Social Media Tips: Online Strategies for Small Business Networking Profits

 

Small businesses today are using social media to compete with large company’s multi-million dollar marketing budgets.  Banding together with other small businesses, they are sponsoring events through sites like Twitter, Facebook and various blogs.

Having problems finding someone to handle all of the social media duties? Queensland, Australia held a contest to find someone to blog and promote tourism in their area. More than 34,000 applied for their dream job. Small companies all over are creating similar campaigns with hundreds of qualified entries and campaigns that are generating massive media attention with hundreds of thousands of articles written or blogged about them.

Since small, locally owned businesses don’t have the ten’s of thousands of dollars needed to build a website and crank up a media frenzy, they are turning to Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the Ning network to prove that small companies can compete with these big marketing budgets using just the free tools that are available online.

Small businesses use social media and social networking to augment their strategy for achieving marketing objectives. But, they also must have a clear understanding of their purpose and possibilities in two realms – social media, and social networking.

Social Media is a means to many ends – greater visibility (SEO), demonstrable thought leadership, establishing market preeminence, and perhaps social networking. It is important in today’s business climate to become an expert in social media plumbing; the delicate science of streamlining social media participation in ways that are operationally efficient.

Social Networking is what happens after social media has performed well; it is the humanistic side of the conversational web. Ergo, you can sign up on Linkedin and you can make 10,000 connections, but nothing will happen unless you produce social media. There are many types of social media . For example, a simple “Hello, tell me about your business.” written on a Facebook wall is a social media artifact. A blog post about the “The New Real-time Web” is also a social media artifact. Both examples might lead to a conversation which is an instance of social networking.

By the way, do you want to learn more about Social Media?

If so, download my brand new free white paper Social Media: A Primer Click Here

By the way, do you want to learn more of my “tricks of the trade” of using social media to boost your online profits and exposure?

Do you want to learn how to build a big online subscriber list fast? Click Here

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Social Media Tips: Gaining Followers and Positioning Your Business for Success

Many companies and freelancers found their initial efforts in marketing via social networks with MySpace several years back. At the time, it was the only kid on the block. Today, that site’s demographic caters to the 16-25 year old group. If that fits your market, keep it in your social media strategic plan.

Twitter and Facebook are the new tools for most businesses today for marketing purposes. Other sites used are YouTube (and several other video sharing sites), OnlyWire (for bookmarking sites), and PitchEngine to gain exposure on the web.

The key to using social media sites is to integrate as many as possible to be automatically updated when you make a new blog post, Tweet, or video submission. This can easily be done today with all of the tools coming out almost on a daily basis.

You want your customers to see a social media presence on your homepage directing them and interested people to several outlets to interact with you: LinkedIn, Twitter, Second Life, Facebook, etc. Also, have links to promotional videos posted on hosting sites like YouTube, which should be one of the top tools for PR.

Once you have been on the scene for a while you will want to learn a lot about who and what to follow along the way. This will be dictated by what market you are in and who the movers and shakers are. You will learn that MySpace may not be as effective as Twitter. You will build extremely beneficial relationships via Twitter and also use it to position your company as a news and info source as well as a platform for your niche market.

They are a great way to expand your reach and create buzz around you and your products and services.

By the way, do you want to learn more about Social Media?

If so, download my brand new free white paper Social Media: A Primer Click Here

By the way, do you want to learn more of my “tricks of the trade” of using social media to boost your online profits and exposure?

Do you want to learn how to build a big online subscriber list fast? Click Here

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Twitter Tips From The Field

Last week I posted several articles about the use of social media sites in general by businesses. This week I want to share the specific tips using Twitter for business, both as a means of promoting a company’s brand and also to attract customers.

Twitter is quickly becoming the social media tool of choice for both small and large companies. I recently started researching the use of social media sites by companies for an upcoming book I plan to publish.

Through the over 300 companies I have interviewed, I have found without a doubt, Twitter is the highest rated social media site for both a sales venue and promoting a company brand.

Below are some of the responses I received from my interviews. Please check out all of the company websites and share this article by Tweeting your followers on Twitter.

Enjoy the following Tweeter tips from the field:

*Since vaccines are such a hot button issue for parents right now - concerns with autism, safety, ingredients, schedule - we are using Twitter to engage new parents in their decision to vaccinate their children. We are a state-wide nonprofit here in Colorado, the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition, which uses social media to advocate for improved childhood vaccination rates. We are AVID Twitter users - @immunizecokids - that use it to:

• Spread information/articles about immunizations
• Engage Twitter users who are spreading misinformation
• Encourage mothers and fathers who are already vaccinating their children
• Answer questions about vaccines

We use Twitter tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck to monitor chatter on our issue and measure ROI. We’ve had amazing success connecting with blogger and reporters to place traditional media relations stories. We chose Twitter as an advocacy platform because we are trying to reach a target market of women aged 18 - 35. Twitter is also an incredibly useful tool for us because moms often use Twitter as their lifeline to the outside world when they are at home with their new babies.Dawn Crawford Twitter: http://Twitter.com/immunizecokids

*Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants has had great success with our Facebook and Twitter presence. Since the company began its Twitter account in November, it has grow to over 5500 followers.  Our goal with social media has remained constant- to create a two-way dialogue with our loyal guests. We’ve achieved this through Twitter and Facebook. The company’s Twitter and Facebook presence is also promoted and integrated in a number of ways, including in various email notices as well as its website. This provides Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes’ loyal “Club Veg” subscribers exposure to the new ways in which they can interact with the restaurant chain and receive the heads up on things like special offers and new menu items.
Erika Diprofio www.Twitter.com/souplantation

*We have worked with EarthShare Georgia for over two years, providing them with eco-friendly promotional items for their yearly gala. We have been trying for as long as that to connect to other EarthShare affiliates and the national office, to no avail. Two tweets to http://Twitter.com/EarthShare and this morning we get a call from the Washington Head Office asking how we can setup a relationship between our two organizations. Wow.  John Simonetta www.proformagreen.com

*I run a website called GroceryAlerts.ca that summarizes the latest flyers each week and post top deals from all grocery stores in Canada. I cross-post to Twitter (@groceryalerts) the latest deals using the hashtag of the store (i.e. #thriftyfoods, #fairwaymarket) and of the website (#groceryalerts). This way users can search for the hashtags for their favorite store. It has gone well. The growth from Twitter followers is outstanding (close to 800 followers in over 2 months). I have an automated process using a Wordpress plugin where when I publish a post to a category.  One tip I learned was that Retweets were important. I recommend authors to only use 100 characters because then it increases the probability that a follower will retweet the tweet. The next step is to create sub-accounts for individual stores that our website wants to use. Steven Zussino, GroceryAlerts.ca

*Our company raised $315,000 for charity in 72 hours using Twitter.  We held a 5 for 1 sale: http://sale.sitepoint.com/

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/02/11/70000-usd-in-the-bag-with-two-days-to-go-
–help-us-hit-100000-usd/http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/01/sitepoint-bushfire-appeal-wrap-up/

We recruited top Twitter users (such as Darren Rowse from @problogger) as well as used our own Twitter account (@sitepointdotcom).  Bumps in the road: We got shut down early by Australian Consumer Affairs and threatened with jail time & fines because we were not a registered fundraiser.  Matt Mickiewicz www.sitepoint.com

*I work for a winery and we use have very successfully used Twitter to grow our wine club, connect with locals and those across the country, and have even been requested by people in other states to come and visit… we did, and this landed us placements in wine bars and more wine club members, yet again!   Twitter has been a huge blessing for us, but there is definitely a technique to maximizing its effectiveness. Brandy Bell www.donatifamilyvineyard.com

*Locali is an eco-convenience market based in Hollywood. We use Facebook and Twitter extensively to promote the store as well as our summer project, The Icycle (a tricycle that vends artisan ice creams, sandwiches and vegan frozen treats). We are followed via @locali and @theicycle.  Just recently we wanted to gauge interest from our customers in our idea to start a weekly organic produce box service at the store. Customers would sign up and pay in advance for an assortment of affordable organic fruits and veggies.   We sent a message to all our Facebook Fans in Los Angeles and then posted the note on our Facebook Fan page - http://www.Facebook.com/home.php?#/note.php?note_id=109380831204. After we linked to this note in various Twitter posts through www.Twitter.com/locali.

We received responses from over twenty-five customers via direct message or wall posts.  Initial direct message to Angelenos via Facebook did not result in much in terms of a response rate. However, posting the message as a note on our fan page wall and then Twittering to that note, sent a desired volume of responses our way.  This enables us to now confidently launch the produce program since we will need a minimum of ten people to sign up and with the verbal commitments thus far, we feel secure that this would be a service valued by our community as well as a convenient way to encourage healthy purchases while supporting organic farmers.  We are firming up our pricing for a box around $15-$20 and deciding on reusable carriers for the service. Melissa Rosen www.localiyours.com

*We recently (beginning of May) launched a campaign which yielded us huge social media success, specifically with Twitter.  To be direct, month over month (April 2009 to May 2009) we saw an increase in traffic to our website from Twitter of 4,911%.  In addition we were able to receive coverage in over 120 different blogs in just our first month.  To quote a blogger “Members of their (Grasshopper’s) marketing team spend the first 3 weeks constantly monitoring Twitter, trying to personally respond…..they had created a Twitter Storm of Sorts”.  We have 4 people (out of our 45 person company) on a social media team, all with individual Twitter accounts for different purposes.  Similar to a Comcast or Google approach.  All 4 of us, as well as our founder @dh , were on Twitter monitoring searching, proactively responding to anyone talking about our campaign.  Having fun with it, keeping the conversation going for well over a month.  We were able to receive notable tweets from Guy Kawasaki, Kevin Rose, and Jason Calacanis (which reached over 1 million followers). Jonathan Kay  On Twitter @Grasshopper Join the movement: http://grasshopper.com/idea