It is a Marketer’s dream… You can connect with more than 500 million potential customers, you can choose your audience by location, age and interests… all with easy-to-target, self-reported demographics that are up-to-date and accurate.

If you own a business, or are responsible for marketing one, you’re right to think about creating a Facebook Page (formerly a Fan Page) and build community around your business. And you’re right to think about using a drawing, contest, or sweepstakes to grow your Fan base.

Be aware of the rules and regulations

Facebook has grown so much so quickly there’s still confusion about what you can and cannot do.

For example, it is against Facebook’s promotional guidelines to post this offer on the wall of your fan page:

“Like us and Win a $250 Shopping Spree (or some other prize)”

Potential problems with this offer:

• You can not administer a promotion on your wall (without an approved 3rd party application)
• You need to get Facebook’s approval prior to running a promotion on your wall
• You can’t use Facebook to communicate with the winner

The big distinction that Facebook makes in their promotional guidelines is between publicizing and administering a promotion on Facebook (this applies to contests & sweepstakes only):

• Publicizing a promotion means that you promote, advertise or reference a promotion in Facebook, but you do not collect entries or draw or notify winners in Facebook.
• Administering a promotion means you both publicize it and collect entries in Facebook.

These guidelines have been a boon to 3rd party applications like Wildfire, Involver, FanBase that help Marketers administer promotions through Facebook, but on the 3rd party-application page (which is technically outside Facebook). These applications require users “Like you” as a condition of entry, and then have a an entry form that’s not “on” Facebook, so it conforms to all the rules. But many of these solutions can be expensive… a minimum of $750-$1,000/month and up–making it cost-prohibitive to many small businesses.

The Solution? Use Facebook to promote, not administer, your drawing, contest, or sweepstakes

Publicizing  your promotion does not need Facebook approval, and does not need an approved 3rd-party application to run it.

You can use Facebook freely to promote, advertise or reference your promotion, but you don’t collect entries or notify winners in Facebook. 

Next Post: “3 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You“

What is the purpose behind Blogging? It’s not to show how smart or cute you are. If it’s going to be a part of an effective business strategy, you need to provide value, to show people the way, and establish yourself as a thought leader.

What is the purpose behind Social Media? It’s to connect with People: Friends, Associates, Affiliates, Prospects, Customers, and let them know what you’re up to. If you are using social media, you get to build your own channel, and you are literally the Editorial Board, Editor in Chief, Writer/Anchor, and Ombudsman all in one person.

What’s the purpose behind integrating your Blogging and your Social Media? Quite simply, it’s a radical new opportunity to put yourself “out there” in front of your clients and prospects, to help them solve problems,and position yourself as a potential solution provider, so that when they have an itch they’ll remember that you provide the scratch.

How to Integrate Blogging and Social Media: In 8 Simple Steps

1. Reserve your social media profile names: If you haven’t done so already go to Linked in, Facebook, and Twitter, and reserve your social media profile names. Optionally you can create a corporate Facebook account, or a Facebook Page, so that people can follow your business (“like you”) instead of you as an individual.

2. Build out your social media profiles: Building a good profile takes time and evolves as you evolve. To start take an hour or two and do your best to build your social media profile so that it tells people what you do and how you do it better than anyone else.  Optional: On Linked-in add Wordpress (if you have a WordPress website) and Twitter.

3. Build your base group of followers. Upload Gmail, Yahoo, AOL accounts. Or Upload a .csv file. This allows you to connect with everyone in your address book quickly.

4. Work to add followers on a daily basis. Did you meet someone at a networking event? While you’re adding them to your CRM, invite them to connect, to be a friend, or a follower.  This requires some discipline. But once you add it to your routine it’s easy.

5. Blog about things your customers and prospects are interested in. And educate them about what you do at the same time. Make what you do relevant to your followers. Jerry Seinfeld was a genius at this. Share practical tips, insights, humor, personal triumphs. Your editorial could be topically-related business news, the economy, or about the seasons and the weather.

6. Download Tweetdeck: Add your social media accounts to Tweetdeck. There are others tools out there like Hootsuite, Social Oomph. I’m wary of “auto-magic,” i.e., anything that automates your marketing so much that you end up losing the human touch. Think quality over quantity as it pertains to the content you’re writing, and your number of followers. There are no shortcuts. Just do a good job, and success will follow.

7. Update your statuses: When you post a new blog, update your statuses to all three networks (Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter) using Tweetdeck. This will increase the likelihood that your thoughts will be seen, and picked up by others. The more you interact the more you get picked up.

8. Interact with Others. Remember that Social Media is a two-way street. It’s not simply a broadcast medium. If someone takes the time to comment on something you’ve written, take the time and have the courtesy to respond. Also, comment on other posts that you find interesting. Retweet (RT) other people’s Tweets.  Follow and comment on status updates that you find interesting. Take advantage of opportunities to interact with others.

If you follow this Simple 8 Step Plan, others who use Social Media will see that the lights are on and someone is definitely home. 

Don’t forget that Social Media is “Social”

Remember to emphasize the “social” aspect of ”Social Media.” Its purpose should be to genuinely connect with people because you genuinely care about connecting with people (**not to connect with them so you can sell something**). If you’re at a cocktail party, you are a boor if all you do is talk about yourself.

So that’s how you can begin to integrate Blogging and Social Media. And if you do it right, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes YOU pushing all your new business around in a baby carriage shopping cart.

Postscript: The one item on this list that people ask me the most about is #5. “What specifically should I write about about?” My answer: “It all depends.” What is going to engage your followers? You’re the Editor-in chief; you decide what will engage your followers. Write about problems and solutions (and oh by the way if you provide the solution let your followers know, but don’t lead with a solution before you’ve got people agreeing that there’s a problem in the first place).

Over the past two years, it has become my web design platform of choice.

“Why?” You might ask….

Simply because a WordPress website can do everything an old-fashioned website can do, and about 100 times more.

10 Reasons Small Business Owners Love WordPress

Here are ten excellent reasons why, if you are looking for a website, you should choose a WordPress as your publishing platform:

1. Easy to use — If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can probably use WordPress.
2. Flexible — Wordpess themes can be easy to modify, and hundreds of plugins and widgets make it easy to customize your website/blog.
3. Full-fledged content management system — although it’s thought of as a blogging platform, it’s really so much more.
4. No software required – Do you have a mini laptop and wireless connection? Blog from the airport in between planes.
5. Design it once and forget it — and you can blog to your heart’s content for years without ever going out of style. 
6. Easily add an e-commerce — it’s easy to accept credit cards via Google Checkout, Paypal, or accept credit cards via Authorize.net
7. Completely customize your site –  start with a theme like Hybrid or Flexibility and modify the theme so it’s uniquely yours.
8. Achieve top search engine visiblity — optimize it for search engines and get your prospects to call you when they have a need. 
9. Get social / learn more about your customers and prospects — because a blog is designed to be more interactive than a static website, and can integrate with Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter.
10. Trick it out — with Hundreds and hundreds of plugins to customize the functionality of your website/blog so that it fits your unique needs!

Thesse are 10 excellent reasons why small business owners should love WordPress. Not to menation that it’s cheaper, easier to implement, and easier to maintain.

When Warren Buffet speaks, people listen.

Recently I happened to catch Warren Buffet on TV talking about how leaders should set business priorities.

Buffet was saying that you should run your business like it’s a family business–one that you are going to hold onto for 100 years, and the #1 thing you should think about is how to build a sustainable competitive advantage, like building “like a moat around your castle.”

If you look back to medieval times, moats were excavated around castles as part of the defensive system–an obstacle immediately outside the walls–and usually they were filled with water.

A good moat made it difficult for your enemy to access your walls with siege weapons, such as towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to work effectively. A water-filled moat made it impossible for your enemy to dig tunnels under your fortifications in order to effect a collapse of the defenses. A good moat protected your castle and everything in it.

The wider your moat, the longer you can protect your profits. The deeper your moat, the more profitable you are.

“Understanding your customers” is key to building a good moat

If you’ve followed him for any time, you also know that Warren Buffet invests primarily in companies that “understand their customers.” To me this means companies that make Marketing a priority in their strategic plan…, not just the 4 P’s (Product, Place,  Price, and Promotion), but also RSPT (Research, Segmentation, Positioning, and Targeting).

In essence, applying the Fundamental Principles of Direct Marketing not just to your Marketing but to all your Operations.

One of the best ways to protect your profits and build higher margins, the key to a successful business, is to continally work to understand and serve your growing customer base. The way you do this is by mastering the Fundamentals of Acquiring and Managing Customers:

1. Find a suspect (on a good list or use of demographics)
2. Convert the suspect to a prospect (a lead),
3. Convert that prospect into a customer (an account),
4. Convert into a regular customer or multibuyer (someone who has purchased from you 3 times or more), and
5. Convert that regular customer into an advocate for your business who provides you a testimonial and a stream of referrals.

Literally all the things you can do to protect your profits and increase your margins derive from “understanding your customers, managing this fundamental process, and managing it well, i.e, all of the traditional methods of creating a competitive advantage: (1) Product Differentiation (2) Branding and Positioning (3) Pricing Strategies (4) Locking in customers, and (5) Locking out competitors derive from making great offers, establishing a real relationship with your customers, and being responsive.

“Understanding your customer” is the equivalent of protecting future revenue streams, and forms the basis of value. It’s the modern-day equivalent of building a good moat.

With this perspective, what are the competitive threats in your environment, i.e., the towers and battering rams that could impact your profitability? And what are you going today, this week, next month, next year to ”build your moat and protect your relationship with your customers?”

• 40% the list,
• 40% the offer, and
• 20% for everything else , i.e., copy, creative, timing, etc.

If you’re not getting the response you think you should be getting, look at the offer first.

The strategic process in old-fashioned Direct Marketing is matching up the right list with the right offer… segmenting the list into micro-segments (or “splits”), and tailoring specialized offers to make the offer more relevant. 

The 3R’s: It’s not Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, but…

Jim Prendergast who is one of the great Direct Marketers of all time, a long time friend and mentor, and Professor of Marketing for years at Baruch College, always reminds his students of the 3 R’s of Direct Marketing:

1. Make your offer RELEVANT; to achieve response you can’t have one message for your entire customer base. Using Segmentation and analysis, you’ve see you have different kinds of customers, and they’re going to react differently to different offers and messages. What the segments, and what are the offers and messages?
2. Establish a RELATIONSHIP with your customer (they’re not a customer until they’ve bought from you three times). You are in business to win customers. Then to get them to buy more from you until they become multi-buyers, and ultimately to become raving fans of your business, so they refer all their friends to you. Again, it’s all about the customer.
3. Be RESPONSIVE to your customer’s needs. Ask them what they want, and create periodic customer satisfaction surveys. Ask them if there’s anything else you can do for them. Funnel this information into developing new products to keep you ahead of the competion (if you have any). ”Give ‘em what they want.”

Here are a few more well-known sayings about “the offer”:

• “It’s the offer, stupid! If you do not get the results you need or response is flagging, check the offer first.” ~ Bob Hacker
• “If you want to dramatically increase your response, dramatically improve your offer.” ~ Axel Andersson
• “Success in direct mail is 40% lists, 40% offer and 20% everything else.” ~ Ed Mayer