In my first post about Pinterest, I provided a basic overview of what Pinterest is and how to use it. In my second post in this series about Pinterest, I gave you some fundamental rules and a few general ideas of how you can use Pinterest to market your business. And last week, in a “hey, this is an interesting topic post,” I talked about ways to protect your content in Pinterest (and all social media, for that matter).

Today, as I complete this series on Pinterest, I want to start out by sharing something interesting that happened as a result of having posted this article series about Pinterest on Pinterest. One of my Pinterest pals asked me, “I have a sign shop and was thinking about doing some type of advertising on Pinterest but I definitely don’t want to turn people off. I’m going to read your pin but I’m just curious if you have some feedback for me.”

I wrote:

“The real key is the same for Pinterest as for all social media: focus on the community, not the advertisement. It’s not about flooding the site with a one-way broadcast, but about engaging in conversation with your audience.

What kinds of things do sign customers want to know? What can you teach them? Post in your blog on those topics. Best practices for signs, what makes a great sign, how to make your sign stand out, etc. Then pin the blog post and tweet about the pin.

I’d also recommend that you create a board dedicated solely to crazy signs. You could also run a contest asking people to create a board with your business name on their accounts and pin weird signs, the weirder the better. Weirdest sign wins…I don’t know, something awesome.”

One thing I really like about social media is that blog posting initially feels a little abstract or isolated…until someone comments and a conversation can begin. Blogging is only the start of the conversation. And sharing this blog post on Pinterest turned a general post into something quite specific. I love that! So I’d like to encourage you to think about how you can write blog posts for your business that can initiate a conversation, once you share the posts in social media, including Pinterest.

Look, Pinterest is cool. It’s fun. It’s addictive. But at the end of the day, it really is just like every other social media platform, in that the rules are the same across the board. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, and whatever else comes along, the rules are the same. 

So whatever new platforms emerge, while there may be some sort of learning curve associated with the new technology and perhaps some fun and exciting new ways to leverage the specific platform for marketing, the rules of engagement probably won’t change. They won’t change because the rules for social media are the same rules we use in person, and those haven’t changed for eons. We’re talking about things like: When you’re in a room full of people, don’t talk about yourself exclusively. Ask people about themselves. Get to know people. Focus on them and not on you. Build your KLT Factor (know, like, and trust). Engage, converse, discuss. Don’t broadcast or advertise. Deliver value, bring something to the table. Be interesting, but more importantly, be interested.

Break these rules, and you’ll be perceived as obnoxious and your business will suffer. Follow these rules, and you’ll be a welcomed member of the community and you’ll see  a return on your efforts. It’s really just that simple.

I recently posted a series on Pinterest and how to use it for small business marketing. A couple of days ago, one of my readers, Joan, posted this comment:

Thanks for two great articles on Pinterest Susan. There is a lot of controversy around the re-pinning of third party content from around the web and Pinterest TOS. Photographers and Artists appear to be perturbed about Pinterest taking ownership, and being able to use their works without requiring permission.

Personally I like the ease of use Pinterest has introduced, sharing of information is global. [The] majority online love for their content to be shared. Any idea on copy right for the above mentioned, to protect their work?

I thought this was a great question and as I started writing my response, I realized that I had enough to say on this topic that it warranted a full blog post.

I, too, have followed the controversy on Pinterest, copyright, ownership, etc. It’s the same debate we’ve had for years about other sites, and I imagine the debate will continue. But because Pinterest is the newest platform to be engaged in the debate, I thought it worth mentioning today.

Of course, there are benefits to artists and photographers when people share their content on Pinterest. In the big picture, you generally do want people to share your stuff, because the wider dissemination of your materials, whether your “stuff” is art, photography, writing, products, or services, builds visibility for your brand, which should lead to more business. On the other hand, if people are sharing anyone’s content without attribution or permission, there’s no business benefit and obviously, that’s a problem that must be addressed.

(Side note: This isn’t an issue that affects only artists and photographers. I recently discovered that a stock photo I bought to use on the Business in Blue Jeans web site was pinned as an inspiration image for how someone wants to look in their blue jeans! The image was pinned directly from my site, so I received credit, but it surprised me a lot to see how that image was showing up.)

Unfortunately, we’ve had this problem since the early days of the internet. There are far too many ways to take content, no matter what kind of content it is. With writing, there are ways to find out if people are using your content without permission. For example, Copyscape is a fantastic site that searches the web to help you find out if your content’s been stolen. Their Copysentry tool will even track your site and content and notify you if and when anyone ever uses your content.

As an artist or photographer, it’s more difficult to locate if your images are being used inappropriately. There are, however, several strategies you can use to protect yourself, each coming with its own pros and cons (and most of these apply across the board, regardless of which social media or other site you’re worried about, with regard to infringement):

• You can check http://pinterest.com/source/businessinbluejeans.com (replacing “businessinbluejeans.com” with your own domain name) to see what’s been pinned from your site. However, if someone has downloaded and posted/pinned your images, you won’t see it there.
• You can embed your images with Digimarcs, allowing you to convey copyright information in the image, but this option comes with an annual fee.
• You can use text to put a copyright and your business name on the image itself, though with the right skills and technology (read: Photoshop or similar), that can be stripped away.
• You can use coding on your web site to prevent downloads, but I’m not sure that would prevent people from pinning images, and I’m certain it doesn’t prevent people from using screen captures to take those images anyway.
• You can use TinEye, which is a reverse image search tool, but reviews indicate it’s not fully reliable.
• You can hire a company like ImageRights to track down images being used without your permission and to get paid for their use (ImageRights takes a portion of the money they help you collect).
• You can also use Flash, which can’t be pinned, to display your portfolio (just don’t use it for your entire web site or your SEO can suffer).

Pinterest does care about your copyright. In the terms and conditions of the site, they explicitly say,

You agree not to do any of the following:

Post, upload, publish, submit, provide access to or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy;…

Also, they have a listing in the About menu specifically for Copyright specifically intended to tell you what to do if you find out someone has been taking your content without your permission. Here’s what they say:

Pinterest (“Pinterest”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest’s policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.

Then they go on to tell you what to do if you discover a copyright infringement on their web site.

As for Pinterest claiming ownership, they don’t:

By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use and exploit any such Member Content.

I always find this kind of “We want to exploit your content” legal language somewhat distasteful, but frankly, it’s not uncommon to have this kind of language in a site where members contribute the bulk of the content. The company wants to use your content to market their site and they want to be able to distribute your content socially, which is the entire purpose of the site- they just need your permission to do so, and if you want to use the site, you have to give them that permission. That’s how all social media works, pretty much. You’ll find similar language on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and CafePress, for example.

I’m not sure what else Pinterest could do. CafePress has super-secret digital scanning algorithms that scan every image uploaded to ensure that you’re not using copyrighted materials to create products for sale. But Pinterest isn’t selling anything, thus the sharing of links and copyrighted content is and should be encouraged. The issue is in using the content inappropriately or illegally.

Philosophically, it’s difficult to know where the responsibility lies, if members of a site are engaging in copyright infringement. Is it the job of the social media platform to police its members, or is it the job of the artist and photographer to adequately protect his or her work? In this day and age, when it’s so easy to steal an image here and bootleg a DVD there, I imagine this debate is far from over.

Welcome back! Last week we covered the basics of Pinterest, a new social media bookmarking site that’s taking the online world by storm. This week, I’ll cover ways to use Pinterest in your marketing, what to pin, and how to get your stuff into Pinterest without being obnoxious about it.

The first thing I want to address is the issue of how to use Pinterest for business marketing. Marketers have gotten a bad reputation on social media. Plain and simple, there are folks out there who get it wrong and blanket social media with advertisements that feel a lot more like demands than the conversation that social media is intended to be. And that group of marketers have given marketing in general a bad name, because their advertisements and “in your face” commercialism have, at least according to some, ruined sites that others found to be pretty enjoyable on a personal level.

So let’s talk about how to avoid that with Pinterest, because Pinterest is one of the coolest, most enjoyable sites out there right now. Let’s not ruin Pinterest with a bunch of marketing junk! Instead, let’s join together to bring quality content and a higher level conversation to Pinterest that enriches the community, instead of transforming it into a much less-appealing, commercialized marketplace.

1. Don’t be all business. Create boards that are business-oriented, but also create boards that are personal and let people get to know you. Also, bear in mind that Pinterest does not want you using the site for self-promotion, as they tell you in the rules.
2. Don’t be spammy. Whatever you post, post it only once. Don’t repeat-post on Pinterest. See Rule #1.
3. Be a part of the community. Don’t use Pinterest just for marketing and SEO. It’s great for those things, but if that’s the only reason you’re there, you’re missing the point. This holds true for every other social media site, by the way. Join in the conversation. Use the comments field on pins to engage in dialogue with other users.
4. Contribute in multiple ways. Maintain a new pin to old pin ratio of anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1, just make sure you’re both repinning and adding new content.
5. Don’t be the only one pinning from your own site. Make your blog more “pin-worthy” by creating fantastic content, using amazing images in your blog posts, and adding a “Pin It” button on your site (in WordPress, you can use the “Pinterest “Pin It” Button” plug-in, or the “Social Discussions” plug-in, which includes Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). The “Pin It” buttons make it easier for people to pin your stuff and the quality content makes it more likely they’ll do so.
6. Use the Pinterest-provided “goodies” to let people know you’re on Pinterest. Pinterest provides “follow me” buttons and all kinds of other cool stuff for free here. You can also use plug-ins in WordPress to display your latest pins, which makes it more likely you’ll build a following on Pinterest.
7. Display your pins. You can install the “Super-Simple Pinterest Widget” plug-in in your blog to let people see what you’ve been pinning. This also helps to build your Pinterest following. You can also connect your Facebook presence to Pinterest. Connecting all these social media platforms really helps you to build a tribe. I’ve gotten to know people on Pinterest in a way that I haven’t known them on Facebook or Twitter, and vice versa.
8. Pin first, tweet second. Pin cool stuff to your Pinterest boards, then tweet about the pin. This serves the purpose of expanding your Pinterest following while also delivering your web site or blog content to both social media platforms.
9. Check your web analytics. Pinterest will give you great data. Facebook, not so much, because clicks go through a script filter before heading to your site. On Pinterest, you’ll know exactly what pins sent people to your site. That’s great information!

That’s it for now on the Pinterest front. More next week. Got more ideas about how to use Pinterest? Share ‘em!

Lately there’s been a ton of blog posts, conversations, and more about Pinterest, the social bookmarking site that’s growing crazy fast. I’ve been using Pinterest for several months and knew right away I wanted to leverage Pinterest as a business-building tool…but before I shared my ideas with you, I did what I usually do when I want to come up with a new marketing strategy for you- I studied how big brands re using Pinterest to build and market their brands so I could translate their big business ideas into small business strategies.

As we’ve been working on the new Business in Blue Jeans web site, I’ve given quite a bit of thought to how I can make the site and the blog more Pinterest-friendly. But maybe you’re not yet familiar with Pinterest or maybe you’re still trying to figure out how a site like Pinterest can benefit your business…or maybe you think that the recent proliferation of Pinterest-related posts are really just awesome justifications for Pinterest addicts to justify all the time we’re spending pinning spectacularly beautiful images to imaginary boards.

Well, let’s break it all down, shall we? We’ll start with the basics this week, then move on to more advanced “how to’s” of marketing next time.

What Is Pinterest?

They’re calling Pinterest a social bookmarking web site, but it’s far more than that. Imagine a cork bulletin board where you use pushpins to hang all kinds of things you love- beautiful images that inspire you, photos of places you want to go, ticket stubs from events you enjoyed, hairstyles you ripped out of magazines, home improvement projects and recipes you want to try, articles with diet tips or social media how-tos, etc. Pinterest is pretty much just like that, only in a digital, web-based medium.

Why do I want to use Pinterest for business?

On the surface, let’s be honest, Pinterest seems like an enormous time-suck. But once you dive into the research, you’ll be amazed at what Pinterest is doing for businesses. First, Pinterest is growing. Massively. In fact, it’s the fastest-growing site ever. Ever.

With well over 10 million members and more signing on every minute, Pinterst is The Place To Be. So your audience is probably already there.

Pinterest is also driving a lot of clicks, so if your content is good and your images are pretty, your stuff will get shared, re-shared, and every share will deliver referrals to your web site.

And, if you’re a micro-entrepreneur and building a personal brand, Pinterest is a great way to get a little more personal with your audience. I spend most of my time writing about business, but all you have to do is hang out with me on Facebook for a few minutes to find out that I have a lot more going on in my life than just business. But there’s a lot in my life that I don’t get to share in a meaningful way with my audience, simply because it doesn’t come up. Pinterest is a wonderful way for me to connect with people in a new, more intimate way that allows people to get to know me and my style a little better than they would otherwise.

Pinterest also offers a lot of creative, interesting ways to connect with other professionals and reach your target audience in entirely new ways. You can hold contests, offer special promotions, do a giveaway to reward users who repin and share your content, and much more.

Plus, Pinterest offers an entirely new way to get to know your audience, what their interests are, and what they find appealing. Looking at the number of repins you receive should give you a good way to gauge what content your audience likes…so that you can create more of it.

How do I get an account on Pinterest?

Pinterest is invitation-only, which means you can go to Pinterest.com and request an invitation, or you can find somebody who has an account and request an invitation from them, which is usually the faster route.

What do I do, once I have an account?

First, I suggest the same thing I recommend for all social media sites- take some time to look around. Click on the Pinterest logo in the middle of the top of your screen, then roll over “Everything” and just start looking around. Find some people whose pins and boards you like and connect with them by following them. Get a sense for how things work in this social medium.

Note that, just as with other social media platforms, the brands that are building the strongest visibility on Pinterest aren’t just pinning their own stuff. The goal is to build community- just as with Twitter, where you build relationships by retweeting and commenting on others’ tweets, build relationships on Pinterest by commenting on others’ pins and repinning them.

Once you get a sense of how things work, set up your profile. Some marketers have been suggesting that you use your business name as your Pinterest username. I strongly disagree with that idea. Definitely include your business name in your profile (see below) and link to your web site. But unless you’re a larger-scale business with staff contributors/pinners or a magazine, use your own name.

People want to connect with you on social media. For example, I have a business page on Facebook, but I find that more people want to know me than my brand. And especially if you’re in a service industry, people do business with people. Remember that old, “Know, Like, and Trust Factor?” Well, if you hide behind a brand and don’t give people the chance to know you, it’ll be hard for them to build that KLT Factor with you.

Just as on Twitter, my user ID on Pinterest is SueBMoe.

Once you’ve set up your profile, start setting up your “pinboards,” which are like those cork boards I was talking about earlier. You can create as many as you want. Topic-based boards work best. For example, I keep recipes I like in my “Nom Nom Nom” board and business tips in my “Business Tips” board. Then start pinning stuff you like.

How do I pin stuff on Pinterest?

To pin stuff that you find outside of Pinterest, I highly recommend the Pin It bookmarklet. You’ll find that in your “About” menu under “Pin It Button.” The bookmarklet allows you to pin anything from a web site (except Facebook, unfortunately) by just clicking “Pin It.”

*Pinterest Secret Tip*
If you highlight text on the page before you click “Pin It”
then the text appears in the description field of your pin.

You can also upload your own stuff by clicking “Add +” from the top right corner of your screen. This link allows you to enter a web site address or upload your own images from your computer.

Finally, you can look through the overall feed or, once you’re following people, your own feed, and re-pin others’ pins to your own boards by rolling over the top of the image and selecting “Repin.” You can also Like pins and Comment on pins, and all of your activity will show up in your feed so every single one of your followers will see all of your activity (so don’t pin anything you don’t want everyone to see- currently there’s no way to create private boards).

(For more details on how to use Pinterest, especially if you’re a techie newbie and need more help than I’ve provided here, make sure to check out Neil Patel’s post. He’s got some great step-by-steps and also has a list of how several companies are using Pinterest in their marketing and branding strategies.)

Next time, I’ll cover some more advanced strategies- ways to use Pinterest in your marketing, what to pin, and how to get your stuff into Pinterest without being obnoxious about it.

Last week was Mark Twain’s 176th birthday and The Christian Science Monitor ran an article about how  Mark Twain would’ve been booted from Facebook for not using his real name, Samuel Clemens.  To support this notion, Matthew Shaer, who wrote the article, cites the tale of Salman Rushdie, whose Facebook profile was deactivated as potentially fraudulent, then only reinstated when he used his real name, Ahmed (read more about that story and how Rushdie actually won his battle here).

So what, right? Wrong. Facebook wants us to follow their rules. Facebook is designed so that people can connect to other people, so they want people to use their real names. If you want to plug your business, then you can set up a page for that and use your company name.

Except that Facebook, like many large companies these days, tends to enforce their rules rather arbitrarily and, it seems, only at the top, with people who “count.” So you end up with small business owners who set up personal profiles using their business names and “personalities” who mistakenly think they can become more popular by leveraging the popular “Yellow Pages” method, whereby you use a character like ” ‘ ” at the beginning of your name so that you come up first in search listings.

But random enforcement of the rules isn’t really the issue, is it? I mean, we’ve come to expect that with a vast user database, it’s almost impossible to police certain things across the board, so that Facebook can’t quite keep up with all the “little guys” who break the rules really shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

The issue, at least in my opinion, comes down to the real intent of Facebook. What is Facebook for, other than sucking up a whole lot of time? Frankly, it’s a question I get asked over and over by my clients, who occasionally wonder at the true utility of social media as a viable part of a marketing strategy.

Facebook started out, as we all know, as a way to connect students on a single campus. It’s now evolved into a way to connect people around the world (and, lest we forget, provide valuable marketing data about each and every Facebook user to advertisers so they can make sure they’re selling you exactly the stuff you most want to buy).

I think we’re still supposed to be operating under the illusion that our personal profiles offer us the opportunity to connect with others on a personal level, but let’s pull off the mask for a second and acknowledge that there’s literally no way that one could engage significantly on a personal level with 5,000 people.

So even though I myself am getting dangerously close to hitting my own 5,000 limit on my personal profile and long ago started spilling as much of my professional audience into my business page and personal fan page, I confess that I think the Facebook friend limit on personal pages might be too high. The proportion of folks who befriend me on my personal Facebook profile but don’t actually engage with me once they’ve been approved suggests to me that the 5,000 limit ultimately creates a status game that creates the illusion of success for some, but ultimately, simply doesn’t bear business fruit.

On the other hand, what Facebook does well (and Twitter, to some extent) is to provide access to people one might want to connect with but wouldn’t ordinarily have an easy or direct method for reaching. And while I fully support that notion, and the access it has provided me (and the friendships I’ve cultivated as a result), I imagine in most cases, I could have forged those relationships without the “official” access.

So, if Facebook really wanted us to connect on a personal level via personal profiles and leave professional networking to our professional pages, then yes, I imagine that the enforcement of the “use your real name” rule makes sense to a certain extent, if Facebook enforces that rule across the board. But if Facebook really wanted us to connect on a personal level via personal profiles, then one has to assume that the friend limit would be much lower, since studies show that today, most people have only two close personal friends and a circle of around 150 people in total (and in fact, the average number of friends on Facebook is 130).

According to Psychology Today, anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar suggests that having 150 reciprocal and personal relationships pretty much maxes out our brains. Our neocortexes literally can’t handle more relationships than that. So while you might be able to influence far more than 150 people, creating the kind of relationships Facebook suggests we cultivate on our personal profiles would mean the friend rate ought to be capped closer to 150 or 200. And since Facebook pages offer unlimited space on pages, if you want to engage with that many people, it would seem that the psychological research indicates that we would do better to relegate our “relationship overflow” to pages, rather than personal profiles.

What do you think? Should personal profiles remain totally personal? Would it be useful for Facebook to lower the limit of friends one can have on a personal profile to, say, 200, and to leave anything beyond personal relationships to professional pages?

Recently, someone posted a kind comment on my Facebook Wall, saying how special I am and how much my friendship means to them. At first I thought, “Wow, I’m really glad that person is my friend!” and started to post back a thank you for the warm and friendly post. But then I noticed where the comment was generated from.

You know how Facebook tells you when something’s been posted from HootSuite or Ping or a mobile application? Well, this one was posted from a tool that acts much like an e-mail list management tool that lets you insert “%firstname%” into the body of your text so that the person’s actual name appears. For example, when I write my weekly e-zine, the software I use allows me to write something like, “Hi %firstname%, Welcome to No Suits Allowed!” and the e-mail that the subscriber receives, says, “Hi John, Welcome to No Suits Allowed!” Well, this software allows you to do the same thing, but with social media. So you can write something like, “Hi %firstname%, I just wanted to let you know how special and amazing you are, and to say that I really treasure our friendship,” and send it to a thousand people.

Efficient? Yes. Totally against the entire point of social media? In my book, pretty much.

Social media isn’t designed to be a mass enterprise. It’s designed to form and build relationships and connections among people. Whether you’re talking about Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, social media is all about a conversation that takes place between individuals. If you want to leverage social media to its greatest advantage, you have to actually participate in that conversation.

I’m not entirely against time-saving tools for social media. In fact, I make great use of them myself. I use Networked Blogs to automatically post my blog posts to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I use HootSuite to load in links to articles I’ve written, to maximize visibility of those articles over a longer period of time. And I recently started using the feature in my e-mail newsletter software that allows me to post my weekly e-zines to my Twitter account.

But the automation stops there. If I automate personal messages, how, exactly, am I building high quality relationships, and how can I bring true value to my friends, followers, fans, and associates? How can one form an authentic connection, if one starts by deceiving people by posting what seems like an intimate and individual comment, but what turns out to be a generic message which was actually posted to several (or even hundreds) other people?

Back to the individual who posted this message to my Wall…I looked at this person’s Facebook Wall, to see what response she was getting from others. Many people had posted and thanked her for the message she posted (and a little detective work proved that indeed, it was identical to the one posted on my Wall), and it’s pretty clear to me that most didn’t know (or didn’t care?) that this was the exact same message she’d posted to everyone else…and that she hadn’t visited their Facebook pages to learn about them, but rather had just clicked a single “Submit” button to send one message to many.

So maybe this tool provides a jumping-off point for forming a relationship? But…no. Because as I suspected, the person in question hasn’t responded to a single one of the people thanking her on her Wall, which is what you’d think someone would do, if they understood the point of social media and were truly interested in forming those connections.

Folks, social media isn’t about collecting followers and friends. The numbers aren’t what’s important – the quality is what matters. If you have thousands of friends, how much good does that really do you, if you don’t talk to them or engage in a dialogue with them? How does it serve you to have that many friends you don’t have a relationship with, and more importantly, how can you possibly serve them?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times…social media is about engagement and it’s about the conversation. If you post to your Wall or tweet and you get no response from your friends and followers, there’s a reason why. You’ve got to get to know people to know what will interest them. You’ve got to get to know your friends and followers to know what they want to hear about from you. And if you don’t bother doing that, you’re wasting the incredible business and personal potential that social media puts at your fingertips.

Now, if you’ve got thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, obviously you won’t be able to have conversations with each and every one of them every day. But what you can do is post things that appeal to your friends and followers, and engage in a dialogue about those things. Different things will appeal to different people, which means that over time, you’ll get a good mix of many of your friends and followers involved in the conversation. People will talk to you and they’ll talk to each other, and you’ll create a little community, just by getting to know the people who you’re connected to in social media. And that’s the point.

Ever since I gained a certain level of visibility and credibility in the marketplace, I’ve been bombarded with private messages and e-mails from people who want me to promote their books, products, teleseminars, live events, telesummits…

I’m particular about who and what I promote. I only share people and products I have personal experience with. I only share things that have helped me and improved my business. If I connect with someone or read a book that just didn’t help me, I’ll be darned if I’m going to promote that to my subscribers and followers, just to get a fat commission. I’ve never believed in promotion for profit. It’s just not my style.

But what bothers me most is that I regularly receive requests for help from people who have befriended me on Facebook, never said “hello,” and then sent me a message a couple of weeks later asking me to promote their new book and help them get to “bestseller status” on Amazon.

Why would I do that??

Why would I ever promote someone I don’t know? Why would I promote content I haven’t reviewed? How could I possibly recommend someone I don’t know and maintain my own integrity and authenticity?

I imagine there are people who will promote anything, thinking that associating themselves with someone they perceive as more successful makes them look more successful. It doesn’t.

So here’s the scoop: if you want people to promote your products, here’s the way to do it:

1. Create really solid content. Don’t hold back. Give everything you’ve got and make sure you have a good editor (for print or audio).
2. Form strong relationships with other entrepreneurs and small business owners who have the same target market. Look for complimentary businesses to form alliances with.
3. Talk to people. Get to know them. Comment on blogs, Facebook pages, articles, and show your support.
4. Bring value to the table for other people before you ask them to do something for you. Believe it or not, things like what I mentioned in #3 are ways of bringing value and forming a relationship with someone. I remember the people who post comments on my Facebook status updates and blog posts.
5. If you want someone to promote your product or book for the first time and they haven’t seen your content before, send them a copy of your work before asking them to promote it. You might end up with a great blurb for your book cover or web site and you might also gain a fan.

Ultimately, the most important point I can make here is that if you’re using social media as a business networking tool, make sure you use it the right way. Remember to focus on the “social” part of social media. It’s all about the connection and the conversation.

Let’s face it—we’re all looking for shortcuts to help manage our businesses and social media interactions more efficiently and effectively.  One of the best ways to make your social media activities run more smoothly is outsourcing—having someone manage certain tasks for you.

But when it comes right down to it, there are certain things that shouldn’t be outsourced, and there are really good reasons why “you” need to be a part of your social media strategy.

In fact, if you’re thinking of hiring someone to manage your social media accounts and handle your online networking, you may want to think again, because you might end up with exactly the opposite of what you’re after.

This article will look at social media tasks and what should and shouldn’t be outsourced, to see maximum results for your small business. READ MORE AT SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMINER

I recently connected with Al Ferretti (@alferretti) and Skeeter Hansen (@skeeterhansen), founders of both TwitterWatchdog and TweetFormula on Twitter. These guys are super-authentic “Go-Givers” who I spent almost two hours with on the phone last Friday. I learned how they both met their wives, how they both got so many darned Twitter followers (approaching 100,000 between the two of them), and why they created TweetFormula (as a sidenote, if you want to be “in the know” about Twitter, how to increase your following, and how to use Twitter most effectively in your small business, TwitterWatchdog is a wonderful, authentic resource packed with useful, practical content).

After getting an inside peek into the TweetFormula product itself and spending this past weekend delving into the material, I can safely say that I understand why TweetFormula is so popular, and indeed, why Al and Skeeter are doing so well. So what is TweetFormula and why do I dig it so much? Read on….

*BTW, in the interests of full disclosure…please note that I do not have any sort of affiliate relationship with TweetFormula, TwitterWatchdog, Al Ferretti, Skeeter Hansen, or the partridge in a pear tree.

TweetFormula: What is it?

TweetFormula is the brainchild of Al Ferretti and Skeeter Hansen, founders of the crazy-popular and high-content blog, TwitterWatchdog. TweetFormula is a step-by-step formula for getting started on Twitter and creating a strong, authentic following that’s interested in what you have to say. Using a system of online videos, step-by-step written instructions, and bonus teleseminars, Al and Skeeter take you through their 10-step program, one step at a time.

What you’ll learn:

You’ll get started with setting up your profile and learning the basic lingo. You’ll learn how to find the right people to follow (e.g. people who are in your target market) and how to join in the conversation on Twitter. You’ll learn what to do and (almost more importantly) you’ll learn what not to do. You’ll learn how to automate, when to automate, and how to navigate the tricky Twitter waters with ease.

One of the things I really like is that Al and Skeeter include copious information about how to “join the conversation” and build relationships on Twitter. TweetFormula is all about the Go-Giver philosophy — give value, show people that you’re interested in them, and use social media as its intended: to connect with other people. And in doing that, you’ll find that your small business will indeed grow. Even better, these are skills you can transfer to other social media or in-person networking for small business success.

Lest you make the same mistake that I myself made, thinking “All of this sounds very nice, but it’s going to take forever,” Al and Skeeter show you exactly how to set up systems so that your social media becomes efficient, manageable, and doesn’t take up a huge chunk of your day. In fact, one of the last modules focuses on automation and creating efficient systems using third-party tools. It’s included in the later steps to really drive home the point that social media isn’t about broadcasting your promotions, but is a truly interactive medium requiring your commitment to a daily (albeit not constant) presence.

And in an ever-growing sea of third party Twitter “enhancement” applications, most of us find things a bit overwhelming and confusing. Luckily, at exactly the right moments in your training, Al and Skeeter show you the most useful tools (and just enough of them to be useful, but not enough to be overwhelming), so you can build maximum visibility and increase efficiency.

Pedagogically speaking….

The videos in TweetFormula are high-quality. The instructions are clear and easy to understand and follow, and everything is done in a highly methodical fashion. You understand what you’re doing and you learn the reasons why you’re doing this stuff. You get clear action steps for every single module, so you know exactly what you’re supposed to do next.

Who does TweetFormula rock for?

There’s really something here for everyone. If you’re a Twitter newbie, or you just find Twitter a little overwhelming, TweetFormula is a fantastic way to get started. If you’ve been on Twitter for awhile, and your following isn’t growing the way you want it to, you’ll find really helpful information to jump-start your list.

For myself, I thought I was getting a pretty good bead on Twitter. I’m fairly technically-oriented, so I had fancy-schmancy nested systems already set up (all my social media nested inside Ping.fm, nested inside HootSuite with the RSS feed from my blog, plus a little automation help from SocialOomph).

But surprisingly, I picked up some great hints and tricks from TweetFormula that showed me how to set up some new systems that are more efficient. I found out how and where to find new, targeted followers, and just inside this weekend, within 24 hours of just beginning to put those systems into place, added 50 new followers. *UPDATE* Within 7 days, I added well over 300 targeted followers. Not bad, right? And just in case that doesn’t wow you, let me remind you that these are targeted, high-quality folks who I happen to know are in my target market and are interested in what I have to say, and that’s worth its weight in gold. Plus, I also formed some really interesting strategic relationships with some new folks I met along the way.

What do I wish TweetFormula included?

There’s not much missing from TweetFormula, I have to tell you. But the one thing I do wish was included was a bit more detail about how to use the advanced third-party tools they recommend. They do a good job of providing an overview and the “getting started” part, but I suspect that the technophobes who find the basic Twitter instructions useful may need a bit more help with the technical aspects of those third-party tools. You may find, however, that a combination of TweetFormula, manuals and training from the individual third-party tools themselves, and content from Al and Skeeter’s TwitterWatchdog blog may provide pretty much everything you need.

Make no mistake about it, though, TweetFormula is not a “silver bullet.” Al and Skeeter will never tell you that you’ll add thousands of new followers in a week. You won’t have the following of Ashton Kutcher overnight by following TweetFormula. What you will have, however, is a solid following of people in your target market with whom you can build a relationship that over time, will most likely translate into tangible growth for your small business.

Overall thoughts…

Do I recommend TweetFormula? Absolutely. You can’t beat the price point and frankly, the program is worth every penny and then some.

What I really love is that every technique in the program is above-board and totally legitimate. No black-hat stuff for these guys, and you’re not going to get into trouble with Twitter using any of their strategies. Plus, they’re supporting Twitter in exactly the way that it was intended, and showing you how to really use Twitter to build your business. So yes, 100%, I recommend it and heartily at that.

And darned if their Northern accents aren’t just super-endearing, too.

Follow me on Twitter: @bizinbluejeans

Listen in to 88.7 FM’s “Rubicon Salon” this Friday, August 7, at 9:30 AM to hear Business in Blue Jeans CEO Susan Baroncini-Moe being interviewed by host Ingrid Cummings. You’ll hear how Susan ended up as the CEO of a business consulting and coaching firm for small business owners, why she thinks Twitter is overrated, and her tips for business success!