Big News in the Social Media world!! As we’ve talked about often, Facebook is rapidly becoming THE go-to tool for Social Media Marketing. Businesses are jumping on the bandwagon and bringing entirely new facets to the art of client interaction.

Facebook, has finally provided something that businesses have been requesting for some time: a migration tool to convert a personal Profile into a Facebook Page.

Why would you want to do that? Profiles are for meant individual people, they aren’t suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands, and public figures with better communication, more opportunities for expression, and improved relevancy.

Gone are the days of using a personal profile that was setup with a business name and “friending” as many people as possible. The most prevalent issue with this strategy (aside from violating Facebook’s Terms of Service), is that a personal profile has a 5,000 friend limit.

The migration tool allows you to convert that personal profile into a Page, and carry all of your friends over there with you. This is far superior to creating a new Page for your business and “Suggesting to Friends” using Facebook’s admin tool, which typically has a very low conversion rate.

Be aware though, not all content will make the transition. From Facebook Developer Blog “Be aware that when you convert your profile to a Page, your profile pictures will be transferred, and all of your friends will be automatically added as people who like your Page. No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning your migration.”

It’s a smart move to utilize this exciting feature and bring the full power behind the Facebook network to your business. We can help you make the transition and get the most out of your online marketing.

B.L. Ochman has kept me entertained with his various articles poking fun at the proliferation of people claiming to be social media gurus. His most recent article about how the number of self-proclaimed “social media guru” titles has gone down but other, but new titles are emerging got me thinking:

Hiring a [social media] strategist, guru, consultant, or any other title is a bad idea for 99% of the companies I come in contact with.

Now, before someone with that title gets all upset and leaves me a heated comment, let me explain why I feel this way.

Social media is a very small piece of what it takes for the majority of businesses to succeed online, pure and simple. Hiring someone who is a recently name social media _________ is a bad idea, because it’s very likely that person knows little about many of the other tools in the online marketing arsenal.  It takes years of study, trial and error, discipline, and a little luck; to become an effective online marketer.  Do you really want to hire someone who has mastered Twitter and Facebook to manage your online strategy?

If you think you need a social media strategist, then I’m going to make a very educated guess and say that is probably only a part (maybe a small part) of what you need.  Most businesses I start working with are not doing many of the other fundamental things right – so why would you jump into social media?!

If you’re not effectively marketing to search engines and generating qualified traffic that converts, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

If you are not segmenting your customers with email lists, cross-promoting to them and building loyalty and referrals, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

These are some sweeping generalizations, but it boils down to this: you need an online strategist, not a social media __________. You need someone who can look at your business and craft a solution from all the many tools in the online marketing toolbox, not just push you into social media because it’s what everyone wants to talk about right now.

Related articles:

• Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing (verticalmeasures.com)
• 3 Social Media Myths You Should Be Careful Of (onesocialmedia.com)
• The Big Myth – Anyone Can Do Social Media (charlesheflin.com)

Presented on July 14th to SMS/HSMAI “Ways To Win in 2010″ seminar.

This is my 4-step methodology that can ensure anyone is successful in marketing to social media channels, regardless of which channel is used. If you can master these areas, then you can realize the effectiveness of online marketing!

The Auto DM is a greatly debated subject in the Twittersphere.  Some people don’t mind them, some hate them with a passion, and there is obviously a huge number of people that are using them.  If you’ve attended the recent workshops on my PLET method for Twitter, then you’ll know that I’m an advocate of some of the features that SocialOomph affords (such as emailed tweet keyword searches).

However, I get really burned out on seeing a “nice to tweet you” or “thanks for joining my Tweeple on Twitter” messages. It’s not authentic, and it annoys me; but my purpose for this post is not to debate the validity of the Auto DM. There are plenty of other sites for that purpose, like StopAutoDM.com. My goal here is to show you how to [at least] opt out of the Auto DMs that are powered by SocialOomph:

1)  Log in to Twitter.
2)  Follow @OptMeOut.
3)  Wait for @OptMeOut to follow you back. @OptMeOut will send you a DM to tell you it has followed you.
4)  Then send a DM to @OptMeOut. (You can write whatever you want in the DM, it does not matter.)
5)  After sending the DM, unfollow @OptMeOut. (This way your opting out remains private since you won’t be in the list of @OptMeOut’s followers. We will unfollow you as well.)

Pretty simple!  This will at least block some of the silly messages.  Good luck!