Why Does an Individual Need A Facebook Business Page?

Facebook business profile for personal social marketing

Facebook has been an extremely popular social media for years now. Millions of individuals have their own accounts, chatting, sharing, and “liking” popular trending topics, ideas, and businesses. For the most part, an individual’s personal profile seems to offer it all, making interaction easy and allowing them to meet and network with people across the world.

So why does an individual need a Facebook business page? If your personal profile seems to be working just fine, what extra benefits would you draw from having a separate business page? 

Top 3 Reasons Why You Need a Facebook Business Page

1. To present a favorable image

Every individual is a brand, whether they work for a company or for themselves.  There may well be a time at which you’re seeking work in a professional field, and with the online world socially-focused these days, it is wise to be able to present a positive and professional, social image. 

Many businesses will Google their employee prospects and Facebook will usually show up in the top two results. What you say and what others have to say about you will significantly affect how a prospective employer/business partner will view you. 

So, consider your personal profile (especially when blocked to non-friends) as being of little aid in endorsing your professional image. But, if you have a business page that demonstrates your professionalism, you will be far more effective in marketing yourself to the right audience. Through word of mouth marketing, your social networks can help or hinder your efforts. Be sure that you are presenting the right image for your desired business audience to view. 

2. To display your professionalism 

Additionally, there is also the importance of separating your personal profile from your business endeavors. Social networks are popular with individual users whose accounts are often littered with personal opinions. Many of which could not be regarded as part of a person’s professional persona. If you are to appear professional, you’ll need your social account to represent your expertise and business-focused mind-set effectively. 

Thus, by designing a business page, you can interact on a strictly professional level and design an image that is desirable for your audience - be it potential business networks or a future career. This business page will help represent your professionalism and display your ability to separate business from personal matters. 

3. To analyze your social strategy

One of the benefits of a business page is that you can utilize the available social analytics. Personal pages do not offer effective analytics to help you when tuning your social network skills. Using those analytics, you can view interactions and see how many people are viewing your profile and when they are viewing it. 

"Social media allows us to build a reputable brand, sometimes that means separating personal and business profiles" [tweet this].

Many people are using the internet. Some are there purely to hang out while others are there for professional reasons. In order to make the most of your social experience, it would be wise to set up a business profile to help improve visibility and potentially make some new professional associates. Set yourself apart as a professional individual. Take the time to set up a business profile on your Facebook account now!

Your Picture and Your Brand

Pictures and your word of mouth marketing

Never has it been more important than it is today to be a social brand. More and more people are spending a lot of their time in social networking sites, connecting and interacting with other people and brands. If you want to engage and reach more consumers, then it’s essential for your brand to have social media presence.

As a small business owner, your personal brand as well as those of the people who work with you or for you can greatly affect your business. This is because people don’t just buy from brands anymore. They want to buy from real people, people they know and like. This is why word of mouth marketing continues to work so well, since it’s based on people’s relationships and referrals through mouth to mouth communication.

Word of mouth marketing still powerful

There are certainly a lot of advantages to having a social media presence for your brand. You can connect with hundreds or even thousands of people with just a click. You can send your message to people all over the world. Information can spread virally throughout social networking sites, so your message gets repeated over and over. It’s easy to offer promotions and discounts, and you can even gain insights and other information about the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Perhaps best of all, it’s easy to offer personalized customer service, since people really get to connect and interact with you in these platforms.

Of course, there are also disadvantages to having a social media presence. Being “social” basically means putting yourself out there, exposing yourself to the public. And this exposure could result in negative comments and feedback about your personal and small business brand.

Pictures and impressions

A picture says a thousand words, and even the pictures you post in your different social media accounts can affect your brand. Customers, hiring managers, job recruiters, and clients are now Googling you, checking out your social media profiles, in order to gain insights regarding your brand. Because of this, the pictures you post can definitely affect the way they view you and your small business.

Pictures of partying or drunken pictures, religious or political slogans, scantily clad images, photos of illegal activities… these may seem funny at the time you posted them, but once clients, customers or hiring managers see them, then you won’t be laughing anymore.

Does the tag spell doom?

This is why it’s essential for you and the people you work with to take the time to check the pictures you’ve uploaded and see if there are any that other people may view in a wrong way. Another even more important thing – you also need to check the pictures that people “tag” you in, especially in Facebook, since it can greatly affect your brand. Some of these pictures may be ones that you don’t want people to see – such as the one where you’re puking your guts out on the toilet – can be uploaded by your friends and then seen by other people when your friends “tag” you.

If you’ve been on Facebook for a long time now, it may be difficult for you to go through all the information and pictures you have in order to filter out the bad things while keeping the good things. If you don’t have the time, you might consider using the Esselte created Pendaflex Tag Tamer, a Facebook app that has been designed to help you find and remove all those unwanted pictures from your Facebook Timeline.

Tag tamer helps look for you

Pendaflex Tag Tamer uses an advanced search function that is easy to use and saves you time so you can quickly search and remove all those unwanted photos. Typically, you would have to manually scroll down your timeline and one by one remove the photos you don’t want as well as the tags you received. With this app, people who have hundreds or thousands of photos can quickly filter their Facebook Timeline so that no unwanted photos are revealed.

In today’s world, what is known about you can negatively affect you, even if it was just a silly picture taken on a crazy night. Make sure that your social media accounts are free and clear of anything that can ruin or put a negative light on your personal or small business brand. If you have people working with you or for you, you should also help them understand the importance of this.

With the Pendaflex Tag Tamer, quickly and easily remove all those unwanted photos from your Facebook Timeline, so you don’t have to worry about pics from the past clouding your future with clients, customers and hiring managers.

Do You Need to Change Your Reputation?

Your online reputation can harm your personal branding strategy

If there’s one thing that personal brands want to protect, it’s their reputation both online and off. You can’t expect to land jobs or get hired if your reputation is mostly negative, especially in the online world. Google now remembers every page where your name has been mentioned, and any site with a negative review about your products or services can remain there forever.

The nature of the search engines allow people to see that site with a negative post about you over and over. Unless, of course, you do something about it. If you aren’t sure where to start on getting back your online reputation, then you should try out Reputation Changer.

Reputation Changer knows how essential for personal brands their reputation is. Whether you’re a politician, a doctor, an athlete, or a marketer, it’s important that you maintain a reputation that’s good and positive. Otherwise, who will want to hire you? If you’re a doctor, for example, who recently had a series of complaints and bad reviews about your medical services, do you think patients will continue lining up at your door?

A good online reputation is essential to ensuring that you continue to have customers and clients interested in obtaining your services and buying your products. Make sure that you protect your reputation, because if you don’t do anything about it, it may even get worse. The bad reviews, news, and feedback will continue to populate the top search engine results, and more and more people will read it, making the decision to turn away from your personal brand and to look to someone else to obtain the same products or services.

Sometimes there are valid reasons for your bad feedback. But many times, these complaints and poor reviews can be the cause of the envy of your competitors or a person out to get you. Do you want to risk having your reputation ruined simply because of someone’s unreasonable vendetta?

Also, the negative feedback could be about another person who shares your name – and now your personal brand is suffering even if you haven’t done anything wrong. People who Google your name read these poor reviews, and they don’t really look into it further to discover that it really isn’t about you. So what can you do?

If you need to change your personal brand’s reputation, then Reputation Changer can help you. What exactly can Reputation Changer do for you?

Clear your name in the search engines

A single negative review or feedback can ruin the wonderful reputation you’ve spent years building. Honestly, it always seems that bad news gets spread faster than good news, so in many cases, a negative review about your brand spreads like a virus while the good reviews just aren’t talked about as much.

Reputation Changer can help you clear the search engine results of any complaint or negative listing that’s posted about your personal brand. The negatives will be buried under websites, media reviews, high PR article sites, and other assets that will show you in a positive light.

Most people don’t go past page one of the search engine results, so once the negative reviews have been pushed back, they you can consider them as dead and buried. When people search for your name, all they will see are the sites that Reputation Changer has created that show you in the best light possible.

Monitor and protect your personal brand

As the owner of your personal brand, you want to protect it at all costs. You want to know right away if someone posts a bad or negative review about you so that you can address the problem immediately.

Reputation Changer can help you by monitoring keywords related to your personal brand in order to immediately inform you if there are mentions or comments about you. Quickly addressing the problem can help contain it, so that it doesn’t spread. If you remain ignorant of the bad reviews, then they can spread like wildfire over the Internet, and it’s a lot more difficult to control.

Manage your online reputation

In today’s world, a good online reputation has become essential for brands, both personal and business ones. It can mean the difference between getting hired, getting fired, getting customers, and getting clients. So make sure that your search engine results are positive and clean. Don’t let an unreasonable complaint or a bad review ruin your personal brand. If you can’t manage your reputation alone, there’s always Reputation Changer to turn to.

The Difference between Wants, Needs and Strategy

Your social marketing strategy matters

It’s essential that you know how to market yourself. You need to be able to stand out from among the crowd and differentiate yourself from all the other applicants. You need to be able to convince someone that you’re the right person for the job. You need to sell yourself effectively in order to get that sale, that project, or that customer.

The competition is fierce. You don’t want to be someone who’s just average and easy to forget. In order to be a cut above, you need to utilize some effective marketing strategies, with social and word of mouth marketing being one of the most popular types today.

Today most people spend a lot of time on social media sites, so it’s important that you establish your presence in some of these social media platforms. Don't jump in too quickly, however! Before you start this type of marketing, it’s important that you identify your objectives and plan out your strategy.

It’s easy to say that you want a thousand followers in one week, or that you aim to establish a presence in all the social networking sites in just a month. But these aren’t strategies – these are goals that you want to fulfill. In order to meet these goals and be successful in your social marketing, you need to formulate a strategy that cuts through the clutter and helps you to reach your objectives within the time frame that you have in mind.

What are some of the things you need to think about in order to create an effective social marketing strategy for your brand?

     1. Create goals and objectives

A ship needs a destination, or else it will just go around in circles. Just like a ship, when it comes to creating a personal brand you need to have some goals and objectives so that you can map out how to achieve them. Otherwise you’ll simply be flailing around, wondering where the shore is. Make these goals concrete by writing them down and putting them in a place where you can see them regularly.

     2. Focus on needs, not wants

Sure, everyone wants a million followers on Facebook, and hundreds of people signing up for their newsletter, but if you’re just starting out, these “wants” may not exactly be feasible and can only discourage you when you don’t achieve them. Focus on what you need in order to be successful in your social marketing. Even if you have thousands of followers, does it really mean that all of them are actively engaged and connected with your brand? Not really. Seeing that you have 3,000 likes on your Facebook page may be remarkable, but if no one is commenting on your posts and updates, then that’s still a red flag that can alert you to problems with your social media marketing strategies.

     3. Identify your target audience

Who is your target audience? If you want to attract new clients, employers and customers, it’s important that you do some research in order to discover how to gain their attention. It’s important to describe your target audience in detail, their demographics, locality, etc., so you know how to identify them and reach them.

     4. Be creative and innovative

Though there are tried and tested strategies for succeeding in social marketing, you should also put some creativity to your plans so that people won’t think that it’s just the same old marketing all over again. Check out your competition and see what kind of approach they’re taking. Encourage active participation in your social media accounts through polls, questions, contests and giveaways, and make sure to add some multimedia to spark conversation.

     5. Listen and respond to your audience

One of the best things about social media is that it really allows you to interact effectively with your audience. It’s not like advertising, which is a one-way broadcasting to the people. Social media allows a two-way conversation to happen, enabling you to really connect and engage your followers. As you advertise in this way, be sure to listen to your fans, take their suggestions into consideration, don’t dismiss their feedback, and always respond to them. This is a great way to spread the word of mouth about your brand, encouraging communication and participation within social media.

Yes, you want to fulfill your social marketing wants. But it’s very important to focus first and foremost on what’s important, on the needs of your personal brand. Once you have concrete goals and objectives, only then can you really create the best strategy in order to achieve these goals.

Focus on what’s feasible and attainable. As a personal brand, you must be grounded and focused on your strategy and goals.

Are Pinners Purchasing?

The popularity of Pinterest has led many brands to utilize it for promoting their products and services. Though Pinterest hasn’t been on the scene for very long, it has quickly signed up millions of users, and is now the third most popular social networking site, just behind Facebook and Google. Though many people are devoting their time to the virtual pinboard, the question that most marketers want answered is: “Are pinners purchasing?”

Many websites and brands are seeing an increase in traffic from their Pinterest account, but the main question remains, does this traffic result in sales? In a study conducted by Vision Critical and Emily Carr University that involved 500 Pinterest users from the US, Canada, Australia and UK, they discovered a pretty high correlation between pinning and purchasing. It seems one out of five Pinterest users has pinned an item or product that they purchased eventually.

This is definitely a big discovery for brands. As a small business owner, you can’t ignore the reach of Pinterest, since it can potentially drive revenue. If you want to have a successful social marketing campaign, you need to utilize most of the tools at your disposal.

In another study by Shopify, they discovered that Pinterest users even spend more on average compared to their Facebook counterparts. Pinterest has become the third largest referral source to Shopify’s partner sites, with Facebook and Twitter continuing to lead. And Pinterest users also tend to shop more – they spend an average of $80 per order, which is double that of what they spend on Facebook.

Though Facebook continues to be the giant among social networking sites mainly due to the fact that it has the most number of users, Pinterest’s unique image-based site definitely offers a lot of potential for social marketing. Rakuten, an e-commerce giant based in Japan, recently made a $100 million investment on Pinterest. It plans to use the site together with the Rakuten ID, which is already being used by 75 percent of Japan’s population online, or roughly around 80 million people. This puts the value of Pinterest at $1.5 billion.

Though purchases may not be frequent and constant, still, brands can’t ignore the power that Pinterest holds nowadays. A significant number of people are raving about the site, using it to showcase the things they love, and sharing these things with their followers. Since this can translate to sales, it would be disadvantages for your small business to ignore Pinterest.

Even though pinners are purchasing, however, it’s important that you use Pinterest properly in order to increase the traffic to your site as well as increase sales. You can create pinboards of all the products you’re selling, but too much self-promotion can end up backfiring on you. So it’s important that you strike a balance between promoting your products and services, and sharing what you love on the site.

Mix and match what you post. Showcase your products with other things that complement them. Find unique ways to showcase the services you’re offering. If you sell make up for example, don’t just post pin pictures of your products – you can add make up tutorials, pictures of made up people that you like, and comparisons of what make up is best for day and for night.

Even if you’re someone who offers services, not products, you can make Pinterest work for you. As a lawyer, for example, you can showcase your advocacies through pictures. You can even show a bit of humor, since this lets people see you in a more personal way.

But of course, the real challenge is getting people to buy from you. Sure, it’s easy for people to follow your Pinterest account, join your contests, comment on your pinboards, like and share them on other social networking sites, and so on. But these things don’t always translate into sales.

Also, there remains the question: Are pinners purchasing what they pin, or are they pinning what they already decided to purchase? What comes first… the pin, or the plan to purchase? This is an interesting question to answer since it gives you an insight on what the users are doing. Does the pin come before the plan to purchase? Or the plan to purchase comes first before the pin?

If the pin comes first, then this can be really advantageous to brands. This means that people are pinning what they love, then they can’t resist purchasing. On the other hand, if the plan to purchase comes first, then it means that Pinterest may not exactly have anything to do with why the user is buying the product or service.

Truly, there is still a lot of uncharted territories with regards to Pinterest. As brands begin to learn what works on Pinterest or not, they can really come to engage their followers and increase their sales in the end.

Creating Good Karma with Your Contacts

The current market is extremely competitive. In addition to having to compete with large corporations, small businesses also have to jostle for positions with other small businesses that sell the same products or offer the same services. 

This is why it’s crucial for small business owners to build excellent client and customer relations. Word of mouth marketing is essential for small businesses to survive and thrive in the current market. In addition, building great customer relationships can help you get repeat customers as well as new ones. 

As your small business grows, however, it can be difficult to manage all of your contacts. To succeed in your business, you need to maintain frequent communication with your suppliers, business partners, and of course, your clients and customers. You also have to keep track of your schedule, your meetings, your business overhead and supplies, and so on. You need to juggle all of these properly to ensure that your business runs smoothly and capably. You don’t want to end up missing an important meeting, or worse, sending out the wrong order to a customer.

So how do you solve this? Well, you could create a spreadsheet and encode all the information there. You can continuously add and subtract to it, and hope that you don’t get confused with all the rows and columns you’ve added. Or you can try a customer relationship management tool. There are currently many customer relationship management tools available in the market. One of the most promising ones is KarmaCRM.

KarmaCRM aims to make your life easier. It’s basically a customer relationship management platform that’s entirely web-based, so you can access it wherever you are, whenever you need it – there’s no need to download anything. It offers a simple and easy-to-use interface to help you manage your contacts and the things you need to do without problem.

What exactly are the things you can do with KarmaCRM?

     1. Manage your contacts

KarmaCRM allows you to import contacts from external websites, and customize your contact list so it only includes those relevant to your business. You can add photos, files and tasks to your contacts, so you always know who you’re talking or transacting with. You even have access to a Google map so you can easily see where your contact is located. 

You can also assign an urgent, hot or cold status to each lead, so you know whom you need to prioritize, and customize your contact status in the settings.

     2. Manage tasks

KarmaCRM helps you easily manage the tasks you need to do, so you don’t forget any important meetings and deadlines. Within the platform, you can place due dates for each task you need to do, so you don’t find yourself rushing when it’s nearing the deadline. You can also set up email and SMS reminders when deadlines are approaching, so you don’t forget anything. How often have you forgotten an urgent task only to be reminded when it’s already due?

You can assign tasks to a contact or a member of your team. This way, they can also be reminded about their deadlines.

     3. Create cases

You may occasionally have small or large cases that need to be prioritized. With KarmaCRM, you can create a case, customize its type, status and priority, assign contacts, and add notes and tasks to the case. This makes it easy to manage each case and then close them once they’re finished so you can move onto the next task. 

     4. Manage your schedule

You can create a calendar of activities in this platform and customize the view according to your preference. You can even import and sync your calendars with your Google account, as the site integrates with many third parties. You can use it to add tasks and events easily and manage your schedule. With KarmaCRM, you won’t have to worry about ever missing a deadline, an important meeting, or an upcoming event.

     5. Chat with team members, store and transfer files

Also within the site, you can privately chat with the members of your team and even create unlimited group chat rooms. You can easily see who among your team members are online so you can talk to them about a task or case that’s almost due. Chat transcripts are even saved for future reference.

Files can easily be transferred from one team member to another. You can store your files and presentations so that any of your team members can access them anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection. 

So why trouble yourself with spreadsheets and other tools when there’s an easier way to manage your contacts and ensure good customer relationships? To create good Karma with your contacts, why not try out KarmaCRM today?

Are You Ready to Face Timeline?

Facebook will force their new layout, Timeline, to  business pages by the end of March. Why is this important for your personal brand? Timeline will give you the chance to be more creative with your profile. There will be new features that will give you more control over your profile, your posts, and your fans. Switching to the new layout will give your personal brand an edge but there are some things that you need to prepare to make your new profile work for you.

Here are some of the new features that you have to look out for:

Cover photo – the cover photo is an important part of your profile. It’s a huge space where you can place creative shots or choose graphics that says a lot about your personal brand. Timeline for personal profile pages was released months ago and since then a lot of people have displayed how you can be creative with your cover photo.

Your cover photo is the first thing that your visitors will see on your profile. Make them stay long enough by being creative: attract them with your cover photo. Make sure that you use an image size of 851 by 315 pixels to ensure great photo quality. Also consider your profile photo: it’s not going to display like it displays on the old layout. Your profile photo will only fit in a small box at the bottom left of your cover photo.

It’s also important to note that on a mobile phone your timeline cover will not show.  Mobile users will only be able to see your profile picture.  When you’re placing important information in your timeline cover, keep this in mind. Anything placed there will not be visible to your mobile phone user.

Timeline cover photos also have strict guidelines:
No calls to action
No “like this” or “like this” arrows
No mention of a “sale”
And No contact information

“About” section – the “About” section is where you display your achievements, contact details, and other items about you that you want others to know. Take the time to fill this space with important details about you. If you already have this, maybe it’s time to review and rewrite your information. Facebook added this feature to make it easier for people to get to know you. If they stay long enough on your profile, they will go to your “About” page, and when they do, you want to make sure that they find the details they need from you that showcase you in your best light.

Admin panel, activity log, and other features – Facebook will also add features to help you be more in control of profile activities. For example, you will be able to manage comments that you get, and get analytics. You can also enable the Track Friend Activity feature, which allows your visitors to see how their other friends are talking about you.

Make sure that before you go and switch to the new layout, you are ready to adjust to the new features. Before you switch, try out the new features and see how it works for you. You can do trials with your cover photo and other new additions before you launch your new profile.

As a personal brand, everything that you do and everything you show others makes an impression With the new Timeline, you can start building a community of both professionals and consumers. You are making it easier for yourself to attract and build relationships with others. Through this, you can build your brand’s reputation. People judge a brand by how they maintain their profiles. If you take the time to adjust to the new page layout, you can make it work to your advantage.