The new film SALT starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent is a sleek entertainment that is a total fantasy. When the film ends, you are no more wiser of the human condition or of anything else worth knowing than when the film began.

This lack of worthwhile information reminded me that people sharing information on the Internet basically fall into two camps: those who share worthwhile information and those who only present their own end game.

Here’s the truth:

You can truly do both. You can both share worthwhile information and talk about your end game. And here’s an example from the world of television:

The Winter/Spring 2010 issue of “The Intelligencer” (Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies) has a review of a TV drama that I’m a huge fan of — the USA Network show BURN NOTICE. The review states:

The show’s writers illustrate the value of good information, intelligence, in any operation, showing the detailed files Michael complies on his targets and the types of data he collects …

If you watch the show, you learn a great deal at the same time that the show offers sleek entertainment. (Yes, both SALT and BURN NOTICE have numerous explosions.)

The difference between this extra element of worthwhile information in BURN NOTICE that is missing in SALT is what makes the difference between the emails I read and the emails I don’t read from Internet marketers. I read the ones with worthwhile information along with the promotion of new products or services.

We should all try to add value even when we are entertaining (or selling). So in case this blog post doesn’t offer enough worthwhile information for you, I’m adding an important reminder:

Are you daily backing up your computer files? And are you using strong passwords rather than weak passwords such as your birthday or your pet’s name?

Your own computer files and online accounts are as important to your work as top secret files are to government spies. Make sure you keep your information safe.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. A long time ago she had a security clearance when she worked as a civilian for the U.S. Army in Munich, where she was always careful to correctly lock the safes for which she was responsible.

I’m reading the book OUTRAGEOUS ADVERTISING THAT’S OUTRAGEOUSLY SUCCESSFUL by Bill Glazer, and I’ve reached the part where Glazer discusses how important testimonials are.

Now I know that testimonials are important – and we have several on our company site. I also know that nowadays signing a testimonial “Reader in Des Moines” is not going to cut it. Website visitors reading your testimonials want to know that there are real people behind the testimonials.

What has struck me in this section of Glazer’s book is that I missed an opportunity.

Glazer recommends: “Place a headline above the testimonial that encourages someone to read it.”

When I read this advice, I immediately went to our company site and added headlines to the important testimonials. (For examples of this, scroll down to the two testimonials on this page: www.millermosaicllc.com/product-launch-ebook/)

And, yes, adding headlines does make the testimonials stand out much better. So go ahead and try this for your own website testimonials.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. Join the company-hosted FREE webinar on Thursday, July 29, about WordPress websites and blogs. (There will be a recording afterwards.) Sign up now.

Susan Chodakiewitz, creator of www.Booksicals.com, has just had her “aha!” moment about Twitter.

Up until now, no matter what I told her as we exercised on adjoining treadmills at LA Fitness, she didn’t truly “get” the power of Twitter.  Then last week she tweeted about the musical performance of her children’s book “Too Many Visitors for One Little House” at the Gap at The Grove in LA.

And suddenly she realized she could share information about the different children’s activities she has on her website.  (Full disclosure: Miler Mosaic built the website.)

Here’s one of her tweets:

Cousin Rose’s Craft Ideas for Kids! Make Snazzy Button Covers http://www.booksicals.com/crafts #kidslit #kids #books #crafts #moms #reading

This is a terrific example of sharing valuable information with a target audience (moms and kids) and using Twitter hashtags (#crafts, #books, etc.) to highlight the information in the tweet and on the Booksicals website.

Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SusanChodak and visit the www.Booksicals.com site to learn about her book-related activities for children.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing.  Check out her “Wonderful World of Twitter” ebook for more information on effectively using Twitter.

Three little pigs decided to use social media to attract more customers for their businesses.

The first little pig, Gretchen, set up a Twitter account and a Facebook profile and a Facebook (business) page for her nail salon shop, for which she did not have a website or blog.

Gretchen tweeted several times a day about the low prices at her nail salon and she used the same information for her Facebook profile and Facebook (business) page.

But as hard as Gretchen tweeted and shared the information on Facebook, she did not get any new people coming to her nail salon.

The second little pig, Jack, set up a Twitter account and a Facebook profile and a Facebook (business) page for his dry cleaners, for which he had a website several years old. The website did not have even basic search engine optimization and Jack never added new content.

Jack tweeted several times a day about his low prices – and he often put a link to his website in the body of his tweets. He posted the same information on Facebook.

But as many times as Jack tweeted the link to his website, he did not get any new people coming to his dry cleaners.

The third little pig, Priscilla, read as many articles and took as many online courses as she could about effectively using social media. Then she had a web person set up a WordPress site/blog for her hair salon business. She made sure that the site had basic search engine optimization.

Next she set up a Twitter account and a Facebook profile and a Facebook (business) page. She used the search function on Twitter to find people who might be interested in hair care – whether or not they might be interested in her own hair salon.

Then Priscilla started sharing tweets with links to the best hair care articles she could find as well as her three-times-a-week posts on her own site.

People on Twitter and Facebook responded by asking Priscilla questions about curly hair, hair coloring, and other hair care questions. Priscilla tweeted back replies and answered these questions on Facebook.

When at first these efforts seemed to produce no new customers, Priscilla did not give up. She just kept dispensing good hair care advice on Twitter and Facebook as well as writing three informative blog posts each week.

And then one day someone called for an appointment and mentioned that he was one of her Twitter followers. Priscilla tweeted about this call.

Two days later she got another new appointment call from a follower on Twitter.

Then Priscilla tweeted that she would give her Twitter followers a 10% discount on hair care services if they sent her an appointment request via Twitter.

And that’s when Priscilla reaped the benefits of her social media efforts. She got new customers who were appreciative of the helpful advice she shared on social media as well as her responsiveness in answering individual questions.

If you’re using social media to attract more business, which little pig are you?

For help setting up effective social media sites and developing a strategy for using these sites, see www.millermosaicllc.com/social-media-marketing

And for more free helpful advice on using social media marketing, subscribe to this blog.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller) is a co-founder of social media marketing company Miller Mosaic, which coaches clients on how to effectively use social media to attract more business.

Facebook offers businesses incredible networking and relationship-building opportunities with potential clients and customers. But there are a couple of major catches.

First, Facebook changes things often, which can be quite unnerving, especially for people who teach others about how to use Facebook.

Second, the logic of where things are is NOT logical.

Here’s a case in point:

After Yael built a customized tab for our company Power Marketing Facebook (business) PAGE, we wanted this customized tab page view – that we labeled “Inner Circle” – to be the default page view when someone new came to our Facebook (business) PAGE.

To accomplish our goal of making the Inner Circle tab page view the default page view, I clicked on edit and went to the page view on our Facebook PAGE where I found the section “Wall Settings.” By clicking on “Edit” for that section I got the option of “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else” (I assume that means everyone except the admins of the page). And I chose the Inner Circle tab.

But here’s what I later learned from Susan Newman of www.SusanNewmanDesign.com:

I could have stayed on the “Wall” page view of the Facebook Power Marketing PAGE (the “Wall” being the usual default page view). Then instead of clicking the “Edit Page” found directly under the logo image, I could have simply clicked on “Options” located under the empty field for “What’s on your mind?” and then the word “Settings” would appear.

If I then clicked on “Settings,” I’d get the same default landing tab option choices I got when I clicked on “Edit Page” and then clicked on the “Edit” option for “Wall Settings.”

Are you thoroughly confused now? Even so, do check out our Facebook Inner Circle tab page view. It should now appear as the first page view when you go to www.facebook.com/powermarketing (and if it doesn’t, let us know).

Two different ways to accomplish the same objective of changing the default tab page view; each way found on a different page view of the same Facebook PAGE. Is it any wonder that using Facebook can drive some people mad?

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a co-founder with Yael K. Miller of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. Phyllis and Yael spend a great deal of time working on de-mystifying social media so that Miller Mosaic Power Marketing clients can effectively use social media to attract more business. Check out our monthly de-mystifying program at http://budurl.com/joinmmic

People should NOT have to guess where the navigation is on your website

I went to www.crateandbarrel.com and typed in a search item. And as familiar as I am with websites, by mistake I clicked on Checkout instead of searching.

Retracing my steps, I realized that the tiny arrow pointing from the search field to Checkout was where I should have clicked and not, functioning on auto pilot, clicked where I expected the search link to be.

Then I went to www.bedbathandbeyond.com and did the same search. Here there was no vagueness as to what to click on to complete the search. The clickable button to the right of the search field said Search.

Such a simple task on any website, and so important to get right.

Part of effective website navigation depends on the expectations of website visitors and how much the visitors desire the information “promised” by the site. For example, if the only nav buttons are at the bottom of a page (and a visitor must scroll down to see these), then it is highly unlikely that many people will have the patience to search for these buttons.

This is why it is so important to consider your website navigation from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know, for example, that the little arrow pointing to Checkout is actually the link to do a search.

It may be difficult for you to put yourself in the perspective of a first-time visitor to your website. One solution is to ask friends or family members who have not been on your site before to carry out specific tasks that you give them. Ask these people for honest feedback to gauge which parts of your navigation are not as obvious as you may think.

As with everything else in social media marketing (and an effective website should be home base for your social media strategy), make it as easy as possible for people to say yes to you.

If you feel that your website could use a third-party perspective and you’d like to integrate a social media strategy with that website, check out our social media make-over package.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton school and is co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing.

The new book SWITCH by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (who also wrote MADE TO STICK) is full of fascinating case studies of how people used the concepts in this book to “encourage” change.

I would have highly recommended this book anyway for its incredibly powerful information. But I was also thrilled by what the brothers wrote about my favorite book for helping people get over their fear of learning/using social media: MINDSET: THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS by Carol Dweck. The brothers write:

“In her must-read book MINDSET: THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS, she makes an airtight case that a growth mindset will make you more successful at almost anything. That’s because people with a growth mindset — those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long-term view — can’t help but progress in their lives and careers.”

I particularly like their next sentence: “Once you become aware of these concepts, you start to spot the fixed mindset everywhere.”

Carol Dweck’s book has been incredibly helpful to me whenever I am frustrated by the fixed mindset reactions I get about social media. At these times I just remind myself that I am lucky to have a growth mindset.

And now I have a new book to be a huge fan of — SWITCH: HOW TO CHANGE THINGS WHEN CHANGE IS HARD. The concepts in this book are very clearly expressed and the case studies show how powerfully the concepts can work.

What’s most important, the brothers demonstrate how “little” solutions can be used to help “large” problems. I loved all the book’s information — and I’m considering how to use these change concepts to overcome people’s fear of social media.

Get MINDSET and SWITCH (affiliate link for the book image above) right now — and read both books as soon as you get them. You’ll be glad you did.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing.

Image from www.alumni.msu.edu

Mitch was a junior in ROTC majoring in political science and I a freshman. I got my B.A. in Journalism in three years while he got a year’s deferment from active military duty to earn an M.A. in Communications from MSU.

A few months later we were off to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, the subject of my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT (which includes flashback scenes at MSU). And, in a small world way, that novel brought me to social media and everything my company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing has done since.

Scott Westerman (@MSUScottW on Twitter), who is executive director of the MSU Alumni Association, is quoted in the magazine issue on the subject of monitoring your brand, a topic that especially interests me:

“You have to listen to people, act quickly to solve problems, and be transparent about what you are doing. There is a risk involved. I can give you examples of companies that blew it when they scoffed at complaints instead of handling it right. You can’t control communication in a top-down, one-way manner. You have to engage people in a two-way conversation.”

Before MSU Westerman was a group vice president at Comcast, where he used Twitter to help Comcast’s customer service reputation. Now he’s using social media for a variety of alumni projects and is also using the expertise of MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He says:

“At the end of the day, you have to find new ways to add value to the world. It’s about the friendships and relationships that you have gained.”

MSU journalism alumna Rachel Wilkerson, ’08, who blogs at www.sheddingit.com, has this piece of advice attributed to her: “It’s not ‘plastics,’ as Benjamin [in the movie THE GRADUATE] was advised in 1967. It’s the modern equivalent — ‘get a blog.”’

And whether a college student should have a blog is actually the subject of the fourth post in the new social media blog series that Yael K. Miller and I are writing for eBranding.me (see the first two posts at http://ebranding.me/resources/curriculum/mmpm/).

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller earned her B.A. in Journalism from MSU in 1969 and her M.B.A. in Finance from Wharton in 1980. Her company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing helps clients use social media to attract more business. Read more about the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT at www.mrslieutenant.com

I’ve been following the book publishing industry for many, many years. So I know about the difficulties in finding an agent or a book publisher who wants to publish your book.

In 1992 the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION that I co-wrote with Rabbi Karen L. Fox was published by Perigee, an imprint of Putnam. Karen and I had to do most of the promoting ourselves.

Thus I was not deterred when, in April 2008, I self-published my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT through BookSurge, then a division of Amazon that has now been folded into CreateSpace. I expected to do the promotion no matter who published the novel. (And an extra plus was that MRS. LIEUTENANT had just been named a semi-finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.)

Now it is July 2010 and I have decided to use my self-publishing knowledge to share other material that I’ve written that hasn’t been bought: four comedy screenplays (two of which I wrote with my husband).

True, there may not be very many people interested in reading unknown comedy screenplays. But the point is that I’ve taken control of my own material. And CreateSpace makes it very easy to self-publish.

I’ve just okayed the proof of the book and it is now available on CreateSpace — it will be available on Amazon in a couple of weeks. And whether anyone buys the book, I still feel very good that I took four stories that I truly love — and am providing the opportunity for other people to fall in love with them.

This is definitely an opportunity that wasn’t available with the screenplays only stored on my computer!

If you want to read loglines of the four screenplays, you can do so now.

And I hope this blog post will encourage others who have manuscripts stored on their computers to take control in their own hands by considering self-publishing.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, the co-author of SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION, and the co-author and author of FOUR COMEDY SCREENPLAYS.

Chip Heath & Dan Heath in their new book SWITCH (I’ve also read their book MADE TO STICK) talk about decision paralysis. They write: “More options, even good ones, can freeze us.”

This is exactly what can happen to a first-time visitor to your website if you give the person too many choices on the home page or make the navigation too confusing with tons of links.

Here’s a real example of decision paralysis described in the book:

A gourmet food store. The store managers have set up a table where customers can sample imported jams for free. One day, the table showcases 6 different jams. Another day, 24 jams. As you’d expect, the 24-jam display attracts more customers to stop by for a sample — but when it comes time to buy, they can’t make a decision. Shoppers who saw only 6 jams on display are 10 times more likely to buy a jar of jam!

This is a good concept to keep in mind when considering whether to offer your website visitors lots of bells and whistles on the home page of your website. It’s better to provide fewer options at first and then lead visitors to other pages that may interest them.

And this concept also works in other situations. My business partner Yael K. Miller has just created a new tab (labeled Inner Circle) on our company’s power marketing Facebook page that aims to be less confusing for new visitors than if they first see the page’s wall.

We learned how to do this technique from the Crowd Conversion video course of Robert Grant. Check out our new Facebook page tab now and let us know what you think.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing.