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Are You Using Facebook to Win Clients?

You know sometimes promoting your business is not all about you, sometimes its about having fun and becoming a “real person” to people who are looking to connect and not a “corporate profile”.

I got one of my large web design projects from an exchange on Facebook. It was a random thing. I invited a whole bunch of people to join me on Facebook from my e-newsletter mailing list. One of the people who I invited joined and we interacted online for a few days. When her boss told her to find a web designer, I got the job. You know why? Because I invited her (the office manager and gal Friday to the boss) to join me on Facebook and she loves using it.

If you totally sanitize your message on Facebook and other social networking sites to match your “corporate face” you may have on your website, you are missing the power of connecting with others. People want to know and interact with the real you, not some cardboard cutout or marketing message! They want to see YOU warts and all. People want to see your family, your kids, know what you are doing, and what you like. This is the real world view that I have received from prospects who have interacted with me and become clients from social networking platforms.

For business owners who say they want a separate corporate site from their personal Facebook site, I say be careful there. If you are a big corporation this may make sense, but if you are a small to medium sized business and a business owner with “personality”, you are better served showing your full profile and letting people into your “circle of trust” to experience who you really are. I think you will find, as I have, that you can win business doing just that.

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Are You a Quitter on Twitter?

Okay are you? Let’s be honest, a lot of people use Twitter like they use a blog, set up an account and then tweet the first few days and then stop. They just can’t seem to make sense of the application and so drop out becoming a Twitter Quitter.

Well I am here to say that you can make sense of Twitter by using TweetDeck. In fact I don’t recommend any other way to do Twitter now. Don’t waste your time trying to do Tweets from Twitter.com or waste time reading your Twitter page using a browser, it is too much content in one spot.

Although it would be great if TweetDeck instituted some security and completed the security certificates on the application to encourage more people to feel comfortable installing it, I swear by it. I too could not make sense of the volume of information on Twitter until I started to create groups within TweetDeck. Now I see the real power of Twitter and have totally increased my use of the application and am having way more fun using it.

In fact, I am in the process of writing a new white paper on demystifying Twitter for business owners and TweetDeck was the first thing I installed as part of my own research. I even use TweetDeck to update my Facebook profile at the same time. (@LinkedIn – you need to get with the program, you are falling out of the popularity mix on social networking.)

I’ve been watching Ashton Kutcher this last week on Twitter gaining 200,000 new followers in a matter of days to a total of about 1 million. In fact Ashton Kutcher has been so hot using Twitter on the Web that he even has Oprah doing Tweets as of Friday the 17th. Her first tweets were lame, so she totally needs to get with the program, but as with all Twitter newbies, you’ll get the hang of it if you watch and try it all out.

If you like the idea of using Twitter but don’t know what to do or where to start, you will want to subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter so you can read my Twitter article in the May 1st issue.

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Two New Websites Launched

The Taoist InstituteMan, this has been a busy year so far for my firm. I have moved from one large project to another with another already in the queue. In fact just this past week I have launched two custom SEO web design projects – The Taoist Institute and The Core System Store.

Both sites are owned by the same client and are set up as sister sites to each other, using the general design and feel for branding and recognition. The first www.TaoistInstitute.com is the main site and showcases Dr. Carl Totton’s services and classes in martial arts. The second site www.OneCoreSystem.com is the store site for the main site. It showcases all of his Tai Chi and Kung Fu training videos and supplies. The second site utilizes PayPal add to cart shopping buttons and facilitates credit card transactions through PayPal for an easy start into e-commerce.

The main site is a huge change from the original website which was done with a template in Network Solutions. The new site contains custom content written by the owner and resident martial arts expert and is built to grow. The site is already getting great feedback from visitors and clients.

Isn’t it time for you to consider updating your website too? Check out our custom SEO web design services today.