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How Small Businesses Get the Most from Social Media

Just how are small businesses using social media? What level of online presence should you have? One way to start is to review what other small business owners are doing and model it after them.

Once again our friends at Mashable! have provided some insights in their latest Infographics report.

In a nutshell, here’s what they have found.

What social networks are small businesses using?

Twitter: 78%

Facebook: 75%

LinkedIn: 30%

WordPress: 22%

Flickr: 13%

Tumblr: 11%

Blogger: 10%

How many small businesses have multiple profiles on the major social networks?

Facebook: 31%

Twitter: 10%

Does engagement drive traffic?

Yes! On average Twitter got 117 clicks, while Facebook received 250.

Which platforms should small businesses be using?

Both! The Twitter platform engages customers and there is more interaction, while Facebook will drive more traffic to your site.

One thing that ‘the numbers’ do not show is that these social media tools are not necessarily in competition with each other. When comparing the latest social media tools, it often looks like a race is taking place, when in fact their true power comes from working in harmony. Twitter drives people to Facebook and vice versa. It’s like Twitter is the fisherman using a large net, while Facebook is using a Musky Rod.

From the data above, it is obvious that social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are vital to promoting small businesses. Understanding the ins and outs and leveraging their benefits are the key to your success! Give us a call today to make sure you’re making the most of it.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their conversion rates by adding proven online marketing techniques to their marketing mix.

We do this by integrating inbound marketing techniques into each business’s current marketing plan and by utilizing digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

First Steps to Successful Marketing on Facebook

Today, there are more than 500 million active users, 50% of these users log in daily. Every average user has 130 friends. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

With those kinds of statistics Facebook is a natural for B2C businesses trying to build a loyal following: businesses like restaurants, hotels, sporting establishments, services and so forth.Social Media

Best of all: It’s free and easy.

Start your Facebook Personal Page

First step: you will need to establish your own personal page. The personal info you provide for this page is also your registration with Facebook for your business page, so you will only need to enter it one time. Often this is where someone worries about their privacy; don’t worry, you will (and should) adjust your privacy settings under your personal profile and restrict it so you limit who can view your personal page.  After that, you’re clear to create a business page.

Start a Facebook Business Page

Check out my free e-Book for step-by-step tips on starting your Facebook Business Page including screen examples of the Facebook personal page, business page and group page steps.

Start a Facebook Group

There is little to adjust for privacy on the business page; it’s open to all (except for age restrictions) and allows minimal control over how people interact with your page. If that lack of control bothers you, then maybe a facebook group is for you. It allows complete control of content, but is more effort for you to maintain.

Promote, promote promote!

All set up? Now, focus on promoting your business. Make frequent posts that are brief, upbeat and entice people to visit your business; or at least think about it more favorably. Understand your audience by developing your Online Persona. This helps you write posts that get attention and appeal to your fans.

Learn the power of reposting. This is one simple technique that is often overlooked. Ask a few of your most loyal customers (or friends and family) to repost your page or group on their walls by clicking the share feature. This starts a fan wave that exposes people to your business to whom  you do not have access.

Finally, use the new ‘Tell Your Fans’ feature that allows you to upload your contacts from your email or CRM program. This will allow the exposure of your site to grow.

Next issue? What would you like to hear more about?

First Steps to Successful Inbound Marketing

So, you’ve watched Socialnomics with Eric Qualman and now you ‘get it’.

Haven’t seen it yet? Here it is again.

Now, you’re ready to begin the first steps to successful Inbound Marketing. Because traditional marketing will never be the same. It will no longer get you ‘there’. If you want to move your business forward, then you will need to focus on what you’re doing online. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Own Your Own Website
There is nothing more important than owning your own website. It’s your basecamp. The place that all your social media efforts revolve around. The place where all your communications should originate from -and end up at.

Location, location, location!
Now more than ever location matters. Whether it’s a busy street corner or a hard to find hole in the wall, getting your spot on the map right is vital. My recommendation is first things, first. Can people find you? If you’re a restaurant, hotel or auto repair shop, then start by registering your address and details on Google Places. This will literally, put you on the map.

Google Places http://www.google.com/help/places/index.html

Get Found
Make it easy for others to find your website (you do have a website, right?) by adding it to these most popular search engines, as listed below. Yes, all of them. This will allow the search engines to find you without waiting for them to ‘crawl’ your site. Being proactive on this is a good thing.Socialnomics

Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Bing- http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
Yahoo! Local – http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
Yelp! http://www.yelp.com/business?country=US

Consider these:
__Craigslist- http://yourcity.craigslist.org/
__Here is a link where you can submit your site to MANY places:
http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm

Next steps
For all businesses, the top things that you need to do is establish a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and start a blog. For hospitality businesses, include TripAdvisor in that equation. Put it at the top of the list.
I’ll cover those in future articles. Stay tuned!

Facebook updates for your profile and for your business

Facebook Profiles update

Facebook is implementing some changes that affect your personal profiles again. In the past, they have taken some criticism that their abrupt improvements were questionable. This time around, it seems Facebook has learned and improved on how they go about the update. They’ve added a wizard that helps and walks you through the process. In a nutshell, the changes to Facebook for personal profiles are:

  • A background summary that includes employers, education and location info.
  • New photo montage of 5 of your favorite photos just below your info summary
  • New navigation tabs in the left column
  • More details for your work experience and educational background
  • More info for your interests like music, books, and art
  • Group capabilities for your friends and more detail of your relationships

Changes for Facebook Business

Your Facebook Business Page has added a new feature also. In the last week, they added the ability to upload your contacts list from Outlook, gmail, Linked In, etc. After you have uploaded your contacts, you can invite them to ‘Like” your page.

To do this go to your page> Edit Page> Marketing> Tell your Fans>Upload a Contact File.

If you are using Facebook as a principle means of attracting clients, this can be very worthwhile.

Opposing facebook stories-of-the-day

Okay everyone, Jimmy Kimmel has declared that facebook is irrelevant and that tomorrow is National Unfriend Day

Are you with him?

Ironically, facebook is attempting to make Jimmy K. irrelevant by announcing, today, that it will be launching facebook messages, This will add messaging similar to Google’s gmail to its mix. Watch the video to see how it will work. This will be BIG.

Facebook’s New Messaging System Explained [VIDEO].

Jus’ sayin’ Life’s interesting, isn’t it?