How social should your social media be?

If you’re running a business it’s sometimes hard to decide whether your social media should be you or your business.

There are no hard and fast rules, but these are my observations.

Generally:

• Never post anything negative about anyone else, it’s the fastest way to chip away at your own reputation.  If you don’t have anything good to say – don’t say anything.
• Don’t post anything your mother wouldn’t feel comfortable reading.
• Avoid social media after any intake of alcohol!
• Only post material that will genuinely be of interest to people – tips, advice, interesting activities to your circle, etc.  People don’t want to know what you had for lunch (unless you’re Joe Wicks or Jamie Oliver) or that you’re taking the dog for a walk!

Twitter

You can have your personal headshot or company logo as your avatar, but remember that it’s quite difficult to have a conversation with an organisation.

Twitter is an informal platform so it lends itself to chatty, conversational posts.  Just remember that you are representing a business so think before you hit ‘send’.

LinkedIn

Your personal profile is your personal profile so it should feature a headshot of you (and only you, not you and your partner, child, dog or other people).  It should not be your logo, products, premises, a cartoon, caricature or anything else.  The LinkedIn T&Cs state that an image must be ‘a recognisable image of the account holder’.

Whilst LinkedIn is categorised as a ‘social media platform’ it is a business platform and, therefore, people expect a fairly formal business-like approach.  I keep seeing posts saying ‘Why is LinkedIn becoming the new Facebook?’ usually because someone has started posting personal stuff in their updates.

If you use LinkedIn effectively it can be an excellent business tool to generate leads and new business – you really don’t want to appear anything less than highly professional.

LinkedIn offers the opportunity to have a company page – it’s worth completing a page, but for smaller businesses it’s not somewhere people are likely to look much.  People buy people and want to engage with a human being, not an entity.

Facebook

Don’t use your Facebook personal account to promote your business.  Whether you use your personal account to chat to your friends, stalk your children, post cute cat videos or don’t use it much at all, it should be separate from your business communications.

You can have more than one Facebook Page – and as long as you’re listed as an ‘admin’ on each page they exist completely separately from your personal account, regardless of whether you were logged into your personal account when you created them.

Facebook Pages are much more community focused so you may need to work a bit harder to get engagement.  Chatty posts – with information that interests your followers is important.

Don’t get drawn into slanging matches – politely suggest that any issues people might have should be addressed 1-2-1 or offline.

When people comment you need to answer at least within a couple of days so you will need to check regularly for notifications and messages and answer them to retain your credibility.

Facebook likes images and video – so posts without don’t get as good a rating.

Instagram

Facebook owns Instagram so you can post directly into Facebook from your Instagram feed.

Instagram works whether you are an individual or a brand – but people do associate the brand with the brand owner so you still need to come over as a human being rather than a ‘company’.

Instagram is image based so photos, graphics and short videos all work well.  You can write accompanying content – and Instagram is a dynamic and informal platform so make sure you write positive posts with energy.

You can get away with being more quirky as long as it’s congruent with who you really are.

There are dozens of other platforms, but these are probably the biggest.  Get these right and the rest will fall into place.

‘Just’ blogging

Some of my clients ‘get’ blogging; others can’t see the point.

The doubters don’t understand why they should invest in writing content for their blog.  Who sees it?  What will it do for your profit line?  How do I know if it’s making a difference?

If you are just writing an article and posting it on your blog – and that’s it – hardly anyone will know it exists.  That’s why you need to leverage your blog content.

The right subjects

If you’re really going to make an impact you will need to write about topics (in your area of expertise) that are ‘hot’.  So what are the issues that are getting talked about?  What problems are bugging your clients that you’ve got solutions for?  Have you got an unusual twist on an ordinary subject?

Just rambling on about a subject won’t cut it – so invest some time in research and planning.  Just thank heavens for Google and News Feeds!

Smart blogging

Make your blog into a marketing machine.

• Post it on your website – this gets you brownie points with the search engines for fresh content regularly and gets their spiders to visit more often (and improve your ranking)
• Post it on your LinkedIn profile as an article – this highlights your profile and gets you more connection requests.
• Extract soundbites from it and use them on social media – not just on the day of posting, but in the days, weeks and months afterwards to give your material a much longer life.  This helps raise your visibility and brings people to your website.
• Use your blog as the lead article in your newsletter so you lead with value and get better engagement from your list.  It’s establishing you as an expert and making them more willing to listen/read what else you have to say.
• Put together a number of blogs around a single subject and turn it into a report or ebook to offer as an ethical bribe on your website (and through social media) to encourage people to join your list.

In fact, I’ve used a blog challenge I did to write a blog daily for a month to create a book (How to market your business better in 30 days).  Yes, I did have to do some editing and adding more material, but it made the process of putting together a book relatively easy.

Plan and schedule

If you really want to make your blog work it needs to be consistent.  It’s no good posting three blogs in a month and then nothing for six months.  The secret is to have a plan and then schedule it into your diary.

• Brainstorm a list of topics – and then decide what you will write about each month.  
• Schedule a monthly time to write the posts for the month ahead (or the following month) and put it in your diary on a day when you usually have time to concentrate and write.  (If this really isn’t your thing – then outsource it to someone else, I do this for several clients who would rather spend their time doing what they’re good at).
• When the blogs are written soundbite them and create your social media posts.
• Choose the best item to lead your newsletter and set that up – along with whatever you want to promote this month.  This can be done on MailChimp, AWeber, ConstantContact, GetReponse or many other email marketing platforms – and scheduled to go out later in the month.

Doing the whole exercise in one or two sessions will make life much easier.

Then – as they say ‘rinse and repeat’!  Eventually you’ll develop a monthly habit that will underpin your marketing and get you a much higher level of visibility and a reputation as an expert in your field.

When people want free advice

I was having a conversation with a group of business people recently and the subject came up about people who ‘pick your brains’ and, effectively get free advice.

Some of these people don’t realise that they’re getting free consultancy – but some do and think the ‘can I just ask your opinion?’ doesn’t count as consultancy.

There are two problems for most of us who are specialists or experts:

1. Mostly we are nice people who genuinely want to help and don’t want to be ’difficult’
2. If you’re running your own business you’re probably passionate about what you do and get quite excited about sharing your knowledge (I know this as I have several soapboxes I leap onto from time to time!)

However, that leads to giving away your time – and that will have a direct impact on your profit line.  You’re not getting paid for the advice you’re giving and also using up time that is, for many consultants, what you exchange for money.

So how can you say ‘no’ without offending people?

I’ve been around a while and I no longer have a problem saying “I’m happy to give you a few guidelines, but this is how I earn my living so there will be a fee if I’m going to provide consultancy services.”  Some people find that hard to say so here’s some alternatives:

• “I wrote a blog about that not long ago – give me your business card and I’ll ping you the link across.”
• “Have you checked out my LinkedIn profile?  There are several useful articles on there.”
• “I’m happy to give you a 15 minute free consultancy session to establish that I can help you, but there’ll be a fee for additional consultancy time.”
• “I’d love to help you – let’s organise a meeting so I can focus on your challenges and put a proposal together for you.”
• “Are you looking for a couple of pointers or do you need a more in-depth answer?  I probably need a bit more information to be of any real help – do you want to book a meeting?”

This doesn’t mean that I refuse to answer people’s questions – mostly I’m happy to give them a few ideas to get them started – but I do get people who are really trying to find out how to DIY what I do for a living sometimes.  At networking meetings I tend to give them a summary and suggest a meeting – and they rarely book time in.  However, I have had persistent people who get introduced via a networking contact and then ring me several times for ‘help’.  These are the ones I usually advise that there’ll be a fee during the second phone call!  I rarely hear from them again – but some apologise and offer to pay for my time.

As long as you’re polite and reasonable, most people respond well – and saying (with a big smile) “You do know that this is how I earn my living ...” is often all that’s required!

7 steps to make writing a book easy

If you’re a speaker, business trainer, consultant or any other kind of expert you’ll almost certainly have considered writing a book at some point.  So what’s stopped you so far?

I blew a few excuses out of the water in the last blog I wrote about writing books, but I do understand that getting started is like standing at the foot of Everest all alone with no equipment and wondering how you will ever get to the top.

I’ve written more than a few books myself and I know that having a writing plan and a structure is essential.

Not everyone finds writing easy and I’ve worked with clients in a number of ways:

• Editing what they’ve already written
• Coaching them through the writing process
• Using material they’ve written for blogs, articles, training programmes, webinars, etc. over the years to develop into a book
• Helping an author to develop their plan and then having them talk through it while I take notes to develop 
• Ghost writing the book from interviews

Clearly, everyone is different and, of course, there is a cost implication depending on the ratio of your time and mine in the process.  So, if you want to make a good start at getting your thoughts on paper here are the steps I recommend:

1. Brainstorm the topics you want to cover (I use mind mapping – but any method you feel comfortable with is fine).
2. Organise the topics into a logical order.
3. Expand each topic into a chapter by adding examples, case studies, anecdotes, theoretical models, quotations and references to be included.  This will be your chapter outline.
4. Look at your chapter contents and see if there is a structure that makes sense – e.g. will each chapter start with a quotation?  Will every chapter have a case study?  Will chapters end with a summary or an action plan?  This is what I call a chapter ‘recipe’ and every chapter should follow the same kind of structure to make reading easier,
5. Schedule time in your diary for writing each chapter and stick to it.
6. Take each chapter in turn and, following your chapter recipe, work through your chapter outline, fitting it into the recipe format writing your commentary around the elements you’ve chosen to include.
7. Write your book’s introduction, cover blurb, acknowledgments, etc last.

When you’ve followed this step-by-step process you will have a book ready for editing – and, ultimately, publishing!