Small businesses know by now that they need a website AND visibility in the popular social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and maybe Twitter, YouTube, and others too. It’s not just about having your own website anymore.

So most of you have got at least one social media profile kinda sorta thrown together, like a basic LinkedIn profile. But then I hear: uh, what, huh? What now? One of the goals of my blog (and my business) is to help folks get past those stuck places. So here are some tips.

Sorry to say, you won’t actually be that visible in social media without some optimization of your profile, for starters. So let’s focus there for this post.

As a business coach and as someone who gets a lot out of social media, I often get asked how it works.

Both beginners and regular users of social media can benefit from these tips. I see even the most advanced users skipping key steps.

At Least Do These Things for All Your Social Media Profiles

1. Link to your website within your profile description.
   Can’t believe how often this gets left out! Add a link even if there’s no stated place for a link. For instance, use the left sidebar area on your Facebook Page to include a link.
2. Add links to your social media profiles in your email signature and on your website.
   You’ll need a custom URL to make it look nice in email. See below.
3. Include a real photo of yourself to make it more human.
   Virtual world connections increase when there’s a real face.
4. Use real names so people can find you.
   Use your real name and your real business name wherever those fit. Avoid abbreviations and lesser known names for your business. (If you or your business have common nicknames, use those in the description so that you’ll be found by those names too.)
5. Use your target keywords throughout.
   Use them in your profile description, tags, your “interests,” your summary, video tags, and in some of your posts. Don’t stuff with keywords. Use them as would be helpful for a real member of your audience. (Psst, choosing keywords is a fine art. Hiring an SEO pro for that is usually worth the investment.)
6. Connect with others; be helpful; recommend others.
   The more you give value to others, the more they’ll do the same for you. You link to them, they’ll often link to you. Kindergarten rules still apply.
7. Focus on connecting with influencers.
   Focus more attention on people who might influence your ideal customers (AKA “target audience”). This includes popular bloggers in your subject area. It also includes people who might commonly refer to you. Consider where your influential folks are active on the web and focus more attention there. (This is one of the main reasons Twitter is so popular and effective. Bloggers and other influencers hang out there.)

Specific Optimization Instructions for Your Profiles

• Video: Optimize LinkedIn Profile for SEO (Hubspot)
  Short and sweet by one of the experts in social media and search engine optimization (SEO).
• Video: How to Create and Optimize a Facebook Page (Tyrone Shum)
  Step-by-step tutorial in only 8 minutes.
• Where to Get Your Custom URL for Facebook (Facebook)
  Facebook Pages have long URLs that are tough to add to your email signature. Here’s how to change that.
• Twitter Grader (Hubspot)
  Get suggestions for your Twitter profile with this free tool.
• It’s Time to Prioritize Video (AKA YouTube) (by me)
  Includes everything you need about why and how to optimize videos and YouTube profiles.

Taking It to the Next Level

• 7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn (Mashable)
  If you do at least the first 5 of these things in LinkedIn, you’ll see results.
• Video: Using Twitter for Linkbuilding in SEO (Seer Interactive)
  When you’re ready for some advanced creative ideas for getting big results in Twitter, check out this talk.
• Webinar Archive: Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the new SEO (Hubspot)
• Ask for ratings, comments, and “likes.”
  Don’t just sit there and wait for them to come to you. Suggest it by doing things like adding a Facebook “like” widget on your website so people can spread the word about you with one click. Also, send people to your online videos, slideshows, online business listings, and other postings and invite them to post reviews there. Reviews, ratings, and “likes” lead to higher ranks.
• Don’t forget blogs.
  Blogs are social media too. Blogging is SEO on steroids. Even if you don’t have your own blog, you can comment on other people’s blogs and gain visibility. Heck, I hope you’ll comment below. My blog gives “link juice,” meaning search engines will give value to the links in my blog comments. (I delete spammers.)

Where to Learn More

Of course there are zillions of resources about getting the most out of social media. Here are my favorite resources for staying on top of my game:

• Search YouTube for your particular question and you’re bound to find answers.
• Hubspot – leading-edge web marketing business offering lots of free webinars and tools
• Mashable – THE social media news and web tips blog
• Book: The Referral Engine, by John Jantsch

See you online somewhere. Find me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course here on my blog. (See how I cleverly threw that in. Just trying to be a good role model.)

Image by Kristina B via Flickr

Blogging isn’t for everyone but it can be far more useful for businesses, organizations, and individuals than most people think.

Here are the practical reasons why I choose to blog despite all the other things demanding my attention.

Practical Reasons Why I Blog

1. Blogging sharpens my skills at expressing myself in my field of expertise.
2. It forces me to check up on my knowledge and opinions before hitting “publish.”
3. It keeps me alert for and learning about new trends in my field.
4. It’s an easy place to refer people when I want to explain more of my thoughts.
5. It gives me better attention from search engines. Search engines love fresh content and often reward it with higher ranks.
6. It creates opportunities for conversations with people interested in the same topics.
7. It shows I care when I give away free information. (Good marketers give first.)
8. It’s an easy place to store my thoughts and information.
9. It provides an easy format for people to leave comments and interact. (Scroll down to comment on this post.)
10. It provides an easy and common way for people to subscribe to my updates (via RSS or email), so we can stay in touch.
11. It provides regular writing practice. We could all benefit from improved writing skills.
12. It sharpens my web writing skills.
13. It sharpens my visual presentation skills.
14. It’s a sample for prospective clients of my knowledge and approach.
15. It’s a writing sample for people seeking help with communications.
16. It sharpens my knowledge of blogging which better prepares me to help clients with blogging.

And that’s just the practical reasons! I also blog because it’s fun!

In fact, blogging is more effective if you can have fun with it. Oh man, I just turned having fun into a practical thing. Lest we (I) forget, fun is a good thing by itself! Enjoy!

There’s so many great reasons to hire interns (especially for help with new media) and we all seem to want their help. But, so much gets in the way, right?

You search, you interview, they start…they stop showing up, or you don’t know what to give them… and you stop trying.

Yet, some people manage to make it work! People are using interns for help with social media marketing, technical jobs, video storytelling, and more. I’ve been collecting their secrets for you.

First, Choose the Right Things to Delegate

It’s not easy to turn over your projects to someone else, much less someone who you’re not sure is that invested or experienced. The  trick is to delegate the right things.

I think you’ll find yourself relaxing your shoulders when you see this list of specific and helpful ideas for what to delegate to interns when it comes to social media marketing projects:

10 Social Media Tasks for Interns (by Aaron Uhrmacher, social media consultant)

In a nutshell…

Don’t let an intern be the one to develop your social media strategy, be your primary voice in social media, or make decisions about how to measure success.

Do let them do important jobs like research, giving you feedback on your campaigns, creating video interviews, and much more.

Read the article for some great specifics on how to make it work. Then start writing that intern job description.

Second, Choose the Right Intern

Never underestimate the interview and selection process.

It’s hard to know what to ask someone who has minimal job experience, so here’s a great cheat sheet for you. These questions will elicit what you need to know:

Interviewing Interns (by Jim Taft, Executive Coach)

It’s Time To Go Searching

Once you’ve got your job description and your interview questions ready, it’s time to post your job and find those interns.

If you need someone soon, try listing on:

• craigslist
• InternJobs

If you can wait about six months for them to start, contact your local colleges for intern options. This is the ideal way to get someone with relevant interests, and with an added level of commitment if they’re getting credit.

Feedback?

What has worked for you? Please leave your comment below. It only takes a minute and you’ll get a link back to your website.

In the previous post about social media, I explained how the playing field has changed for everything, as fueled by the rising access to social media.

When it comes to promoting something on the web, you are not in charge of your own messaging anymore. Everyone is in charge.

What?

Hold on, this could be good news for you.

Potentially, people will spread your message for you, wider than you could ever imagine, if you’re doing it right.

This is called viral marketing, which refers to a message spreading like a virus, that is to say, exponentially and easily from person to person. Sounds bad but look at how successful viruses are. A more positive-sounding description might be “word-of-mouse.”

Viral Marketing or Word-of-Mouse Samples

The Iranian protests and Obama’s election victory are prominent examples of the success of viral marketing.

Momsrising.org’s Mother’s Day video is another hugely successful viral marketing sample. (Watch the video and you’ll get why people spread it to millions of viewers.)

Next Step

To understand how the rules have changed and how to keep up, read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Seriously, order it from the library now. You’ll be on the right page for the 21st century. As a bonus, it’s a pleasure to read.

Protest in Iran 6/17/09 as distributed via Twitter (click for more images)

If you had any doubt left about the potential for using social media (like Twitter) for social change, I hope all doubts are gone this week.

There is a revolution going on all around us — in business, politics, everything! The streets of Iran this week are the perfect reflection of it.

Social media is playing a central role in it all.

Obama’s victory was already proof that social media can be harnessed for change. Most marketing pros would agree with this expert’s synopsis:

Obama won because he created a worldwide rave using the best web marketing methods.

—David Meerman Scott, author The New Rules of Marketing and PR

You don’t need a massive budget like Obama’s to get big attention if you know how to harness social media. The protests in Iran are proof that if people want something enough, and they have Internet access, they are unstoppable.

The Key Role of Social Media in the Iranian Protests

The Iranian protesters are able to organize and be heard globally because of social media — despite repression of communication channels.

Something is going on in the Middle East today that is very new.

—Thomas Friedman, “Winds of Change?” 6/14/09, New York Times

Social media is powerful even when the government tries to block the media and access to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Twitter is easily accessed via third party applications, so they just can’t stop it.

Media blackouts don’t work anymore. Nothing can be hidden.

Twitter practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control.

—Lev Grossman, Iran Protests…, 6/17/09, TIME

This Shift in Power Changes Everything!

Not just in Iran.

Next post: What this shift means for YOU

Related from the Blogosphere

A Lesson from Iran for Social Entrepreneurs (Change.org)