Sandra Martini's Success Strategies

Get out of the #FollowFriday rut

I love Fridays and Twitter, especially when they come together.  :-)

Something I've noticed lately is that every Friday, we tend to recommend following the same "great, amazing, wonderful" peeps as we recommended the previous Friday.

And while it's true that they're still the most amazing peeps,surely there are others out there who deserve some #FollowFriday loving?!?!?

My request to you today is to post a #FollowFriday for someone you admire and haven't posted about before AND tell us why you're recommending rather than simply listing their name -- share them with your Twitterverse on this day of remembrance in America (and yes, of course, you can still go ahead and #FollowFriday your regular peeps). :-)

And for those of you who have been considering the 30 Day Blogging Challenge, but are concerned you don't have time or won't find stuff to write about for your target audience...the above post (excluding this paragraph) is MORE than you need to write for the Challenge. Check out the 30 Day Blogging Challenge rules here... -- your business deserves it!

Twitter Suspension of Accounts -- Were You Prepared?

Twitter was all a tweeting with the unexpected suspension of thousands of accounts yesterday -- it was a human error and has since been fixed, but leads me to a larger question. . .

Were you prepared for it to happen? Is your marketing diversified?

Much the way we prepare for disaster by backing up our computers and having health, home and car insurance, we need to be prepared for any one of our visibility and marketing tools to hiccup.

There are thousands of ways to get the word out about your business (a.k.a. "market it"), many of them low cost and high impact.  It's imperative to the success of your business that you don't put all your eggs into one basket -- even if the basket is big and includes all of social media.

Here are several ideas of ways you can get the word out about your business:

2 FREE Visibility Tools for Your Business

It's almost impossible trying to keep up with everything you should know in your business, let alone all the places you're mentioned online. . .especially if you're doing any marketing outreach such as article marketing.

An easy way I've found to know what people are saying, tweeting and which articles are getting picked up the most is to sign up for two free visibility tools:

1. Google Alerts (sends email digests based on keywords you've selected for the Internet) and

2. Tweetbeep (sends email alerts based on keywords you've selected for Twitter "tweets")

These sites not only allow you to follow mentions of your own name/business name, but any topics you want: your competitors, a certain trend, your clients, etc.

A recommendation for Google Alerts: put whatever words you're looking for in quotes if appropriate. When I first signed up with Sandra Martini (no quotes were used), I got every mention of "Sandra Bullock" and the best new "Martini" bars, recipes, etc.

Now I search on "Sandra Martini" and just get me. . .oh, and occasionally the other "Sandra Martini" who lives in Germany.  :-)

Happy AUTOsearching. . .

PS: If you're a member of my Social Networking Done For You program, these have already been set up for you, so no action needed.  :-)

LinkedIn -- A simple way to get "Recommendations"

Anyone who's ever used LinkedIn knows that one of it's many features is letting others write "recommendations" about you.

And to help encourage people to do this, LinkedIn's gone one step further. . .

The recommendation will not only show on your page, but on the person's page who gave it to you.  This way you can see who uses "canned" recommendations, who offers a recommendation when perhaps they shouldn't, etc.

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to get recommendations, simply connect with those colleagues/clients/customers who have given you a testimonial and ask them to copy/paste their testimonial into the Recommendation field.

Done! You now have a Recommendation and it took them less than 5 minutes to do.

Want to make it even easier for them?

In your request for the Recommendation, include the latest testimonial you have from them so they don't have to look it up -- just be sure to give them the option of updating it to reflect current work done together.

(This is a GREAT project for a team member!)

Now stop reading and go delegate!  :-)

When You Give (on Twitter and elsewhere), You Also Receive

One of the questions I've often asked is "What should I post on Twitter and Facebook"?

While there are several things you can post (check out my post on How to Become an Expert Using Content here) on Twitter and Facebook, the simplest of all is to let your friends and followers know when they've helped you in some way.

Rather than send a private "direct message" on Twitter, openly thank or congratulate someone for something they've done.

In addition to showing gratitude/recognition to someone, openly posting "thanks" or "kudos" does a few things:

1. It shows that you're happy and willing to give credit or thanks when appropriate.

2. It links you publicly with the person you're thanking/giving credit to (and puts you in their stream).

3. This type of post counts towards "valuable and informative" content and isn't self-promotional.

So what are you waiting for?  Go share some gratitude and recognition today!

And if you're not yet on Twitter or are ready to take it to the next level (while freeing up your time), you'll want to check out Social Networking: Done 4 You today!

[SmarTini Tip] Expert Credibility: How to let your clients give it to you

If you've been around the "online world" a while, you know that "content is king" -- after all, it's generally expected that you should:

* publish a weekly/biweekly email newsletter

* "touch" your clients in offline ways

* post 2-3 times a week to your blog

* host your own teleseminars and be guests on others

* contribute daily to Facebook and Twitter

and the above is all *at a minimum* and we haven't even discussed videos.

Assuming you're here to connect and build relationships with others in a true and meaningful way (and if you're not, you may as well stop reading now) and aren't in it for the "quick sale", where do you find all the information to post/send out?

After all, the quickest way to build your expert credibility is to share "expert" information with others.

So how do you "know what you know" in order to share it with others who are looking for that very info?

Here's one of my favorite strategies. . .

Facebook Profile -- be sure to get your name

Facebook opened up their system last night to let us create our own Facebook profile URL.

 

Rather than the former hideous URL which looked something like:

 

www.facebook.com/people/yourname/123456789  (this isn't a real URL, just an example of what Facebook profiles looked like -- not the prettiest URL I've ever seen!)

However, now you can have www.facebook.com/yourname

I set mine to be www.facebook.com/sandramartiniso it's consistent with my Twitter name (@sandramartini) and website URL (www.SandraMartini.com)

To get your own Facebook profile name, go to http://www.facebook.com/username

You will see a form that will give you several suggested usernames, and the ability to choose your own. Either choose one of the names suggested or type in your own.

Now here is NOT the time to get creative.  After all, you want people to be able to find you without having to search and wonder what you may have come up with in a creative moment.

The goal is to make it EASY for everyone -- when it comes to branding your business, consistency is key.

You may choose to use your name, your business name, your title, etc., but know this. . .once chosen, you can't change it.  Facebook doesn't allow changes or edits so be sure to choose well and double check spelling before confirming.

And, if we're not yet friends, I'd love to connect with you:

http://www.facebook.com/sandramartini or @sandramartini (Twitter)