Here’s the dilemma. You want to create a handful of posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You probably now you shouldn’t sell more than 20% of the time. But … of the other 80%, can you include some personal info?

Option #1: No – keep everything all business. Every entry should include business tips and ideas. Some will have links to your blog, your articles or other free resources on your site. Some will be stand-alone tips. But all will be related to your business. You’re not making conversation; you’re having sales conversations.

Option #2: Yes – some biz owners (especially on Facebook) seem to favor getting to know others 3-dimensionally. Every time someone posts a photo of a cat (or even a photo of the cat’s food, bed or (I’m not kidding) drugs), they get dozens of comments!

I’m voting for Option #2 because:

Some readers are not potential clients. They’re jv partners or referral sources. You already have credibility and they won’t benefit from your tips.  They just want to touch base, get to know you and have a smile added to their day.

When you respond to a personal post, you get attention and name recognition. Your readers are “primed” to recognize your name. It’s the same phenomenon as TV ads that introduce a product, so you’ll notice an aisle display in the supermarket afterward. The psychological explanation is that we perceive selectively and we are more likely to notice elements of our environment after we have been primed.

You can communicate your success subtly without bragging all over the place on your website. I suspect that’s why we see posts like, “My gorgeous significant other and I just boarded our yacht for a Sunday cruise around our private lake.”

However, I want to add a few caveats:

Don’t write anything that could embarrass you or your family. Remember your readers are taking events out of context and some are meeting you for the very first time. “I just spilled a pitcher of iced tea all over my computer keyboard” is not a good first start.

Create entries that will motivate readers to comment in a meaningful way. For instance, I just saw a Facebook post about a coach who was going back to school for a graduate degree. This post prompted all sorts of queries: What was she studying? Why was she returning to school? What challenges did she expect?

Be prepared for controversy. One business owner posted a story about giving drugs to his cat. A lot of people were horrified. Unlike politicians, we have the luxury of not disclosing every aspect of our lives. Do your prospects and business associates need to know about your religious values, family conflicts, and/or medical issues? Sometimes they do but more often the risk does not justify the response.

We will be talking about social media in future FREE Cat Chats starting July 9. The Cat Chats are teleseminars about creating a compelling, profitable online presence. To get on the list, sign up for this FREE Report.

And … what is your response? Click on “comments” below to share your views.

Most of us have been to Open Houses in the live world.

Real estate agents invite prospective buyers to look over a property.

New businesses introduce themselves with an Open House. Even professional services, such as physician groups, have done this.

Businesses open their doors during holiday seasons.

But what if your business primarily exists in the virtual world? You can get a similar effect when you think about the purpose of an Open House: get to meet some good prospects face-to-face and get a jump start on the “know-like-and trust” factor.

Two ways to hold a virtual Open House:

(1) Offer a Q&A teleseminar. Invite your list members to attend and ask questions. Even if just a few people show, you will have a good time. You can share the recording with the rest of your list, so they’ll observe the way you answer questions and talk to others.

(2) Offer a call-in day, where prospects call you and chat one-to-one for a specified amount of time – usually 10-15 minutes. You’ll have more opportunity to meet more people than you would at a typical networking event. You also get to interact on a deeper level, creating a more solid connection.

Learn more about these options:

More Clients With Call-In Days :
http://www.GoodCatMarketing.com/call-in-day.html

Somehow I lived this long without gambling (unless you count the occasional football pool). Never placed a bet on a slot machine.

While I’m here in Las Vegas attending Shine, I spent some time with Jeanette Cates, an established and highly successful Internet marketer. One of my Seattle friends insisted, “You’ve got to place at least one bet!” and Jeanette agreed to show me the ropes.

Well, I got quite an education – in marketing. Jeanette explained that gambling forces

Some people will never place a bet – not even a small one that they can easily afford to use. They’re totally risk averse or they’re afraid they’ll get hooked.

You can protect yourself by setting limits. Before you place a bet, decide how much loss you will tolerate before you leave and when you’ll decide you’ve won enough and you need to cash out.

If you hit a losing streak, change to a new machine or change the way you bet. For instance, you can bet a different amount per line (don’t ask me to explain).

Most important, follow your intuition. When you feel drawn to a machine, maybe you should play that one. When you feel turned off or just in the wrong mood, don’t play.

No matter how you strategize, you’ll have some great days and some bad days.

Well, here’s what I did. Jeanette guided me to one machine. I added $20. First I won a little but then hit a losing streak. Time to find a new machine.

These machines have themes. Star Trek? Weather? No thanks. Ah – there’s a machine based on the theme from Sex and The City television show! One of my faves. OK, I was drawn to that machine. We transferred our balances. This time I got a bonus play…and some bonus spins of the wheel. Soon my $20 became $75.

My friend who challenged me to place a bet will get treated to a good dinner. And I think I learned about a lot more than gambling.

I’ll be incorporating some of these lessons (indirectly) when we begin the workshop next week. There’s still time to sign up at the Early Bird rate. Just go here to learn more.

To this day I avoid auto-following on Twitter and automatic Friending on Facebook.

Friends? I know many people who were eager to say “yes” to all requests for friends. They soon reached the magic 5000 number, when they couldn’t add more Friends. They realized that many existing Friends had no relationship to their businesses, but who’s got time to sort through 5000 names?

Therefore, when I get a Friend request, I assess the request in terms of my business. If there’s no obvious relationship, I ignore the request. I don’t use Facebook for personal connections and I encourage my own clients to set up separate accounts for business and personal relationships.

Twitter also places restrictions on the number of people you can follow. All too often, people will follow you and then un-follow almost immediately. As a result, you end up with many more “following” than “followers.” No problem till you follow 2000 people. Now your ratio gets constrained by the system. You’re allowed to follow just 10% more people than are following you. IF you are following 3300 people, you need to get more than 3000 followers. Otherwise the system sends you a rather strong message: “You are not allowed to follow more people at this time.”

Here are some of my criteria for “following back” on Twitter, i.e., reciprocating when someone follows me:

A photo or customized icon

A link to a live website

A clear indication of who they are and what they do

A balanced ratio of followers to following. Here’s how it works:

Following: 1992   Followers: 124

This Twitter user is just not attracting followers or else people are choosing to un-follow because the content is boring or (more likely) offensive in some way. When I visit that Twitterer’s home page, often I see a series of blatant sales messages, with nothing else.

Following: 101 Followers: 90,229

This person isn’t going to follow me back. If he’s initiated a request by following me, he’ll soon unfollow. If I have a ton of followers already, and these tweets seem interesting and informative, I may go for it. Otherwise, I risk upsetting my ratios and will be limited in my ability to follow people who are more likely to reciprocate.

I’ve always maintained that Amazon is the other social medium. Therefore, you can use this medium to get more traffic to your website, when you know how to work the system, jsut as you do with Twitter and Facebook.

If you’d like to see this system in action, look up a book Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirm. Kirn wrote several novels, including Up In The Air, which is now a movie.

Lost in the Meritocracy shows how democratic and varied Amazon can be. You’ll notice that opinions are almost evenly divided on the way this book is ranked. Reviews have also attracted a lot of comments. Readers related to this book strongly. Some said it brought back memories of their own college days. Others were critical of the author, either because he (a) spent time in his fifties “whining” about events that happened thirty years ago or (b) wasted the opportunity to get a top-notch education.

There are lessons to be drawn from reading this book. And there are lessons to be drawn about reviewing this book.

If you are a consultant who helps parentes choose a college, this book would be good. You can discuss the difficulties of choosing a college and why the most prestigious college may not be the best choice.

If you are a life coach, your review  could address challenges in decision-making and the futility (or benefits) of looking back on a period of your life.

To learn more about how reviewing books on Amazon can bring more traffic to your website, go here.

Recently I talked to someone who’s setting up his first blog. He has awesome content and a host of fans all set to follow him. But he made these 3 common mistakes (I did too, when I started!):

Mistake #1: Starting with blogger.com. There are 3 major problems wth using blogger.com. First, your blog can disappear at a moment’s notice. That happened to me! I wasn’t doing anything wrong; I just happened to use a link to my own site more than once. It took days of anxious nail-biting to get my blog back.

Secondly, your blog won’t get taken seriously. For one thing, viewers can hop to another blog just by clicking “Next Blog” on top of your page. Who knows what that next blog will be?

Finally, you have very limited options for using your blog as a marketing tool. No widgets. No plug-ins.

Mistake #2: Long, long posts. Keep your posts at 250-500 words. When you have a long post, break it up into smaller posts. You don’t have to remember to post: systems like WordPress let you set up posts far in advance.

Mistake #3: No links from blog to google, facebook and other sources. Your blog won’t work effectively as a stand-alone.

If your blog is just for fun, no worries. Go ahead and use blogspot or even wordpress.com. But to be taken seriously by the blogosphere, and for maximum marketing, get thee to a WordPress.org site.  I recommend WordPress over Typepad because (a) WordPress has more options (b) you can get lots of inexpensive support for WordPress.

Let’s face it, Facebook earns money indirectly by having millions of participants. So I don’t think I’m being grinchy when I get frustrated with Facebook’s arbitrary requirements and unclear policies. If you invite someone to the party, you can’t ban them from the refreshment table after you’ve taken their coats.

Last night I got a rude shock when I sent out a Facebook message to folks who responded “yes” to my invitation to today’s Cat Chat. To my surprise, and shock, the message didn’t get through. I got a note saying my message contained “inappropriate content” that had been flagged by Facebook users.

Since my message was time-sensitive, I turned to the Internet. Apparently my message had a link to a “bad” site. So I tried sending the message without the “budurl” link shrinker and lo and behold the message went through.

I went to budurl’s twitter page. Sure enough, they knew there was an issue with Facebook. But they hadn’t bothered to put up a notice to let their subscribers know.

Budurl isn’t innocent either. I’ve been trying to use a link to Armand Morin’s excellent Silver mentorship program (which I recommend). They keep saying the link is associated with something bad. Armand Morin associated with spam and/or spyware? I don’t think so.

Ever feel like you’re caught in a maze? Normally I’d use budurl to promote this blog post, but I’ll try tweetmeme instead. At least something works.

Internet marketing rewards consistency more than just about anything else. It’s not enough to have a blog or send articles; you have to make a LOT of blog posts and write a LOT of articles.

The notion of “critical mass” appears in many areas of life. I once knew a pharacist who taught me the term “sub-therapeutic dose.” That means you don’t take enough of a drug to make a difference. Malcolm Gladwell introduced the term “tipping point” to the reading public. And on the Internet, we need to think of MIL: Minimum Impact Level. (How’s that for a new term?)

Here’s my 5-Step MIL Visibility Program:

• Blog 3 to 5 times each week.
• Write articles 2 times each week. (You can just modify your blog posts to reinforce your message.)
• Facebook: Invite 5 to 10 Friends a week.
• Twitter: 3 informative posts a day (plus promo and friend posts).
• Forums: Join 2-3 forums in your market. Choose active forums and contribute ideas, not sales pitches.

I go into a lot more detail (including the 3 types of blog posts and the ratio to use each) in my Social Marketing Power product.

I get SO frustrated when I try to RT and

(1) The post is too long! You need to leave room for the sender’s name AND your name. Use the max 140 and it’s tough.

(2) You used a long URL. It won’t carry over into a RT. Shorten with budurl, tinyurl, snipurl or a RT.

My posts are easy to RT because I’ve got a Tweet button. You can also go to “Share this” and stumble or use another social medium.

More on social media marketing here.

Want to get more comments and more dialogue on your blog and Facebook? Here one deceptively simple strategy from Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound:

Ever feel like you’re talking to yourself at your blog and at social networking sites?

If so, try this experiment. It will lead to more comments at your blog, on your Facebook wall, on Twitter, and even at niche social networking sites.

Choose one of the following phrases and add it to the end of your blog posts or messages:

–”Am I wrong?”

–”Am I crazy?”

–”What do you think?”

–”Do you agree?”

–”What’s your best advice?”

–”How many of you are guilty of this?” (I use this phrase after linking to an article that talks about “the biggest mistakes.”)

–”Your thoughts?”

–”What’s your best tip?”

–”What’s your Number One pet peeve?”

These are all conversation-starters. They show your readers that you’re curious about what’s on their minds.

Sometimes those magic phrases lead to a lively give-and-take. When I end my messages with one of those questions, I generate more comments at my blog and more retweets from my followers on Twitter.

You can also use those phrases when pointing to controversial content at somebody else’s site. Don’t shy away from sharing other people’s information on Facebook.

One of the best ways to do that is by creating a Facebook Note, where you can upload photos, link to other websites and use HTML to command attention.

Not making good use of Notes is one of the mistakes we discussed during the recent teleseminar on “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.” You can read about the other 10, and learn how to access the transcripts and recordings, at http://budurl.com/jfgw

How many of those opportunities are you missing?

Reprinted from “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week,” an ezine featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity. Subscribe here and receive by email the handy cheat sheet “89 Reasons to Send a Press Release.” [Highly recommended. ]