It’s that time of year again where I ruminate for a while on which one word I would like to choose as my overarching guide for the entire following year. I find this practice to be very powerful, yet simple to implement. While having a vision, mission, “SMART” goals, plan, milestones, and accountability are all components of preparing for success, I’ve found that by also selecting just one word as a theme for my whole year, all manner of new opportunities and experiences show up. The Universe responds to your decision.

I’ve been implementing this one-word theme practice for the past several years, and it feels as though each year’s word builds on the last one. My one-word themes so far have been:

2008 – FOCUS (I laser focused on strategically positioning myself as a top Facebook marketing expert).

2009 – INFLUENCE  (I chose to make a personal transition and shift my environment, which caused the floodgates to open in my business).

2010 – TEAM (I switched from a virtual assistant support model to hiring local assistants and built a much more robust team).

2011 – COMMITMENT (This was a tricky one! See below for more – but, basically, this one-word theme precipitated my commitment to getting all the right support in place now for an incredible 2012!)

And now, 2012 is GROWTH.

As I reflect back over these years with their respective themes, each time many significant shifts have occurred for me in my personal and professional lives.

2011 – The Impact of Commitment

I will admit, ironically, selecting Commitment as my theme this year was extremely difficult! As a society, we have so much charge around this word. As I reviewed the various commitments I set for myself when I wrote this post, I have managed to keep many of the commitments I outlined. The one I struggled to keep was publishing two blog posts a week. I realize I need better systems to manage my time and the time I spend on creating content. I’m already implementing systems now that will radically change this in 2012.

When selecting your one-word theme, it’s important to not beat yourself up if you didn’t adhere to the word verbatim throughout the year. Adopt the approach of “correct and continue.” Do your best to use the word as a mantra, an internal guide. Then let go of any attachment to how the outside world is supposed to show up for you.

What is interesting, though, is the fact that in the 11th month of this year, I just made a massive commitment to invest in very high-level support to grow my business in 2012 and beyond. So, it feels like the perfectly natural fit to select Growth as my theme for 2012!

2012 – Growth, bring it on!

For me, Growth this coming year will be on many levels. My primary focus of growth will be in the area of business; stay tuned for developments as I’m able to announce them. Meantime, I can share that my plans are to continue offering social media, Facebook marketing, and relationship marketing speaking services and training for entrepreneurs and small businesses, as well as training for fellow social media professionals. Plus, I am building out a separate division of my business specifically to service the corporate sector, and offering social media consulting, training, strategizing, and management services.

And on a personal, emotional, and spiritual basis, I will continue my path in these arenas through my study with various masters, including my spiritual teacher Esperanza Universal. Over the past few years, I have found that the more internal healing, growth, and transformation I’m able to do, the more my outer world changed and improved as a reflection of my inner world.

Mari Smith and Esperanza Universal

I’ve even had colleagues call me up in the past to ask for the name of my marketing coach, PR firm, or publicist — to which I respond by smiling and simply explaining that my business and financial growth primarily came about as a result of healing my inner world and living into my deepest truth. Of course, I am proactive too — with masterminds to which I belong, and attending/speaking at select events.

Speaking of which, I’m actually writing this post on a short break while attending a special retreat at the incredible Canyon Ranch in Tucson, AZ. I’m here with a small group of forty leaders, teaching leaders about leadership! Our host is Stedman Graham (Oprah’s beau) – leadership expert and author of many books, including You Can Make It Happen. Growth has been a recurring theme here at our retreat.

Mari Smith and Stedman Graham at Canyon Ranch

Stedman talked about Growth as a vital component to success in his presentation on Identity Leadership. And, fellow attendee Sam Silverstein gave a short presentation where he talked about the importance of creating a VACUUM in order to grow. Sam used a wonderful example of clearing out his coat closet in order to house the beautiful big down jacket his daughters bought for him! I’m a huge believer in clearing out the old to make way for the new, in the physical world and mental world. Eliminating what no longer serves you is a huge invitation and opportunity for growth to come forth.

So, I’m VERY excited about what’s in store for 2012. It’s going to be a symbolic and significant year for the entire planet – all of us will be impacted by growth, in fact. Not to get too woo-woo on you (well, depending on your own belief systems!), but many prophets have been predicting for a very long time that a huge shift will happen in 2012.  Apparently it’s the “end of the Mayan calendar” (I think they ran out of stone?! Kidding!)

But, the world is not going to end, it’s nothing catastrophic to worry about. What I do believe will happen is a BIG leap in consciousness. Collectively, we are being called to higher levels of caring, compassion, and kindness towards our fellow humans, to all living creatures, and to the entire planet. The massive prevalence of online social networking is tremendous evidence of our evolution, too. The world isn’t getting smaller, per se. It’s getting more connected. (A recent Facebook study showed that the six degrees of separation have been reduced to four, because of the connectedness of Facebook friendships. Amazing.)

Now, it’s your turn – what one-word theme jumps out at you to guide the coming year in your business and personal life? If you’d like to select two or three words, that’s okay! Let me know in the comments below.

[UPDATE 12/17/11: I recently came across this exceptional article on Harvard Business Review by Dorie Clark: Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012. Eliminating these five things that Dorie mentions - especially #1 (stop responding to email immediately it comes in) - feels like lifting a massive weight off my shoulders. In fact, my new business coach is helping my team and me to radically restructure our work days; to implement set times to respond to categories of emails, and to adhere to our scheduled work days even as "boring and predictable" as that might feel. What we end up creating is a much more solid foundation and freedom. Yes, that's right - a predictable, structured schedule actually gives you freedom!

P.S. I first wrote this post on December 10th and meant to save it to drafts during my Canyon Ranch retreat... but ended up inadvertently publishing it before I was quite ready. Oops! I just took time (12/17) to flesh out a bit more of the sections that I wanted to. ]

I often poll my Facebook community to see what issues they’re facing regards their use of Facebook, particularly marketing on Facebook. Following are a couple of related questions along with several suggested solutions:

Hilary asks, “I have a personal Facebook page and a ‘Fan’ page, which I prefer to call an author page. Not all of my ‘Fans’ are friends. Not all of my friends are ‘fans.’ Some are both. But there are some things I want everyone to know, which means my friends/fans get a double dose of me. How to get around this? I don’t want to be inundating people with my stuff, but I do want to get the message across.”

Sally asks, “I have the same question as Hilary. I have three Facebook pages, one personal and two for different books I have written. Each of the books has a different demographic, but some people are friends on all three. Love your thoughts on options.”

Since Facebook “Fan” Pages have significantly grown in popularity over the past couple of years, small business owners and personal brands face the dilemma of how to share content on multiple places without duplication. In other words, as Hilary and Sally indicate above, if a Facebook user is friends with you on your personal profile and also joins your business page (or even multiple business pages if you have more than one), any time you post the same update, around the same time, on both your profile and page(s) you may be creating a double entry in that person’s News Feed. What can then happen is your friends/fans start to hide your updates in their News Feed:

When you mouseoever any post in your News Feed, there is a little “X” in the top right corner of that post. For friends, the options are Hide this post and Hide all by [Name] and Mark as spam. For fan pages, however, there is also the option to Unlike Page, which is a relatively new addition to the options. This is not good news for fan page Admins!

So, ideally, you want to create a good balance of business content – with some personal content – that is spaced out and relevant to both your friends and fans so they’re more likely to engage. Getting your friends/fans to comment and like is the name of the game – the more your friends/fans interact with your content, the more EdgeRank (News Feed optimization) you’ll get. It’s a Catch 22: the more popular your posts are, they more popular they become.

5 solutions to avoid duplication, hides, and unlikes in the News Feed

1. Space out the timing of your content across multiple social profiles

My top suggestion is: never post the exact same content at the exact same time on multiple social profiles. Rather, you can get maximum mileage out of the same content by spacing out the timing across multiple locations. Guy Kawasaki is a master at this – he has no qualms about repeating the same content at various times throughout the day, week, month.

Many marketers have been taught to fully automate their content dissemination and set up pre-scheduled updates using tools such as HootSuite. Whilst I’m a mega fan and daily user of HootSuite and pre-scheduling, the danger lies in over-automation.

For instance, some business owners may schedule identical content to post onto their Facebook personal profile + one or more Facebook fan pages + one or more Twitter accounts + their LinkedIn profile, etc. Or, they sync their Twitter account to every other social profile and just auto-stream the same content. Granted, the likelihood of anyone in your network seeing every update across every social profile is rather slim. However, when it comes to Facebook alone, the chances of your audience seeing multiple updates are much higher because of the way the News Feed works.

Making this one shift to spacing out the timing of your updates could make all the difference. Any of your Facebook friends – who are also connected to your Facebook business page – are far less likely to hide your content (or unlike your page).

2. Focus on your fan page for business content, profile for personal content

Another suggestion is to begin to reduce the amount of business/marketing/promotional content that you share on your personal profile. Instead, try sharing more personal updates that you’re comfortable with. Hobbies, travel, and family are three of the big topics people love to bond over! Plus, try posting inspirational quotes, more photos and videos, your opinion on certain matters, etc. You’ll find that you don’t need to update your personal profile as often. One or two thoughtful updates per day can create great mileage and keep you top of mind among your Facebook friends.

Plus, one of the primary uses of a personal profile is to GIVE to others. It’s your personal profile that allows you to navigate around the whole of Facebook, browse your News Feed, and surf the web at large clicking the Like button, adding comments, giving support, being someone who’s helpful and supportive with no agenda.

You’ll also want to mention your Facebook fan page from time to time on your personal profile – in a status update, or post the link, or @ tag your page. This will let your friends know that you have a separate business community on Facebook. You could also share the direct link to a post to spark engagement. Every post on Facebook has a unique URL: it’s the timestamp just like on Twitter.

With your fan page, given that pages can have unlimited fans, they get indexed on Google, and they’ll increasingly get more EdgeRank in the News Feeds as your fan base grows and engages, it just makes more sense to “start the way you mean to go on.” Imagine a year from now your fan page has 100,000 fans or even a million fans with high engagement?! Will it matter that your same business-related content also gets seen by a few friends who are not connected to your fan page? (As and when your page becomes that popular, more of your friends will likely want to participate on your fan page anyway.)

Be sure to include personal updates from time to time on your business page too. Let people in, show you’re human! On his fan page for his new book, Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki does a wonderful job of sharing quality business content along with sharing nuggets and photos from his travels and ventures. He also repeatedly replies to his fans’ comments which is absolutely key!

Check out this post with five examples of personal brand fan pages – quite the lineup with Mark Zuckerberg himself, Lady GaGa. and yours truly!

3. Make use of Friend Lists for publishing content

Regardless of how many Facebook friends you have, you may significantly enhance your experience and that of your friends by making full use of Friend Lists. For a tutorial on how to create Friend Lists, see this post (Step 2). By segmenting your friends, you can then determine which friends see what content, post by post! You can set your default publishing, then adapt per post by clicking the little padlock that appears just under the publisher (place where you post your content).

Here’s what Mike Stelzner had to say about Friend Lists in this post:

I wanted to use Facebook for business and my personal friends wanted nothing to do with my business. Facebook was fun for personal reasons, but I struggled with the business side of things…

…My turning point came when Mari Smith introduced me to two little features that rocked my world: friend lists and privacy settings.

Facebook allows you to set up an unlimited number of lists.  But it gets better.  You can decide precisely what people in lists can and cannot see with a few privacy settings.

You may find that this solution provides you with the best flexibility and allows you to continue building your network of friends up to the 5,000 limit if you wish.

4. Downsize your personal profile for true friends/family only

If you’re one of the very small percent of Facebook users who has chosen to “max out” their friends and you have close to 5,000 – or at least several thousand – you may want to revisit how you’re using your personal profile. Several buddies of mine chose the downsize route and unfriended all but family members and personal friends they actually know in favor of focusing on their fan page for business.

How many “friends” can we really keep up with? The average Facebook user actually has a mere 130 friends. So, the Dunbar 150 still prevails:

Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Source: Wikipedia.

If you do choose to restrict your personal profile for only true friends and family, you’ll want to also adjust your privacy settings significantly to make yourself almost invisible to anyone that doesn’t know you already. Go to Account > Privacy Settings > under Connecting on Facebook at the top, click View Settings then adjust each one to “Friends Only,” or click Customize and you may even want some set to “Only Me:”

You may find that your Facebook experience dramatically improves by choosing to downsize your personal profile and utilize it the way Facebook actually intended for us to use it – to stay connected to the people we know.

5. What works for me – my “Golden Rolodex”

Though I briefly entertain the idea of downsizing my own personal profile from time to time, the approach that’s worked best for me is #1 and #2 above: spacing out duplicate posts and focusing primarily on my fan page for business.

I intentionally grew my network of friends close to the 5,000 limit a couple years ago and continue to monitor and adjust as needed. I like to keep a “buffer” for adding new friends I meet at events and such like. I also watch my News Feed for any content and/or style that simply doesn’t resonate with me, shared by people I don’t really know, and I quietly unfriend them.

Over time, my network of friends represents what I like to call my “Golden Rolodex” – that is, these are people I genuinely wish to continue nurturing my relationship with – and they may or may not be actual clients or prospective customers at any given time. They are a mix of industry experts; people I admire; people whose blogs and ezines I read; my peers – seminar leaders, authors, speakers; people I’d like to get to know; colleagues and business partners; personal friends and family members. I used to control who sees what with Friend Lists, but now prefer to just publish everything to everyone. I never share anything that private anyway!

At the end of the day, I honestly think there are as many ways to use Facebook as there are members on the site. It’s up to you – find what works for you by experimenting over time and observing styles that resonate with you.

I trust you found this post valuable and gained some perspective and ideas on how to manage a personal profile and one or more fan pages on Facebook. Let me know what you implement in the comments below. Do you have a different strategy not mentioned here? What works well for you? Share below, I’d love to hear from you!

Recommended reading:

• Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide [socialmediaexaminer.com]
• Facebook Marketing: How To Balance Personal and Professional [marismith.com]
• The Mystery of The Facebook News Feed: How to Optimize The Hidden Jewel of Facebook [likeable.com]
• Facebook News Feed Settings: Random Or Not, Biggest Secrets Revealed [thedailybeast.com]
• Facebook EdgeRank and News Feed Optimization? [dcincome.com]
• Anatomy of a Facebook Post: Vitrue’s Data Behind Effective Social Media Marketing [vitrue.com]
• Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day [amazon.com]

Each year, I choose a one-word theme that becomes my guide throughout the entire year. Something magical happens in choosing just one word: the word helps guide my decisions and also activates the “law of attraction.” It’s as if all that resonates with my intent with the word comes to me effortlessly.

In 2008, I chose “FOCUS” as my one-word theme, and I mainly focused on establishing myself as a trusted go-to source for Facebook marketing and a leader in social media. I attracted a vast range of opportunities, interviews and joint ventures. (My favorite acronym for “focus” is, “Follow One Course Until Successful!“) To achieve success in a specific field, I believe it’s important not to dilute your efforts with too many extraneous ventures, interests, and web links in your bio/social profiles, for example, and to keep much of the content you share online directly related to your field of expertise. (Of course, we need to also mix in personal elements too!)

In 2009, my theme was “INFLUENCE“ and, whew, was that ever a landmark year!! My mantra was, “Who and what am I allowing to influence me?” Early in the year, I made a difficult personal decision that had been troubling me for several years prior; my primary relationship was no longer influencing me in a manner that supported my highest good. By choosing a different path and beginning a deeper spiritual journey, the floodgates opened up. Ultimately, I created one of the most successful years of my life by living into my deepest truth.

The greatest gift you can give anyone, is the example of your own life working. ~Orin

2010 – The impact of Team!

This year, my word has been “TEAM.” I’d gotten to the point where I had as many as seven VAs (Virtual Assistants) and a local intern. But, I discovered that I’m not that great at managing more than a few people, and spent much of my time doing just that: managing my team vs. focusing on my strengths and passions. I also simply prefer to be able to meet with team members in person vs. virtually.

So, when I chose TEAM as my 2010 theme, what I ended up doing is firing my entire virtual team and enlisted the help of a local recruiter. Previously, I would hire people because I liked them and wasn’t that thorough in writing out job descriptions and carefully matching skills. Working with a recruiter is one of the best things I’ve done for my business! She helped me create the ad (which we placed on Craigslist), screen about 200 applicants, short-list and interview four, then set up in-person meetings with me.

Lori, Mari, Susan - partying at mi Casa

I’m delighted to say my two local assistants, Lori and Susan, are exceptional and an integral part of my successes in 2010. Lori is my Executive Assistant whose official title is “Client Happiness Director.” And Susan is a wonderful Administrative and Personal Assistant. I also have many other part-time team members who I work with on an as-needed basis for specific projects.

2011 – Bring it on!

For the past several years, my one-word theme has come to me easily. As early as mid-November, I begin to meditate and ruminate on what would serve my highest good for the following year. This year has been very challenging to settle on my next word. I kept circling back to the word “COMMITMENT” but was concerned that it would be misconstrued or taken out of context. (Ha, as if I could control that aspect!).

How ironic I struggled to commit to “Commitment” – would I lose face if I publicly committed to something and later dropped the ball? Could I completely trust myself to follow through on all commitments? (See the piece below by Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott for more on this).

In any case, because I had such difficulty choosing “Commitment” as my word, I knew I had to.

"Determination is often the first chapter in the book of excellence."

My 2011 theme of Commitment means:

• First, commitment to myself and my truth. A willingness to share more of me and not allow any limiting beliefs or concerns about others’ opinions to hold me back.
• Commitment to my daily self-care routine, no exceptions. I’m blessed to have an amazing trainer and am committed to my regime whether I meet with her or not, whether I’m at home or on the road.
• I’m committed to helping more leaders in their own emotional, spiritual, personal and professional growth – to all of us uniting to make a bigger difference on the planet together through social media… no matter how scared I might get at times for “putting myself ‘out there’.”
• Commitment to keeping my word 100% of the time – if I say I’m going to do something, you can count on me to follow through every time. (On that note, in early January, I’ll be relaunching my social media consultant training program Mentor With Mari v2.0 which was a huge hit in 2009).
• Even simple things like when I buy a book*, I commit to reading it vs. skimming it now and then.
• Commitment to asking for help when I need it and then receiving help graciously.
• I commit to bringing my “A game” to all that I do… even more so than before! And to sharing more abundantly my experience, wisdom and guidance to mentor others’ success.
• I will set realistic goals and achieve each one, such as:
  • I commit to publishing two blog posts per week (I’d like to publish more, but know I can manage two. I have so much content on my hard drive for blog posts, I think I’m all set for the first several months of 2011!). Be sure to also subscribe to SocialMediaExaminer.com – I’ll continue with my guest blog posts there (I have a very large post on Facebook business apps coming out tomorrow!)
  • I’m also writing two books in 2011 which will both be published by John Wiley & Sons. One will be on the topic of relationship marketing; it’ll be my seventh published book, but my first ever solo-authored book which I’m very excited about! Plus, I’m co-authoring v2 of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day with Chris Treadaway. I commit to doing all I can to make each one a bestseller!

I look forward to sharing many more goals with you on my journey! The above is what my friend, Darren Hardy, calls a “PDA: Public Display of Accountability!”

*On the subject of buying books, I’m a big fan of SUCCESS Magazine’s book summaries product!

What happens when we commit?

My spiritual teacher, Esperanza, introduced me to a beautiful piece on Commitment by Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott. Here’s a small excerpt:

Commitment is what turns dreams into realities. Your choice is what you want, and your commitment is what allows you to have it. This is the process: 1) You look to see what you want. 2) You choose it. 3) You commit to it.

Commitment makes choice real. Commitment means: “This is going to happen, and I am going to be the one who causes it to happen.” It means doing what you say you will do and having what you want, no matter what the obstacles.

You can commit to anything: a person, a job, a way of life, losing 10 pounds, or a way to spend your weekend. It doesn’t matter what you commit to. What matters is the relationship you develop with yourself by committing to what you want. For people who have a strong investment in not getting what they want, Commitment is extremely uncomfortable and sometimes painful. The painful part is letting go of the attachment to not getting what you want.

You may need to read that last paragraph several times – I certainly did the first time I came across this piece!

I’m committed to making 2011 the absolute best year of my life so far, in all ways and to teaching and touching the lives of as many people as I possibly can. (And, this may resonate with some – 2011 is the final year before the big shift in vibration in 2012 that has been talked about for so many years. Because of this, I feel that 2011 is a very symbolic year).

Providence moves too

You may also be familiar with this wonderful piece by William Murray; it’s so true that “Providence moves too” when we truly commit ourselves.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!’

— William Hutchinson Murray (1913-1996), The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

What’s your word?

Now it’s your turn. What one-word theme deeply resonates with you and inspires you? And, what will you commit to in 2011? Please share in the comments below, I’d love to know. Of course, you don’t have to choose just one word (Chris Brogan has an annual ritual of choosing three words) and certainly it’s important to also have a vision, mission and “SMART” goals too!

Related articles:

• My Theme For 2009: Influence
• My Theme For 2010: TEAM!
• The Spirituality of Social Media – businessesgrow.com
• Choose a Theme for Next Year – Maybe Even Just One Word. (happiness-project.com)

Ever since I landed on “Planet Facebook” in spring of 2007, I’ve been a raving evangelist for the platform and all it can help society to accomplish both from a personal and business standpoint. As much flack as he gets, I have tremendous admiration for CEO, Mark Zucerkberg, and his vision to make a profound impact on the world by helping us communicate and connect more effectively. even, dare we say, to actually solve world problems by having a more connected world.

As much as Facebook tends to be geared towards the millions of members who use the site for personal reasons (the average user has just 130 friends), I’ve always chosen to approach my activity on Facebook from a strategic business standpoint. I never got into all the games or “frivolous” apps. I’m not one for any kind of violence; no Mafia Wars, Vampire Bites or WereWolves for me.

I don’t play FarmVille, FishVille or whateverville (with all due respect to the millions of folks who do play those games; and, of course, huge props to the geniuses behind Zynga!).

Actually, I have heard of a few people who swear by these giant game apps as a way to strategically network. Hm. (Do share in the comments below if you’ve gotten business from playing games on Facebook; I’d love to know!)

Oh, and Poke? Sheesh, I have a “zero poke policy.” Always have! Lol. If you want to connect with me, come write on my wall!

Strategic fun!

Now, don’t get me wrong – I have a ton of FUN on Facebook. But, it’s strategic fun. I interact with friends and share as much of my life as I choose to. Every action I take on Facebook is mindful, with a strategic intent; it has to be. Every action is being saved, documented, archived away.

As I wrote about here back in 2008, we can think of our lives in three categories: Personal, Professional and Private. The line between Personal and Professional has become very blurry, particularly since the prevalence of social networking sites. Our online social communities have come to expect us to share nuggets of our personal lives. However, we can still have a PRIVATE life,.

My rule of thumb is this: Anything I wouldn’t be comfortable appearing on the front cover of the New York Times (okay, soon to be web page), found in a Google search, and/or proud of my parents to read/see simply does *not* get shared. Period.

Differentiate between Profile and Page?

One of the questions I get asked a lot on my fan Page, is how to differentiate between our Facebook personal Profile and our business/fan Page. Essentially, it’s a personal choice! How I choose to approach marketing on Facebook may be different from your approach. There’s no “one size fits all.”

However, one of the most effective approaches I’ve found is to grow your friends over time and segregate different sets of people into Friend Lists as I wrote about here.

Or, you may choose to edit your privacy settings so your personal Profile is practically invisible, and you only communicate with a select number of close friends and family members. Then, focus all your business efforts on a fan Page.

I see my Facebook personal Profile as a place to nurture key relationships with specific friends + reach a wider audience of acquaintances + keep up to date with close personal friends and family members. I stay just under the 5,000 max friends and I publish a mix of personal and professional content.

I tend to leave my privacy settings fairly wide open with just about everything viewable by everyone. That way, I don’t have to think/worry about who’s seeing what. However, for most people, I highly recommend you adjust your own Privacy Settings using Friend Lists to select who sees what.

Whereas, my fan Page is really an extension of my business network at large – an outpost, if you will, of my blog subscribers, Twitter followers, email subscribers, etc… so I publish almost all business and more from the position of education mixed with strategic promotions.

Read more about my Facebook profile vs. page approach here.

Understand Facebook’s TOS

Here are a few key points about what you can and can’t do with your personal Profile and business Page.

• You can only have one personal Profile.
• Your personal Profile MUST be in your real first/last name; it cannot be in the name of a/your business.
• You need a personal Profile in order to create a business/fan Page.
• Your privacy is fully protected as it’s impossible for users to determine who the Admin is of any fan Page.
  • There is an alternative: if you do not have a personal Profile and don’t want one, you can use a Business Account to create a business Page. and buy Ads.
• You can create/administer an unlimited number of fan pages – so long as you’re the/an official representative of the business.
• The originating Admin can add additional Admins (I recommend adding one more trusted person at minimum).
• Any Admin can add/remove other Admins.

Click here to get started with an official Business Page for your business; browse the directory of existing Pages here. Be sure to also review the Facebook Page Guidelines and Facebook Page Terms. And, clear up confusion around Community Pages here.

There’s SO much to learn on Facebook!

In the 3+ years I’ve been an active member of the Facebook community, I’ve seen massive evolution. (I can only imagine that those former college students, who first joined the site back in 2004, scarcely recognize Facebook nowadays!)

My internet marketing consulting + relationship coaching career merged into the world of social media in 2007, and I chose to specialize in Facebook marketing in particular. During those 3+ years, I’ve never seen an educational event dedicated to Facebook for businesses. There are always plenty events on social media in general. And, several conferences just about Twitter. There are Facebook developer conferences and events for the games industry. But, this is the first time I’ve seen a social media training event dedicated to Facebook for business.

I’m very excited and honored to team up with one of my favorite professionals, Mike Stelzner (founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com), to bring you the first ever Facebook Success Summit. It’s been a long time coming and I wish there had been an event like this back in 2007, 2008 and 2009!!

What I’ve talked about in this post here about differentiating between personal and professional is a teensy, tiny tip of the iceberg when it comes to using Facebook as a marketing tool.

Virtual event to help you begin to master Facebook

If you want to discover how to use Facebook to attract and engage quality customers – as I’ve been doing for over three years now – and quickly grow your business, this event is for you. The Facebook Success Summit 2010 is the web’s largest online Facebook marketing conference! Exciting times!

Twenty-two Facebook/social media experts will lead sessions designed to cover a vast array of all you need to know to master Facebook as a business tool. The opening keynote will be lead by one of my own personal favorites in the industry: Brian Solis, author of ENGAGE.

@MariSmith & @BrianSolis at the LinkedOC event, August 2010.
[Yes, I'm uber tall: 6' plus heels. lol!]

The online event starts October 5th and runs all the way through October 26th in a nice paced fashion of webinars.

The all-star lineup of presenters includes Brian Solis (author, Engage!), Justin Smith (Inside Facebook), Jesse Stay (author, I’m On Facebook, Now What?), Paul Dunay (author, Facebook Marketing for Dummies), Darren Rowse (Author, Problogger), Jay Baer (Co-author, The Now Revolution), Michael Stelzner (Social Media Examiner), yours truly, Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), and more. Plus, experts from Intel, Microsoft Xbox, Cisco, the Washington Redskins and SAP; )–just to mention a few. Check the bios on these folks here.

Attendees already signed up include key representatives from the likes of Radisson Hotels, Microsoft, AAA, Cisco, Universal Studios Orlando, Ikea, California Travel & Tourism Commission, Philips, Kellogg, MetLife, CNN, HP, Henkel, Autodesk, Country Music TV, AARP, HealthNet, Tropicana Atlantic City, Long John Silver’s, Cutco, Ben & Jerry’s, Mary Kay, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Otis Spunkmeyer, Wyndham Hotels, University of Tennessee, Brueggers, Herbalife and hundreds of smaller businesses. Amazing!

With your ticket, you get all live webinars + the replays + transcripts; Plus, an array of bonus material, an active forum and access to a very vibrant, invitation-only LinkedIn Group.

Here are some of the topics the sessions will cover:

• The best ways to market your business with Facebook!
• How to create a Facebook marketing strategy.
• Creative ways to grow a loyal Facebook following.
• Proven ways to optimize Facebook ads (the most targeted traffic your money can buy!).
• How to integrate Facebook with your website, blog and other marketing programs and much more!

Go here to see all the sessions.

Learn Facebook marketing at your own pace

The cool thing about this Summit is it does not require any travel. You simply attend sessions, meet the experts and network with peers from the comfort of your home or office!! For any sessions you can’t make live, the replay videos are always loaded up promptly and you get unlimited access for a year. (Plus, if your more of a visual/written learner, you’ll be happy to know all slides + transcripts are included too!)

By the way, there is a superb half-price special on the tickets which ends at midnight (Pacific Time) on Thursday, September 16th so I’d recommend registering straight away! Here’s a short video message about the Summit:

If this is a fit for you, I look forward to meeting you in the “virtual classroom,” and the forum. and the LinkedIn Group! There’s an enormous amount of support!

Meantime, do add your thoughts in the comments below about how you approach the delineation between sharing your personal life and promoting your business on Facebook. I’d love to hear your ideas!

[UPDATE] – we had a marathon seven-hour Virtual Launch Party today (May 3). Here’s a wee video greeting I recorded for my Facebook wall on my iPhone:

First, Chris Treadaway and I co-hosted a three-hour presentation via TinyChat where we discussed many of the chapters in our book, along with the recent changes announced at Facebook‘s f8 conference, and the implications for marketers. The replay of this part will be available shortly! (I recorded my desktop with TinyChat via ScreenFlow and will give it a slight edit).

Then, I went on to lead a four-hour webinar meeting and greeting many of my peeps, and where I continued on to give Facebook marketing ideas, tips, tricks, Ninja secrets, dive deeper into the Facebook changes, do fan page critiques and more.

[ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS]

I’m super excited for a project that’s been a long time coming: my first published book! I’m honored to team up with the talented Chris Treadaway to coauthor Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, published by Sybex (a division of John Wiley & Sons).

Our book officially comes out on Monday, May 3, 2010. Copies are already shipping and we are climbing the charts on Amazon.com!

Virtual Launch Party – You’re Invited!

On Monday, May 3, we’re hosting a VIRTUAL LAUNCH PARTY from 10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST onwards! Come meet Chris and me and a few surprise guests – we’ll be LIVE virtually!

Drop in any time during the day for Facebook marketing Q&A, book excerpts, interviews, prize drawings, lots of fun - you name it! We’ll even have virtual champagne!

Let us know you’re coming via the Facebook Event page – RSVP here.

An Hour A Day series

You may already be familiar with Sybex’s popular “An Hour A Day” series, which include:

• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day – by Dave Evans
• Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day – by Hollis Thomases
• YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day – by Greg Jarboe (Greg is a fellow presenter at the upcoming Social Media Success Summit!)
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day – by Avinash Kaushik

Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day is the ideal comprehensive guide for marketers, business owners and practitioners alike. I’m sure this book will end up flagged, scribbled on and dogeared as you study it! Chris and I outline all the ways businesses can maximize everything Facebook has to offer, from simple quick techniques to full-on campaigns.

Table of Contents:

Screenshots taken from my iPad on the Amazon Kindle app for the iPad! Yes, our book is available on Kindle (and eBook / Nook).

Expert Contributors to “The Future of Facebook” Appendix:

Chris and I are truly honored by and grateful to the following six professionals, all of whom contributed valuable expertise to our book:

Dave Kerpen	Jesse Stay	Nick O’Neill
Lauren Cooney	Scott McCaskill	Kevin Tate

Free Facebook Marketing Online Class!

With Facebook’s product changing so frequently, Chris and I wanted to offer special follow up support for our readers. You can join us in a special series of online trainings, designed to help you get the absolute most out of this book and from your own Facebook marketing efforts!

In our three-part online webinar series, we’ll walk you through exactly how to:

• Integrate the new Facebook Social Plugins
• Assess the power of the new Like button for your site
• Create a compelling Facebook Fan Page
• Source consistent, relevant content to keep your fans coming back for more
• Build your raving fan base using creative ways to drive targeted traffic
• Increase your brand awareness and brand sentiment
• Easily drive traffic back to your website and blog
• Engage your fans and turn them into paying customers
• Rapidly build your opt-in email list
• Place effective Facebook ads that make people take action
• And much more.

This workshop series stars on June 3, 2010 and is entirely virtual, so you can attend via your computer from the comfort of your home/office. Each session will be recorded and replays will be available with unlimited access.

Chris and I will share screenshots and our desktop as we guide you through the exact steps you need to build a vibrant, profitable presence on Facebook.

Here’s how to register:

It’s super easy to secure your place in the free 3-part Facebook Marketing online class:

	STEP 1: Purchase your copy of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day at any of the online retailers listed below.
	STEP 2: Access the replays here.

Order Facebook Marketing Now At These Online Retailers:

Amazon.com	Barnes & Noble	Borders
BooksAMillion	BestBookBuys	800ceoread

Also available in Amazon Kindle version for your Kindle and/or iPad! Plus, ebook version for your eReader.

Advance praise for Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day

Chris and I are truly grateful to the following professionals for their support and encouragement:

“This is the ultimate Facebook marketing guide. It provides the most important strategies to take full advantage of Facebook’s best features, make your Facebook presence pop, and generate profits. A must-read!”

-Guy Kawasaki – Co-founder of Alltop and former Apple chief evangelist

“The best marketing engages buyers with valuable information at the precise moment they are receptive. That’s why my chiropractor shares video exercises with me on Facebook! And it’s darned effective, too. If you want to learn how to tap the communications tool of choice for hundreds of millions of people around the world, study Facebook Marketing. The real-world examples from organizations of all kinds are especially valuable for those who still need to be convinced (like your boss).”

-David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, now published in 24 languages

“Facebook is a powerful new marketing platform and thanks to this book it just got a whole lot easier to understand and tap.”

-John Jantsch author of The Referral Engine

“The social media world is full of people saying they know this tool or that tool. But there’s a reason the first name a lot of people think of when they think of Facebook marketing is Mari Smith. This book shows you how the world’s largest social network can be leveraged for your business. And it’s written by one of few people out there who actually has shown companies how to succeed on Facebook. If you’re trying to leverage Facebook to reach your customers, this book should be on your shelf. It’s on mine.”

-Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer, Social media educator, speaker and consultant

“This is the only book that walks you through every step of creating, implementing, measuring, and optimizing a successful strategy for engaging on Facebook. Featuring proven strategies and techniques, this approachable guide walks the walk. It shows marketers at all levels how to roll up their sleeves, jump in, and get winning results quickly.”

-Brian Goldfarb, Director, Microsoft

“Mari Smith quickly became THE go-to expert before the crowds flocked to Facebook, realizing how powerful this channel is for business. Mari, teamed up with Facebook analytics expert, Chris Treadaway, have created an absolute masterpiece! Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day is long overdue, and every reader is lucky to have this book at their fingertips so they can tap into the mind of these pioneers and accelerate their success on Facebook by applying these tips.”

-Deborah Cole Micek, aka: @CoachDeb, Founder of QuanSite.com and Author of Twitter Revolution and Secrets of Online Persuasion

“Even though (or perhaps because) it’s transforming the way businesses interact with customers and prospects, Facebook is often confusing, and counter-intuitive. Not any more. Chris and Mari have created the Holy Grail, a book where nearly every page is worthy of an underline, highlight, or dog ear. With some companies posting to Facebook twice a month, and others posting banalities four times daily, the content strategy guidelines alone make this book indispensable. Buy two copies – keep one for yourself, and mail one to a company whose unfocused Facebook approach drives you crazy.”

-Jay Baer – Convince & Convert

“Mari and Chris have a very unique gift in that they can’t take the very complex and sophisticated paradigm of marketing on of the world’s largest social networks and present it in a way that anyone can understand and more importantly, put into practice.”

-Brian Solis, author of Engage, the complete guide for businesses to build and measure success on the new web

“I love books that start with strategic planning. Just about every Facebook title I’ve seen is obsessed with secret tips and tricks, without ever encouraging the reader to identify what they’re trying to accomplish in the first place. Chris and Mari have done a splendid job putting those tips and tricks into a meaningful context and I know I’ll be studying my copy to improve my own Facebook presence. If you’re looking for the full picture, the “why” along with “what” and “how”, then this is your book.”

-Dave Taylor, online entrepreneur. AskDaveTaylor.com

“Every marketer knows they need to be on Facebook and other social networks, but few know how to do it right. Chris and Mari have created what is essentially a user’s manual for anyone managing a brand or advertising a business on Facebook. Whether you’re new to social networking or a savvy user, this book provides the tools every marketing professional needs, from getting setup the right way to managing successful, targeted advertising campaigns. The book’s step-by-step format makes what many consider a daunting undertaking seem like a more manageable process for even the busiest marketers by helping you prioritize your time online.”

-Peter VanRysdam, Chief Marketing Officer, 352 Media Group

“Not only does FBMHD provide a practical framework for Facebook marketing, but it also offers a 360-degree perspective on how social media connects with a cross-section of marketing disciplines. By reading and using FBMHD, social savvy marketers gain the strategies, tactics and tools to cross the chasm from a hope-it-works community to a well-performing channel for marketing and communications.”

-Adam Weinroth, VP of Strategic Marketing, Demand Media [See Adam's Twitter page. Yes, his pic is sideways. ]

Additional Recommended Facebook Marketing Reading

And, just to whet your appetite while you’re waiting for your book to arrive (unless you’re anything like me and get the Kindle/iPad version right now!), here are several tutorial blog posts that you may find helpful too:

• How To Add A Custom Landing Tab To Your Facebook Fan Page
• How To Attract and Engage Quality Customers With Social Media
• 13 Ways to Move Your Facebook Fans to Action
• How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’
• 21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase
• How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’
• How to Create a Facebook Fan Page Editorial Guide
• How to Add Google Analytics to Your Facebook Fan Page
• 10 Tips for Creating Buzz With Facebook Events

If you have any comments, questions, concerns, challenges, (rave reviews!) – anything to do with Facebook Marketing, please do share in the Comments below:

Are you satisfied with the results you’re currently getting from all your social media efforts? Would you say there is room for improvement?

Though we’re clearly reaching critical mass point with social media market penetration, there’s still a morass of confusing information as to what works, and what doesn’t.

There are social media policies, and which sites to use, and the right content and engagement strategies. And whether to automate, delegate, ghostwrite. or not. It can all be very overwhelming and many people are stuck in a place of sheer inertia for lack of proper knowledge, training and experience.

When it comes to social media marketing, most businesses begin with no clear objectives or strategy. They jump in with the technology piece first: they set up a Twitter account, usually due to peer and media pressure. But they don’t really know how to listen or engage effectively.

Then they throw together a Facebook fan page and it sits there gathering virtual dust. Next comes the blog, YouTube channel, LinkedIn account, Ning site, live video with Ustream, and whatever new-fangled tool comes along.

But, in order to be effective in attracting and engaging quality customers using social media, you must have the following components:

1. Clarity on your exact target market and which social networks they prefer to use most often
2. Knowledge of what online and mobile tools are available to you (apps, widgets, plugins, clients, etc.)
3. Knowledge of the cultures, best practices and etiquette of the various social networks (there are vast schools of thought on the right and wrong way to use social media)
4. Clear objectives (such as: drive traffic to your blog, enhance customer service, grow your email list, sell more widgets, gain targeted media attention, crowdsource new products, etc.)
5. A strategy to achieve those objectives
6. A social media implementation plan
7. Resources to pay for training and ongoing social media management, whether third party or in-house
8. A company social media policy
9. An ongoing engagement plan
10. Systems to track and measure results
11. Strategies for reputation management, and
12. A scalability plan.

Whew, is it any wonder business people feel overwhelmed and stuck. I hope this list is of value to you. However, if you’d like some help – if you’re ready to ramp up your social media marketing and gain tremendous measurable results – I have good news for you: it’s almost time for my favorite online event of the year.

The Social Media Success Summit 2010 is the brains of my dear friend, Mike Stelzner.

Mike gathered together twenty-four of the world’s leading social media experts, practitioners and leading brand representatives to be Summit instructors.

Each session is a LIVE webinar with visuals; no fluff, just deep useful content that you’ll be able to apply to your business right away and see results.

Some of the Social Media Success Summit 2010 sessions include:

• Effective ways to market your company with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, social bookmarking sites, mobile marketing and more
• How to track and measure the return on investment for social media programs
• A step-by-step method for creating a smart social media marketing plan 
• How to build a loyal social media following 
• How to bring more customers into your local business with social media techniques
  See all the sessions here.

Just check out this incredible lineup, each of whom will share their proven social media tactics, strategies, techniques and tools. (Names hyperlinked to each presenter’s Twitter page so you can go follow them! Links open in a new window.)

Guy Kawasaki	Chris Brogan	Steve Rubel	John Bernier (Best Buy)
Marla Erwin (Whole Foods)	Sarah Molinari (Home Depot)	Andrew Mason (Groupon)	Tristan Walker (Foursquare)
Darren Rowse	Rick Calvert	Ann Handley	Brian Clark
Jason Falls	Rob Birgfield	Ramon DeLeon	Mike Stelzner
Jay Baer	Kim Dushinski	Denise Wakeman	Muhammad Saleem
Greg Jarboe	Chris Garrett	Lewis Howes	Mari Smith

This entirely VIRTUAL event starts May 5 and sessions run during the month of May. SAVE 34% on your ticket through April 20th!

Last year, nearly 1000 marketers and small business owners from around the world attended the Social Media Success Summit.  It was a huge hit.  Businesses were transformed.  In fact, 97% of attendees said they’d attend again!

This year’s focus is to empower attendees to build social media marketing plans, track your social media results and learn from other successful businesses. This is more than just an event. It’s also a way for people just like you to come together, share their experiences, meet the experts and network.

Remember, the Social Media Success Summit is a live ONLINE conference that you can attend from your home or office. PLUS, *all* sessions are recorded and you get access to every single replay, just in case you can’t attend a session live or wish to go back and review!

(By the way, whether you get a ticket or not, you can access a free online training session called "How to Grow and Engage an Audience).

Will you be attending this exciting virtual event? If you already have your ticket, congrats!! Come on over to the Facebook Event page and begin your pre-networking. Feel free to add photos of you with any of the 24 speakers to the Event page – you’re welcome to create valuable visibility for yourself and, in turn, let others know about the Summit! I look forward to “seeing” you on the sessions and my hope for you is this too will fast become your favorite event of the year too!

Guy Kawasaki, one of my favorite peeps in the socialmediasphere, will be giving the opening keynote.

Any questions, just let me know in the Comments below:

I was recently approached by the team at Vpype to test out their brand new Facebook app that allows you to stream LIVE video directly from your Facebook profile or fan page to your friends and fans!

This app is a gamechanger! Live video streaming meets Facebook. and the best part? It’s FREE!

Vpype allows you to:

• Schedule regular shows
• Broadcast live anytime
• Broadcast as yourself or broadcast as your fan page
• Select specific friends to broadcast to (think private conferencing, trainings, etc!)
• Archive your shows
• Embed any show
• Browse through your Facebook friends’ show recordings
• .and more.

So, last night around 7:30pm PST, I put out a tweet, updated my Facebook profile status and began broadcasting – within a few minutes, we had over 40 participants view the show (ultimately 247 live views) and engage in the chat room from around the U.S. and as far as Singapore, Iceland and Gold Coast, Australia! (See this prompt recap of my Vpype debut by Marianna Fridjonsdottir in Iceland!)

The Vpype Facebook app displays on your Fan Page as a tab called “Shows.”

By the way, here’s a hot Facebook fan page tip: All tabs to the left of Wall and Info can be reordered by dragging and dropping. In the screenshot below, I’ve placed my Shows tab inbetween my Blog and Welcome tabs:

Possible uses of the Vpype Facebook app – some are my ideas, some I asked my peeps in the chat room:

• Live Q&A for fans on your fan page
• Private conferences
• Family chats
• Daily/weekly show with guest experts
• Short tips/tutorial videos – live or pre-recorded
• New product demos
• Classes
• Video book reviews
• Virtual party
• Cooking demonstration

And a few excerpted enthusiastic comments:

We only ran into just a couple hiccups; for some viewers the stream was sticking from time to time (but that depends on variables such as internet speed on the viewer end, of course). Also, the chat area froze one time and I ended up hitting refresh – which temporarily stopped my live broadcast, but the users stayed connected and we ended up picking right back up where we left off. However, the second part didn’t seem to record.

Also, I first published this post with the video embedded – but was a wee bit alarmed to see the video plays on load! So, I took it out.

You can watch the show here. And, I’ve pasted below a screenshot of what the embed looks like. (Btw, the default width is 750px which is rather wide and needs to be sized).

A few items on our features wishlist as a result of this debut show:

• Embedded player does NOT play on load
• Default embed size is 600px
• Notification of who joined/left
• Participants’ names/avatars linked to their Facebook profile
• Ability to pause the chat area (similar to Tweetchat)
• Broadcast inside the “frame” of a fan page tab
• Ability to assign mic/webcam rights to others for live video interview

Vpype officially launches on Monday, March 15, 2010 at the Social Media World Forum in London.

So, what do you think? How will you use live video broadcasting on Facebook? Let me know in the comments below!

At the recent 140 Twitter Conference, I sparked a bit of controversy on the branding panel that I participated on: I brought up a point that reminds me of the line in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross “ABC, always be closing” and I framed it as “ABM = always be marketing” and “always be me.”

I was fascinated to see the polarized responses from the audience, Twitterverse and one of my fellow panelists. (I’m a big fan of expressing opinions, but it’s not my style to polarize! Oh well!)

To me, Always Be Marketing means that I am extremely mindful and strategic about everything I do online and in public. For example, turquoise and bling is my signature branding color/look/feel – so that’s what I present in public. (Eight percent of my wardrobe is a shade of blue!) And, my persona is upbeat, open, caring, genuine and always helpful, always willing to answer questions particularly about Facebook. This is all part of my brand.

In fact, the greatest compliment I receive is when people meet me in person and say I’m exactly like they thought I would be from how I am online.

With social media so prevalent we are all EXTREMELY visible. Your prospective clients, your peers and your competition can drill as deep as they wish searching, reading and gathering information online about you and posted by you without you ever knowing who’s searching. Depending on what they find, your prospects may choose to do business with you or not.

Being mindful and in “ABM” mode helps with reputation management. To me, ABM means you’re never careless about what you put out there. You see the longevity of everything that’s published. (For the best book on reputation management see, Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss).

To some folks, the word “marketing” has negative connotations. It’s a word often misinterpreted as meaning “hocking your wares,” “pushing” and being like a used car salesman. That’s unfortunate. There’s a big difference between ABP: always be pushing and ABM: always be marketing!

I unfollow the “ABP” types on Twitter and unfriend or even block them on Facebook. I’m all about connecting and building relationships… and yes, there’s strategy to all that too. What may seem as idle chit-chat on Twitter is 100% visible to the whole world on Twitter. It’s important to always do your best, because you just never know who is watching you.

Perhaps some folks have negative feelings associated with the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross – it’s an intense movie and the question of ethics and integrity in sales is a theme running throughout the film. I certainly would never recommend doing “whatever it takes” to market. It has to be genuine, positive and contribute to your community. Like I say, the ABM also means “always be me” (or, for me, “always be Mari!”

In fact, here’s a couple of my fave nuggets from the #140tc:

What are your thoughts? What does ABM mean to you? Do you consider yourself to be in “marketing mode” at all times – or is it something you turn on and off? Do you apply a special formula to your tweeting style with x% personal and x% business? Is there a clear line between the two, or are you like me and completely blend your social media personal/professional style because you know ultimately people are buying YOU first?! I’d love to hear from you – add your thoughts in the comments below:

I’m often asked how I got started in social media and became so successful and well known. Well, first I like to think I’m humble and am just “one of the peeps” like everyone else, which is true. But I do recognize my business has really exploded in the past eighteen months, and so I thought I’d come up with a list of contributing factors that you might find of benefit too:

1. Get lucky!

My definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Since ’99, I had pursued a path of relationship marketing, internet marketing, and success coaching… all of which culminated in social media when I got invited to join an alpha team of a Facebook app in 2007. I joke about being an “overnight success ten years in the making” – perhaps you can relate?! But all these years were preparation for my passion and purpose to intersect. I’d been preparing for many years, then an opportunity presented itself and I took ACTION!

2. Self-knowledge.

I’m a raving fan of personality assessments. I’ve taken over fifteen assessments, including Myers Briggs, DISC, Reiss, Kolbe’s, iWAM, PIAV, the Enneagram… you may be familiar with some of these. I believe it’s not enough to just do one assessment. By understanding yourself – and ultimately others – at a deep level, you’re better able to design a lifestyle and career that motivates you and meets your needs.

3. FOCUS.

I love the acronym for the word “focus”: Follow One Course Until Successful. Every year I choose a one-word theme for my entire year. In 2008, my word was focus – I did not deviate from my path of predominantly Facebook education which lead to many, many doors opening.

4. Influence.

My one-word focus for 2009 is influence. I ask myself, “Who and what am I allowing to influence me?” In terms of social media, we all have equal opportunity to build up significant influence. Your “tribe” is made up of people who know, like and trust you. They may hang on your every word. That’s a responsible position to be in!

5. Be yourself

“Be yourself because everybody else is already taken.” I love this quote almost as much as I love this Dr. Seuss quote: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” This goes along with my notion that there is no competition. Nobody can offer the exact same product or service in the way that you offer it with your personal touch. This goes for big brands too. Be yourself is also all about authenticity and transparency in social media.

6. Know what you want.

One of my mentors, T. Harv Eker, used to say the #1 reason people don’t get what they want in life is they don’t know what they want. Hmm. So, of course, the secret is to get super clear on exactly what it is you want. This goes for personal, life and business goals whether you’re a solopreneur or CEO of a big company. In social media, what are your objectives – more visibility? Increase in traffic, subscribers, fans, followers, friends? Then what? How will you convert them to paying clients?

7. Have a plan

The main reason people fail in social media is lack of a strategy. There’s so much confusing and conflicting advice out there, it’s easy to get lost in the social media jungle. By having a clear objective, developing a strategy to accomplish that objective, and measuring milestones along the way, you’re bound to have better results.

8. Stay on track.

This goes along with #3 above, FOCUS. It’s all too easy to get distracted and go down a million rabbit holes as I call them. Or to have “multiple-hat syndrome” where you have about six different businesses. Much as it’s fine to have multiple streams of income, I strongly recommend you stay on course with one primary business until that venture is at the level of success you want.

9. Add value.

R. Buckminster Fuller talked about the importance of adding value and that your financial wealth is a direct reflection of how much value you add to the world. Sometimes it’s easy to think you don’t want to give away the store. But I really think we cannot give it all away because every day new ideas, techniques and strategies come along… so give generously. And help promote and build others up.

10. Broadcast the postive.

I love to focus only on updates that are upbeat and positive. I’m a glass-half-full type of person anyway. What often gives Twitter a bad name is people think we just sit around and share about trivia… well, some people do! But I like to say nothing at all if I can’t think of something of value to say.  We have a position of responsibility to influence others in a positive way, to create positive ripples. At the end of the day, you want to be the voice that is remembered, not just heard. (Kudos to my friend, Nancy Marmolejo, where I first heard this awesome saying!)

11. Surround yourself with successful mentors.

In order to get to the next level in life and business, it’s important to seek the counsel of experienced mentors who are several levels above where you are now. The best investment you can make is in yourSELF. Not just business, professional and financial training. But in deep personal, spiritual and emotional growth too. Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world, so the more you grow yourself the more successful you’ll become.

12. Take imperfect action.

One of my mentors last year, Kevin Nations, has this great saying, “Winners take imperfect action while others are sitting around perfecting their plans.” Well, I’m a recovering perfectionist! I used to have to wait until every duck was in a row. Now, I make myself just GO for it. When I first announced my social media certification program earlier this year, I really wanted to wait awhile longer, but I went for it anyway because I’d already waited 18 months… and was simply astounded by the overwhelming response! (I’ll be announcing dates for the next program just as soon as possible!)

13. Correct and continue.

Did you know a rocketship is only on course 3% of the time? The remaining 97% it’s course-correcting. This is true for us. At every turn, we have an opportunity to put something out there, test it, make a correction, test again. But if you keep waiting for things to be perfect, you’ll never launch. So, for sure, due your due diligence, then take imperfect action, then correct and continue!! And, the faster your correct, the better… especially with social media being so prevalent because people notice your mistakes quicker!

14. Be willing to be a bit “out there.”

By this I mean, be a bit off the wall, a bit crazy. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun. I love to goof around with my avatars on Twitter – I call it my avataritis and my favorite is my avatiara! Check out my avatar slideshow here and this great post What does your avatar say about you by Maureen Birdsall.

15. LIVE WITH PASSION!!

“Live with passion” is one of my favorite Tony Robbins sayings! Tony certainly embodies passion, as does my friend, Gary Vaynerchuk. If you ever get the chance to see Tony or Gary live on stage – GO! Both are hugely vibrant, larger-than-life, passionate peeps!!

I hope you found a few good nuggets in here for yourself. What are some of your secrets to success? Feel free to share below:

I created this five-part model – the ABC’s of Social Media – to simplify your social media efforts. Many folks come to social media and attempt to short-circuit the process by over-automating, over-broadcasting, over-delegating and miss out the vital component of connecting, engaging and building relationships.

Once you’ve confirmed your target market uses Facebook and Twitter, and you’re happy with your brand, messaging and systems for capturing leads, etc., here’s how the ABC system works:

Automate

First, set up systems to automate your broadcasts, feeds, updates, content. On Twitter, this could be using Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog feed as tweets. To pre-schedule tweets, use TweetLater and/or Hootsuite.

To update multiple social media sites, including Twitter, your Facebook personal profile, multiple Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and many more, Ping.fm works extremely well. To pre-schedule updates to multiple social sites, the best choice is HootSuite > Ping.fm.

Import your blog post on Facebook using the Notes app and/or the Networked Blogs app.

Aggregate all your social feeds into FriendFeed and add the FriendFeed app to your Facebook Profile.

There are many more ways to automate; these are a great start. However, I do recommend not over-automating. Pre-scheduling and auto-broadcasting are great to ensure you at least have some content going out daily. But you’ll also want to generate real-time content/broadcasts too.

Broadcast

Broadcasts are what I call regular tweets (as opposed to @ replies), Facebook status updates, posts on Facebook, blog posts and more. In fact, any way of pushing your message “out there.” This could be seen as more traditional “push marketing” though you’re not being pushy, per se. It’s important to broadcast your content and, in fact, broadcast others’ content in the form of retweets, favorites, social bookmarks and the Links app on Facebook.

Now the challenge with many businesses using social media is they stop at “B” – in other words, they just repeat the cycle of automate and broadcast, automate and broadcast. It’s hard to know who’s behind the Twitter account or Facebook page. It’s all about pushing content and there’s hardly any engagement. So the third step is vital to your success in social media:

Connect

On Twitter, this is the art of joining, initiating and responding to conversations via @ replies. Using popular third party clients like Tweetdeck, or Twhirl , you can easily track and respond to @yourname mentions.

On Facebook, create Friend Lists with your key contacts, drag that friend list to the top of your News Feed and now that’s your default view [see screenshot to the right]. Then, even in just a few minutes a day on Facebook, you can easily connect by commenting appropriately.

Acknowledge your friends’ birthdays on both Facebook and Twitter. [On Facebook, all your friends' upcoming birthdays are listed on your Home Page on the right; you can also receive a weekly list of upcoming birthdays via regular email: click Settings > Account Settings > Notifications > under the first segment (Facebook) click Show More > make sure "Has a birthday coming up" is turned ON.]

Look for other occasions to celebrate and acknowledge. And, look for ways to introduce and promote others, compliment, add value.

Subscribe to a number of popular blogs and regularly post your comments. When writing your own blog posts, encourage your readers to comment by asking stimulating questions.

Delegate

If you’re serious about integrating social media into your marketing efforts, before long you simply cannot manage everything yourself. Depending on the size of your company, you may well have a member of staff who’s sole responsibility is to be the voice and face of the company, often called a “brandividual.”

Or, you may choose to hire a competent, trained VA (Virtual Assistant) or social networking assistant – at least to help set up and manage the basics. I usually recommend you do not delegate your voice, though most of us know some celebrities have “ghost tweeters!” [There are many sources to find good VAs, including on Twitter via the directory Twellow.com - that way you can find, follow and monitor their style before even contacting them.]

One major task you can delegate is to track and monitor your reputation by setting up Google alerts and tweet alerts (via TweetBeep and/or TweetLater which is a suite of helpful Twitter tools). Look for your evangelists who are always singing your praises so you can connect, empower and incentivize them more. And, also look for negative activity that needs to be responded to and ideally nipped in the bud. [The best book on reputation management is Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss.]

Evaluate

As quickly as you set up your social media systems, something new comes along or the big sites introduce new features. Facebook are constantly adding a tweak here and there, sometimes minor but often major. It’s important you stay informed and regularly evaluate how your systems are working for you. Are you meeting your objectives? Are you getting a good ROI (return on investment) and ROT (return on time). Have you thoroughly researched where your target market hang out most and are you reaching them effectively? How can you think outside the box, get more creative and innovative to stay ahead of the curve?

Let me know your thoughts on my ABC’s of Social Media model – did I miss anything critical? Does it help you better understand how you can effectively use the giants like Facebook and Twitter? Please do retweet this post too, assuming you found it valuable!