Christian Karasiewicz, Author at Christiankonline.com

3 ways to get people talking about your business!

Let’s face it – as much as we don’t want to admit it, we love being the center of attention. For some business owners, that’s rather easy when you have a large following and people know you. For others who don’t have so large of a following (or for that matter are rarely talked about), that can be a challenging task.

The first thing I strongly recommend is to consider:

How well your business is branded.
Do only a few people know about your business?
How large are their circles?
Are your customers the type of people that would tell others about your business?

While you ponder your reach among your current customers, here are 3 ways business owners can help get people talking – most of which require just a little effort and the opportunity to reap big rewards!

Talk to your customers

As customers, we often seek out employees to ask them questions or to get assistance. Why can that same model not hold true for business owners? Probably because we’re too concerned with the sale rather than helping the customer. Talk to your customers, ask them questions like if they saw the current sale, if they needed anything, etc… Also, don’t be afraid to ask them if they would give you a review, testimonial, referral, etc… Often, people will oblige if they have had a good experience. Remember, word of mouth marketing is a huge contributor to increasing awareness for your business. Engage with your customers often and they’ll be more inclined to engage back — by telling their friends about you!

Make your website and social media links visible and easy to share

If you have your own third-party website, consider adding the standard buttons to your website — Facebook, Twitter & email. These tools not only allow others to easily share content from your website, but they’re also FREE! If you’ve got a Facebook and Twitter account (who doesn’t), make your website visible so that people can find it easily and share your content with their friends.

Don’t be afraid to try out new topics

Often, I get the question from business owners why they’re not Continue reading 3 ways to get people talking about your business!

How to increase your Facebook connections

The great thing about Facebook is that it allows us to connect with others anytime, anywhere. That’s great, but how can we possibly see all of those connections?

One feature that most Facebook users don’t know about is increasing their number of connections that display in their newsfeed. This allows us to see more (and share more) from our friends.

Here are the steps you can take to increase the number of connections you see on Facebook.

Login to Facebook
Scroll to the bottom of your newsfeed
Look for ‘Older Posts’ and ‘Edit Options’ – hint: they’re at the bottom of your newsfeed.
Change the number of friends to 5,000 to show in your live newsfeed and click save.

That’s it!

Best,
Christian

Public vs. Private Tweets

As a social media strategist, I see a lot of good and bad things being done on Twitter. One particular area I wanted to highlight is the importance of setting your tweets to public vs. private.

Setting your tweets to private is a big no-no on Twitter, that is if you want to attract followers and build your network. If you’re not interested in networking with other people, having others see what you’re saying so that they can add to it or share with their friends – and possible opening a few doors along the way, go ahead, set them to private.

Sure, you’ll be able to control who follows you – this way only the people you approve only see your tweets, but you can already essentially do that, simply by looking at the types of tweets someone writes. You can also go to www.twitter.com/username and see their profile directly too. This way you have an idea on what they typically talk about. Also, remember, you choose who to follow and besides, the whole point of Twitter (and any social network for that matter) is to attract followers and to network with others right? Definitely not doing that with private tweets.

Here are a few reasons why your tweets should be set to public

Public tweets are seen by everyone (even those people you don’t know)
With Google live search, you have a chance that your tweets will be seen by other people searching because public tweets are included in Google search results.
They allow people to retweet (or forward) your tweet w/links, pictures, thoughts to other users
More exposure = more connections and higher chances for conversions, visitors to your website, blog articles, new friends, etc..

For those Twitter users that want to make their tweets public again, you can do so by following these simple instructions for unprotecting your tweets.

Login to Twitter
Click your name (right side)
Select “Settings”
Uncheck the box next to “Tweet privacy”
Click the “save” button

There you have it! Public tweets vs. Private tweets and why you should go public!

Would love to hear from Twitter users that have their tweets set to private. Why did you do it? What benefits do you think you’ll get using private tweets and are you serious about networking?

5 ways to reward your fans and customers

With the rise of Social Networking over the past couple of years, we now have even more ways to connect with our fans and customers. One thing to remember, your fans and customers are your best source for helping to continue to grow your online presence. This is why it is extremely important to reward them for not only providing commentary on your content, but also for sharing your content with others as well.

Remember, without fans or customers, it is pretty hard to grow, so it is important to give back.

Here are 5 ways you can interact with and reward your best fans and customers:

Respond to comments

It’s nice to get noticed – take a couple of minutes each day and respond to the people who took time to comment on your blog post or status update. Those two minutes will go a long way in letting them know you read their content and acknowledged it.

Publicly reply to them on Twitter

Social Networking isn’t about being anti-social. If someone sends you a tweet, telling you how much they love your site, a product, etc…send them a public reply on Twitter. Not only will they see it, but so will the millions of people on Twitter. Giving back again will pay itself forward many times over, just for taking those couple of seconds to show someone you’re listening to them.
Continue reading 5 ways to reward your fans and customers

Facebook EdgeRank Explained [video]

When you login to your Facebook profile, you’ll see your Facebook news feed, filled with a different types of content such as website links, photos, videos and more. What most users don’t know though is that everything you interact with on Facebook does not show up in your news feed. Instead, this is controlled by something called Facebook EdgeRank.

What is Facebook EdgeRank?

Continue reading Facebook EdgeRank Explained

How to run Adobe flash on your Apple iPad 2

When Apple announced the Apple iPad, it was extremely well-received in the market. So much so, that lines formed practically everywhere and prices on the gray market nearly doubled. I’ll admit, I also spent some time in line too.

For most users though who purchased the Apple iPad 2 as a laptop replacement, you’re probably feeling a little burned, since it does a lot of things great, but unfortunately, doesn’t let you play Adobe Flash games or visit websites built using Flash.

Luckily, one of the strongpoints to the iPad (and the entire Apple ecosystem), are the thousands of apps available in the app store, which help you expand the capabilities.

While I’m not much of a flash user, I do run across the occasional website that I can’t view on my Apple iPad. Fortunately, there is a solution for viewing Flash websites and playing Flash games on your iPad – it doesn’t require you to jailbreak the iPad either (win)!

Here’s a brief video on how to run Adobe Flash on your Apple iPad.

Note: this works on both the iPad 1 and 2.

So I have to ask, do you feel your Apple tablet could replace your laptop? What other features does it need?

What the Facebook ‘like’ button means and how you can benefit from it.

This past weekend, I gave a talk on using social media to 6,000+ business owners in Miami, Florida. If there was one thing that I took away from the 2011 Market America World Conference, it’s that a lot of people are confused about how the Facebook ‘like’ button actually works and what it can do for their business.

Most of the people I spoke with had not yet liked their favorite brands because they didn’t want people in their network seeing they liked a particular page. Not sure why anyone would not want to like their favorite brands or company, but to help everyone out, here is a breakdown on the like button and how it works for everyone so that you can begin to harness the importance of liking content and how this displays on your Facebook profile.

What is the Facebook ‘like’ button?
The Facebook like button is a way to tell your friends what type of content that you like.

Where can I find a Facebook ‘like’ button?

Blogs/blog posts

When clicked on a blog, the Facebook like button posts on your Facebook profile for all of your friends to see.

Ex: Christian Karasiewicz liked How to use QR Codes on ma Blog.

How to use QR Codes would link to the blog article. ma Blog would link to the website.

Facebook pages – Christian Karasiewicz

When you click the like button on a Facebook page, what this does is tell your friends that you like a particular company, brand, person, etc…

What you will see: when you like a Facebook page, this tells Facebook to send updates done by a particular Facebook page to your newsfeed. This information is not visible to your friends until you take an additional action by clicking that you like a specific post, comment on it, or share it.

What your friends see: your friends initially see that you liked the name of the page. They do not see the content from that page unless they like the page too.

Ex: Christian Karasiewicz likes Market America

Facebook newsfeeds

When you click the like button on a particular item in your Facebook newsfeed, all of your friends will then receive an update in their newsfeed that you liked something. This could be a Facebook page, a status update, photo, video, etc…

Ex: Christian Karasiewicz likes #marketamerica owners, @jrridinger & @lorenridinger featured in @miamiherald via Market America

Why you should like content and how you can benefit from doing this

The whole point of Facebook as a social network, is to share social media content (photos, videos, status updates, blog posts, etc…) with your network. In-turn, when you like content, Facebook will recommend friends to you as well that liked similar content. This is a great tool for helping you expand your network (and fast).

Facebook pages are also important because as business owners, you need to be passionate about the brands you sell. A lot of times, companies and individual brands post their updates via their Facebook page. If you didn’t like their page, you could be severely missing out on deals on particular products, new press and announcements from your favorite brands.

As business owners, it is also important to become an advocate of a particular brand or company – why? By becoming an advocate, you stand to benefit from spreading the word to others because the more people know about something, the more they will seek out others that are also passionate about it — the whole social media effect you know?

So there you have it – the Facebook like button and how you can benefit from it.

Want to get started using the ‘like’ button? Click the like button on my note so that your friends can read about it too – it is that easy!

How to convert a Facebook Profile to a Page in Seconds

Did you accidentally create a Facebook Profile for your business when you meant to create a Facebook Page instead?

Or maybe you setup a profile because you didn’t know how to create a page.

This article is going to teach you how to convert a Facebook Profile to a Page in just a few steps.

Why convert a Facebook Profile to a page?

There are plenty of reasons to convert a profile to a page.

One reason is that it will eliminate the need to login to two different accounts to make a post.

The main reason though is because if you are using a Facebook Profile for your business, you violate Facebook’s terms of use.

Here’s what Facebook says about using a profile to represent a business.

You will not use your personal timeline primarily for your own commercial gain, and will use a Facebook Page for such purposes.

If you continue to use a Facebook Profile for your business, you can lose access to that profile and all of the connections you have worked hard to build over the past few years.

Fortunately, it’s a pretty easy thing to fix.

Preparing your Facebook Profile

When you convert a profile to a page, here’s what happens to your existing profile:

Friends and subscribers are automatically converted to likes / fans
Your username will become the username on your new page
You lose all of the data on your profile

To prepare your profile to be converted, here are the steps you need to take.

Following these steps helps ensure your profile to page conversion goes smoothly.

Four things to do before you convert a Facebook Profile to a page.

Click To Tweet

Use the Facebook backup tool to download a copy of your profile data
Change your profile name and address to match your business
Assign a new admin to any Facebook Groups you manage
Assign a new admin to any Facebook Pages you manage

Once you’ve completed these steps, it’s time to convert your profile to a page.

How to convert a Facebook Profile to a Page

Step 1: Login to the Facebook Profile you want to convert

Using a Facebook Profile for a business violates Facebook’s terms of use.

Step 2: Access the page migration tool

Start converting your profile to a Facebook Page using the page migration process tool.

Step 3: Choose a page category

When you convert a profile to a page, choose a category for your new page

Step 4: Give your new Facebook Page a name

You can choose to keep the name of your Facebook Page or change it.

Step 5: Wait for the profile to page conversion process to finish

Typically, when you convert a Facebook Profile to a page, it happens within minutes.

You’ll know your conversion was successful because you won’t be able to access your old profile.

Step 6: Add a new admin to your new Facebook Page

Now that you’ve converted your profile to a page, you need to be sure to add a page admin.

If you don’t add another admin to your Facebook Page, you’ll end up with a Facebook Gray account that you’ll need to then fix.

Note: If you need to undo a profile to page conversion, you can appeal it.

Once you’ve converted your Facebook Profile to a Page, if you have duplicate Facebook Pages, you can merge them to combine them.

Your Turn

Converting your profile to a page is a very easy process provided you do it the right way.

It also helps make you compliant with Facebook’s terms.

When trying to convert a Facebook Profile to a Page, did you run into any issues?

What was your profile to page conversion process like?

Leave a comment and tell me what was the most difficult part about converting your profile to a page.

The art of the tweet

2010 was a great year and I wanted to thank everyone for helping make big things happen. So how is 2011 going? Sticking to those New Years resolutions which you set?

I sure hope you’ve made one resolution – to use social media more for personal and business growth – it helps!

Over the past few days, I’ve had people email me, asking for a few tips on tweeting. I’ve put together a few things to remember on the art of the tweet which should help get you started and keep you focused in 2011.

For those of you that are completely new to Twitter, please consider downloading my free social media manual which covers Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Download: The Social Media Manual: A Guide on Using Social Media to Grow Your Business

I’ve put together a brief list of Twitter Tips to help you with the art of the tweet. While you’re typing away, please remember these tips:

Continue reading The art of the tweet

5 RSS Apps for Facebook Pages

How many of you want an easier way to display some of your favorite blog content on your Facebook Page or Facebook profile? Thanks to these 5 handy RSS Feed apps for Facebook, you can supplement your status updates with lots of great content.

Networked Blogs

Networked Blogs

One of my favorite RSS feed Facebook Apps. This one is FREE. With Networked Blogs, you can post multiple blogs and allow fans to easily share posts with their friends.

Install app

RSS Tab

RSS Tab App

With RSS Tab App, you can publish up to 5 different blogs on your Facebook Page at one time. RSS Tab App also lets you customize the look of you blog links.

Install app

Shortstack

Shortstack App

Shortstack App is another great option for Facebook Pages. This app offers lots of customization - in addition to just the ability to display RSS Feeds from your blogs.
Install app

Social RSS

Social RSS

With Social RSS, you can customize your Facebook Page - as well as your profile. Like Shortstack App and RSS Tab App, you can display multiple blogs. This allows you the opportunity to share more content with your friends and fans.

Install app

RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti

posts any RSS Feed to your Facebook Page. By posting multiple blogs to your Facebook Page, you can share some of your favorite content with your fans from other websites.

Install app

So why should you supplement your content with other content?

Continue reading 5 RSS Apps for Facebook Pages