Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 56

Your Email Address Is Part of Your Social Media Marketing

In my post "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" I said:

Do not use a gmail or hotmail address for professional purposes when you have a professional email address.

For example, do not have a Twitter background displaying your business' website URL and a hotmail email address instead of [yourname]@[yourdomainname] email address.

Of course what I should have added is:

Do use a professional email address (by buying a domain name for your business and getting an email service with it) regardless of whether you yet have a business website.

Use your own name and not info or support for your main email address:

While you may want info@[domainname] for certain purposes, you do NOT want info@[domainname) as your email on your business card. You want some form of your own name (a recognizable part -- not just initials). After all, this is on your business card that you hand out to actual people.

Why do I say that these small details are part of your social media marketing?

Because social media marketing is about relationships. If you are connecting with people online with your real name, why would you hand out cards with an email address of info@[domainname]?

Perhaps the most important business marketing lesson we can learn from the era of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is that people want to do business with other people – not with faceless businesses. And info@[domainname] falls into the faceless category.



What email address are you using on emails you send to your list?

I am on the email list of someone whose information I admire. But I often do not open her emails because the return email showing in my inbox says support. I actually mentioned this to the person and she said she knows it's not good. (But months later this simple change is still not corrected.)

Why would I want to open an email from support? Many emails from such an address are nothing important.

Yet I would readily open an email from this person if her name were on it. And I do mean her name and not her company name because I might not recognize her company name.

Most of us get so many emails each day that we only scan the incoming ones, choosing to open the ones that look important to us.

Getting an email from info or support usually doesn't fall into the category of important.

What email address you use is important because in today's online world we do want to know there is a real person behind the messages we open – even if software is sending out the messages!

P.S. If you haven't yet taken advantage of the power of email marketing, check out our Miller Mosaic email marketing setup service. We can quickly get you started using this valuable online marketing tool. And we'll make sure that the email address displays the name of a real person!

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Finding Information to Share on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

If you are just starting to use social media marketing to promote your business (and regardless of whether you have your own blog), you will want sources of information connected to your brand to share with others.



The main concept of social media marketing is sharing information that your followers might be interested in rather than only trying to sell your own products or services.

Sharing information connected to your brand helps establish your expertise, and most people do not produce enough content to share only their own material. Thus it is important to find good content from others to share.



One place to find good content is to choose people to follow on Twitter who tweet information and links that might interest your followers. You can use the search function on Twitter to find these people.

Then when you find one of their tweets valuable for your followers, you can retweet this tweet.

(And if you have set up a selective tweets connection to your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, you can add #fb and #in at the end of the retweet to send it to your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.)

Another strategy is to find several blogs that you feel consistently have good information to share. And as www.technorati.com is probably the biggest blog directory, start with doing a search there on topics related to your brand.

Identify 5-10 blogs you think will be consistently valuable for providing posts for you to tweet. Most blogs will enable you to get notification of new posts automatically so you'll know when there is new material to share. Sign up for these notifications.

Warning: You want to share the permalink to a specific post and NOT the blog's URL. Why? Imagine you share the blog's URL but refer to a specific post title. By the time some of your followers get around to checking out the link you provided, there are new posts on that blog and the post to which you referred is not easily found.

Thus you always want to share the permalink, which you get by clicking on the title of the post that you want to share. This takes you to the unique page on the Internet where this blog post lives. Then you copy the long link of this post and this is the permalink of the post.

If you want to track how many people click through on your links, set up a shortened URL account at bit.ly or budurl.com and shorten the permalink you want to share before tweeting it or posting it as an update on your Facebook or LinkedIn accounts.



Many blogs make it easy for you to share posts on your social media accounts. For example, if you are signed into your Twitter account when you read a post you want to share and the post has an automatic button to share that post on Twitter, just click on the Twitter button.

Most Twitter connection applications will then show the post title and a shortened form of its permalink in your Twitter update box. You can add your own comment to the tweet if you wish and then click the Tweet button.

(Note that sometimes a blog post has the button Share, which you click on and then get the option to share on Twitter.)

Now you have several sources from which to find good content to share with your followers.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Comment on Blog Posts

If you are active online to promote a brand, book, cause or business you should also be active in posting insightful comments on other people's blog posts.

First step, you should NOT post anonymously. A main reason for posting is to get people interested in knowing about you. And having the same photo on your comments as you do on your social media profiles enhances your online recognition factor.



Many blogs today offer you the ability to leave a comment by signing in with your Twitter login or your Facebook login. In either case this will display the photo you have on that site.

Other blogs require you to enter your email before leaving a comment. If you have a photo on gravatar.com and the blog is Gravatar enabled, your photo will appear on your comment if you entered the email associated with your Gravatar account.



Now that you understand how to have your photo display with your comments, here are three reasons why you should post comments:

1. If you post thoughtful comments, you are showcasing your own expertise.

2. If you have posted with your website URL, people can check out your website.

3. You are contributing to the blogging community, and sometimes the blogger on whose post you commented will return the compliment by commenting on one of your own posts.



And if you are the blogger and people leave comments on your posts, do respond:



If you want to encourage people to leave comments on your posts, show your appreciation publicly by responding to the comment.

And if the comment doesn't lend itself to giving a specific response, you can simply thank the person for his/her comment.

If the comment does lend itself to a specific response, then write that response.



The same advice goes for showing appreciation to people who write comments on your Facebook updates:



Show your appreciation by thanking these people on Facebook by adding a comment under their comment. And, if you have time, you can go to their profile or their Facebook Page and leave a comment on something they have posted.



One cautionary note: Whether you are commenting or tweeting or doing a status update on Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media sites, do check what you have written for misspellings, incorrect words, etc.

I recently got a tweet from a top person at a high-tech company. The tweet had so many spelling mistakes that I had to puzzle out the meaning.

Once again, I'm reminding all of us that everything we do online reflects on us and our businesses. We want that reflection to be positive.

P.S. You might also like to read the post How to Use Notes Function on a Facebook Page as Your Blog – thus providing people an opportunity to comment on your published Facebook notes.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

How to Use Notes Function on a Facebook Page as Your Blog

Using the Notes function of a Facebook Page (formerly a fan page) can provide you with an alternative to getting a hosted blog at Blogger.com or WordPress.com (not the same as a self-hosted WordPress blog).

Although in all of these cases you don't have the benefit of owning your blog, you do have a large advantage in using a Facebook Page rather than another hosted blog site.

This is because the title of your Facebook Page is searchable inside and outside Facebook plus you are on a site that currently has over 500 million members.

Once you have set up an effective Facebook Page (where people now "like" your Page), here is how to add a Note, which can be a blog post.

When you are signed into your Facebook account and on your Facebook Page, click on the Notes tab. (If the Notes tab doesn't show, click on the >> and you'll get a dropdown and then click on Notes.)

Then click on "Write a Note."

Now if you are going to actually use this as a blog post, I recommend you first write the post in Word. Then review your post for spelling, grammar, etc.

Do NOT copy and paste directly into the Note field. First put your Word copy through a program such as Notepad that strips out the unseen Word coding. Then paste the copy from Notepad into the Note field.

When you do this, you'll have to put back the spaces between paragraphs as well as any boldfacing or other instructions you added to your Word doc.

Type your title in the title field – think keywords.

Now add tags (also think keywords) in the tags field of your Note.

Add a photo if you wish.

Preview the Note and, if correct, hit Publish.

You'll see that this new Note will automatically feed into the wall of your Facebook Page besides being on the Notes tab.

And each new Note you do is on top of the Notes stream in the same way that each new blog post is on top of a blog post stream.

To post this link on Twitter:

Click on the title of the Note the same way you would click on the title of a post to get the permalink of that post.

Then copy that long URL into a URL shortener such as bit.ly (do get an account so you can track your clicks) and you can tweet the shortened URL.

Plus if you have set up the selective Twitter option available on your LinkedIn profile, you can add #in at the end of your tweet and automatically update your LinkedIn profile.

Remember: The first step to using your Facebook Page as a blog is to carefully choose the title of your Facebook Page as this is in effect the title of your blog. (Once you have 100 people who "like" your Page you cannot change the title.)

If you would like help setting up an effective Facebook Page, Miller Mosaic can do this for you.

And you might also like to read the post "New Hyper Alerts Application Helps With Facebook Page Decision"

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Using the Notes Function on a Facebook Page as Your Blog

New Hyper Alerts Application Helps With Facebook Page Decision

One of the important decisions if you are the admin of a Facebook Page (not a Facebook personal profile) is whether to allow other people besides the Page admins to post content on the Page.

This decision option can be found after you click on "Edit Page" and then click on "Manage Permissions."

You then see the following in one part of this section:

Posting Ability:

__ Users can write or post content on the wall

__ Users can add photos

__ Users can add videos

In making this decision whether to check these boxes, here's what you have to think about:

If you do NOT allow any user content on your Page, you will make sure there is no spam or inappropriate comments or competitors' links posted on your Page.

If you DO allow user content, you will be encouraging people who "like" your Page to participate as part of your Page's community.

And, then, if you do allow content, which content can users add?

While for some clients with sensitive-type businesses we have recommended not allowing any user content, for our own two Facebook Pages (www.facebook.com/powermarketing and www.facebook.com/bookmarketing) we have allowed comments because we believe community is an important part of social media marketing.

But allowing users to post content means we must remember to "police" the Pages, checking for inappropriate comments that as an admin we can remove.

Unfortunately, we don't always remember to do this every day. Thus some inappropriate comments might be hanging around our Pages.

Voila! There is now an answer to this problem – and I've tested it out before sharing it with you.



Hyper Alerts – at this time a free application that will email you as soon as anyone posts anything on your Facebook Page. (Great tagline on this application site: "The feature Facebook forgot.")

This is terrific for anyone who wants to allow users to post content on a Facebook Page and yet is worried about inappropriate comments. Try it yourself now at http://alerts.hyperinteraktiv.no/

Bonus Facebook tip: I often caution to choose your Facebook Page title carefully because it cannot be changed. I have just learned that it can be changed as long as you have less than 100 people who "like" your Page.

(Only if you have less than 100 people who "like" your page will you see the name field at the top of "Basic Information" when you are in "Edit Page" mode.)



P.S. If you are interested in having an effective Facebook Page for your business, Miller Mosaic can set this up for you.



© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes

The following eight mistakes are ones that I notice people online making over and over again. I hope this list will help you avoid these mistakes (not listed in any particular order):

1. Do not use a different photo on your social media profiles.

For example, do not have a professional photo on your LinkedIn profile with a link to your Twitter account that has a photo of you in sunglasses. You want a consistent professional image across all social media platforms.

2. Do not use a gmail or hotmail address for professional purposes when you have a professional email address.

For example, do not have a Twitter background displaying your business' website URL and a hotmail email address instead of [yourname]@[yourdomainname] email address.



3. Do not use offline marketing material that sends people to an unprofessional website.

If you are promoting a professional service or business, your image will be impacted by what people first see on your website.



4. Do not have a website that is completely Flash.

A Flash home page can discourage people from staying on your site. And then having to wait for Flash to load for every additional page can really drive people off your site.

5. Do not use references in your posts or articles to a specific date if you want the articles/posts to be evergreen (not to appear dated).

For example, do not say "Today, in 2011, …" when you can say "Today, in this era of online marketing, …" (Yes, sometimes the date will be important. But when the date is not important, do not include it.)



6. Do not use a period to end a sentence if the period immediately follows a link.

If you can't rewrite the sentence to put the link elsewhere in the sentence, leave off the period. Many people mistakenly pick up the period when they copy/past a link – and then, of course, the link doesn't work. (See recommended usage in bio at end of this post.)

7. Do not be penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to your online presence.

If you have an older website that is not social-media friendly and search-engine friendly, walk away from it. Either use a Facebook Page (NOT your Facebook personal profile) as your website for now, or get an effective website.

8. Do not link to Twitter from your LinkedIn profile if you only tweet once every week or so.

This is not an effective use of Twitter and there is no reason to showcase this to people reading your LinkedIn professional profile. Better not to have a link to Twitter than to link to an ineffective account.

In conclusion, as I have written about before, everything you put online reflects on you. If you have a business, you want to reflect well on that business.

And NEVER EVER put anything online – regardless of what the privacy controls supposedly are – that you would be upset to have your mother, your client or your boss read.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Actor Angie Harmon Is a Convert to Twitter

Your Website and Social Media Marketing: Is the Cart Before the Horse?

Recently my business partner Yael K. Miller and I have been looking at company websites of prospective clients for our social media marketing coaching.

Both Yael and I have had the same response:

How can you set up effective social media marketing to bring people to a website that – to put it mildly – is a total disconnect from the social media persona of the business?



Imagine you have a tennis club for children. On Twitter and on a Facebook Page, under your own name, you share information on exercise, sports, tennis equipment, etc. You tweet about taking your own kids for tennis lessons at an early age. And you take part in online conversations about how to motivate teens to play team sports.

Now you link back to your website – and what do visitors see?

No photo or mention or you or your children or any children playing tennis. Instead visitors see a brochureware website (see my post "Is Your Website Making the Mistake of Being Simply Brochureware?") that lists the hours the tennis center is open along with a phone number and generic email address.

This is a big jolt – to go from interacting with someone on Twitter to a website that has no indication of real people behind the site. Yes, there may be small Twitter and Facebook icons on the site, but there's probably not any indication to whom these accounts belong. ("Follow us on Twitter" does NOT count as personal.)

Let's take an example from a different field to clarity this point:

If you were a fashion designer whose personal clothing style was highly observed as part of your brand, you wouldn't wear your five-year-old designs when you have brand-new designs to wear. You know that styles have changed and that people are expecting a different experience from fashion this year.

Now imagine your website built years ago and still displaying design elements popular five years. Or imagine a new site for which you used a free template from Yahoo. Or perhaps you are only using a book page on someone else's site because you haven't bothered to have your own book author site built.

Do you think your prospective business or book fans might wonder why you have such an ill-looking site or book page? What happened to the nice photo of yourself on your Twitter account and your Facebook Page? For that matter, what happened to your name? These site visitors have discovered that your site is a nameless, faceless piece of brochureware.

Now we come to the cart before the horse question:

Does it make sense to start in on social media while your website is still in the dark ages? Shouldn't you first bring your website up to 2011 and then start effectively participating on social media to create relationships that will drive people to your contemporary website?

Your website is your horse. Don't put social media – your cart – before your horse.

And if you aren't sure whether your website passes the social-media friendly website test, check out our website review report service. It can really help you get the horse back out in front of the cart.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

5 Reasons Why You Should Say Yes to Weekly Networking Meetings

After reading the book THE REFERRAL ENGINE by John Jantsch (who also wrote DUCT TAPE MARKETING), I realized how important face-to-face networking can be even to companies such as mine that get much of their business from online connections.

And as I have written before, because I had just read this book I realized, when I first visited the Beverly Hills Leads Club chapter meeting, how important it is to have a dedicated network to help achieve Jantsch's referral recommendations.

Yes, joining this chapter meant committing to getting up early one morning every week. But I immediately saw the benefits.

Recently I've talked to business owners who want more business but aren't willing to commit to a weekly networking meeting.

Here then are five reasons why such a commitment is worth it:

1. People need time to get to know you and appreciate what you have to offer. Then they need to be continually reminded of what your business does.

2. People need time to trust that you will deliver what you promise to clients because giving a recommendation for you is putting their own reputation on the line.

3. You need to demonstrate your commitment to other people's businesses and to the group before you can expect people to go out of their way to recommend you.

4. Even seven days between meetings seems a long time given all our busy lives. Asking people to remember about you if they only see you once a month is expecting an awful lot.

5. Team support can be an incredibly powerful motivator. With everyone cheering on all the members in a coherent group the whole is definitely more than the sum of the parts.

Bonus reason: If you keep up your commitment over time you should definitely see results.

If you are fortunate enough to find a weekly networking group in which you feel comfortable and with which your business "fits," do not pass up this opportunity because you don't want to make a weekly commitment.

You ask your clients or customers to make repeat commitments to you. Ask of yourself the same for your business networking/marketing efforts.

P.S. If you are in West Los Angeles, check out the Beverly Hills Leads Club chapter.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...