This seems to be the time of year for lists. In preparation for a presentation I am giving here in Livingston, Montana to a group of local business owners I decided to make my own list. One of the biggest challenges when discussing social media in this town is the vast differences in prior social media knowledge. In a room filled with 20 Livingston business owners there might be a few who have already fully integrated social media into their marketing campaigns, some who are set up but haven’t done much with it, and a handful of people who have either never been on Facebook before or are very skeptical of  it for some reason. My hope with this list is that it will provide a little something for everyone.

1. Listening

One of the best uses for social media that many people overlook is listening. Three main things that you want to listen to are: your customers, your competitors, and other professionals in your field. You can do this by setting up Google Alerts and Twitter searches for any term that is relevant to your business including your business name. Social Mention is another great tool that lets you set up alerts similar to Google Alerts but from social media channels.

2. Customer Service

Now that you are listening to what you customers are already saying about you, you can use social media as a customer service tool. People use Facebook and Twitter regularly to share good and bad experiences with their friends and followers. Your business now has the opportunity to either thank them for positive recommendations or address any negative experiences people have had. Because of the immediate response capabilities of social media, it is also becoming a preferred method for many people to have their questions answered about businesses and products. You only have the chance to answer those questions if your business has a social media presence.

3. Networking

In addition to listening to what other important players in your field are saying you have the opportunity to interact with those people and build a strong network within your professional community. LinkedIn is one of the best places for this but Twitter and Facebook can be great too especially now that business pages can write on other business page walls on Facebook.

4. Showcasing Expertise

Social media is all about sharing. And one of the best things to share is how knowledgeable you are in your area of expertise. The best way to do this is to provide useful bits of information (from yourself and from other sources) that people might then pass on to their friends. At the very least it will make people think of you when they are in need of your services or know someone who is in need.

5. Telling Your Story

Social media allows the world to have the feel of a small community such as the one I live in. Word of mouth in any community is huge and people are more likely to trust and recommend someone they “know” than a stranger. So let people get to know you. Tell them your story, share your passion for what you do, give them a face to go along with a business name and logo. If you share a little of who you are (but not too much!) it will help your customers feel a personal connection to your business.

6. SEO

Blogging, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are all great ways to help your Search Engine Optimization. If you have a website and add a blog to it that you update fairly regularly your search engine rankings can improve in ways that are not possible with a static website that never changes. Social media channels are already optimized for search and utilizing them in addition to a website will help your business name come up when people are searching for terms related to your business.

7. Focused Advertising

Facebook advertising is some of the most affordable targeted advertising you can find. When you run an ad on Facebook you can specify a geographical location, age, gender, specific or general interests for the audience you are trying to target. You can also decide whether you want to direct people to your Facebook page to get more people following what you are posting there or you can direct them straight to your website if you are trying to convert sales there.

8. New Product Announcements/Launches

Using social media can help create buzz when you are announcing a big change in your business or you have a new product launch. The more outlets you use to make an announcement, the more likely it is that people will hear about it. If you generate enough excitement about it with the customers who are already following you, they will spread the news within their networks. A cohesive approach that strategically utilizes email, website, Facebook, Twitter and more will allow for a much higher success rate.

9. Sharing a Variety of  Media (Videos, Photos, Podcasts)

This ties right in with many of the points I have already made. Photos and video with the right tags are great for search, they can be good ways to show off your knowledge with tutorials, they allow people to get to know you and your business better, and they can be shared across platforms allowing for greater exposure. Some platforms to consider: YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Tumblr, Pinterest, iTunes

10. Market Research

This can be done directly and indirectly with social networks. It is very easy to specifically ask your customers what they are looking for, where they would like to see improvements, what products they want and more. Indirectly, if you are listening to your customers you can take note of trends in what they are talking about and use this information in your advertising.

11. Mobile Presence

One half of all local internet searches are done on mobile devices. If you do not have a website, or if your website is not mobile friendly, social media is one way to give your business a mobile presence. More and more people are using smartphones and they are using them to access social networking sites. If you want to reach your potential customers you need to be where they are.

12. Community Building

If you build a sense of community around your brand by connecting with customers, being generous toward other businesses, spotlighting non-profits and important causes, your customers feel more comfortable recommending you and other business owners will feel more comfortable recommending you.

I have been working hard on a personal project for the last 3 months or so that I wanted to share with all of you. This summer I was feeling a little burnt-out and decided that I needed to put some time and effort into something that could incorporate many of the things that I love in life. This ended up becoming a blog called “One Bowl Parenting“.

The whole idea behind the blog is sharing what we do as parents anyway with the rest of the parent world. I wanted to create a fun, useful resource for other people and in order to do that I called upon some of my friends to share their expertise as well. I have really been enjoying combining my photography, graphic design, crafting, and day-to-day parenting stories in a creative way.

I mention this blog to you for two reasons. The first reason is that I feel we all need to find ways to further explore the things that make us happy in our personal lives. And if you can find a way to tie that into your professional life – go for it! The more passion you have for your job, the more people are going to be drawn to you and your work. Please, if you are a parent and/or would like to see what I am passionate about, go check out my blog.

The second reason that I mention the blog is that we are doing our first giveaway and I want to share it with as many people as possible! My good friend and talented artist, Jessica Buickerood is giving away one of her amazing Recipe Calendars for 2012. For the all of the details and info on how to enter to win, just go here.

I would love to hear from you. How do you feed your soul and stay inspired? Do you have side projects that you work on or is work your main passion in life?

We all knew it was coming. The giant that is Google wasn’t going to stand by and watch Facebook explode forever. As we tip-toe around yet another social network, something’s telling us that this one isn’t going away anytime soon. Are you on Google+ yet? Have you started posting updates or photos? So far we have been watching and listening, but something tells us it’s time to dive in.

Below is a short compilation of the social media conversation surrounding Google+, put together using the platform Storify. If you haven’t been following the Google+ buzz, you can get a quick update here.

This weekend is arguably the busiest, craziest, jam-packed weekend of the year for Livingston.  We have the parade on the 2nd, rodeo on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and what seems like all of Bozeman, and then some, descending upon our tiny little town for the entire three days!  This year we are really excited to be participating in the parade as representatives for Livingston Buy Local.

Being the social media geeks that we are we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to include Twitter – one of our favorite tools – in our plans!  Twitter is not something that has caught on completely in this area but we are trying little by little to get people on board.  One of the great things about Twitter is the use of hashtags.  For those of you who don’t know, hashtags are simply the “#” symbol followed by a single word or phrase and they are great for searching and organizing data.  They work really well for events such as the Livingston Roundup weekend.

We plan on tweeting using #LivingstonRoundup to keep people informed about everything that is going on here in town.  We will be tweeting live from the parade and the rodeo and are hoping that others will join in the fun!  We fully realize that not everyone has a Twitter account so we have set up multiple locations where people can view the feed of all tweets that include #LivingstonRoundup.  If you are a self proclaimed tweetard but still want to see what is being said on Twitter about the Roundup events you can check out the widget on the right hand side of our blog page, the widget on the left hand side of the home page of Livingston Buy Local, or the special tab we have set up on our Facebook page called “#LivingstonRoundup Events 2011″.  Be sure to keep an eye out for the Murray Hotel as well as the City of Livingston who will be using the hashtag too.  And if you are already a hashtag ninja please help us out and spread the word.  We think it’s time we all put Livingston on the Twitter map, don’t you?

We’ve finally stopped taking screenshots and maneuvering them into pretty InDesign how-to templates, opting instead to create a YouTube channel full of video tutorials. From our experience, if someone has a question about how to do something on Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, etc., it’s likely that others have that same question. We’ve started answering these common questions via video tutorial.

Check in with our YouTube channel frequently to stay updated on the latest tutorials. So far, we have tutorials covering how to use Facebook as a page and how to change the default landing tab. What video tutorials would you like to see? Leave it in the comments!

Happy April Fools’ Day everyone!  We had a really wonderful “Social Media Socializing” session this morning.  What a great way to start off the month of April.

Naturally, with the recent news of Facebook allowing profile to page migrations, that was one of the first topics discussed.  There is a link to an article that details everything you need to know for migration on our Facebook page, but the most important thing to remember is to download all of the information from your personal profile before you make the switch.  We also talked about how great it is that you can now download your entire Facebook profile, including photos and wall posts just to have as a backup.  Many of us upload photos to Facebook that we might not keep copies of elsewhere and now we can archive all of that.

Hootsuite and Twitter were the next big topics of discussion with questions about how to keep track of posts that have already gone out.  One person was using a Word document of all scheduled posts in order to periodically cycle back through some of the really important information going out.  We then got into downloading Twitter updates.  This was important for two reasons: to keep track of what has already been tweeted, and in order to have a record of tweets.  The City of Livingston is getting ready to get on Twitter and one of their big concerns is that they must have a record of everything that they tweet.  We found several options for archiving Twitter info and there are probably many more out there.  This article outlines various options and talks about why archiving is important.  One that we tried out this morning was Tweetscan.

What we found was:
- html version is easier to read
- csv file could provide you with a lot of user data, i.e. when people are replying most often and therefore when you should send your tweets

For the City of Livingston we also discussed using hashtags to get people organized around important local events and really utilizing #LivingstonMT.  Be on the lookout for the City of Livingston on Twitter soon.

Jamie from Reclaim MT was at our meeting this morning and would love to get more followers on Twitter: @reclaimMT (recycling pickup in Livingston – Jamie posts great information regularly).

We also talked about changing Facebook settings so that you can see everyone in your news feed.  To do that scroll down to the bottom of your newsfeed and click “edit options” then choose “all of your friends and pages”.  Also, very important are Account Security Settings.  You can go into these and make it so that Facebook sends you an email anytime your Facebook account is logged into from a new computer.

Lastly, I shared the new custom iPhone cover that I designed using one of my photos and ordered from http://www.getuncommon.com/.  We discussed how this could be a great promotional tool and possible give away when bigger ticket items are purchased.  This company also has a large selection of pre-designed cases for those of you who want something different but are not artistically inclined.

If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed feel free to email us or post them in the comments.

Thanks to everyone who joined us!  Looking forward to more next week. Have a great weekend.

You are probably seeing a lot of this as status updates today:

“TODAY Facebook will start using your photos in ads that will appear on the profile page of your contacts. It’s legal and is mentioned in the fine print when you create your account. TO stop this do the following: Account, Account Settings, Then click on Facebook Ads, choose “No one” on TWO drop-down menus and save changes”.

If you take the time to do what everyone is suggesting, you will see that the default settings on these are “only my friends” and it states clearly that Facebook will only use your profile picture (no other pictures).  It also states for the first drop down menu option: “Facebook does not give third party applications or ad networks the right to use your name or picture in ads. If this is allowed in the future, this setting will govern the usage of your information.”  This setting is preemptive because it isn’t even allowed right now.  But it still only applies to people you have chosen to be friends with on Facebook.  The only two options are “only my friends” and “no one”.

Facebook has been using your actions in advertisements to your friends for awhile now in the form of “so-and-so likes such-and-such page” right underneath the ad for the page.  You will notice these if you look at the left-hand side of your profile.  I actually like it.  I like seeing that my friends like a certain page and it definitely makes me more likely to like the page myself – which is why Facebook does it.  Your friends can already see your profile pic, they can already see what pages you like, so what is the big deal with them seeing both of those things in an ad from a company that you already like?

Don’t get me wrong, we believe very strongly in privacy settings and both of us have our privacy settings set extremely high because we like to keep our professional and private lives somewhat separate.  We are glad that people are staying informed and are informing each other, but sometimes it seems like the most popular activity on Facebook these days is to complain about Facebook!  Check your privacy settings on a regular basis and move on.  And if you have issues with your “friends” seeing your profile picture and what pages you like, you might want to weed out your friends list a little.

While reading this blog post from Chris Brogan today I started thinking about a problem we are seeing more and more with clients and potential clients – skipping the crucial step of building a social media fan base.  The people who have done their research and already know why they need to be utilizing social media for their business bring us in to consult and they want to know how to get set up on Facebook and Twitter, and they want to know what to post once they are on there, and they want to know when to post, and how frequently they should post.  What most people skip over is that none of this matters if no one else is seeing it.  Just because you have a Facebook page and you are active on your page does not guarantee that people will find you.  So how do you let people know that you are on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube so that they can see just how great of a job you are doing?  By utilizing all of the other marketing tools that you already have in place.

If you have an amazing email database and you send out monthly newsletters then use that to bring people to your Facebook page.  If you have more than 25 likes on your Facebook business page you can set a username for your page and then you have a direct link to your page to put in your email.  An example of this would be getting to our Facebook page: simply go to www.facebook.com/handhweb (and while you’re there, be sure to like our page!).  But be sure that you lead them right to your page from  your newsletter.  If you send them to Facebook’s home page (www.facebook.com) they will have to work to search for you and you’ve just lost their attention.

Even beyond those monthly newsletters that you send out, everyday email is another great way to let people know you are on Facebook or Twitter.  You should already have your website in your email signature, so throw your direct Facebook link and your Twitter username in there as well.  Add Facebook and Twitter links onto print ads that you run, postcards that you mail out, commercials that you make.  Have you noticed lately that at the end of almost every commercial for any major brand they tell you how to find them on Facebook?  Some of you might have much smaller businesses with non-existent marketing budgets.  In that case, put it on your website, if you have one, or on your business cards even.  And lastly, talk about it.  Tell people face-to-face when you meet with them exactly where to find your business online and why they should bother.  If you are going to put in the hard work of maintaining a social media presence then make sure you are laying the groundwork necessary to reap the benefits!

If you’ve followed our Facebook page or Twitter feed, you’ve probably noticed that many of our links come from the same few resources. That’s because these people know their stuff, and we want you to read what they have to say. Here’s a breakdown of the list we always hand out to our clients and distribute at training sessions.

• Mashable – Social media news and web tips
• Seth Godin – Author blogging about ideas and marketing
• Chris Brogan – Consultant in business communications
• Hubspot – Internet marketing products and resources
• H&H Web – Tips and articles about social media trends (liking our Facebook page and following us on Twitter is the best way to stay abreast on social media without having to do all the legwork yourself!)

Do you have some other resources to which you like to turn for tips on social media, Facebook, Twitter, marketing, etc?

Unfortunately, the “bug” that wasn’t allowing you to suggest to your friends that they become a fan of a business page is not a bug at all. Facebook removed the feature when it was having problems loading correctly, and confirmed on their help page that they won’t be returning it to users. Administrators will still have this option, but other users will instead have to use the Share option (found at the very bottom of the far left sidebar), which will post the page and a message to their wall and show up in friends’ news feeds. For businesses looking for a quick and direct way to build their page likes, this is going to cause a little bump in the road, as they can no longer ask their employees and friends to send out a personal message to their entire friend list (unless, of course, they are a page admin).

The "Suggest to Friends" option no longer shows up for users who are not admins of the page.

This just means we have to get a little more creative about spreading the word that your business is on Facebook. There are so many simple ways to advertise your Facebook page, which you really should be doing anyway, and if you combine these methods with some good old fashioned talking to your customers and clients, you probably won’t even notice this change.

Some ideas to get you started (which can be applied to any social network, not just Facebook):

• Add your username (facebook.com/username, i.e. facebook.com/handhweb) to the signature of your emails
• Provide direct links from your website to your Facebook page
• Add your username to your business cards
• Put your Facebook page on EVERY single piece of marketing material, period. This includes newspaper ads, magazine ads, flyers, direct mailers, postcards, brochures, notepads, etc.
• If you do any email campaigns, put a link to your Facebook page
• Put some signs up in your store: on the checkout counter, on the front door, in the dressing room, in the bathroom.
• Staple a piece of paper with your usernames onto customer receipts
• When you’re chatting with a customer or client, tell them about your Facebook page and ask them to follow you

We really cannot stress enough how important it is to fully integrate your efforts when it comes to social media. If people do not know that you are on Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr, they’ll never know to search for your business and follow you. The more you talk to your clients and customers about your presence there, and WHY they should be following or liking you, the better results you will see.

We stopped for lunch at Weebee’s Cafe in Bozeman today, and as I was tweeting photos of our food, I realized I was mentioning the wrong username when we saw this on the bottom of their beverage menu:

We’re now following them on Twitter and liking them on Facebook.

We’ll continue to share examples of creative ways businesses are advertising their presence on social media on our own Facebook page, so stay tuned. Have any other ideas we didn’t mention? Leave it in the comments!