Why Using Facebook and Twitter Are Not Enough

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by: marshafriedman123
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Word Count: 750
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 Time: 11:26 AM
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You gotta love Betty White.

In a soon-to-be-released movie, she portrays a high school girl's grandmother, and in one scene a boy is asking for her granddaughter's phone number. Of course it's White's character who responds with hers.

"I am also on Facebook... and the Twitter!" she enthusiastically adds.

So, if Facebook and Twitter have reached Betty White's generation, certainly it has reached just about everyone by now, including your business. But in using these sites, called "social networks," for the purposes of marketing our businesses or our books, we should keep in mind that in a way we are twisting the original purpose of those sites to suit our own needs.

Let's face it, Mark Zuckerberg did not create Facebook in college so that authors could sell more books or so corporations could support new product launches.

In fact, hooking up socially, as Betty White tried, is probably closer to what Zuckerberg actually intended.

Remember, social networking sites are places where people go to interact with other people, catch up with friends, follow celebrities and, yes, look up their high school sweetheart from 20 years ago to see if he or she is single again.

So, when entities get too commercial with their updates and messages, the community crashes down on their heads. You see, with Facebook and Twitter, people are free to comment on your updates in whatever way they want. Sure, you can delete the ones you don't like, but that just means they'll post something else, or maybe talk about you on someone else's feed.

So, let me give you the two important things I try to keep in mind in using social networking for my business:

• Don't Promote, Just Educate - How can you use social networks to grow your business and promote your book? Well, you have to adjust your intentions! I love the quote from motivational speaker John Maxwell, who said, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care!"

In other words, don't try to push your promotional messages through those channels. If you provide advice from your expert's point of view that actually helps the reader, you will create a following of people wanting to know more about you. For example, if you're a tax advisor who wrote a book or launched a new Web site, use your update to give people useful tax tips. If they like your advice they'll look at your profile, where you can passively place your business contact information.

• PR is the fuel to your social media engine - PR is about newsworthy information that radio and TV hosts and print publications use to entertain and inform their publics. Since the most popular postings on social networks are links to useful articles, videos, podcasts and audio; there is nothing better to build your online following than linking your PR coverage from reputable media sources, introducing you as an expert. So, if you are actively engaged in a PR campaign, now you can use your media coverage as legitimate updates that won't be received as self-serving sales pieces.

As many of you reading this know, I love to share my expertise with my online friends and help them reach their goals. In the process, my book, "Celebritize Yourself," and my PR agency, automatically gets promoted. I can tell you from experience that it works. I've received some of the kindest and most flattering comments on Facebook and Twitter, because I prefer to educate others rather than to promote myself.

In the words of Zig Ziglar, "If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want."

If you want help getting your PR campaign up and running for the holidays , please call or email us right away. My partner, Steve Friedman, and I, along with our staff of PR professionals, have been promoting authors and corporations for 20 years, and we can help you.

Plus, I think you'll be interested to learn that our fees are performance-based, which simply means that if you pay us to book you on 15 radio interviews in top 100 markets, you get booked on 15 radio interviews in top 100 markets, with similar fee structures for TV and print. Media is guaranteed with our firm, which is very different from how traditional retainer-based PR firms operate.

Feel free to explore the possibilities with Steve; he can be reached by email at stevefriedman@emsincorporated.com, or call him directly at 727-443-7115, ext. 208. We'd love to hear from you!

About the Author

Marsha Friedman is a 20-year veteran of the public relations industry. She is the CEO of EMSI Public Relations (www.emsincorporated.com), a national firm that provides PR strategy and publicity services to corporations, entertainers, authors and professional firms. She also hosts a national weekly radio talk show, The Family Round Table, and is author of the book, Celebritize Yourself.