Book review: Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses

Hopefully, the end of the month is the right time for the freelancer to read and discover new valuable resources for improving his or her work. Yesterday evening I discovered that I have on my Kindle a book about Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses and decided that it is the right time for a useful lecture. 

The book belongs to the category of what I call 'anchor books': in the search for new customers, you need to offer as many credentials as possible and thus, a book or more plus an updated website will help you to improve your pitch. Nothing despicable in this case and the advantages of many books and articles from this category are that free of charge or in exchange for a very low price you can read a lot of insightful ideas about a variety of domains.

The book was published at the end of December 2011 and most probably there are many things that Facebook changed since then and in less than one year the book will need an improvement. However, if you are looking for a fast lecture - of around 30 pages - and useful ideas, you should take a break for an hour and read it.

What are my lessons learned?

As for the moment I am not too much involved in social media projects, I got almost all the technical information I was looking for about Facebook Fan Pages and the advantages of using Facebook advertising for businesses.

Randomly, some of the best advices at the end of the lecture:

- The Fan Pages should contain only professional/business related information. The post should be regular - but not as frequent as in the case of Twitter, for instance -, entertaining and addressed to the current and prospective community. You need to set up a plan of posts for at least one month in advance, outlining various aspects of your business. A 'like' is not enough, you should be ready to start and be a part of a conversation.

- Regardless of your object of activity, you should always connect with your community. Thus, before you start writing, you should know what is the profile of your target, to establish the demographics and the main interests.

- If you want to expand your community, the Facebook fan page should be used as a reference to your website and, in general, as part of your general business communication.

There are many ideas that I will explore further soon and thanks to this book I am able to continue the journey through the social media jungle. 

Writing happiness

As a professional writer in the process, I enjoy every piece of advice about how to improve my writing, either it is about simple blogging or sophisticated literary writing. 

Thus, I enjoyed a pleasant lecture of the eBook by Marya Jan - Writing Happiness, How to write blog content that works. You can read this booklet very fast, for free, and if you are looking for some inspiration in-between posts or when you feel that the writers' block is around, it is the right lecture to lift you up.

In the words of the author, it is a "non-grammar focus guide for writers and non-writers who are in the business of generating content". This is the reason why, for instance, you are not scholarly advices that first and forehand your posts should be grammatically correct in order to achieve success. In a way it is obvious, in a world of words facing a very serious confrontation. 

The book includes a couple of very useful advices, more or less evident even for experienced writers. It includes a couple of insightful quotes, mostly from Stephen King's On Writing, a book which I highly appreciate. Regardless of your domain of writing activity, you will find for sure 2-3 tips.

Shortly, here are my lessons learned from the lecture of the Marya Jan's book:

- If you are a writer it does not mean that you should stop reading. You should be in touch permanently with what people from your domain are writing, but also for improving your style and looking for new sources of inspiration. My experience is, when I find something interesting, I prefer to blog about it as well and, eventually, share my impression with my audience.

- You need to find a reason to write. In other words, to find a clear reason to put your words in order. The reader needs to discover something new, and thus clarity is key. The organization of your blog post matter as well: the headline and the first paragraph are very important for a successful reading. The end matters as well as an incentive to encourage the reader to return or to go further to explore other writings published on your blog. 

- Related to the previous aspect, you should find your voice in writing. This is the reason why very often I preferred to put my intensive blogging on hold for a couple of weeks or even months, as I was looking to accommodate different voices and writing personalities.

- Add to the ingredients of a successful writing the proper connection with the reader. Do you know who are your readers, what are their tastes and interests? In many cases, your domain of activity is limiting your domain of activity and thus, creates the possibility for the development of your niche. For instance, if you are a fashion blogger, you will be interested in covering all issues dealing with fashion, but if you are into do-it-yourself fashion it will be even better for reaching a certain audience.

- As you are writing for a blog, you should take into consideration the limited attention and time of your usual writer. If you are interested in complicated writing, you should avoid blogging. However, there are many examples of successful bloggers addressing highly complicated issues with the help of clear expressions and short sentences. The book does not address the issue of multimedia support - podcast, video, 
pictures, but very often the visual aspects can add more readership.

The conclusion: a simple and useful writing for any kind of writers facing with the challenges of the 2.0 world.

Books about the 2.0 world

The latest titles, in German. As usual, I can't stop being surprised about the high level of theoretical discussions about social media, in comparison with the clumsy approached I've encountered very often in the real and practical playground.

Lecture for the week-end: The Google book

20 things I learned about browsers and the web - a very funny week-end book, from Google.

Social books

Just read an article on Huffington Post about the social networking sites for book lovers. I am on Shelfari for about two years, maybe, and, since recently, on Goodreads. I am updating carefully my shelves, with the latest books read. From time to time I am inviting or I am invited for connections and I am watching conversations in the groups of interest or posting random thoughts about books. Until now, the communication with my book mates is nil. A reason might be as well the limited possibility of interacting in real-life, via chat. And, as everywhere, people looking for dating or virtual adventure, are the most active.

Book review: Connected. The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives

For business, personal or academic reasons, staying away of the power of social networks looks as a risky behavior. And the risk is not only of social nature, but might have as well consequences on the level of general health. The book is offering among the first, according to my knowledge, an evaluation of the implication of the network for the social, political, economic and health levels. Becoming in a relatively short time a human superorganism, the network - made up of various gatherings of friends, co-workers, people with whom we share various interests, potential mates - is creating new patterns and social habits and is involved in changing attitudes faster than before.

Although our exposure to information and though, to knowledge, is significantly different, the human qualities required to maintain the flux of information didn't changed at all, because, the authors outline from the very beginning (xi), "altruism and goodness are essential for social networks to grow and endure". And, in addition (xii): "Just as brains can do things that no single neuron can do, so can social networks do things no single person can do".

The pattern of the "everyday social networks" are following the "natural tendency of each person to seek out and make many or more friends, to have large or small families, to work in personable or anonymous workplaces" (p.13). Social networks embrace two fundamental aspects, according to the authors (p.16) - connection and contagion - and are operating according to four fundamental rules (pp. 17-26): "We shape our network", "Our network shapes us", "Our friends affect us", "Our friends' friends' friends affect us" and "The network has a life of its own". And, as "the taste of the cake transcends the simple sum of its ingredients" (p.26). Exploring different aspects - the political aspects during voting, the contagion effect of various behaviors among teenagers (as suicide or sexual experiences) - the resources for making life parterships and building relationships - we have a full picture of our networked world.

The conclusions are based on studies released in more than a decade, with a detailed quantive background. A bizarre exception, in my opinion, is the mention of the case of spreading back pain via social networks (pp.119-120): "Before the Berlin Wall, East Germany had much lower rates of back pain than West Germany, but within ten years of reunification, rates had converged to be the same, with East Germany emulating West Germany's higher rate". The authors don't mention any surveys regarding the medical situation, the working conditions or other specific affects, but the "psychosocial decontamination". This is the risk of exclusive and non-critical inductive thinking.

The novelty brought by the Internet relies on four radical modifications of "existing types of social-network interactions" (p. 275): Enormity - our worlds are becoming increasingly big and global; Communality - the possibility to share information at the level of communities; Specificity of our ties, based on particular interests and Virtuality, under the aspects of our different identities we can shape and assume in the online world.

"We are more connected for a reason" (p. 295) and the better use of our new skills, with the help of our brains connections we already developed during our long evolutive history, is an important asset for knowledge, both emotionally and socially oriented.

Successful stories of publishing

using social media - by providing content on Twitter.

How to find a good job

Around 400 pages dedicated to preparing for addressing a job offer, preparing your credentials, going to the interview, being ready for the various tests. Plus a CD with various useful applications.

I was impressed by the quality of the detail. I discovered lots of things I never been able to order in a systematic way, as for example being ready to answer various types of questions regarding your professional perspectives and your working record.

Finding a job these days, the job to make you happy from the financial and professional point of view, while keeping a certain balance with your family life is more difficult than ever. The market is full, the level of professional standards is getting higher and higher. For example, you have now by far more qualified candidates, from the point of view of the education background, than two decades ago, as having an MA, MBA or even a PhD is a more widespreaded feature. In these cases, you genesis of the choices is made up to very careful examination of professional background, sources from the market, successful tasks.

Applying for a job is part of a very careful plan of analysis and evaluation of your own offer, your communication capacity, your medium and long-term objectives. The choices are followed by considerations regarding the dress-code, the choice of the language, the elaboration of the CV - according to various standards -, a psychological self-analysis.

The list of questions you might be prepared to answer is long and you will never be able to predict 80% of them. What it is important to have in your mind as long as possible is to know your objectives and to answer and behave accordingly. It is true that the current economic crisis is narrowing the options and limiting the freedom to say "no". But, on the other side, it is important to be ready to say "no". Everything is a matter of self-awareness and even there are books with this subject too, the most important thing are your attitude and your inner resources.

Self-helping books

or a long period of time I considered the self-help book and, in general, the publications aiming to make you happier and shining and more peaceful with a huge distrust. What profession is this, to help people to smile, to be themselves, to be happy? In fact, everybody wants to be like this, but what you cannot solve is the unpredictable and unfriendly environment. In conclusion, these self-help whatever are not to be taken into account, as their efficiency and professionalism is closer to the daily horoscopes.

It was a long time ago, more than 10 years, at a very beginning of my personal observation process of the human relations. Working in a very personalized environment as it is the case with the journalistic one, it was not necessarily a need to be too careful with the management of human resources. Journalists are supposed to be, by their professional definition, bold, mean, indifferent to what other people say. But, as I upgraded my level from a simple reporter to a middle executive, if these people do not understand the reason of being connected and coordinating with the others, their news could be a wonderful story, but without relevance for what the daily organisation of the newspaper. Hence, the need to create good communications links and to let people understand the necessity to be aware of the nonconflictual tools which could be used in relation with the others.

After these experiences, I continued to face various problems related to human resources distribution: people unhappy with their work because unable to go beyond their own limits, people unable to identify their potential in order to find the right place for outlining their capacities, people in a permanent conflictual competition with the others, but in the impossibility to realize that the most important problem relies in themselves.

With other words, the industry of self-help and coaching books is not a simple industry, but it is answering practical needs following the dramatic changes from the last years regarding our working environments, economic incertainties and outbursts of new communication tools. And I started to read several books about how to better improve ourselves, by a careful - almost scientifical - evaluation of our own resources and I also started to write one, about how to better communicate in and between institutions.

The practical experience is always the best key to create the opportunities for change and improvement. Of ourselves and of our environments. A new section in this blog will be dedicated to this books and articles dealing with how to communicate with ourselves, not only for the purpose of our very urgent commercial projects.

Good idea for difficult economic times

The textbooks rental industry.