• Before You Start: You have a small business. You are using some social media tools.
• Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article Last Updated: Friday, December 2, 2011

Find Your Voice On Social Media

One of the reasons why some small businesses don’t get great results on social media is because they feel awkward talking about what they do. Maybe you fall into that category. You don’t think what you do is especially important. Or unique. Or interesting. These feelings keep you from sharing on social media. You feel awkward. Not special.

Your Unique Take On The World

I believe every business is filled with smart ideas that others would like to hear. Every business person has a unique take on their business world. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you are in, or how many other people are in the same business. You are unique. The way you approach things is unique. And there are people out there who would be inspired by what you have to say.

You Can Solve Problems

I want to inspire small business people to speak up. Share what you do. Share why you do it that way. Of course, everyone will not agree with you. Some people will think your ideas are ordinary. That’s part of it. But there are people who will be thrilled to hear what you have to say. People who have been waiting for the kinds of insights you have to offer. People who have problems that get resolved by your approach and your outlook.

Get Inspired

If you are feeling ordinary, awkward, or tongue-tied on social media, take a minute to think about this. And while you are thinking, watch this amazing video from Derek Sivers to get inspired to find your voice.

The world is waiting for you to share.

You Have Something To Share

One of my great pleasures with this business is connecting with people who feel inspired after talking with me. These people find something about what I say and how I say it reaches deeply into them. They become empowered to step out into the world in a bolder, stronger way. I love that. I love helping people realize the spark of unique brilliance inside each one of us.

I find that small businesses are started by people who have a strong statement they want to make to the world. Are you sharing your voice and your opinions?

Your turn: Have you ever felt that your voice or insights are not important? Have you found people who enthusiastically embrace what you do and how you do it? Share your experience here.

Related Articles:

• Talk About Your Business (Part 1)
• Talk About Your Business (Part 2)
• Customers With Benefits
• Why It’s Important To Work With The Right People

• Before You Start: You are ready to jump into social media. Or, you are already using social media but want to reach out to new social media sites.
• Learning level: 2 | Getting Started
• Article Last Updated: Friday, December 2, 2011

Social Media Account Names

You want to make it very easy for your existing customers and other people who know your business to find you on social media. This means that your social media account names are important.

However, you may face a challenge if you try to secure your business name on various social media tools. For example:

• Your business name is too long. Each site has a limited length for account names, and your business name may not fit into the allowed number of characters.
• Your business name is already taken. Another business with a similar name may have already taken your business name.

In most cases, when another business is using your name on social media, it’s because they have a similar business name. However, if you find a business who is impersonating your business, you may be able to talk with the service provider to reclaim your business name.

If you can’t get your ideal account name across all tools, but you can get a variation of your business name across all tools, you have an important branding decision to make.

• Mixed names. You can use your ideal account name on some sites and a variation on other sites. This makes it easy for people to find you on most sites.
• Consistent names. You can use a variation account name on all sites. This gives you consistency, but make sure that your variation will make sense to people looking for your business online.

Social Media Account Name Strategy

Your social media account names are important. But you may have to compromise because your ideal account name is already in use.

Here’s a strategy you can use to decide on your social media account names.

1. Make a list of the social media tools that you may want to use for your business. Obviously, you can’t use every social media site, so select a handful of services that are a great fit for your business, industry and customers. Do include the big three (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube).
2. Make a list of your ideal account name and several variations. What will you use if your ideal name isn’t available? Think through your options, and rank your variations in the order you prefer them.
3. Check the availability of your possible account names on each tool. You can manually check a handful of sites, or use one of these account name checking tools to instantly check across many sites.
4. Decide on your account name strategy. Will you use mixed names, or use  a consistent name even if it isn’t your ideal account name? It’s a personal decision you must make for your business.
5. Set up your accounts on your target social media tools. For most businesses, there is no need to set up an account across 10 or more social media tools. If you think you might want to use a tool in the future, go ahead and set up your account now so you can claim your account name. You can always delete your account later if you change your mind.

Your turn: Does your business use the same account name across multiple social media sites? Did you have a problem getting your ideal account name on a social media site? Share your experience.

Related Articles:

• Claim Your Business Name On Social Media
• Talk About Your Business (Part 1)
• Talk About Your Business (Part 2)
• Your Twitter User Name Matters
• Get A Custom Facebook Web Address (Username)
• Why Do You Use Social Media?

• Before You Start: You are ready to jump into social media. Or, you are already using social media but realize that you need to claim your business name on other social media sites as you plan for future expansion.
• Learning level: 2 | Getting Started
• Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Social Media Account Names

You want to make it very easy for your existing customers and other people who know your business to find you on social media. This means that your social media account names are important. In the early days of social media, it was easier to get your ideal account names on each site. Now that many businesses are adding accounts, you may find that you have to compromise to set up accounts on some of the most popular sites.

While there are paid services that will register your business name on many social media sites, this is something you can do for yourself for free. Here’s how to secure your business name on multiple sites for free.

1. Make a short list of ideal account names. Include your business name, product brand, as well as short versions of your names (when appropriate).
2. Make a list of the most important social media sites for your business. Most businesses only use a handful of social media sites, and the most commonly used sites are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. If your business has a physical location, you should also check location-based services like Foursquare and Whrrl. You should also list any specialized social media sites for your industry.
3. Use an account name tool. Search for your ideal account name across multiple sites and see where you name is still available. Pay careful attention to the availability of your ideal account name on the list of important social media sites for your business. When possible, you want to use the same account name on all of these sites. However, if your ideal name isn’t available, check for variations on your list of ideal account names.
4. Set up your social media accounts. Even if your business isn’t ready to start using all of the social media sites in your important site list, take the time now to set up your account so you can reserve your ideal account name. The name may not be available if you wait to set up your account when you are ready to use each tool.

Social Media Account Name Tools

Fortunately, there are tools that help you to find your desired account name across multiple social media sites quickly and easily.

• Knowem? Searches over 400 social media sites, as well as available domain names.
• Namechecklist. Searches  12 of the most popular social media sites, as well as domain names.
• Namechk. Searches more than 150 social media sites.

You don’t need to reserve your ideal account name on every possible social media site. Most businesses only use a handful of social media sites.

Related Articles:

• Talk About Your Business (Part 1)
• Talk About Your Business (Part 2)
• Your Twitter User Name Matters
• Get A Custom Facebook Web Address (Username)
• Splashing In The Social Media Swimming Pool

• Before You Start: You have a business you want to promote through social media.
• Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article Last Updated:  Sunday, December 4, 2011

Self-Promotional Strategic Thinking

Here’s a strategy to help you break down your products and services to talk about them from your customer’s perspective.

1. Make a list of the things you deliver. When you make a client delivery, what do they have to show for it? Is it a tangible product (a meal, a piece of clothing, a resume, a website, etc.), or is it an intangible product (a change in the way the client thinks or acts, peace of mind, etc.)? Or is it a combination of both types? Do this for every product and service you offer.
2. Review your delivery item list. Is your delivery list the size of Carrie Bradshaw’s shoe inventory, or do you specialize in just a few things? Neither one is right or wrong, it’s just one aspect of your business. It’s something you should know and understand about your business.
3. Clump your delivery items into solution sets. This is especially important if you have a lot of delivery items. Are they logical groups that you deliver together? The key here is not to group them by their characteristics but to cluster them they way a client might order them as a group. For example, rather than group together french fries and onion rings (as side options), group together a burger, fries and a drink (the way people order them). If you are graphic designer, you might group together a logo, business cards, and letterhead combination as an identity kit solution set.
4. Write a list of reasons why a client might ask you for each solution set. Put yourself in the client’s shoes, and figure out what situation drives the client to need your solution set. If your customers are consumers, why do they want or need your products and services? If you customers are other businesses, what business challenges do they face that you can solve? Really be creative here because this is where you start to connect to your potential clients.
5. Turn the list of reasons into a list of client problems that you can solve. Again, put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. Imagine a potential client sitting at her desk (on on her couch) with problems swirling in her head. Talk about her problem the way way she would talk about it.
6. Summarize what you do from the list of client problems that you solve. At the core, every small business or freelancer is a problem solver. That’s right. If you customer didn’t have a problem, they wouldn’t need your products and services. They might hang out with you over coffee, they might tweet and email and Facebook you, but that’s not the same as doing business with you. Your clients have a problem that causes them pain, and they are paying you to make it go away.
7. Publicize what you do to the world. Update your website, all of your social media sites, and your business cards with your updated business services description. Create your new elevator pitch. And prepare for the avalanche of new clients.

What are you waiting for? There are new customers who need your products and services today!

Related Articles:

• Talk About Your Business (Part 1)
• How Does A Blog Help My Business?
• Social Media Communications Audit
• The Value Of Negative Reviews
• Splashing In The Social Media Swimming Pool

• Before You Start: You have a business you want to promote through social media.
• Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article Last Updated:  Sunday, December 4, 2011

Self-Promotion Obstacles

There are a lot of reasons why promoting yourself and your business may not come naturally to you.

• You are naturally shy so you don’t like to point out even the obvious things about your business.
• You are unsure of yourself and so you don’t speak because aren’t sure what to say.
• You are confused about what other people find valuable about your services and products.
• You are reserved and you want your work to speak for you.
• You are waiting for someone else to speak for you and recommend you to the world.

But the reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that you find a way from where you are today to where you want to be. And that means overcoming these obstacles.

Self-Promotion Mistakes

Take a little time to look for examples of businesses that promote themselves well. Look carefully at what they say and how they say it. When you find something brilliant, borrow it. But while you are looking, also take note of what doesn’t work in your opinion.

Here are the two things that many businesses get wrong when promoting their services and products.

• Describe your business from the inside. Have you ever landed at a website and couldn’t figure out which of the website menu options contains the information you want? It isn’t your fault. The person who wrote the website copy wrote about the company from the company’s perspective. They didn’t think about you and what you were looking for when they designed the structure. You are not an insider. That’s why you couldn’t figure it out.
• Describe what you do with a label. Lots of people give labels instead of describing what they do. What’s the first thing that crosses your mind when someone says they are an “expert” or a “visionary” or a “thought leader?” These labels are not helpful because no one can explain what an expert or visionary or thought leader actually does or how they provide practical help for your business. David Meerman Scott talks about meaningless language to avoid in his Gobbledygook Manifesto.

Now that you’ve looked at what can go wrong, in the next article we’ll cover how to break down what you do to create a positive way to talk about your business.

Related Articles:

• Talk About Your Business (Part 2)
• How Does A Blog Help My Business?
• Social Media Communications Audit
• The Value Of Negative Reviews
• Customers With Benefits

• Before You Start: You have a business Twitter account. Simple editing skills with any graphics program would be helpful but are not necessary.
• Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
• Article Last Updated: Monday, August 22, 2011

Brand Your Twitter Presence

You can bring the visual branding elements you selected for your business to your Twitter account. In fact, Twitter makes it easy for you to customize your account settings. Building your Twitter presence with your visual branding doesn’t take much time, and it increases the impact of your company’s image online. Most of these tasks you can complete yourself if you have simple editing skills with any graphics program and access to your branding image files.

Avatar

Your Twitter avatar is the image that displays next to each tweet. You should be using either your company logo, a professional headshot, or another component of your visual branding for your avatar. Make sure that your avatar is easy to read and that it shows up completely. Twitter requires you to use a square avatar, and most logos are rectangular, so you may need to do a little tweaking.

Twitter Background

One of the most effective ways to communicate your company’s visual branding with the Twitter community is to use a custom Twitter background. You see your background each time you use Twitter.com to read and send tweets. Other Twitter users see your background when they view your profile on Twitter.com or send you a direct message (DM).

Visit other business profiles and see how much a custom Twitter background tells you about the company (or business person). While you are doing this, make a list of things you like and don’t like so you can create a Twitter background that suits your company’s message.

What makes an effective Twitter background depends partly on the kind of business you run and partly on using a nice layout for the information. In general, consider including:

• Company name and logo
• Description of products or services (menu for a restaurant)
• Location(s)
• Contact information
• Photographs of the business or products

The new Twitter provides less space for visual branding. If you created a Twitter background using the old Twitter, you need to adjust it for the new Twitter.

Before you hire someone to design your Twitter background, ask to see examples of the designer’s work to be sure it is going to give you the image you want online.

Twitter Menu Colors

Twitter makes it easy for you to customize the colors used on the right menu to coordinate with your background. After you select your background, change the design colors (Settings > Design > Change Design Colors). Use colors from your visual branding, or variations on these colors for a coordinated look.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with these colors. If you make a mistake (for example, white text on white background) just use the color blocks across the bottom to make changes. Before you start, get a list of the hex colors (this format: #ffffff) used in your visual branding to make it easier to update the colors.

If this takes you to the edge of your comfort zone, try using Themeleon which helps you coordinate your colors quickly. Create and install your background first, and then let Themeleon coordinate the design colors from your wallpaper.

Related Articles:

• Twitter Profile Checklist
• Communicate With Your Twitter Community
• Twitter Landing Pages
• Your Twitter Web Link Options
• Your Twitter User Name Matters
• Social Media Secret Ingredient