So many people ask me about what they should do on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ etc. I thought it would be easiest to put it all into one very tidy package, and so here it is.

See below for the infographic.

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are often not the core strategy for B2B marketing. They are useful tools. When a business wants to use these tools, they seldom have the resources to manage this as an active ongoing campaign.

Therefore, we focus on a very simple way for you to be active in these mediums, cover your bases and start the conversations.

Here it is:

Download the PDF version (1.6MB)

Read more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

The short answer? You can’t!

You cannot disconnect an employee from your company profile on LinkedIn; they have to do it themselves. LinkedIn marketing is great for business networking but it is sometimes quite clunky; they don’t allow for you to control who is saying they work for your organsiation – I suppose it’s a flaw in the system.

Employee information on company pages is based entirely upon information in the users’ profile. Individual users have control over their own profiles – not you as the administrator of the company page.

So what options do you have?

1. Flag the profile:
• Go to their profile
• Under their experience you will see your company name with a small alert button that you can click on
• Doing this will flag them, but not really do much for you
2. Message the users and ask them to disconnect
3. Contact customer support and provide them with a screenshot of the profile and the connection

It’s not easy to get people to disconnect. It’s a large task and rarely for any worthwhile result. This is not something that LinkedIn is going to change any time soon.

Discover more ways to use LinkedIn in your Marketing Strategy.

Twitter on Thursday announced a program for Facebook-style brand pages.

Currently this is only available to a few larger organizations using Twitter, but they will soon expand the number of brand pages on the platform.

Launch partners for the pages include American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard, Intel, JetBlue, Kia, McDonald’s, Nike, PepsiCo, Staples, Verizon Wireless, NYSE Euronext, Heineken, Subway and Paramount Pictures, specifically for the release of Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.

You will see Twitter go through a major redesign, especially with the iPhone application combating the likes of LinkedIn with ‘news’.

Advertisers will soon be able to customize their headers to make their logo and tagline more prominent; brands can now “control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a tweet to the top of your page’s timeline” said Twitter’s Advertising Blog. The new design also lets brands separate their @ replies and mentions, according to Ad Age‘s report.

Now just one month after Google announced brand pages for Google+, Twitter has followed suit.

Read more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

Social Media Marketing for business took a big step forward recently when the stupid rules that Facebook had imposed on the world were taken down.

Some of you may remember FBML. This was Facebook’s own scripting code used to create Facebook Business Pages. You had two options: either learn the completely new FBML or use the same old script you’d always been using: HTML. Obviously everyone went for the latter…

This move was meant to give Facebook control over what content was put on these business pages; however this would have been a nightmare, managing everyone’s individual pages. Therefore Facebook has now come up with another option for how to create these Business Pages.

Facebook now uses iFrames for its Business Pages. An iFrame is essentially a frame in your website that peers onto another server and shows the data there. Therefore the data is no longer stored on the Facebook server, but can be pulled from anywhere on the web.

This means that you can now do anything on a Facebook Page!

In order to setup your own Facebook Business Page, load your page (remember, 520px maximum width) onto your host or server (or onto your website).

Then log into Facebook and do a search for iFrame. This should show a number of iFrame apps available. All you then need to do is select one, click on “add to my page” and voila!

On some of these pages you will need to add code in order to have the iFrame view the page that you have setup. The code for this is:

<frame src=”enter your page url here”>Alternate text goes here</frame>

Alternatively there are still some apps out there that allow you to enter any HTML into your business page, bypassing the iFrame altogether and storing the code on the application. The issue with this is that you will still need to host your images on your own website.

The final option that you have is to develop your own page using your own application. This will give you full functionality to change the text that says “Welcome” and the image that sits in the menu of your Facebook Business Page.

Easily done! I hope that helps your Marketing Strategy!

Read more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

So many businesses are stuck in the dark ages. They still think that marketing is all about direct mail or email newsletters; there is still a place for those methods, but it’s definitely not the be all and end all of marketing. In fact, these methods are becoming less and less important.

Businesses should treat Facebook Marketing as just another email newsletter platform. You may have used an email program like aweber or MailChimp in your business before… treat Facebook as much the same.

A Facebook Page has people ‘Like’ it. Once they like it, they then become a part of your list. Their feed is an RSS feed of everything you post (and everyone else’s posts), so essentially it’s just replacing emails.

Businesses have to realise that you shouldn’t be trying to take people off the platform; you should instead be engaging them on the same platform. If they ‘Like’ your page it just means that they are subscribing to your feed and want to be communicated with that way. Speak to them on their terms!

Now your aim is to get people to like your page and start sending them stuff…!

Find out more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

There is an updated version of this post here.

Having a well-designed, attractive Business Page on Facebook is now a must – and not too hard to do.

Facebook last year released FBML – Facebook Markup Language. This [stupidly] was expected to replace HTML – the common code used online.

Facebook however has since allowed for users to create pages with HTML and very recently did away with FBML altogether.

To create a Facebook Business Page, simply search applications for “FBML “(or “Welcome Page”). Then the easiest way to populate the page with the content you like is to go into the page and insert an image. To do this you should upload an image to your domain and use the code:

<img src=http://www.domain.com/image.jpg” />

You can also easily use HTML, if you know it.

We would recommend using these guys: www.shortstack.com – brilliant software that makes it so easy.

There is an updated version of this post here.

Find out more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

In terms of social media marketing, every time you Tweet you are essentially creating a new web page or post on a blog. Each one is its own (hopefully optimized) piece of content. And guess what? They all interlink closely.

Every Tweet on your profile is interlinked to the others, through your profile page. As more people engage with you and Retweet you, the more inbound links you are essentially getting.

This form of optimization is really no different to that of a website. And guess what? It works well for other social media platforms too.

Find out more about Social Media Marketing with Lead Generation here.

You must have a solid personal brand before engaging on social media. If you are going to engage, wherever you go, your profile follows. Think about it.

I Tweet my blog post; my Profile is clickable. I comment on a friend’s Facebook page; my profile is clickable. I comment on a blog post of a friend; and through most modern systems, my profile is clickable.

Now let’s add a level of complexity to the equation. You’re probably part of a business wondering how to boost your online profile. Well, the dominant online profile you should be concerned about is Social Media and your business’ social media profile.

Social media is still yet to allow for businesses to have a dominant profile – apart from Facebook to an extent. Even on Facebook I still find it very odd to see that a company likes something or comments on something – it’s just not human.

So to bring back the human element and cover what Social Media does not, we need to post in our own personal profiles. Therefore, how can you have an incomplete or ‘social profile’ to post on behalf of a business.

You must brand your identity as a business owner or manager and even have your assistants build a strong personal brand. That way they can act on behalf of your business online.

Here’s more on B2B Lead Generation with Social Media

Are websites a thing of the past? Do you hate spammy emails and scouring for products?

There’s some very logical thinking out there that a one-stop-shop is going to provide users with less spam, greater interactivity and better access to the services acquired on a daily basis. So is Google scared about the new strength that Facebook is acquiring? The answer is categorically, yes!

Facebook’s new profile has started a few murmurs around the Google offices, and for good reason. Have you noticed that when you wish someone happy birthday, your feed shows you the other people you know that have also wished them a happy birthday? Have you noticed that the ads on the side are for body building supplements if you’re a single male, or wedding dresses for the newly engaged?

Facebook has come up with some pretty smart algorithms that control the content that you see.

Company pages are now replacing whole websites for micro businesses. There are even interactive storefronts on Facebook now, so you can make your purchases without even leaving the site.

So why is Google scared?

Facebook has the upper hand; they control the ‘profiles’ that you create. Facebook can see if you are single, see where you live, see your friends, what they like, what purchases you’ve made, where you were last weekend and the gripping part about it is that they are actually using this information to control the way that browse the website. Google has little or no access to all of this, and if you’re receiving the information you are looking for, then why would you go anywhere else?

The most disturbing part is that Facebook isn’t alone in this quest. Sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit are interlinking. They allow complete access from one site to the next without ever visiting Google.

So you no longer need to wonder why Mark Zuckerberg was voted the most influential person in the world for 2010, because Facebook is influencing every interaction you have online.

More on Social Media for B2B Lead Generation here