8 Social Media Sites to help you engage with local customers!

I came across this wonderful list of – 8 Social Media Sites for Local Networking, and felt this could be expanded upon slightly. The list is good and I advise you to read to at least understand how some of these localized social networking resources may figure into your own business marketing strategy. Here are a couple more social networking sites to add to the list:

Google Groups
Join up with Google Groups and immediately start searching! Enter is some terms related to your industry, or terms somehow related or tied to your industry. Review the results and if a group looks active and has a fair amount of members, join up! And, remember, these groups aren’t just folks from anywhere, but directly from your backyard!

Slideshare
Share your powerpoint and PDF presentations either privately or publicly to users looking for just what you have to show. Join Slideshare groups and share common interests with others. More importantly modify presentation to specifically address your local market and you’ll pull in interested local users.

Social Media Helps Some Small Businesses Endure Bad Economy

Whether it’s a 50-cent discount for knowing architecture trivia on Twitter or a Hawaiian pizza night aimed at college students on Facebook, many small businesses say that social media sites have been godsends for weathering the current recession. With a dash of creativity, these companies – including some start-ups – have leaned on Facebook and Twitter as low-cost options to communicate with customers who, in turn, have helped spread the word.

Take Coolhaus, an ice cream sandwich venture by real estate developer Freya Estreller and architect Natasha Case, the latter having become recently unemployed in her field. When they launched about 10 months ago in Los Angeles, the foodie entrepreneurs didn’t rely only on their architecture-themed street vendor truck to market the brand. Instead, they took their handmade ice cream concoctions and figured out how to meld them into the local consciousness via social media.

[Continue post on ClickZ]

Small business Social Media benefits – SIMPLIFIED!!

Nice and fun to watch presentation on the basics of Social Media and the value it can provide your business:

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

The importance of understanding the traffic that visits your small business website

We’ve never had more data and metrics at our fingertips than we do today. But many business owners and managers either don’t realize this or believe that it is too complex or difficult for them to understand and use.

Web metrics are simple to interpret, can be disseminated to provide just the right amount of information you need, to create actionable strategies for your products or marketing without requiring an expensive research firm.

The best way to do it, is to start slow, start simple and learn the basics. Learn how to use the basic data from web metrics and move on from there. Anyone can do it! (no pressure here…)

1) Learn the basic aspects of website analytics
WAIT! I know the mere sight of “analytics” may send some running, but please don’t! Web analytics doesn’t have to be difficult to understand or use. Smashing Magazine has a fantastically easy to follow guide on how to use Google analytics, a free online analytics tool. Do it! You won’t regret once you figure out the opportunities for your business based on the data this tool captures.

2) Pull key data from your analytics package and document it
Pull out the data you feel is important and copy and paste this information in a spreadsheet. This will help simplify the metrics you’re looking at. You can always go back into your analytics program for more detailed metrics.

3) Create realistic goals that push the company in the right direction
Nice! You’re now not just tracking web analytics, you’re analyzing the data and creating a plan of attack based on the information you have obtained thru the analytics.

4) Create goals that push the business, but are realistic
The data is pointless if you don’t use it. Establish or modify an exisiting marketing strategy, incorporating assumptions you are now better able to make based on the data you are acquiring from Google Analytics. Give your business that added Oomph!

[Post based on article from TopRank]

5 musts for boosting the efficiency of marketing your business through social media

You can spend every minute of every day of the week following and maintaining industry news, blog posts, Twitter “tweets”, discussion boards and groups, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, and the list can go on and on. But if you want to get efficient and make better of use of what limited time you have, you have to get organized. Marketing a business through social media can easily keep a full time employee busy beyond belief. But if you don’t have an employee to dedicate to this, you’ll have to make do with what you have!

Search Engine Journal’s 5 Ways to Maximize Social Media Marketing Productivity in the Workplace starts us off on the right path, but ultimately, the factors you should take into account, when organizing your schedule for maximum efficiency are:

1. How important is social media to your overall marketing strategy? If “very” then you need to seriously examine or re-examine the time available to you in the day and dedicate a fair chunk to addressing this aspect of your business.

2. Understand your social footprint. What social networks have you established a business profile on? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? How about others? YouTube? Flickr? Oh, and don’t forget about social bookmarking sites like Delicious or StumbleUpon? Wow! Almost forgot about accounts you may have on Google or Yahoo! Groups, and the list goes on…

3. Prioritize! How spread out are you – based on #2 above? If you’re anything like me, you are spread pretty thin, with business profiles established across the known Web and social networking universe! If this is the case, and there are only 24 hours in the day you’re going to have to prioritize how much time you will dedicate to each one. Start with a base and adjust as needed.

We can keep going with this, but you get the idea. We have so much access now to information, that getting overloaded and spread too thin is commonplace. To take real advantage of the power, the reach, the potential, that social media has to offer your business, you’ve got to get organized, you’ve got to continue to improve on efficiencies, just like any aspect of your business.

Jack Bauer’s 5 rules of engagement when marketing through social media

There’s a lot of ways to approach engaging with your customers through social media, and really it boils down to specifics such as who is your targeted audience? What are your business goals, needs and requirements? etc. In other words, a properly run social media marketing campaign needs to be well thought-out and tailored specifically for your business. But, there are some things that you can do now, to help you get a feel of what’s out there? Get a better understanding of what social media is and what options are out there? Whether marketing through social media makes sense for you business? And, is this something you should try to do yourself or bring in a professional?

If Jack Bauer were running the interrogation….er, research project, these are the questions he’d probably be asking…

Jack: My name is Jack Bauer. I’m a CTU agent following up on a lead we just received concerning social media and how we can use it to more effectively engage with our target market, promote our business and strengthen our brand. We need to ask you some questions.
Suspect: I’m not talking!
Jack: Sir, I don’t have time for this. You are going to help us, right here. right now, or I am going to have to do things you are not going to like.
Suspect: I don’t know anything!
Jack: TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!!!
Suspect: (silence….some muffled whimpering…)
Jack: ONE! TWO!…
Suspect: OKAY OKAY!!!
Jack: TALK!
Suspect: One. There’s a great source of general information on Social Media, Social Networks, trends, tools and best practices. It’s called Mashable! It’s where I would start, if I were looking for some information on social media.
Jack: Go on…..
Suspect: Two. Understand the importance of marketing through social media. You’ve heard some things about it, but you don’t really know.
Jack: I’m listening…
Suspect: Three. I’d set up a personal profile on either LinkedIn or Facebook if you don’t have one already. These are two of the more popular social networking sites. Not only is this free to do, but it’ll help you understand how these sites work, and if something like this make any business sense to pursue.
Jack: Keep going….
Suspect: Four. Hit a few more social media blog sites, just to make sure you stay on top of it. The more informed you are about how other businesses are using social media, the better off you’ll be. Trust me. Start with these guys – ReadWriteWeb, WebGuild, SocialMediaToday, and SocialMediaExplorer.
Jack: Good. Are you sure that’s everything?
Suspect: (beads of sweat running down his brow, slowly nods)
Jack: If you’re not telling me everything, I will come back, and I will find you…Are you telling us everything we need to know!?!
Suspect: One last thing. Five. You can try and go this alone. You can try to market your business in-house. But understand this takes a huge time commitment and dedication. Once you start you don’t want to quit half way through. To see the long-term benefits of marketing through social media, you have to stay the course. If you don’t have the time (and most small businesses don’t), I’d recommend speaking with a professional, who will not only help you understand social media, but also help you craft a social media marketing strategy designed specifically to your business and industry. That’s it! THAT’S ALL I KNOW!!
Jack: I believe you. (Jack looks up at the other CTU agents) Let him go. We got what we came for….

A cost efficient way of marketing your business online

A good testimonial from a couple of strong, brand names in the travel industry (Travelocity & Carnival) backing up the effectiveness of deploying a well planned and executed Internet marketing campaign can really go a long way. And even more notable is the fact that these two companies were able to achieve this vast improvement through a combination of “organic search optimization” means, such as social media and website optimization, which are the more cost efficient means of Internet marketing.

Organic search engine optimization is a cost effective and efficient way to drive qualified traffic to your website. It doesn’t break the bank and can still do wonders for your business website. And, no matter how big your business is, applying organic search engine optimization practices to your website will always be a viable and effective option.

1 in 5 U.S. Small Businesses Use Social Media

Small business in the U.S. is beginning to understand and take advantage of the benefits that social media affords their operations:

The plus side of social media? Using social media to better engage with your targeted customer. Not just waiting for them to “discover” your service, but actively going out and speaking to them and building trust.

The down side of social media? There isn’t one. It’s typically free to use and create a business profile. It provides an additional marketing channel for you to strengthen and enhance your business brand, and since your competitors probably have some sort of established presence out there already, it would probably be a good idea that you seriously look at getting your business up and running using social media as well.

Small businesses in the United States have doubled their use of social media in the last year, with social media adoption doubling from 12 percent in December 2008 to 24 percent in December 2009.

According to the December 2009 Small Business Success Index(TM) (SBSI) sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, nearly 1 in 5 small business owners actively using social media in their business, using such tools as blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Small business owners are predominately motivated to use social media in order to identify and attract new customers (61 percent of small businesses surveyed for the study). Most have embraced social media by creating a company page on a social network (75 percent of those surveyed), while 57 percent have built a network through a site such as LinkedIn.

Small businesses have mixed expectations about social media, with 45 percent expecting it to be profitable in the next twelve months and 50 percent indicating that it takes too much time.

Some small businesses also have misgivings about social media, with 17 percent believing it gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet, and 6 percent saying that social media use has hurt the image of their business more than helped it.

[Kikabink News]

Social Technology IS the future.

Focused on enterprise-level business – ZDNET’s Ten emerging Enterprise 2.0 technologies to watch is saturated with social technologies for business. Many tools and applications are mentioned, but here are a few to note:

Social Community Management
Automating and making community management more efficient. For that, look to apps such as:

Rollstream

and, Essentia

Social CRM
Social networking and media is all about engaging and connecting with your customers. These tools help facilitate this:

Get Satisfaction

and, HelpStream

Social Analytics
Social media generates a lot of information and data, but what good is it if you cannot make it manageable and useful. Welcome to analytics:

Connotate

Good article. Lot of useful information and many tools and social applications are discussed giving you a good understanding of how to get ahead in the near term. Enjoy.

5 great ideas to help you better manage your online presence

A straightforward list of important things to account for when looking at managing your online presence. If you’ve noticed, once you have established anymore than maybe two or three online profiles on the various social networking sites, consistently managing your presence quickly becomes a beast. These steps are nice reminders of what’s important…