Have you thought about getting involved with Social Media but feel the impact is too negative?. Think you don’t have time to “tweet” or update MySpace or FaceBook. Afraid your private information won’t be compromised or phished. Think you have enough spam as it is?  Whatever your reason for resisting the use of social media to spread the word, it’s been proven that the importance of linking your business image to a grope of profiles far outweigh all the cons.

Social Media = High Profile

Imagine this- Lets say someone walked into a restaurant or store claiming to be you, then started overturning displays, breaking things up, then running out of the building. People will remember the face of the person, and they’ll also remember the name and give it to the police when they arrive. You wouldn’t want an unauthorized person misrepresenting you in real life, so why let somebody do it online? People will also use your name for legitimate purposes which serve to defuse or dilute the image you want to promote. 

I have a real world personal example of this. I own several domains which are variations of my name, Larry Bartley. There is another Larry Bartley on the other side of the world from me, a musician in London. He doesn’t have his own website or own any domains which are variations of his name. If you search for the term “Larry Bartley” on Google and you’re looking for Larry Bartley the Photographer and Social Medium, you get far more results for Larry Bartley the Musician than you do for me. Looking closely at the search results you can determine that all of his returns are coming from Blogs and various forms of Social Media sites. This is a situation I’m working on turning about as I bring more connection into my Social Media network.

Case in point- The longer you wait to get your version of your name into a solid social presence for your business, the more time you allow people to use your name in their brand. If you operate a company in Tex with a common name, like Smith, Inc., there’s a change another Texas company with the same name might come along and take the vanity urls you could use to promote your business. As people search, they could come to think “the other Smith” is “you,” and you could lose business. Even if you don’t plan to put too much into online socializing, you should at least establish your brand on these sites so it’s clear you are up to date on social networking. Set up each profile to link back to your official site, and include links to the networks on your site to verify the branding.

LifeStreaming Cuts the Hassle

The drudgery of logging onto all your social networks to make updates is a thing of the past. The new technology of LifeStreaming allows you to update all your social sites with very little effort. With proper configuration, a WordPress blog will post your latest updates to all your social networks at once. Also, many social networks offer integration with each other to allow for streamlined updating. You can post to FaceBook and the updates will appear on MySpace and Twitter. You can maintain a bookmarking site like Digg to share your information on selected networks. Most Social Media sites have RSS functionality which lets you add updates to your main web site, and allow subscribers to receive your latest updates on their desktop.

In Summery- It is important to claim your space in the online community before someone else claims it for you.  If you think social media is a waste of time, consider what you stand to lose if you don’t get involved.

Contact me now to see how I can improve your web site’s usability to convert visitors into leads and sales.  ©Larry Bartley