Admit it. You have a Facebook account you’re just dying to get back to right? I don’t blame you. Where else can the common man get the exposure he needs without having to deal with criticism from ‘concerned’ friends and family members? However, not everyone has the time and leisure to sit back and add friends all day long, but wouldn’t you like to? Knowing how to maximize your Facebook time can help you create a vast network of friends who will be available to you almost any time you wish to parlay.

The good news is that you can do just that by applying some simple techniques that can teach you how to maximize your Facebook time:

Photo by topgold

Let’s face it. Facebook has become a vital part of our everyday lives no matter how much we try to quit ourselves of the habit. It has brought the world together within a social system the likes of which can easily dwarf even a small nation! This was all the incentive the corporate world needed to take full advantage of this pseudo global village though.

Create a PROFESSIONAL Profile

First thing’s first-you have to create a profile that defines everything that is uniquely YOU. This includes entering your PROPER name, email address, fax number, postal code and cell number (if you want to) so that interested users can know who to contact. Try not to apply a nickname if you can help it. Few people have the patience and humor to tolerate funny guys when it comes to spending their hard earned money.

Build a Network

Facebook is all about networking after all. Your job is to add friends and relatives so that your own grows substantially. Why? That’s because your Facebook marketing success depends on how big your social network is and how well you are able to maintain it. The next step will be to start some events on your account and post it on your news feed. If they’re successful enough you can get more friend requests than you know what to do with!

Another good way to do that is to post every update you make in your marketing website as well as the links to any affiliate products. Try not to post advertisements on your Facebook page. Remember, this is a social gathering, not a pure marketing tactic. This will aid you in gaining your customer’s trust in a more amicable environment which can make them comfortable enough to give your business a try.

Connect With Like-Minded Individuals

Another good way to gain popularity is to connect with users that share your interests. This will definitely help you get the referrals you need to make yourself known to others in their own networks. People will be more willing to communicate if they know that you have their best interests at heart after all.

Use the Facebook Advertising Program

This is a pay per click program where you can invest your money in advertising your products/services effectively. However, the only drawback is the strict policies this social networking site pushes regarding the content you decide to put up on their site. Typically affiliate programs are not allowed to be put up in their advertising program so you may have very limited options. To avoid being ousted from the site, make sure that you go through the terms of service and policies regarding their advertising models.

Photo by pshab

Building a business on any type of social media service takes a light touch and an experienced mindset. Unfortunately not everyone can boast having both of these attributes. If a small time businessman includes himself/herself in the equation than that usually turns out to be a recipe for disaster. No one can think of managing a social media business presence without the aid of relevant management skills. You can opt to hire a social media manager to do the job for you which helps lesson the learning curve and saves you tons of hours.

One thing you must understand is that hiring a social media manager is not the be all and end all of online business management. You can’t just pay one off, sit back and dream of the oodles of cash just waiting to be tipped into your bank account. Before even thinking of hiring one, it’s always best to learn the ropes of social media management yourself. So, how should you go about it?

Get to know the lay of the land

The first thing you must do is to map out the online terrain and get to know the lay of the land. In layman’s terms that means you have to familiarize yourself with the best social networking and bookmarking sites and direct a large portion of your activities there.

Choose your tools wisely

Keep tabs on your most frequently visited sites and choose the most suitable tools to make your social management easier to manage. You can do that by regularly posting your progress online. Take Twitter for instance. If you have an account on that social media network along with a large following you can automate your tweeting with tools which will aid you in updating regularly.

Strategy is Key

Every website needs regular maintenance to keep it afloat. The same applies to business sites which need more than usual tune ups. The key to doing this is through website traffic analyzers like Google analytics which will provide you with detailed reports regarding where your traffic is coming from as well as the most used or popular keyword searches to your site.

The geographical diversity and density of your users can also be found out through the use of these analyzers making. This continuous update will allow you to strategize your business website accordingly.

Importance of Market potential

Be sure to check out the popularity of any good websites and blogs. When you find them try and have your advertisement campaign displayed on it especially if it is related to your products or services.

Don’t be the Needle in the virtual Haystack

The World Wide Web has been perceived as a potential business venture by billions of users around the world. Making your presence known in this dense corporate jungle can prove to be the key to many successful business ventures world wide. It’s therefore essential that you make yourself as visible as you can amidst the immense cluster of other business websites.  You can do that by ensuring that you get listed in the top search results to help your enterprise.

They say behind every successful man you can usually find a woman. This age old adage is especially applicable to the budding entrepreneur and the social media manager. Many smart business owners swear by them. Business moguls don’t make decisions without consulting them first. Why? That’s because a good social media manager can create a highly targeted marketing campaign for you and your business faster than any print media.

What is a Marketing Campaign?

A social media campaign by one of these talented individuals can go a long way in establishing your business status both online and offline. Not only is it more effective than television and radio advertisements but having one made need not cost the earth. A reliable and strong social media campaign will have the correct amount of keywords to attract as much online traffic as it can.

Why use Online Marketing Campaigns?

The internet has been the source of much satisfaction for millions of users worldwide. According to studies an average Facebook user uses the site for 4 hours and 39 minutes while Twitter users can log on for an average of 31 minutes a day. What’s the point of this diatribe you ask? Many of these users at one time or another search for services or products they’re in need of. Social media websites are usually their prime search mediums which can spell good news for the potential businessman.

Social Media Managers

Unfortunately many social media entrepreneurs face a time crunch when it comes to maintaining their online presence. Even though they realize the immense profit they can generate with them, many entrepreneurs face both technical and monetary difficulty when they try to glue themselves to the computer screen.

This is where the immense usefulness of a social media manager comes in. This technically talented individual aids a business owner by maintaining and updating their social network for them. This can be anything from a business blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account. Other services also include customer reviews, video casting, pod casting and even social bookmarking. They can even maintain an active presence on message boards and forums.

Additionally the business owner will be privy to the latest and most successful advertising venues without having to do much. A social media manager will be able to be where you can’t afford to be. Think of them as proxy individuals or virtual clones if you will. Your manager will be able to take care of your business’ reputation by keeping a steady flow of relevant content on your business website. They will also clean up any problems, technical or otherwise, that may crop up.

A good social media manager will also make sure that all your customers remain satisfied with your services or products. This includes making sure that every client is provided with his/her specific requirements and to keep them up to date regarding any updates or new products. This will have the added benefit of creating a loyal online following, a must have for any big or small business owner.

photo credit: webtreats

When you join Facebook,  your profile page is created and your given a public “wall”. This is where your friends can write things to you or about you. Whether you use it as a place for conversation – where you and your friends chat back and forth – or you use it more for a place to talk about new updates in your life, just keep in mind that your wall is viewable to everyone.

Step 1: Writing On Your Friend’s Wall
a)    Navigate to that person’s profile
b)    Write your message in the box
c)    You can attach a photo, video or other items to your comment.
d)    When you’re done, click “Share”.

If you like someones comment, click the Like or leave a comment.
You can remove a message by moving to the right of the post (comment) and a X will appear if you hover near it … it says Remove Post. Just click on it and your message will disappear.  Tips – They still get a notification with what you wrote originally.

Step 2: Replying To Comments Left On Your Wall
Under my original message you can see friends left comments, if you look below… it says “write a comment…” this is where I would add my response.

You can remove any message written on your wall all you have to do is select “remove” next to the message.

Step 3: Sharing Links, Events, Notes and Videos On Your Wall
Add a these Tabs
There are many things you can add to your wall. For quick setup, we’re going to add several tabs before we get started. To add tabs, follow these steps.
a)    Click “Profile” in the top-right corner. You should see a tab titled Wall and possibly more.
b)    Click the + sign to add a new tab
c)    Select the tab(s) you want to add
d)    You can search for more tabs using the search box

For this demonstration, we added tabs for Links, Photos, Videos and Notes as shown below.

Add Photo Album & Photos
Creating photo albums is a great way to share certain photos with your groups of friends. Here’s how to add a photo album and photos:
a)    Click the Photos tab
b)    Select to create an album, upload a photo or take a photo with your webcam
c)    Depending on your selection, follow the steps provided by Facebook.
d)    Click Share to select who to share the new item with
e)    Click Publish

Adding Video
You can record a live video or upload a video you pre-recorded and saved to your computer.
a)    Click the “Video” tab
b)    Click “Record” to record a live video using your webcam
c)    Click “Upload” to upload a video from your computer

Say you want to share a friends video on your wall so your friends can see it…. here’s how.
d)    Click the Video
e)    Click Share
f)    Choose whether to post the video to your Wall or send it by email to everyone in your address book.

This also applies to YouTube and other sites that host videos.

Adding Links
Similar to a bulletin board, you can post links to websites, articles and other items you find interesting. Here’s how to add a link:
a)    Click the “Link” tab
b)    Enter a short description (optional)
a.    If you don’t add a description, it will pull one from the site/article
c)    Enter the URL to the

Adding Notes
You can write notes about things that are happening in your life, random thoughts, a new favorite food, hobby, album or movie – anything short that you want others to see. Here’s how to add a note:
a)    Click the Notes tab
b)    Enter a title for your note
c)    Add the body content of your note
d)    Attach a photo if you’d like
e)    Click Publish

**Notice it says Tags but use them sparingly and wisely! No one likes to be tagged if the note isn’t about them.

How do you use your Facebook Wall? Leave your comments below…

Exclusive Report – 500 Million User’s Can’t Be Wrong! Unlock the Unlimited Earnings Potential with the Latest Craze…..FACEBOOK! Fact: If you’re not tapping into a worldwide 500 million person “List” … You’re Losing Money!




About Karriann

Karriann Graf is a Social Media Manager/Strategist for small businesses and real estate professionals. Her focus is to help you learn about the best Social Media methods to connect with your clients and customers and increase your revenue.

There are many benefits to using TweetDeck such as enhancing your communication, information and organization on Twitter which these benefits cannot be overemphasized. One of my favorite benefits of Twitter tools – TweetDeck is time management.

Many Twitter users are taking advantage of one of the top Twitter tools which is (TweetDeck) to save time. Take your time exploring the main navigation buttons. This way, you will learn to navigate and effectively use TweetDeck which in turn can save you tons of time.

When you rollover on the profile icon, you will get a wide range of options such as Reply, Direct Message, Retweet, Unfollow, Follow and Add-to-Group. Using these navigation features, will assist you in managing your time using this Twitter tools – TweetDeck.

Here are ways to manage time with TweetDeck

When you want to share some ones content TweetDeck saves you from having to search for links or content they make re-tweeting simply. All you have to do is add the letters RT or press the retweet button and the information gets shared. So, there is no need going through a rigorous search process and wasting your time this action only takes a second.

TweetDeck can also help you manage your time efficiently in the Twitter platform by using the Column view. You can achieve multiple views without going to sub windows; right from the same main viewing window, you can accomplish several views via Columns and effectively manage interaction with followers. If you are using TweetDeck, you can create columns for those following you, mentions, direct messages as well as save different searches that may be of interested to you and your business.

Twitter Tools – TweetDeck; another great way to achieve things quickly and easily on TweetDeck is the use of symbol such as “?” to search for questions to provide answers, you providing the answer makes you look like the expert. Indeed, this is another great way to manage time on Twitter; rather than carry out a rigorous search, you can have all the questions at your finger tips by merely typing in the question mark tag – “?”.

Using TweetDeck’s filter option you can achieve things faster; for instance, if you want to read tweets from a particular friend, instead of going through the hassle of searching through every tweet message, simply click on the username dropdown list to select only the person’s username to get just his/her tweets in a single column.

Thinking you’ve got no time for Twitter? TweetDeck is a powerful tool that can help you manage your time more effectively. No doubt, Twitter is a great business tool for finding a great deal of information about your prospects and customers it gives you the opportunity to build relationships.

I am going to be doing a series of videos on Why Twitter is Important for Your Business.

The last thing your business needs is an empty Twitter account taking up space in the twittersphere. You’ll have wasted your time in setting it up and when people find an empty account they may think your business doesn’t know what it’s doing. While this is worse than not having a Twitter account, you could be missing out on excellent opportunities.

So, before you jump on the bandwagon and setup your business’ Twitter account, or write off the whole social media thing…. Take a few minutes to learn why you need an account.

My next episode will be about how to Find more clients using Twitter.

Exclusive Report – 500 Million User’s Can’t Be Wrong! Unlock the Unlimited Earnings Potential with the Latest Craze…..FACEBOOK! Fact: If you’re not tapping into a worldwide 500 million person “List” … You’re Losing Money!




About Karriann

Karriann Graf is a Social Media Manager/Strategist for small businesses and real estate professionals. Her focus is to help you learn about the best Social Media methods to connect with your clients and customers and increase your revenue.

You’re probably groaning right now at the thought of having to create more content. The great news is that in Twitter land, content is only 140 characters long. And you don’t want to overdo it. Such as with blogging or website building, content is king on Twitter. If people like your content, they will follow you and tell others about you. If they don’t, you’ll be sitting on your own Twitter island all by yourself.

Fortunately, Twitter makes providing content really easy. You don’t even have to write all of it yourself. You can simply read through the content provided by the people you’re following and retweet to your followers the great content they have written. Or, as you’re reading through your RSS feed for the day, you can tweet about the news, interesting blog posts or controversies that are brewing in the blogging world. If you have an opinion be sure to say something, share your thoughts and ideas..

So your wondering what kind of content should you be sharing?

• Information. If you know something, share it. It might be a bit of trivia of interest to people in your industry or your customers. Or it might be a piece of relevant news.

• Advice. As a business owner, you should know what your customers struggle with. Let’s us me as an example I know that many people struggle with implementing their own social media strategy.  Plus, many need help with creating their own business fan page.  So sharing these tidbits helps my audience. So, provide insight for your customers and they’ll love you forever.

• Answers. Similar to advice, answers are a more direct way of helping people. Watch out for people asking questions about your field of expertise, product, or service. Provide the answers and they’ll remember you – particularly if you just saved them from hours of searching or paying someone hundreds of dollars for the 5 minute fix you provided.

• Updates. Again, I think it’s a good idea to have your blog posts tweeted as updates to your Twitter stream. There are plugins that will allow you to automatically tweet the headline and a shortened link to your blog post. Of course, this assumes that your blog posts are original content and useful to others. If you’re tweeting spam, you’re followers are going to jump ship.

• Contests. Running a Twitter-only contest is a great idea. You can blend the contest with an effort to gather opinions from your followers. For example, if you need to know whether or not your customers will pay for a physical version of your digital products, send out a tweet and include an offer to give away a free copy of one of your products to those who reply.

• Personal tidbits. While it’s a good idea to give your profile some personality, you have to be careful with this one. Talking about a song you’re listening to, or something cool you learned today is fine. Telling us about your indigestion is not! Honestly, we don’t care what you ate for lunch either.

Now that you have some ideas for content, you can plan out some of the elements. For example, if you’re getting ready to launch a product, announce that you’re taking beta testers, run a contest to give away a copy or two, and give out a few bits of information about the product to whet your customers’ appetites. Throw in a sprinkling of personal fun (professionally speaking) and you’ll have a winning combination.

Exclusive Report – 500 Million User’s Can’t Be Wrong! Unlock the Unlimited Earnings Potential with the Latest Craze…..FACEBOOK! Fact: If you’re not tapping into a worldwide 500 million person “List” … You’re Losing Money!




About Karriann

Karriann Graf is a Social Media Manager/Strategist for small businesses and real estate professionals. Her focus is to help you learn about the best Social Media methods to connect with your clients and customers and increase your revenue.

In my previous blog I shared information about hashtags and what they’re used for. #tags can be confusing but there are some useful, free online tools to help you out. Here are just a few:

Twitag.com lets you group, see and share #tags. According to the website: “This is a useful tool to group posts related to live events (meetings, conferences, games), services (traffic, weather, emergency), memes and so on. ”

Tagdef.com is like a dictionary for hashtags. Input the word, words or letters and you’ll find out what they mean. You also get suggested hashtag words related to your search. NOTE: tagdef doesn’t know all the acronym hashtags (e.g. smss).

Search.Twitter.com: Input hashtags to get the list of posts, or follow some of the hashtag postings currently being discussed when you log in.

Twemes.com: Search for the latest Twitter Themes (“twemes”). You can also click on a topic in the Tweme Cloud and you can also choose timeline for the hashtag tweets (posted in the past hour to up to the past year).

Tweetchat.com. Search for hashtags on the home page. Log in with your Twitter username and password, then key in the hashtag acronym and you will be directed to the hashtag discussion room. You can add a tweet on the topic directly from that site.

Are there any #tag organization tools you use? Please share them with us here.

Image by Search Engine People Blog via Flickr

When you see a pound sign – # – followed by words or letters in Twitter you are seeing what’s known as Twitter Hashtags or Tags. Hashtags offer an easy way to do a keyword search on a topic or to define your posting under a topic. For example, if you tweet about a topic related to Social Media you might want to add #socialmedia to your tweet. People searching for information on this topic will see your tweets, along with others who are tweeting about it.

In some cases, letters or a combination of letters and numbers, are created for a live event so participants can post, in real time, event sharing information with other participants or their followers or anyone who keys in the hashtag name. For example, people who sign up for the annual Social Media Success Summit will tweet about it in real time will tag their tweets with #smss.

According to Twitag.com: “All words posted in messages that begin with a hash (#) are considered a tag or hashtag.” I found it interesting that Twitag.com reveals how hastags or originated. “Hashtags were popularized during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter (Twitter user) used the tag #sandiegofire to identify his updates related to the disaster.”

By following hashtag topics you’ll learn about current and upcoming events, and be able to stay on top of the most trending topics, and even get in on the conversation and show off your expertise!

Tweeting about events in real time using hashtags will help your followers learn something new. They can also use a hastag you created as a saved search and reuse your hashtag to follow up, or add information to discussions you created.

In my next blog I’ll share some of the tools you can use to follow hashtag conversations.