10 Tips for Making Facebook Work for You

A few days ago I got an email from an outdoor writer/photographer who said he has closed his Facebook account. He had created the account in the expectation of its being good for business. Instead, it had been a distraction and a nuisance, as friends played games, conducted polls, and otherwise filled his page with non-work-related apps. Not only was Facebook not good for his business, it was detrimental to his getting work done.

It really made me think about how I use Facebook and how writers, editors, and photographers can benefit from it rather than have their work disturbed. I’ll admit that until fairly recently, I disliked Facebook intensely. While I opened an account with business purposes in mind, it quickly turned into a place to connect with old friends. Not that I didn’t want to do that, but high school friends and business associates didn’t belong on the same page. I also experienced the same distractions as the writer who closed his account: games, virtual hugs, teddy bears, polls, and the like that didn’t appeal to me, especially in a forum where I’m trying to do business. So I just connected on Twitter and avoided Facebook.

But the past year has taught me that the outdoor industry’s clients, consumers, and participants are online, and Facebook is the number one platform where they congregate. Any of us who aren’t also there are missing a valuable means of connecting with them and with one another. And the networking benefits alone make it worthwhile to me. In the past month alone, I’ve met writers, editors, photographers, outfitters, prospective clients, wildlife agency people, and others online with whom I might work in the future. I’ve also introduced two photographers to multiple editors, helped several writers connect with editors who were looking for their expertise, and facilitated numerous introductions between people who might have common business interests.

If the writer who left Facebook had asked me how to use it more effectively to benefit his business, here are 10 tips I would have passed along:

1. Hide all the games, virtual hugs, bunnies, flowers, quizzes, and anything else you find distracting. These don’t have to appear on your page.
2. Create a business page to separate business from pleasure. Invite your business friends to become “fans” of the page. Personally, I’m a little turned off by that term, but it’s a connection nonetheless. Post to it or start a discussion every day.
3. Use the business page for business interactions. Give fans a reason to be there. Post teasers and links to current articles and blog posts, initiate discussions, post photos of business travel or samples of your portfolio, talk about what’s going on at your magazine or website. Are you a book author? Here’s about the best book promotion I’ve ever seen.
4. Set up “lists” of your friends. I have lists for Outdoors, hometown friends, Raindogs (look it up), and other categories. When I just want to see what the Outdoors list is talking about, that’s the view I choose. When I’m only interested in the Raindogs, I choose that tab.
5. Build your network. This can only be useful if you have a network. Chances are, most of the people in your email address book are on Facebook; look for them. One easy way to find connections for your network is to look at the friends of your friends, then invite the ones you know or want to know.
6. Promote your page. If you blog, write magazine articles, have a TV show, produce hunting videos, have a website, or have any other public presence, provide a link to your Facebook page. Post a link on Twitter, and add it to your LinkedIn profile.
7. Engage. If you are simply posting to your page but not engaging, having conversations, responding to others’ posts, and being part of a community, you are doing it wrong.
8. Produce some content exclusively for each platform. If you use a social media application like TweetDeck or FriendFeed, it’s easy to post to, say, both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. But don’t make it automatic. Those who follow you in both places don’t want to read all the same posts twice. Also, the practices of Twitter – hashtags, @ replies, retweets, text-speak, the limitations of 140 characters, and other contrivances must be annoying to non-Tweeting Facebook friends.
9. Step outside your comfort zone. Don’t limit your friends to people you already know. Make new connections. Read profiles and learn about other people’s professions and interests. Make and ask for introductions.
10. Talk to people like me. Let us know what you’re working on, whom you need to meet, what types of markets you’re looking for, the connections you’d like to make. Maybe I can make the introduction you need or at least brainstorm the project you’re trying to figure out.

What would you tell the writer who left Facebook about making it a productive place? How do you use it for business?

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What Are We Doing Here?

I was lucky in my draw of genes. As is typical of her family, my mother has only a few grey hairs at an age when most people have more salt than pepper.  She has fewer wrinkles than most of my friends from high school, and it certainly wasn’t from living a cushy life. So if being in the shooting industry for 25 years and owning a PR business for 20 hasn’t given me grey hair and too many wrinkles, what have I gotten out of it?  Well, I ache in a few places I didn’t know I had when I started, and, oh yes — I’ve learned a few things about how this complex relationship between manufacturers and the press works. Or how it ought to. 

I’m not one of those PR people who think outdoor writers have their hands out for “free stuff.” On the contrary, most of the writers I know have more “stuff” than they have room in which to store it. I’ve always considered it a privilege to help writers and editors with their projects, and that’s what my PR philosophy centers around: I want to help you do your job. Sometimes that takes the form of overnighting products to you, writing copy that will exactly fit your 7¼-inch sidebar, or creating a makeshift studio on my credenza or fence post to quickly set up exactly the photo you need. It’s my job and my pleasure.

But times have changed. In the same way that digital photography, email, and the internet have changed the manner and speed with which we can fill your editorial needs, they have changed your jobs. Your editors have different expectations of you. You have more competition among other writers, photographers, and editors. A tight economy means magazines are closing or getting thinner, dropping writers, paying less for your work, or requiring greater rights for what they’re paying.

I’ve made a genuine effort over the years to stay abreast of trends so I could service my accounts and help writers in the way they need to work — but at the same time, to bring them along to new ideas and new and better ways of working. In the 1980s, I insisted that many writers buy fax machines so we could improve our communications. In the 1990s, I walked writers through the process of setting up email accounts, sending and receiving attachments, and other activities you now do with your eyes closed. Now I consider myself a social media evangelist bent on bringing outdoor writers and organizations online and in real-time communication with their readers, customers, and colleagues.

So that’s what we’re doing here. I want to help you do your job; in some cases, just to help you see things through another set of eyes, and in other cases, to give you ideas of new ways to do your job easier, better, and more competitively. How can I help you?

Hal Swiggett

Hal Swiggett came into my life in 1988, within weeks after Outdoor Media Resources came into being.  Hal died Monday, March 2, 2009, at the age of 87.

As an outdoor writer and editor who specialized in handguns, Hal was my first and best public relations success story.  Immediately before we met, he had written unkind words about not only the pistol scopes being made by my first client, Simmons, but about the company itself.  That meant I had to address it.  I wrote Hal a letter expressing my desire to change his opinion of Simmons, to have the company learn from the points he had raised, and to have him help us develop a better product.  We became fast friends.

A few months later, I sent Hal a prototype of a new pistol scope my client was considering producing, one they thought would correct the problems Hal had identified in no uncertain terms.  My accompanying note said, “See if you can break this.”  For many years thereafter, I read and heard Hal tell the story of that note, his effort to break the scope, and how he shot with right and left trigger fingers until he no longer could, then pulled the trigger of his 44 Mag with his middle finger. 

That actually turned out to be good practice for Hal.  What’s the worst thing that could happen to a gunwriter?  Near the top of the list would be somehow losing use of his trigger finger, but that’s just what happened to Hal several years later. A freak tire-changing accident cost him his trigger finger, but not once did I hear him complain.  “I have nine others,” he told me.

I hunted with Hal many times - moose, bears, whitetails, and hogs – and on our last hunt together, he even let me persuade him to use a muzzleloader. That still didn’t keep him from showing up at the Nail Ranch in Texas with his vehicle full of handguns. Big ones, little ones, new ones, old ones, some with the lowest serial numbers most of us had ever seen.

Once at an NRA convention, I complimented Hal, who always wore a vest, on the very distinctive one he was wearing. Two days later, I got an identical one in the mail. At the following NRA convention, we drew chuckles wearing our matching vests – unplanned – to the American Handgunner Awards dinner.  I wore mine so he could see me wearing it. He wore his, he said, to prove to me that he actually hadn’t sent me the vest off his back. I learned to be cautious when complimenting my generous friend, more than once saying something like, “I like your turquoise watchband – but I don’t want it!”

He somehow learned that I collected loon decoys, so for years he sent me every “loony” thing he came across – decoys, collector plates, photos, art prints. If it were legal to kill or capture one, I have no doubt he would have sent me the real thing.

Hal Swiggett was not only a gunwriter but also a Baptist minister who fulfilled his calling by visiting hospitals every day, and he was a devoted husband to his dear Wilma. To me, he was the kind of friend who would give candid advice, keep my secrets, appreciate my successes, give compassion or consolation when I needed it, and tell me what I needed to hear, even when it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

Hal was in declining health in recent years, and I’ve missed him.  Now, as I learned of his death, I’m celebrating his long and happy life, doing exactly what he wanted to do.  Goodbye, dear friend.

 ###

 Note:  Thanks to my friends, outdoor writers Jim Foster and Bill Miller, who contacted me to pass along the news of Hal’s death.  Below is the obituary Jim forwarded.

SWIGGETT
Harold “Hal” Swiggett, age 87, passed away from the loving arms of his family to the loving arms of his Lord on Monday, March 2, 2009. He was born to Otho Benjamin & Mildred Swiggett in Moline, Kansas. He was preceded in death by his son, Vernon Lee Swiggett. He is survived by his beloved wife, Wilma C. Swiggett; sons, Dr. Gerald Eugene Swiggett (Ida); daughter in law, Linda Swiggett; grandchildren, Donna, Darryl, Leah, Katherine, Stuart; great grandchildren, Nathan, Leanne, Jordan, Ryan, Zachary, Meredith, D.J., Haille, Cameron.

Mr. Hal Swiggett was a gun writer for over fifty years; African big game hunter with over 25 hunts with a handgun only, a 30-year contributor to Gun Digest, Field Editor of the “North American Hunter” and Senior Editor of Harris Publications. Hal was included in the “Top Ten” Outstanding American Handgunner Award for 10 years and was awarded the first place bronze sculpture on the 10th time. He served on the committee that built the NRA National Firearms Museum. Hal is also an ordained minister giving comfort to hospital patients daily.

SERVICES
The family will be having Private Services. In lieu of flowers, the family requests yard plants.

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Dave is a 20-ish, adventurous young college student who made a road trip from New York to Alabama last July with his sister and two friends, just to hear some great music. He and his pals ended up at a party I was hosting for a large group of strangers from all over the U.S. and around the world. Why I did something so bizarre but fun is another story. This one is about Dave.

The party was off to a great start, and a crowd had gathered around someone telling a story on the deck. Dave and his crew were in the circle surrounding the story-teller when he suddenly stood up and said quietly, “I have to get out of my comfort zone.” He moved around the crowd until he was on the opposite side, positioned himself between a couple of strangers, and shook hands with both.

Dave was on an adventure. He recognized that he couldn’t make new friends and have a memorable night unless he moved away from his traveling companions with whom he was comfortable.  I saw him make about 30 friends that night, get invited to visit people all over the world, and become part of a group traveling to Atlanta the next evening.

Some of the most successful writers and editors I’ve worked with were those who were willing to get out of their comfort zone.  My clients and I taught them to shoot and hunt with a muzzleloader for the first time, and they developed a new skill to write about.  We taught riflemen to hunt with handguns and shoot clays with shotguns. Like Dave, they wanted to meet the writers and editors they didn’t already know and learn from them.  Editors listened to our ideas for new columns and new subject matter. Writers and editors asked us for introductions to one another.

When did you last take up a new shooting discipline?  If you’re a gun writer, have you ever written about fishing, bowhunting, birdwatching, camping, or canoeing?  When you go on a sponsored hunt, do you hang out with the writers you already know or make a point of meeting the ones you don’t?  When was the last time you queried an editor of a magazine that was larger, more prestigious, or better-paying than your current markets? Have you ever queried a non-endemic publication?

Dave may still be a student, but we can all learn something from him. When was the last time you were out of your comfort zone professionally?