If your presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook is negative, you are better off removing that presence.

What do I mean by this?

I spoke with a person whose very brief LinkedIn profile had no photo and the name of his company, which was the headline of his profile, was spelled incorrectly.

He said he was on Twitter but couldn’t remember his Twitter username. When I did a search, I discovered that his Twitter username was spelled incorrectly for the business he is in.

He told me he had a Facebook (business) page that someone had set up for him and on which he occasionally posted status updates. In actuality, he had a Facebook profile page and not a (business) page.

Note: The Facebook (business) page was formerly called a Facebook fan page.

I told him that, if he didn’t plan to rectify his current social media presence, he would be better off removing the accounts. Better to be invisible than to be negatively visible.

Are your social media profiles a positive or negative representation of you and your brand?

And even if you are sure your profiles are a positive representation, when is the last time you updated them?

Read my expert post at BizyMoms.com titled “Have You Updated Your Social Media Profiles Recently” as a checklist for things to consider.

Profile tip: I have frequently found spelling errors on people’s 160-character Twitter profile, and I often send a DM (direct message) pointing out the error so that it can be corrected.

If you know that spelling is not your “thing,” write your profile bio in Word, run spellcheck, and then copy and paste the bio into the social media profile.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See their Quick Start Social Media Track.

The Wall Street Journal article by Ellen Byron titled “Estee Lauder’s Counter Makeover: Cosmetics Company Touches Up Department-Store Sections With Express Lanes, Browsing Areas” is a very interesting article about Estee Lauder’s department store changes and the cosmetics industry.

Yet, in my opinion, what is probably the biggest recent influence on department-store cosmetics departments is totally missing from the article: social media.

For example, the article talked about the new express line “for consumers who know what they want.” And the article went on to say: “Employees who staff Clinique’s express line try to deliver the product in 60 seconds …”

Why do so many consumers today already know what they want?

Probably because they have been influenced by what their friends recommend. And this is particularly true of people influenced by the “likes” of their Facebook friends, who can “like” a product on or off Facebook.

Why is 60 seconds so important?

Because in today’s online world if your social media profile or website doesn’t hold someone’s attention for a couple of seconds (forget 60 – make that 2 or 3 seconds), the person clicks away – on to something else more exciting or interesting.

The lesson here for every business person – no matter what your business (including, for example, a single shoe repair shop) – is that you need to be savvy about how social media influences your potential customers or clients.

Then you need to adapt those social media strategies to your own business.

If you want help putting social media to work for your business, contact us at powermarketing@millermosaicllc.com

(You can read the Wall Street Journal article at http://on.wsj.com/baIgeF )

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See their Quick Start Social Media Track.

Join Us for a Free Webinar on Tuesday, September 21

Bizymoms and Miller Mosaic Power Marketing are hosting a free online seminar to talk about how effectively using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can help attract more clients and customers to your business.

Title: How to Use Social Media to Attract Clients and Customers

Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Time: 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM Eastern (4:00 PM – 5:30 PM Pacific)

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/690320945

My business partner Yael K. Miller and I were meeting with the head of three companies regarding using social media to connect with the target markets of these companies.

Immediately after the meeting Yael and I talked with an employee. He showed us the website of one of the companies. Yael noticed there were porn links at the bottom of the site, which meant it had been hacked.

Yes, this employee said, the site had been hacked several times. He then showed Yael the dashboard of this WordPress site.

She immediately realized that perhaps the main reason the site continued to be hacked was that the plugins and the WordPress software itself had NOT been updated, leaving the site vulnerable to hacking.

When Yael pointed this out to the employee, he was unconcerned. The site was soon to be replaced, he said.

Yet, as we walked away, Yael couldn’t get over that the employee would care so little about the company’s reputation that he hadn’t immediately contacted whoever was responsible for the site in order to get it updated immediately and the porn links removed.

And what actually bothered her more was that the parent company (a prominent online company) would also care so little that it didn’t keep this site updated.

Why write a post about this?

It’s a cautionary tale about being complacent about your brand and your website. Just like your car or any other machine that has movable parts, your website needs continual vigilance to ensure its effective functioning.

You undoubtedly spend a lot of time working on your company’s reputation. Do NOT let that reputation be tarnished by ignoring the “little things.”

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See their Quick Start Social Media Track.

I had a conversation with someone who felt it very important to establish his organization’s brand. While he was correct in this objective for the proposed website, the matter of the URL (web address or domain name) is a different story.

What do I mean?

If the brand is many words (as this person’s brand is), it isn’t very user friendly or search engine friendly to choose a domain name that includes only the first letter of several of the words of the brand. Neither people nor search engines are mind readers.

It makes much more sense to choose a URL with real words that are part of the brand. Then, of course the full brand is featured the moment someone lands on the home page of the website.

Let’s take an imaginary example to clarify this:

Suppose your organization is: Left-Handed People for Promoting Reading Literacy — obviously you wouldn’t want a URL that long.

If this is your brand, you might think of getting the URL www.lhpfprl.com — which would be meaningless to most people and very difficult to remember besides not providing any keywords for the search engines.

Or you might get www.lhprpreadingliteracy.com and this would have the keywords “reading literacy,” which would be good, but it would still be very hard to understand or remember.

The best solution is to try to get something such as www.promotingreadingliteracy.com or www.readingliteracy.com.

Then the moment someone lands on the home page the organization name is front and center: Left-Handed People for Promoting Reading Literacy.

When optimizing your website to be both user friendly and search engine friendly, you should think from the point of view of other people (as well as the point of view of the search engines) rather than from your own point of view.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See our Quick Start Social Media Track.

If you have already posted your Twitter username on your LinkedIn profile and now want to be able to selectively send tweets through to your profile, here is what you do:

Click on “edit” next to your Twitter username in your LinkedIn profile.

You will see this page and you will choose appropriately (the boldface choices are mine):

Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile
•
Yes, visible to anyone
•
No, do not display on my profile

Share your tweets in your LinkedIn status
•
Yes, share all tweets
•
Share only tweets that contain #in

ex: “Working on a new blog post about increasing meeting productivity. #in”

Tweet display

Show rich link display where possible (picture, page title, and short description).
___

Additional information about your tweets showing up on your LinkedIn profile

• If you have the above application and scroll down your profile page to “Recent Tweets” (powered by Twitter), you will only see the tweets in which you included #in to tell Twitter to send these tweets through to your LinkedIn profile.

• But if you click “see more” at the bottom of “Recent Tweets,” you will see all your tweets, regardless of whether they included #in.

• And on the right-hand side of your profile page, where it has your recent activity on LinkedIn, you will again find your tweets that included #in along with such items as the new people you are connected to on LinkedIn.

• Of course, the most recent tweet that includes #in will show up in your LinkedIn status box on your profile page.

Yes, it can be very confusing. That’s why Miller Mosaic Power Marketing works with clients to craft an individualized strategic social media marketing plan to help clients effectively use social media to attract more business.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See our Quick Start Social Media Track.

Once again I was asked wasn’t Twitter just about what celebrities ate and what they’re doing?

And once again I replied that this may be how celebrities participate on Twitter. But this is not what people tweet about who want to engage about their areas of expertise.

The question I often ask myself is:

How if Twitter gets tons of print coverage, which it does, do people still have such misconceptions about the power of this microblogging social media platform?

If only I had a magic wand that I could use to swoosh over everyone on the Internet so that these people “got” that Twitter is so much more than a celebrity tweeting her breakfast menu.

If you are on Facebook but still don’t “get” Twitter, you can do a Google search and bring up tons of blogs, articles, reports that will give you masses of information.

You can also go to an older blog of mine – “Twitter and Your Website” – and read through the posts.

And here from that site is a post entitled “How to Explain Twitter to Your Boss” that might help you explain Twitter to others:

You are a marketing manager at a small company and you have been trying to encourage your company to utilize the power of Twitter to connect with potential customers. Your boss – head of her company – is resistant to understanding the value of social media sites.

Now you have come up with a way to explain Twitter that might get your boss’ attention.

Here is an imagined conversation to explain Twitter to your boss:

You: I’d like to demonstrate how using Twitter could help us connect with our potential and current customers.

Your boss: Twitter? Isn’t that where you write what you’ve eaten for lunch?

You: Yes, some people write about what they’re eating. But that’s not really what Twitter is about.

Your boss: I’ve read about Twitter. You only get 140 characters in a message.

You: It’s called a tweet – and you’d be surprised what you can get in 140 characters.

Your boss: How will being on Twitter help us connect with our customers?

You: The most important reason to be on Twitter is to monitor what people are saying about our company. See on the home page of Twitter there’s a search box? Even if you are not logged into Twitter you can type in the name of our company and see what’s being said.

Your boss: Let me try it. (She types the company name.) Wait a second! Someone is complaining that we didn’t deliver an item on time. What’s this about?

You: (You click on the person who posted the complaint and see that he has 4,512 followers.) The person complaining has 4,512 followers. Of course not all his followers will see this tweet.

Your boss: 4,512 followers! If even a very small fraction of his followers sees this complaint …

You: This is exactly why we as a company need to be on Twitter. We need to respond to this comment. We need to demonstrate that we can “make good” on the problem.

Your boss: Sign us up right now. I want to answer this … tweet.

You: We can sign up right now but we won’t have much credibility in answering the complaint.

Your boss: Why not?

You: Because we will be new on Twitter. We should have started building our credibility on Twitter long before this. Now we’ll have to play catch up.

Your boss: Do whatever you have to do to get caught up. We need to be in this space NOW.

You (to yourself as you walk away): That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for months. Finally I got your attention.

If this imagined conversation hits a raw nerve, it’s time for you to act. You can forward this post to your boss – or try the imagined conversation on him or her.

(FYI – If there’s no complaint about your company, find one about another company. You can use that company to demonstrate what the risk is if your company doesn’t have an active and credible Twitter account.)

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business. See our Quick Start Social Media Track.

The era of Facebook and other social media sites has tremendously impacted the expectations many visitors to your website now have even if you are not personally on these sites.

What your website visitors expect to see

Visitors who participate on social media sites or comment on blogs expect to be able to interact with any new website they visit. These visitors are not just looking for information; they are also looking for engagement. And they want the purpose of your website to provide means to that engagement.

Read my blog post “The Tale of 3 Little Pigs Use Social Media” for a cautionary tale about effectively using social media to attract more business.

Now it’s also very important to continually add new content to your website in order to keep the search engines happy. But this does not mean that you have to blog on your site.

If you don’t want to write several blog posts a week, there are other options for adding new content. These other options range from having a blog on your site for guest bloggers to publishing new articles on your site that you get from ezinearticles.com and other article directory sites. (You must include the author bio or resource box at the end of each such article.)

The face of the Internet will never be the same

Facebook and other social media sites have forever changed the Internet landscape. Now website visitors want to immediately spot the personality of a website and know who the person or persons are behind the site.

This is why many sites today look more like a blog even when they are fully developed websites. Website visitors have become so accustomed to knowing personal information the moment they land on a blog (or a profile page on a social media site) that they are more comfortable with home page copy that focuses on the people behind the site.

Why? Because it is those people that website visitors can then engage with on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites.

If you want help making your website social-media friendly and on effectively using social media to attract more business, see our new Quick Start Social Media Track.

And for more information read my WomanzWorld.com guest post: “Needed: An Open Mind to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business”

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business.

Yael and I were asked to speak five to 10 minutes on social media at a networking breakfast. With such a short amount of time to give the huge subject of social media, we decided to go back to the source.

Effective social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn requires an effective website. And an effective website requires a clear brand to make you and your business stand out.

When we talked of brand, we meant what’s called your Unique Selling Proposition — your USP. It’s what you offer to your niche.

And let’s first talk about niche — as in taking a large business area and narrowing it.

What’s interesting is that narrowing your niche may seem as if you’ll attract less business, but in fact you will probably attract more.

For example, if we say that our company is a marketing company — while lots of people need marketing for their businesses, there’s nothing specific for people to be attracted to.

But if we say our company helps clients use social media to attract business — we are only appealing to people who want this help, but these people are attracted by our offer of what they are looking for.

When you are working on your brand definition, think of it as a tagline for your prospective clients or customers. For example, think of Subway’s “Eat Fresh” – Subway wants you to know that its sandwiches use fresh ingredients.

Let’s say you have a dry cleaning business. You might say that your brand definition is: “We clean your clothes.” That’s a statement of what you do.

But a much better brand tagline would be: ‘We treat your clothes as if they were our own.” This is a benefit to you — the cleaner promises to be careful with your favorite suit or tablecloth.

It takes some time to get used to this kind of thinking. And sometimes it takes a while to work through what you think your brand might be until you discover what your brand truly is.

FYI — If you need help identifying your brand, read about our one-hour branding consultation.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business.

Twitter is my favorite social media platform, and it just got better with the addition of four new features although not all of these new features are created equal:

More info in email notifications of new followers – 5 stars:

The emails announcing new followers now have a great deal more information than before. Besides a more pleasing design layout, you can learn a lot about your new follower without even clicking through to the follower’s bio.

Definitely a 5-star feature for ease-of-use.

Suggestions of who you might want to follow – 4 stars:

On your Twitter account home page you’ll now see the headline “Who to Follow” and I do appreciate having these Twitter users brought to my attention.
The reason for the 4 stars rather than 5 is because I also find this new feature somewhat distracting. If I’ve come on Twitter.com to check something specific, I have to be careful not to go off on a tangent checking out Twitter’s suggestions for me.

Shared followers – 3 stars:

When you go to someone’s profile on Twitter (whether or not you follow that person), over on the right-hand side under “Actions” you’ll see “You Both Follow.”

I give this feature 3 stars because I’m not particularly interested in knowing this about most Twitter users. But there may be times when I’ll find this useful.

Following followers – 2 stars:

And on someone’s profile (whether or not you follow that person) under the follow button you will see “Also followed by” and if you click on the word “others” you get “You follow these followers of [Twitter user]

This gets 2 stars for confusing language. What “Also followed by” really means is that these are the people you follow who are following the Twitter user whose profile you are on. I also don’t see the relevancy of this feature.

Extra tip: If there are people whose every tweet you don’t want to miss, you can get an RSS feed for their tweets at the bottom right-hand side of their profile page.

© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business.