How to Put Your Business on Facebook ( Entrepreneur Magazine)

Dani Babb: The Online Professor
Group, Fan Page or Both?
Make sure your Facebook strategy is the one that works best for your business.

By Dani Babb | March 09, 2010



URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/theonlineprofessor/article205406.html


In today's social media-driven marketing frenzy, online business owners are expected to be top in their game in using tools like Facebook and Twitter to their advantage. These free tools are increasing in popularity but also in saturation--many people report not reading updates anymore because of "information overload." It's important to keep information fresh, useful and purposeful while adding, if your brand allows, some humor and interesting information.

One of the most common questions I get about Facebook is, "What options should I use? Groups or regular pages?" This is a more complicated question than it seems on the surface, but important for making certain you spend your hard-earned money and precious time in areas that will give you the most bang for your buck. You can certainly have both, but it's important to know what you can and can't do with each.

First, let's take a look at a standard Facebook fan page and some of the options available to you. Pages can be viewed by unregistered users, though you will need to set your security preferences for this. A viewer does not need to be a Facebook member to view your fan page either. You can add extra applications to make your page more personal and send messages to all members using the updates feature. Pages also allow you to see statistics. You can create a corporate "person" page. There are tighter security options now in Facebook than in the past, so be sure to explore what each of those does. I recommend logging out and seeing what you can and can't view while not logged in as a registered user. Fan pages can be useful in helping the viral aspect of social media because "Joe became a fan of…" pops up on each persons wall (unless they turn it off or remove it) when they become a fan of your business.

Groups, on the other hand, allow you to send out bulk invitations (for instance, you can ask all of your friends to join the group) and any of your group members can also invite their friends. If you have "friends" on your Facebook page who are acquaintances or just share common interests this is a good way to market.

A group, however, has a limitation of 5,000 members if you wish to send a message. They are generally considered to be best for more personal interaction. I use a group, for example, to help people find online teaching jobs called "Make Money Teaching Online" where members share experiences, job tips and who's hiring. Group pages allow you to set other administrators to see who is requesting to join the group. If you post something to the group page, it will also show up on your personal wall. Some people don't like this because it ties them to their businesses, but this can be useful in creating a "person behind the online business" feeling with your customers. You have more control over participants and permissions with group memberships.

Both groups and fan pages allow you to create discussions and others to reply. Both have a wall for people to write on. Both allow you to share videos and pictures. Both require you to manually remove posts as an administrator if something does not meet your standards or purpose for the page. Both also allow you to create events.

Regardless of which one you choose (of course, you can have both), be sure to update regularly, keep your audience engaged and offer something of value. If you use your page or group purely for promotional reasons, you are far less likely to build loyalty, and there's a good chance that your members and friends won't be returning to your pages anytime soon.

Breaks for Small Business (Business Week)

Diversity December 4, 2009, 3:00PM EST text size: TT
How Minority-Owned Businesses Can Catch a Break
Minority- and women-owned businesses may not be using all the resources—such as professional associations and municipalities—that can help them
By Amy S. Choi

Expanding your business is always tough, and never more so than in the midst of a long-running economic slump. But women and minority entrepreneurs, who together own more than 10 million U.S. businesses, have access to more resources than they might realize. These range from business planning advice to certifications aimed at helping entrepreneurs win government and big-company contracts. Help is offered by myriad groups, from professional associations to local municipalities.

A variety of small business owners told SmallBiz that they were initially wary of describing themselves as minority business owners, preferring to let their capabilities speak for themselves. But others have found that there is no time like the bruising present to begin pursuing all avenues to success.

The services and organizations that follow aren't necessarily new, but they're among the most effective in helping minority and women entrepreneurs boost their businesses. Here is our guide, plus links to organizations that can help.

FINANCING
Commercial banks with active small business portfolios or Small Business Administration lending programs also often have programs for minorities and women. Wells Fargo, which last year ranked as the largest national bank lender in the SBA's flagship 7(a) loan program, has set a goal of lending $5 billion to Asian American business owners by the end of 2013 as part of its Asian Business Services Div. KeyBank also runs a minority and women's business enterprise program to help boost those outfits. Members of the Global Banking Alliance for Women, such as Bank of America and UPS Capital, have committed to building their lending programs for women entrepreneurs. wellsfargo.com; key.com; GBAforwomen.org; bankofamerica.com; capital.ups.com
Specialized angel funds such as Golden Seeds, for women, as well as local angel groups, such as the Minority Angel Investor Network in Philadelphia, may also be resources. Even if a fund isn't targeted specifically toward minorities or women, a little research into a fund's portfolio companies and the principals' interests can give you an idea of how receptive they might be. goldenseeds.com; minorityangelinvestornetwork.com

Springboard Enterprises also helps connect women business owners with investors, offering training and assistance in developing pitches and business plans. springboardenterprises.org

The SBA's Women's Business Centers can help you find local lenders who run programs for women business owners. SBA.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/online-wbc/index.html

Your city or state economic development agency may offer grants or loans to women- and minority-owned businesses. Although such grants may be geared toward low-income entrepreneurs, they're worth an inquiry. Many also offer grant programs or seed funding for minority- and women-owned businesses generally.

Certified minority business owners can apply for financing through the National Minority Supplier Development Council's Business Consortium Fund. This fund provides money to companies that are doing business with other members of the NMSDC. nmsdc.org

PEER ADVISORY
The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce offer peer counseling. Connecting with fellow members at the local level can help you navigate particular issues. Industry associations are also useful in this arena. ushcc.com; uspaacc.com; nationalbcc.org; uswcc.org

The Women Presidents' Organization offers peer counseling for entrepreneurs who, on average, have revenues of about $1 million a year. Local chapter members often advise one another informally. In addition to monthly meetings hosted by professional facilitators, the organization, which has more than 80 chapters, offers Webinars, regional seminars, and an annual conference. womenpresidents.org

The nonprofit Count Me In offers peer mentoring and professional coaching to women business owners. Its marquee event, Make Mine a Million, is a yearlong online competition to build a business to $1 million in revenues. makemineamillion.org

NETWORKING
The many chambers also offer opportunities for education and networking. "The chambers are great contacts to have at the city level to know where business is going," says Ana Harvey, assistant administrator of the SBA and former president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Professional organizations such as the National Association of Women Business Owners, the WPO, the NMSDC, and the Women's Business Enterprise National Council also offer networking and educational resources. Locally or regionally, you may also encounter dozens of organizations for your ethnic or racial group. The Alliance of Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs in Chicago, for example, connects established black entrepreneurs with decision makers at large corporations. nawbo.org; WBENC.org; ablechicago.com

Industry or professional groups you belong to, whether a real estate organization or retail industry group, may also provide networking opportunities for women and specific minorities.

mentoring & business Planning
The SBA offers a broad spectrum of assistance. Its Office of Women's Business Ownership oversees more than 100 Women's Business Centers, which offer advisory services including business planning, loan applications, and certification help. They are primarily for businesses with less than $200,000 in sales. The Minority Business Development Agency, through the Commerce Dept., operates five regional business development centers that help minority entrepreneurs launch and boost their companies. In addition to tools and guidance, the centers help minority-owned businesses find financing. mdba.gov
A number of corporations also offer business planning and general advisory programs. IBM's Small & Medium Enterprise Toolkit offers online advice, mentoring, and tools for women and minority business owners. More specialized help is often available from services companies, too. Accounting firm Citrin Cooperman and financial-products company Principal Financial Group, for example, host meetings and Webinars for women business leaders. us.smetoolkit.org; citrincooperman.com; principal.com.

CERTIFICATION
There are three main certifying agencies for minority and women business owners: the NMSDC, WBENC, and the SBA's 8(a) program. The first two are primarily for corporate contracts, but they can also help you network with other women or minority business owners who have their own contracts to fill. Some minority business owners can be certified through chambers such as USPAAC, which offers certification for both U.S-born and naturalized citizens as well as those holding green cards. These can help entrepreneurs gain access to corporate procurement programs, although many government programs buy only from citizen-owned businesses.

Many small business owners find that their fellow certified vendors become their clients. Within the WBENC list, for example, up to 50% of certified business owners sign procurement contracts with other small women-owned businesses.

The SBA's 8(a) federal certification program promotes access for socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs— those who face bias because of their identity and therefore have limited access to the free enterprise system—to federal contracts. It also serves as a directory of qualified small businesses for prime contractors. State and local governments may also offer their own certification programs. Generally, certification as a minority or woman-owned business also allows entrepreneurs to attend pre-bid conferences on state and federal contracts. SBA.gov/about-SBA/sbaprograms/8abd

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTs
Several organizations work with entrepreneurs to demystify the government contracting process. "It's really not that complicated or difficult, you just need to know what it entails," says Barbara Kasoff, president of advocacy organization Women Impacting Public Policy. wipp.org

Kasoff notes that the SBA is an excellent place to start. But her organization has also joined with American Express Open to launch the Give Me 5 program, named after the 5% of all federal contracts that are supposed to go to women business owners. It offers monthly Webinars and other tools for those who want to sell to the federal government. In November, Amex launched Open for Government Contracts, an online tool that walks one through the process of applying for a government contract. openforum.com

Minority groups may also offer assistance with federal contracting. The USPAAC and the Hispanic Chamber offer extensive online resources to help navigate the government procurement process and offer training on how to make bids. "The opportunities are there," says Javier Palomarez, president of the Hispanic Chamber. "We want to make sure that our members are prepared and ready to take them."

EDUCATION
Many colleges and universities offer significant resources for entrepreneurs, and plenty are open to the community. For established businesses, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth offers one-week courses such as Building the High-Performing Minority Business and Growing the Minority Business to Scale. Other schools have programs for launching or growing a business. Among Babson College's offerings is Moving from Managing to Leading, an executive course for women leaders. The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University also offers an executive program in partnership with the NMSDC. tuck.dartmouth.edu; babson.edu; kellogg.northwestern.edu

INFORMATION RESOURCES
Rather than offering services to members, the National Women's Business Council, a policy advisory council to the President and Congress, serves as an information clearinghouse. Resources include research on entrepreneurship and papers on current issues that affect entrepreneurs, as well as lists of other organizations that may provide aid. nwbc.gov

Choi is a staff writer for BusinessWeek SmallBiz in New York.

Boomers zero in on social networks - USATODAY.com

Boomers zero in on social networks - USATODAY.com

Shortcuts to Social Networking - NYTimes.com

Shortcuts - Putting Yourself Out There on a Shelf to Buy - NYTimes.com

Websites for Job Hunters - from WSJ

WALL STREET JOURNAL
TECHNOLOGY NOVEMBER 25, 2008, 8:44 A.M. ET

For the Jobless, Web Sites Offer More Options

By PUI-WING TAM

Unemployment in the U.S. has hit a 14-year high as companies cut back. That has sent masses of laid-off workers flocking to the Web in search of opportunities -- and job sites have been stepping up to meet the challenge.
New job sites with names like MarketVendorJobs.com have sprung up to take advantage of growing user interest amid the economic downturn. Established sites, such as CareerBuilder.com, have also started rolling out new features to improve the relevance of job listings for candidates and make their résumés stand out, among other things. And some sites, such as Vault.com, are providing career counseling and other new services.

Business-networking site LinkedIn last month began offering online outplacement services to companies so that laid-off workers can more easily find their next gigs. It also has introduced technology that better matches its members with appropriate jobs. Using an algorithm, the site searches words within a job posting and then matches up members who list skills that fit the job. In January, the company plans to debut a feature that makes it easier for users to notify members in their online network that they're searching for a job.
Meanwhile, Glassdoor.com, a salary-review and employee-review Web site, this month retooled its home page so that jobs listed near the users' hometown and relevant job categories immediately pop up when an individual logs on. Vault.com has created a $999 service for job seekers to get two 45-minute career-coaching sessions over the phone to help them land a new job.
But some consumers may be overwhelmed by the number of job-search sites and all their new features. Scores of career sites are competing for clicks, so users must master multiple search tools -- only to discover that sometimes there is redundancy in the listings. Career counselors advise job seekers to learn advanced search strategies on several sites so that only relevant results are displayed. They're also told to find niche sites that focus on an industry or region to further narrow their search.
Alice Ziroli, 46, began looking for new jobs online earlier this year when the pharmaceutical company she worked for shut down its local sales division. But when she trolled sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, she says she found their offerings too vast.
"I didn't find them user-friendly," says Ms. Ziroli. She eventually found a job-search engine called Indeed.com, which has a simple Google-like home page and allowed her to narrowly specify her job-search criteria. Last month, Ms. Ziroli started a new $65,000-a-year job -- slightly more than what she made before -- as a sales representative for a hospice-and-health-care company just 18 miles from her Diamond Bar, Calif., home.

Adding New Features

A CareerBuilder.com spokesman says that, in this environment, the more features that a site offers the better for a job candidate. Monster says it is rolling out improvements to its site early next year with features that will make it easier to upload résumés and apply for a job online.

CareerBuilder.com and other sites are adding features to improve the relevance of online job searches.
Still, job-search sites are experiencing a dramatic spike in usage. The total number of minutes that Internet users spent on such Web sites jumped 13% in October from a year earlier, while the total number of job-site pages viewed rose 20% in the same period, according to comScore Inc., a market-research company based in Reston, Va. Overall, the number of unique visitors to job-search sites is up 12% in the past year, more than the 5% increase for the Internet as a whole.
"Engagement with these job sites is a lot higher now," says Andrew Lipsman, a comScore spokesman. "It's not just how many people are on these sites but how much time overall they're spending on them."
Job-oriented sites are capitalizing -- literally -- on the newfound interest. Glassdoor.com late last month got $6.5 million in new venture-capital funding, just four months after its June launch. LinkedIn also announced last month that it had received $22.7 million in new funding from strategic investors such as Goldman Sachs Inc. and McGraw-Hill Co.
Niche Job Sites
Some job-search sites cater to certain industries. Dice.com, for instance, is targeted at technology professionals. Its sister Web site, eFinancialCareers.com, is tailored for finance-industry workers -- an area that has been particularly hard hit. In September, eFinancialCareers.com launched an emergency toolkit that bundles tips and articles on how finance workers can network, customize their résumés and interview better in order to land a new job.
Other sites try to stand out by providing more career-improvement data and features apart from just job listings. With numbers submitted by users, Glassdoor.com offers salary data for positions at numerous companies. So based on nine submissions, individuals searching for engineering-manager positions at Google Inc. would see that total compensation for such a job might add up to $241,000, including salary and bonuses.
And some sites are now emulating features found on social-networking sites: CareerBuilder.com in February launched BrightFuse.com, where professionals can network and interact with one another. A CareerBuilder.com spokesman says BrightFuse.com will add new features next year to highlight each member's skills, such as allowing writers to upload samples of their work.
One thing career sites haven't been able to perk up for job seekers is the total number of job listings. As of earlier this month, the number of job listings on Dice.com was down 9% for the year so far, compared with the same period in 2007, says a spokeswoman, who declined to reveal underlying numbers. At Indeed.com, the number of open positions has stayed flat at about five million jobs over the past year, says Indeed.com Chief Executive Paul Forster.

'A Mixed Picture'

"It's very much a mixed picture" out there jobwise, says Mr. Forster. "There's a lot of weakness in certain areas, such as in the mortgage, retail, financial, construction and hospitality industries. But some areas like defense and health care are strong."
Marc Hirsch, who started looking for a new job six months ago, says many features on the job sites helped him. The Roanoke, Va., resident, who has a background as a chemist, used LinkedIn, CareerBuilder.com and Indeed.com to get job alerts sent to him and liked how many of the listings came with salary information and estimates. "There was a lot of garbage that came back" through the online searches "but some quality opportunities too," says the 52-year-old.
Ultimately, though, the job sites proved to be just a starting point for him. Through one job listing he found on a career Web site earlier this year, Mr. Hirsch got his résumé sent to General Electric Co. While the company didn't have anything suitable at the time, GE kept his name on file.
When a position as an applications engineer came open, GE contacted him and he got the post, he says.
Write to Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com
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