I’m back again, continuing the Facebook Business Basics series.  

If you went to my Facebook page, you saw two videos about how you can find people on Facebook who may be interested in you and let them come back to your site. This video talks about  what to do once you have someone viewing your profile.

Find more videos like this on Website Promotion for Regular Folks

(You may need to click through to the original post if the video isn’t showing up. You can also click the lower right corner of the video to go full screen.)

Technically speaking, where does the experience of Facebook largely take place? See why you can get better results posting to your own profile (which updates the news feed that goes out to your connections) rather than publishing on other people’s profiles.

I’ve got lots more Facebook video for you, to view them just go to my Facebook fan page in the videos section. The next three videos in the series give you an airplane view of what you need to do to be in the conversational and activity stream of information we just talked about.

Why do you want to be in that stream? Because that’s where the interaction is happening.

My pal Warren Whitlock is hosting it tomorrow night at 7 pm Pacific. Yes, I totally forgot to tell anyone, which is a shame, because you can call in to talk to me and ask (on topic!!) questions.

His radio show page is where you go to get the information and a reminder to tune in.

Did I mention that it’s free?

I’m going to be telling a bunch of social media secrets, mostly relating to what the key is to getting more traffic via social media. It’s not like anything else you’ve heard with tips on what the links are and stuff like that. I’m going to be talking more about what the difference is between an average everyday user and a power user. What do they do differently that we’re not?

I’m also going to talk about how to keep social media from being a time suck in your day, without putting you behind the pace of other users.

Then, of course, you can ask me all your questions about where to begin and such. This is my last free and public interview for anything remotely related to website promotion and internet marketing.

So be there, or…

… be somewhere else, I guess?

This is the 3rd in a series of 8 posts I’ll be writing ending tomorrow, leading up to my retirement, all on topics I feel are relevant to be discussed before I begin to introduce new blogs and content.

I’m not leaving the internet, just internet marketing, & website promotion. If you need to contact me you’ll be able. The best way is currently following me on Twitter.

photo credit: pbyrne

If you understand this, truly understand this, about social media, you’ll never be confused about how to benefit wildy from it.

Notice I didn’t just say “get traffic from it”.

The One and Only True Power of Social Media is that it is completely based on getting approval from others.

So to understand how to use that information, answer this question for yourself: in a situation where popularity is driven by approval, who is the most powerful person?

Hint: It’s not the person who Gets the most approval.

Ask me below and I’ll give you another hint. A big one. For free, but I will only deliver it in private. And if you guess correctly or figure it out, I’ll let you know that too.

Within the next seven days, I’ll write in public about the answer. You’ll have to figure out for yourself which writing is the answer though.

photo credit: anders.rasmussen

This is a continuation of the series I started last week – if you’re still stuck on whether or not Facebook and other social media sites are useful for your business, then you probably want to start with the “Blah Facebook” article.

It’s about whether the social networking sites are about whether we’re holding hands and singing kumbaya in a perfect world, or serving our clients.

So, what was I saying after I was so rudely interrupted by life and the flu and going with my sister when her family moved across the state?

Oh yes.

Now that we’re past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we’re focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there’s still a fundamental question.

How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help YOUR company?

It boils down to three things.

1- Are There Enough People on the Site in Your Interest Area for it to Be Worth Your While?

You have to think about business connections too, not just clients. You can connect with people who send you business. Think about what the value of a new client is too, whether you think can get one out of 100, and how long it takes. When people come to your profile, are they visiting your site? If not, is your profile set up correctly?

Experiment. There are several very subtle things you can do that maximize your exposure, not just daily clicks through to your site.

2- Does your company have an RSS-capable site that updates frequently?

If it does, a profile on Facebook gives you another place to share your RSS link. You can import your blog posts going forward, or summaries.

3- Do you already have clients, friends, associates, whose signal you can isolate, or whose noise you can penetrate, using Facebook?

This is the most underestimated use of Facebook. My first month at Facebook I had direct interactions with ten influential people I admire. Some of them I look up to for personal reasons, others are greats in some aspect of search, the internet or technology. One actually sent me a client.

Instead of installing hundreds of applications and super-poking someone or posting spam to their Super Wall, you can be the smart person who sends a letter and gets a response, the one who sends a private message and is sent a gift in return, or just get the wonderful feeling of having a world famous personality you admire not only acknowledge you, but contact you directly.

One of the greatest things about Facebook is how it can help cement relationships between you and people you know but didn’t think you had much in common with. You know how sometimes, you want to write to say hello to someone, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste their time?

Or when you think about some great author or celebrity you admire, and what you’d say to them if you could meet them? Maybe you just want to compliment a more famous colleague and not sound like a dork.

Facebook can help with this when it functions as an automatic ice-breaker, facilitating an intial contact between you and someone you wish you had more reason to interact with, then another, and another, until you become friends who call each other on the phone and plan to visit or meet at conferences.

Those are the reasons. It’s not a matter of time because you can block all the nuisance requests and there are ways around the irritating app requests.

It’s not a matter of just traffic because first, you can set up a profile in 15 minutes to automatically send you traffic and never mess with it again if you like. Or you can go in and meet people every day and it can be a major traffic source.

And it’s not a matter of whether you can get anything out of it – it’s more a matter of whether you’re willing and whether the available traffic is targeted to your topic. It’s not for everyone, because let’s face it, not everyone wants to do the work, or even use Facebook that’s way.

And that’s okay! For some people, it’s a nice little escape, like a mental, online Starbucks. For some it’s a bother, and the pain of learning a new way to do things isn’t worth the time. I don’t mean that sarcastically – if you’re functioning as a CEO, you may not want to focus on Facebook.

With a little research, you can find out what kind of role it will play in your life.

It seems to me that if you can learn how to be the life of the party, you can learn how to work the social media scene. Let’s think of it as a party then, and do a run down of how it would work out.

Stage One: You Go to the Party

If you’re smart, you’ll be invited, or better yet, throw the party. The party of course, meaning the place where you socially interact in the social media arena.

On a social news site, the party might get started when you submit a link, or a party in progress might be a story you vote on that’s rising in popularity.

Stage Two: You Find the People Who Like
What You Like

As Rob Gordon says in High Fidelity, “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” So find the people who have the same tastes as you, follow what they’re voting for, or saving, or where they’re hanging out.

One safe basis of friendship is commonalities.

Stage Three: You Mirror and Create Rapport

You know how you meet someone knew and start picking up their expressions, etc. When you’re meeting people online, we also tend to try on aspects of other people’s behavior. You’ll suggest things to each other, or catch yourself imitating one of the Alpha Populars.

There’s actually a scientific background to this. In Unlimited Power, Anthony Robbins talks about how to use rapport to build connections to other people.

Stage Four: You Make a Gesture

Eventually, you’ll start to drill down to your favorite folks, and in natural course, do something for them. It’s partially the paying of an imagined social debt – when people enrich our lives by sharing information we enjoy, we often feel like reciprocating.

That’s one of the reasons the free ebook still works so well to get newsletter sign-ups. (It’s email that’s failed, not the email marketing techniques. But I digress.)

Stage Five: The Gesture is Appreciated,
or Even Reciprocated

When you get feedback from shared links, when you are thanked for your gesture, or the person you hooked up does you some kind of solid back, you’ve definitely got the basis for a relationship.

It’s a two-way street.

Stage Six: You Are Friends

At least in the online sense of the phrase. This is the time when you can send a link out of the blue even if you haven’t spoken in a few days.

But remember the most important part of a relationship is maintaining it. Don’t take this new connection for granted, and keep doing the thing that made you become familiar to each other in the first place.

Some people “get” social media right away, but can’t really articulate why. Other people will never get it no matter how clearly it’s spelled out to them. In discovering why this is, I realized an important point.

The secret to benefiting from social media is so very simple. Social media is about relationships.

Not necessarily friendships. Not always community. Relationships. From how the content relates to the person reading it, to how the information gets spread from person to person, why people vote for some stories and not others. Relationships to people, relationships between you and the content you read. Not just the fact that those relationships build community but how.

Every problem with social media has a solution that is based in fixing or forming a relationship.

Take a site like Digg. Why are some people hostile to one submission, but thrilled by another, on the same topic, sometimes even about the same issue? You’ll probably find the answer in

• Whether or not the submitter has found a niche community within the site and is respected/liked within it
• The connection or lack of, that the story has to the group that’s reading it
• The relationship of the submitter to the site (sometimes it’s considered okay to submit your own stories, sometimes not)
• The relationship of that site to the story or the Digg community at large

You could go on forever, but if you go deep enough, you’ll find a relationship that needs to be fixed, formed or forgotten.

That’s not to say that if you don’t build a relationship, you won’t get in. On the contrary, your first submission to Digg may go right to the front page and stay there for all I know. But your story will have to be relatable.

I like to think of social media web sites as a club where I’m not on the VIP list. Depending on that club, I might have to stand on a line and wait to see if I’ll have the privilege of joining, or if I seem cool enough, I might be let in.

It’s partially on that basis that I chose the clubs I go to… when I dress the part of a jazz vocalist, no matter how much I like metal, I won’t seem like I will relate to the crowd inside.

Yeah, it’s about relationships. Not just friendships – your friends may not be enough to keep you on the front page of Digg. If you can understand how relationships work, between people, between people and what they do, and why they relate to some stories and not others, you’re probably going to do well.

Kind of like in business.

I’ve been reading a few blogs here and there as I recover from my holiday hiatus. There are a few resolutions that I think can help you get more out of your traffic this year.

1- Get Rid of Dead Weight in Social Media (but consider holding off for a week for reason number 2)

I got this from Lyndon over at Cornwall SEO. You should read his post for an in-depth look, but here’s a quote that sums it up.

Humans are complex things, but to reduce the presence of another human being to an avatar allows a more mechanical reaction. I look at any of the avatars classed as a friend on digg and a process occurs. “Does this friend ever vote on my stories?”, if the answer is no put him on the delete pile. “Does this friend submit cool stuff and link to me regularly on his blog?”, remove him from the delete pile and put onto the daily digg file. “Does this other friend not vote for me and has not even friend-ed me back?” Yes, delete the bugger right now and stop him (or her) slowing down my ship.

If you’re an up and comer though, I’d advise you to be a bit less malicious. Same thing if you’re a power user with infrequent participation.

One reason is that some people are going to resolve this year to be more active – maybe wait a week or so and see who sticks, then do your house cleaning.

2- Be More Active in Fewer Mainstream Social Web Sites If You Haven’t Been a Power User

If you want to have profiles everywhere, knock yourself out.

But I’d advise you to pick your top five favorite sites and really get to know them intimately. In so doing, you’ll find that you’ll be more successful at a handful of sites you use religiously, than attempting to be a jack of all trades.

Right now I’m thinking of going with del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Facebook, Mixx, and Digg as my mainstream sites.

I don’t like Digg so much but I’ve built some relationships there, and am used to getting a certain amount of news from the site, and attention for some of my friends. (There are about 5 Niche sites that I’m going to dedicate more time to as well, but that’s another article. Here’s a hint: the Niche sites will be the stars this year as disgruntled folks continue to migrate. The traffic will be less in quality but of much higher quantity.)

3- If You Have Been a Power User, Leverage Your Influence to Spread the Heavy Lifting Around

I got this one from Maki over at DoshDosh, not from his New Year’s post, but from an older one about Influencing the Influencers. This is often much smarter than being an influencer yourself.

The catch is that you may first have to become an influencer for a while if you don’t have any other chips to bargain with.

4- Comment and Trackback More

Think of blogging as a war between centipedes. Whoever has the most, and the strongest legs, carrying the sexiest body wins. Those legs are comments and trackbacks. This analogy is getting gross. I hate centipedes, why did I do this?

The point is, if you’re not getting into the conversation, it’s like trying to make lemonade with no sugar. You’ll have a drink alright, and it’ll be yellow. To the untrained eye it may even look like the real thing. But the people who take care to look closely will know it’s not genuine. And they’re the ones that can sink your boat.

What is with me an all the analogies, smilies and metaphors today?

5- Write Shorter Articles In Your Blog/Newsletter/Etc or Blog Less Frequently

Your every blog post doesn’t have to be a novel. I really need to take this advice myself. I produce less premium information because I’m making longer posts, which also eats into time that could be used for consulting or training.

So either I need to say less with more, or balance my longer articles with fewer posts. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to do membership sites again.

6- Make a Plan, Then Tie it To a Schedule

Your traffic actions yield more the more organized you are about their execution. The problem is either not sticking with a traffic method to fruition, or not knowing what to do next in the first place. Stop flitting from one technique to the next, commit, and see things through to the end.

Plan your traffic tasks ahead for a month, then break them down into steps.

7- Elevate Your Relationships

Take your newsletter relationships to the occasional snail mail. Call your power affiliates on the phone. Take your IM conversations to Skype. Take your voice conversations to video conferences or meet in person. The Relationship Economy has been here for years, and the world is less and less slow to embrace it, which means you must be too.

Make friends, or at least connections.

8 – Commit to Creating and Receiving Less Noise

This is a big one. I’m a pack rat and I hate to throw things out. And every month it hurts me to sift through my reader and toss out blogs that don’t update at least twice a week, unless I have some personal relationship with the blogger, especially since I know I’ve been guilty of the same.

Of course in my case, it’s because I don’t want to be part of the noise, I want to be part of the conversation. And I fully expect people to delete me when I don’t update — sometimes it’s Why I’m quiet.

But that’s another story for another day.

For this year, it’s going to mean that every post of mine will have even more of an emphasis on concrete take-aways. What Loren said in a New Year’s Resolution post inspired me:

Instead of trying to cover all of the search news which comes out daily, perhaps writing more opinion and tutorial will be of greater value to our readers. In October and November I started publishing more link building and SEO tutorials and lists, and these attracted a good deal of positive reader response, bookmarks and interest; so I’m thinking that this is a good sign.

Now, do you need to do all of these? Probably not. But if you do, they’ll help cement your online relationships, increase traffic, and build trust. All three of those will lead to greater profit.

Some people think Facebook, is a waste of time.

And it can be – IF you’re prone to time wasting. You don’t have to be if you learn how to use it properly.

There are plenty of less vocal people who believe StumbleUpon is for amateur sharers. And of course there is the big camp of people who think all social media, including blogging and social bookmarking, is a huge waste of your resources that you won’t get anything back from.

What’s so often missed here is that, under different circumstances, the view of tools as useful and/or useless are right. A powerful weapon in the hands of a novice is impotent.

And yes, I mean that the dirty way.

Seriously though, it’s always your choice whether to be a novice or to learn more. It’s much more savvy to say you don’t know how to use Facebook for business, and then find out, than it is to claim it’s a time waster when you’re playing the Zombie game and bothering your co-workers.

The easiest way to overcome the potential lazy factor in any social media tool is to limit the amount of time you spend on it.

If you have 15 minutes to get everything you need during a trip to the grocery store, the way you spend your time differs greatly. You’ll bring a list, think ahead to how to most efficiently cruise the aisles, etc.

On the other hand, if you are taking a leisurely trip that’s not needed, you tend to browse and look at things you normally wouldn’t buy, not to mention spend too much.

Plan your trips to social media sites the same way. You can always come back to play Scrabulous or chat with friends, after you’ve finished your work .

I liken the use of Social Media to the use of the telephone. (Yes, the internet too, but that’s so obvious that the point is still missed. But heck, if you were smart enough to catch that, I guess you can skip to the end.)

You can use the telephone for dating (phone chat rooms), to waste time (gossiping with a friend), to solidify a relationship (calling a friend just to say hello), to touch base (let your mother know you’re alive), and yes, for business too (call instead of driving over and having a meeting, connect with a client, check up on a vendor, ask a colleague a question, network, etc.).

It’s up to you how you want to use Facebook, or del.icio.us, or MySpace or Furl or any Social Media tool.

If other people think it’s a waste of your time, let them.

They aren’t the ones who have to live with your profits and losses at the end of the quarter. There’s plenty of information about how to use Social Media for business, Facebook in particular. A lot of it is free.

If that’s what you’re interested in doing, don’t let the “time waster” scare throw you off – go out there and find out for your self what the best tips are and test them.

Believe your own results.

If you submit all the links you find, every day, to all the social news, bookmarking and sharing sites you know of, you will get into an endless loop of site sharing. This is far from what you want to accomplish.

Instead, see how much sharing you usually get done in whatever time you have set aside for share work, whether it’s 15 minutes a day, or 2 hours at the end of the week. Make that number the amount of sites you gather.

You don’t have to hold yourself to exactly 100 sites. About 90 or 110 will do – this way if you find a really good site when you’re near your soft limit, you won’t waste time agonizing over what site not to share.

After a few weeks, you’ll get a feel for how many sites you normally come across and what percentage of them can make it to the sharing stage. Don’t just set a limit to the sites you bookmark. Think about keeping your submissions to some approximate limit. You can always come back during non-marketing time to add more.

As you finish with basic sharing of sites, you’ll likely want to move on to the subset of those sites that you want to vote for, or submit to a social news site.

What you’ll run into at some point is that as you’re submitting stories, many of the links you’ve submitted are already present. The way you’ll find this out is as you’re submitting- this can quickly turn into a waste of time. Or, if you’re often the first submitter, by the time you’re visiting other submissions and voting, there’s a pile of new sites to see and vote on.

You can overcome this by setting aside time to look on the popular and upcoming page for stories you’ve already read at other sites and voting for them, when you first log onto the site, before your submissions.

Then, when you’re adding your sites, you’ll have an idea which ones to skip. Of course, if you want to be the first to submit a great story, this can get in the way. But you’ll build a better following by keeping most of your submissions to completely new discoveries rather than brand new submissions from sites everyone already knows about..

When you’re finished voting for sites you already know about, you can then scan the upcoming and popular lists for your favorite category, and vote for the links you didn’t know about. If time pressed, instead of starting the cycle all over again, you can either end on this round of submissions. Or, if the submissions aren’t time sensitive, simply add the links that you enjoy, but aren’t as popular, to your share list for the next day or visit.