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Do you have a policy on how much you’ll share on social media? I’ve had a lot of requests to post photos of my family on my Facebook page. For a variety of reasons, I’m reluctant to share much personal information about myself on the internet. I know it’s not a popular view, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one.

1) My social media presence is connected to my business, Global Copywriting. Most of my user ids are “globalcopywrite” or some variation of that name. It also happens to be the name of my company. My family does not work in my business, so including their pictures in a social media profile would be inappropriate.

2) Once you post photos on Facebook, they enter the public domain. While it probably wouldn’t bother me to have my fans/followers/connections see photos of my family, I certainly don’t want to make those same photos available to their wider networks.

3) Once a photo is in the public domain, you can’t control what happens to it or how it’s used. Paul Pichugin knows this all too well. Channel 9 News used a photo of his that was posted on his Blaque Studios Fan Page. They refuse to compensate him or even give him a photo credit. It’s good enough they’re using it in their promotional collateral but when he asked to be recognised as the photographer, he got a letter from their lawyers.

4) I don’t feel comfortable defining a social media presence for someone else. While I’m prepared to promote my business online and suffer the consequences if I take an unpopular position, it’s just not fair for me to expose my family and friends along the way.

I’m a big fan of using social media as part of my overall marketing strategy. I’m not so inclined to use it in my personal life. While business and professional boundaries blur and overlap, putting my family into the public domain is something I’m going to continue to avoid doing.

What is your opinion about posting personal information in social media channels?

Do you have a social media marketing plan? If you’re a small business or sole trader, a recent report says social media marketing is delivering substantial benefit impacting the profitability of the company. As a social media practitioner, I wasn’t surprised. (NOTE: I did not say I was a social media “expert”) What did surprise me was the significant increase in positive results in the past year.

The 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report contains plenty of interesting data about how companies are behaving when it comes to their online presence. Subtitled “How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses”, the report was compiled by Mike Stelzner, founder of The Social Media Examiner. The report was chock full of graphs and statistical data,  and I was struck by how many references small business garnered.

According to the report, there’s no doubt small businesses are embracing social media and at slightly greater numbers than larger organisations. Specifically:

Small Business

• 58% reported they closed business through social media.
• 89% reported greater exposure for their business

Sole Proprietors

• Were more likely to benefit from qualified lead generation
• Were more likely to see reductions in marketing costs
• Were least likely to outsource their social media activities: 11% compared to roughly 25% for medium and large organisations

More than any other group, small business:

• Reported increased traffic to their website
• Were more likely to use LinkedIn
• Plan to increase their blogging activities
• Show interest in learning more about social bookmarking and Ning sites

These statistics reflect my own experience using social media marketing techniques. I encourage you to read the report. You can download it free from the Social Media Examiner website. It’s an easy read and identifies successful models for social media usage. Importantly, it gives insight into coming trends. If you have any doubt about the place of social media in your organisation, you need to read it.

If you’re already convinced about the value of social media but don’t know how to go about implementing a plan, “The Business of Being David: How to use social media to make your small business big” by Australian writer and small business owner Nick Bowditch is a fantastic place to start your research.

What impact has social media marketing had on your business?

Related posts:
6 Practical Ways Twitter Can Help Your Business
6 Reasons for Refusing LinkedIn Invitations
9 Tips that Improved my Blog

Welcome to the first Global Copywriting BRIEF. If you’re like me, you’re inundated with information. My goal for the BRIEF is to provide a little nugget of quickly digestible data to supplement my longer blog posts. I give credit to Casey Hibbard from Compelling Cases who inspired me with her Tip of the Month. When I get a bit of time, I’ll send the BRIEF out in email format for anyone who has subscribed through my website. You can find the feature on my Home Page.

Spin Your SEO Web

According to Dave Morse, an internet marketing strategist, you control about 25% of your search engine rankings through your website. It’s almost entirely related to the keywords on your site and in the page titles. The other 75% is largely outside your control and has to do with what other websites are saying about you and who is linking to you. If you’re worried about SEO – and who isn’t? – these statistics can seem pretty grim.

A great way to gain SEO effectiveness for your website is to post comments. Nearly every blog post, discussion board, news article or social media tool requires you to add the URL for your website. If you’re adding comments to authoritative sites, you’re automatically spinning an SEO web for yourself. The search engines will troll through these sites, recognise your URL, and use it to establish the rankings for your website.

The Take Away:

Aim, every day, to leave at least one thoughtful comment somewhere on the internet. The bigger your web, the better chance you have to attract search engines. Additional benefits include staying in touch with industry trends and establishing yourself as an authority in your field.

Have you noticed there are only 3 kinds of blog posts this week?

• Top 10 lists for 2009
• Top 10 Predictions for 2010 lists
• 3 Things to Do Before the New Year

Since this is a BRIEF post, I’m not making a list. Instead, here’s one recommendation based on something I discovered in my own business this week.

1) Review your company profiles: When I launched Global Copywriting last year, I had a clear idea where I fit in the market. With a broad IT background – 15 years in software development followed by 5 years of software sales – I knew I was a natural for writing projects requiring a technical background. I developed profiles for my website, LinkedIn and various company listings reflecting this speciality. Guess what? Most of my business this year has not been related to IT.

John Lennon famously said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.” I had planned to do one thing but the market has pushed my business in another direction. Instead of being tightly focused on a niche market, I’ve had work from many different industries. I’m delighted.

Guess what else? I nearly lost a WoM client because the profile for my company on LinkedIn described Global Copywriting as a company that does technical writing. My profile was out of date and no longer represented my business.

Take Away
Take a couple of minutes this holiday season to review your profiles for accuracy, especially the ones stored on social media tools. If it’s been more than a year since you last updated them, you could be compromising your own business opportunities with outdated information. When was the last time your reviewed your own marketing collateral?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Like many small business owners, I have to prioritise my tasks with customer demands always ranking first. School holidays change the mix a bit with family battling for the first spot. Nearly everything else languishes – including my website. Consequently, my search engine rankings take a hit because I don’t get a chance to update my site as often as usual.

Tricks of the Trade
I do have a little trick to keep Google and the rest of the pack happy. I have a “News” section on my home page. It holds three articles with the most current sitting at the top. It takes less than five minutes to add a news item. By keeping this one small area of my website up-to-date, I achieve several things:

• Even when I’m busy or away, my website looks fresh
• The home page is being updated 3-4 times a month, which keeps the search engines interested
• It’s a great way to promote events and business successes without spending a lot of time tooting your own horn
• The content is being refreshed with very minimal time expenditure

The Take-Away
Consider putting a news feature on your home page. Your SEO will improve and it’s a great way to communicate with your users.

How do you keep your search engine rankings during busy periods?