With its recent redesign and a slew of new features, Facebook has been moving to make Pages a focal point of the site. Personally, I recently described these changes as “the business model that moves [the company] from a successful social network to a highly profitable business.”Thus, it’s not surprising that Facebook is starting to do more to reach out to brands that might benefit from using revamped Pages. The latest example is (fittingly) a Facebook Page that the company has setup to promote “Facebook Marketing Solutions,” complete with case studies from a number of large brands using the tool, tips and how-tos, and discussion with marketers.

The brands that Facebook is featuring include household names like Adobe, Lionsgate, and Ben & Jerry’s, but there are still some useful tidbits for those with slightly smaller budgets. For example, Ben & Jerry’s implementation of Facebook Connect is something that any website could deploy with a bit of coding work and zero marketing spend.

• It lets visitors to Ben & Jerry’s website select their favorite flavor and share it on Facebook. Then, that user’s friends see the flavor selection on their homepage, and also get a link to Ben & Jerry’s Facebook Page where they too can become a fan.

  Meanwhile, for brands looking to spend money on Facebook (), namely by promoting their Page, the Marketing Solutions group shares a number of different types of campaigns. For example, Adobe’s “Real or Fake” campaign includes a game on the company’s Page, where users guessed whether an image was real or Photoshoped.

  Adobe describes its results: “About 10% of our page visitors played the game and, of those who played, 6% clicked the “Share” button at the end of the game, and 6% clicked “Buy Now” at the end of the game. Due to this game and media placement, our page received over 6,000 new fans too.”

  For Facebook, sharing this type of information using a Page is a great example of a company eating its own dog food so to speak. It’s also good to see that they’re both sharing tips that anyone can do – without spending significant money on Facebook – as well as case studies clearly designed to get big brands to spend big dollars on marketing their Pages.

  ---

  Additional Facebook Resources for Brands

  ---

  - New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers

  - 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page

  - 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

From Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Why blog for your personal brand?

There are so many reasons why blogging is good for your personal brand. A blog allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field and blogs rank very high in Google because there’s fresh content, they are keyword rich and people link to them often.  Blogs allow you to build a community around a topic, network professionally, and hopefully make new friends.  A blog will help you become a more proficient writer, gain confidence in yourself and it will make you feel empowered to reach to the stars.  From a marketing standpoint, you can get your message out for free and command the attention of the media.  There’s also bloggers who make money with advertising and AdSense.

DOWNLOAD: “Blogging Your Brand: A Complete Guide to Your Success!”

Click here to download

For complete table of contents go to Free 52 Page Complete Blogging Guide | Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m launching a site or two on “green biz”, so I’m trying to keep up with what’s out there.  In 12 Green Consumer Trends Mean Business Opportunity for Eco-Entrepreneurs,  Scott tells us:

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Hopefully, like me, you are learning to use Twitter to enhance and increase your business.  Here’s some help getting there:

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource , Derek Halpern great collection, broken into targeted pieces.

• Chapter 1: Twitter for Newbies
• Chapter 2: How to Use Twitter Effectively
• Chapter 3: How to Increase Your Twitter Followers
• Chapter 4: Why Twitter Helps Bloggers (and How they Can Use It)
• Chapter 5: The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business
• Chapter 6: Here are the Best Twitter Marketing Resources… Period
• Chapter 7: Does Twitter Provide Any SEO Benefits?
• Chapter 8: Where Else Does Twitter Apply?
• Chapter 9: Twitter Case Studies: What are People and Companies Doing?
• Bonus Chapter: More Twitter Tips

In case you are asking yourself if your business or association is ready to start tweeting, you can stop asking.

Even the high, conservative guru of business, the Wall Street Journa,l is not only reporting on tweeting but is tweeting itself. http://twitter.com/WSJ

As WSJ.com as reported on the Twitter phenomenon infiltrating mainstream America:

“Doctors are using Twitter to update patients about office hours. Local groups such as the Los Angeles Fire Department are using it to share details about service calls with interested residents, occasionally with graphic descriptions of the victims’ conditions. And dozens of major companies, like computer maker Dell Inc., use Twitter to share deals and product news with people who sign up for the service.”  They also report on a mobile Korean taco business, selling spicy Bar-b-que tacos  getting 400 customers in customers at night by tweeting out their location.”

Is there anything Tweet can’t do?  Perform brain surgery?  Tweet out Hamlet in snippets?

Well, kidding aside, that still leaves plenty it can do, and what it can do for your business can be pretty amazing.  For the basics, go to Using Twitter For Business

Tell us how you’re using Twitter, and we’ll start a dialogue of people or businesses with interesting Twitter uses.

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The folks over at Mashable have developed an excellent list of free resources to help us all build websites.  Mashable is a bit more tech oriented though and many of the books have to do with accessible Flash design.  A lot of business people, bloggers and writers just want a good, solid website without all the bells and whistles, or if they do want them, they want a programmer to put them in so they can sleep easy at night.  So, I’ve taken the list from Mashable at 20 Free Ebooks and Whitepapers for Better Web Design and a pared it down to a manageable 12 for those of us who are not uber techies.

Aside from the basic web design books, if you’re just starting out, my favorites are the first two, because many of us need some coaching on how to sell a service and because insourcing vs. outsourcing is a fundamental decision that will affect how well your business operates.  So here goes, with the leaner, more basic list:

Creating a Web Site for Your Service Business from Entrepreneur Media
Selling products online might be easy, but selling services is a completely different ballgame. This whitepaper covers what you need to know to create the best website you can for your service business.

Managing Web Development: Insourcing vs. Outsourcing from Key Professional Media
If you’re trying to decide whether to hire an in-house web designer or outsource to a design agency (whether in this country or abroad), this whitepaper is a must-read.

Free Web Design Ebook
This ebook was written to help new internet marketers get through the basics of web design in relation to internet marketing purposes.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Obvious: Web Usability 101 from Squiz.co.uk
This online whitepaper covers everything you need to know about making usable websites from the ground up.

The Top 10 Web Site Design Do’s from ProfitJump.com
The tips covered in this ebook run the gamut from learning HTML coding skills to realizing that a website is never really “finished”.

Integrate Design to Create Brand Harmony from MarketingProfs
Incorporating your brand into your website design is very important, and this whitepaper explains the how and why of doing that.

10 Tips for Designing an Ecommerce Web Site from nightcats.com
This ebook has ten tips for creating a great ecommerce site and covers everything from designing for your target market to identifying your objectives.

KnockKnock from Seth Godin
This ebook from Seth Godin has all sorts of information about using online marketing tools to make your website work better.

Creating a Web Site for Your Service Business from Entrepreneur Media
Selling products online might be easy, but selling services is a completely different ballgame. This whitepaper covers what you need to know to create the best website you can for your service business.

5 Common E-Commerce Site Mistakes from Microsoft
If you run an ecommerce site but are unhappy with the results you’re getting, this ebook may shed some light on the subject and point our common mistakes you may be making.

Web Design Best Practice Guide from e-consultancy
This ebook is a regularly updated point of reference for best practice approaches for all the areas that anyone involved in web design needs to do an effective job.

“Mosaic Layouts”: How and Why to Avoid Creating Puzzle-Looking Websites from Software Talks
This whitepaper covers why properly using images and graphics in your website is so important.

10 Tips for Creating Your Web Site from Global Knowledge
This whitepaper offers 10 tips you can use to make sure your web site is effective from day one.

For the really techy stuff, particularly about how to do Flash design, go to 20 Free Ebooks and Whitepapers for Better Web Design.

Let us know how reading these books works for you.  What you’ve learned, new advice for the rest of us.  We’d like to hear from you.

When it comes to hiring I’m reminded of the philosophy:

How you do anything is how you do everything

As an Online Business Manager I’ve done my fair share of hiring virtual professionals over the years, and i’ve found that you can learn ALOT about someone from the very first moment you connect with them (which is usually by email).

How people respond to you from day one can be a good reflection of how they would actually be on a project.

There are a few things you can pay attention to that may help filter out some potentially unsuitable people along the way:

How quickly do they respond to your emails?
I expect a 24 hour turnaround time when I send someone an email (except on weekends/holidays of course). If I send someone an email saying ‘hey, i’m interested in hiring you’ and I don’t hear from them for 3 days I will most likely not consider them further. Most of our projects require a 24 hour turnaround in communication, and if I don’t see that right away it is a red flag.

Did they provide what you asked them for?
If you asked them for specific information, did they provide it in full detail? I’m actually surprised how often I will get a response from a potential hire and they didn’t include half of the information I requested. If they have a lack of attention to details in these early stages it makes me wonder how much would be missed on the job.

What is the tone of their response?
Are they casual or do they take a more professional approach in their writing? (depending on your needs you may prefer either one). How is their spelling & grammar? The actual tone of their response can be very telling – for example if you are hiring someone to response to customer service emails and their spelling/grammar is poor that may not be a good fit.

Do they follow up with you?
If you haven’t responded to someone in a day or so, do they follow up with you? I’ll admit that I sometimes do this on purpose – not respond to an email for a couple of days just to see if the person will follow up with me to check in. If someone is eager/excited about the opportunity they should send a follow up email to check in with you (even just to ensure that you received their last message)
There are of course many things that come into play in the hiring process, but it is sometimes these little things that can make all the difference in the long run. And if you don’t pay attention to them now they could turn into big issues and annoyances down the road.

–

Tina Forsyth is the author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with Your Clients and Yourself. She writes and consults in advanced online marketing and business systems for business owners and their support teams. www.OnlineBusinessManager.com

The Obama Model Web 2.0 – Social activism, bordering on a movement, is a whole new concept. Well, maybe it’s a rebirth and reconfiguration of a Web.1 concept. (According to Humanity.org, these are the top 10 Social Activist Sites: The World Revolution, Ashoka, Changemakers, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Earth Fund, Afribike, Grupa hajdeda da…, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and Youth Against Aids (YAA) ).  But it does use a whole new set of social media tools that did not exist until recently.

Or maybe it’s another transformation of an even older concept, corporate social responsibility or CSR.  Two prime examples are ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, which not only promotes support sustainable and safe and environmentally friendly methods of food production but seeks and supports nonviolent ways to achieve peace and justice as well. Another vendor, Whole Foods Markets, goes to the ends of the earth, literally, to find delicious and unusual products.  Whole Foods then partners with local farmers and producers, even including direct micro-credit loans to their vendors, in order to bring quality to their customers, and, at the same time, lift up emerging economies. It has been a powerful formula.

But now there is a new model on the web, inspired by the Obama’s extremely media savvy campaign. It is a model where activism is not rooted in a bricks and mortar organization but driven, primarily, by viral marketing on the web and the formation of a communities of interest.  Or are they movements?

Whatever you call them, you can use the same model.

As set by Tim Leberecht in Obama Inc. – Web activism for profit:

I have to admit, when I started entrepreneuring I had neither.  My father died and I was suddenly thrust into managing ranchland, mineral rights, cattle, grazing, tough as leather cowhands, and swarms of immigrants crossing over and across our land which was like the Camino Real into the States, as old as the ancient Indian trails crisscrossing the Southwest.  It was a bit disconcerting to a young woman who had just come back from the East, from Wellesley with its crew neck sweaters and circle pins, having graduated from Columbia, that egg-head paradise, a stone’s throw from the Broadway theaters, which I frequented regularly.  Yet, here I was in the South Texas sun and red dust or mud, depending on the season, wearing boots for fear of rattlesnakes and carrying firearms for fear of all else, trying to run a busines  But what’s a gal to do?  I learned.

What I did have when I started was the fearlessness of someone trained since birth to be an entrepreneur and considering risk taking as natural as breathing.  So even though I might have been put off by rattlesnakes, I assumed I could learn a business, any business, just as well as anyone else, because my father had convinced me I could.  And I did.

But I have to agree with Seth.  Perhaps the most important things I learned were high level things that I didn’t even realize at the time involved process, perhaps because my father didn’t call it that.  What he had were certain maxims that I had to learn to decode.  Statements like ” You have to be around money to make money.”  Or, go into a lucrative market, not one that’s hanging on by its fingernails.  Or, my favorite. At the age of 5 or so, my father would point to a building and ask “What’s that building worth?” The correct answer was, “As much as you can get for it.”

Those are the kind of processes that are invaluable and here’s Seth’s take on it from Seth’s Blog: What are you good at?.

So how do you promote yourself in a professional and sophisticated way?

One way is to deliver something of value.  ( Your ideas and professional expertise, of course.)  And one of the very best ways to do this today is using Twitter to tweet your own horn.

As Ron Miller points out: Your Business Needs to Pay Attention to Twitter

Over the past year or so, Twitter has become a full-blown communications phenomenon. For those of you who don’t follow every social networking trend. Twitter is a micro-blogging site where you enter your thoughts, whatever they may be, in 140 or characters or less. Experts say if you aren’t paying attention to Twitter, your business may be missing out on more than you think…

I’m a recent convert to using Twitter and am just trying now to set up a system myself to use it in a strategic way.

So let me turn to an expert, Michael Stelzner, and give you what I think is a stunning and very compelling  example which Michael used in How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business on practical ways to use Twitter. Trust when we say your tweets can capture the attention and interest of top level people in your field, so best to learn how to do it:

“The Twitter Plan

Cindy King, an international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by implementing a strategic Twitter plan.

“Following the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.

“Light bulbs went off, and I spent a weekend putting together a tweet marketing plan and entered in 6 weeks worth of tweets, 5 a day, using TweetLater. I used a mindmap, created categories, varied times on tweets and used BUDurls so I could track results and improve my tweet plan the next time around. That was a month ago,” explained King.

When King finds a spare minute between projects, she logs into Twitter and watches what folks are talking about. When she Tweets, about 90 percent of the time she presents useful information and resources to her followers. The remaining tweets are surveys and questions. Following this strategy, King saw an 800 percent increase in inquiries about her business after she setup her Twitter campaign.”

And another example:

“Getting In Front of High Profile People

B2B copywriter Terri Rylander took a much different approach. At first she was very skeptical of Twitter. “I looked at it but couldn’t figure out why people would continually send out messages about the size of a text message, unless they were a teenager. Twitter was for sending updates they said. I don’t have time for updates, and besides, who would care?” said Rylander.

She later came across a peer in her industry that was using Twitter and suggested Rylander follow her on Twitter. “That’s when I discovered Twitter as a business tool. I’ve been in my particular niche for over 10 years and know who the players are (though they don’t know me). When I checked who she was following on Twitter, there they all were! It read like a “Who’s Who” list.”

Rylander joined Twitter and began following and interacting with the people she respected. “Other than a cold call on the phone or e-mail, I would never have the chance to get my name in front of vendors, industry analysts, and industry experts. I’ve had a number of Twitter conversations that have also led to personal conversations.”

To stay top of mind with experts, she offers interesting links, responds to tweets, and posts her thoughts for conversation at least a few times a day.”

Michael Stelzner also offers a number of very useful tools for your Twitter Toolkit, and I suggest you go to How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business to collect them all.  That’s what I’m going to do.

You can follow Michael here on Twitter .  When I get my Twitter plan up to speed, I’m going to ask you to follow me on Twitter also, and I’ll follow you.  Some of the Top Tweeters have 10,000 people following them.  But they all started with just a few.

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