A great solution for small business

With the kind of technology we have today, various forms of Marketing Strategies are present. Let’s say your company or business owns a website. What would you be need to be successful? Simple — A lot of traffic. A huge number of people visiting your website, clicking your posts and your blogs, and most importantly, purchasing your stuff.

Now stop and think; “Is it possible?”

That is what Facebook is most helpful for; building traffic and making friends with other people. Of course, if that will be for your business, “friendship” would mean traffic, and traffic would mean sales, and sales definitely means money.

So, what’s with Facebook?
Why are millions of people around the world addicted to this a website?

That is the best part of it; MILLIONS of people around the world are addicted to this website. Thus, that huge number of people will be your inspiration in creating a Facebook page.

With your Facebook page, you can:

1. Build your own network of followers and generate leads,
2. Post your photos and product images, and easily design your page,
3. Easily update and post the latest information about your company,
4. Advertise your company or page for a very affordable price,
5. Upload videos and share those within your network,
6. Join other groups with the same or of different industries and increase your network,
7. Easily share your page with your blog or current website via html codes,
8. Easily track the number of visits to your page,
9. Easily interact with other people by means of comment or wall postings,
10. And best of all, save money. Facebook is FREE!

Certainly there are a number of ways to market your business, but there is only one most effective way to do so. Hence, this aspect should also include the cost-saving ways of promoting and gaining sales.

CoTweet

CoTweet is a cross between CRM and Twitter (/Facebook if you opt for the pay edition). The platform’s concept is simple — it allows you to manage “conversations”. If someone sends a tweet toward you about something they don’t like about that product, you can track that conversation. There’s also room multiple users where you’re allowed to assign tweets to certain people and even automatically add a user-tag (A tag, usually “^AB” to show who wrote a certain tweet).

CoTweet is built on that concept of managing customer service with little else as far as features. You have automated tweets, bit.ly integration and little details like saved search but it’s short on features.

www.cotweet.com

Social Mention

Social Mention is a versatile tool for monitoring anytime your name, brand or product (any keyword really) is mentioned in the social eco-sphere. This includes Twitter and Facebook but also blogs. It’s a real-time capture of who’s talking about you, and that’s pretty important. It’s so powerful that it can be a distraction from what it offers. When you try to drill down to the specific sources for what you’re looking for it can get a little obscure.

Social Mention offers e-mail notifications which can come in handy as a daily diary of where you’re being mentioned.

www.socialmention.com

SWIX

SWIX is actually one of our secret weapons. While Google Analytics monitors your website and Facebook Insights offers you details on your page’s stats, SWIX combines everything (and we mean “everything”). SWIX will gather information from a variety of sources including Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Feedburner and many more (the list goes on). Combine all these stats into easy to digest logs, graphs and statistics. For anyone looking for a simple tool to show their influence across social media, we highly recommend SWIX.

SWIX starts at $9/month (per “project”) but offers a 30-day free trial to start.

www.swixhq.com

TweetDeck

Still leading the pack it’s our old friend TweetDeck. The little Adobe AIR app is still powerful and there’s not much else to say. The ability to connect to every major social network (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz, LinkedIn and FourSquare), an easy to navigate display, powerful searches, alerts… it goes on. If you haven’t tried TweetDeck, just do.

www.tweetdeck.com

If there’s one we missed, let us know in the comments.

As an interactive marketing agency we specialize on inserting your brand into that conversation. It’s as easy as it is fun. On the other side there are the those who do it wrong. We can give them the same name we give them when they e-mail us, spammers.

As part of our Social Media for Business workshop we discussed these various methods under a section called, “It’s Easy Because It Doesn’t Work”. There will always be services and products that hint at making your social media marketing just a little bit easier by taking the human element out of the mix. The issue with this is that the human element you’re attempting to eliminate is the draw of Twitter in the first place. It’s the brands and marketers that understand this that succeed. It’s also those that don’t understand this that fail.

Today we received a direct message from one of the brands we follow, Ford Fiesta’s New York/New Jersey account (@FiestaNYNJ). The message was SPAM, automated and asking us to visit their website. The human element was officially removed. Suddenly the excitement we had for hearing about events and updates on a car we liked was brought to the point of being nothing but a stream of automated messages that would constantly try to sell us on why we should buy the car. That doesn’t develop brand loyalty.

Upon delivery, Wave Universal CEO Thomas Stampfli (@GothamTommy) threw back a lesson at the account and Ford Fiesta’s Brand Manager:

Cannot stress enough — DO NOT send automated DMs on Twitter. Do not have a robot working your social media marketing @FiestaNYNJ @samdelag

Sam DeLaGarza (Brand Manager for Ford Fiesta) responded quickly with a non-automated DM of his own:

Did u get an automated DM from Fiestanynj ? If so, I will correct make sure we don’t engage in that nonsense. Sam

In all likeliness someone “downstairs” who’s job it is to engage tried to make it easier without realizing what damage they were doing to the brand. More importantly DeLaGarza recognizes this and refers to it as “nonsense” which leads us to believe there won’t be any more Direct Messages being sent by Hal-5000.

When using social media for your business — if you’re an established brand, utilize Twitter to celebrate your brand loyalists. Do not use it as an outlet to send SPAM messages about buying a product. They’re following you because they’re already a customer or are interested in your brand. Don’t ruin that relationship.

Social media has become the focus of business marketing. Many businesses now have a Facebook page before they have a website. This raises the question of whether or not it’s necessary to have a website anymore, especially if everything you want to push to your customers is built into social media (your contact information, store hours, products, etc.).

For small businesses specifically it is much easier and cheaper to focus on Twitter or Facebook than a website with server costs, web design, content management systems, graphic design and all the other facets of building your own dot-com. While it may be easier it’s selling yourself and your business short.

A website and a Facebook page (which we’ll focus on for the rest of the article) are both methods of “marketing” your business. Both are equivalent to a flyer or an informational brochure — they both contain information about your business, product and/or services. A website will still allow you to offer additional information, be more creative and unique (in design and branding) and even allow you to turn your website into a storefront to sell your products.

Imagine Coke and Pepsi don’t have a website… or even a billboard, a display — any marketing at all. All they have are Facebook pages. Besides the logos (Red vs. Blue) what is the difference between them? Each can offer different images or personality through interaction but overall there is nothing one can do the other can’t.

As a final example — this blog. Whether you are a client, a potential client (contact us) or a passer-by you were somehow driven to our website because of our blog. Maybe now you know a little more about us which means our marketing has been successful. We didn’t do this with a Facebook page, we did it with our website. Maybe you were impressed by our new design.

Notes:

• A website allows you to be a unique flower against your competitors.
• A website allows you to offer more than what you’re restricted to on social media sites.
• A website allows you to further control your branding and create a unique look-and-feel that matches your business.

I sometimes tell the story of Brian. Brian was a simple person I came across quite a while ago in my career. Brian worked in retail. Brian was stupid.

I don’t suggest Brian was stupid because he worked in retail — the two were independent of one another. Quite simply Brian was just stupid. One of the tasks handed down by corporate was to solicit customers to donate one dollar to some charity. Brian, along with the entire staff, were far behind what was expected. Brian approached me and asked for advice on what to do. I gave Brian a few tips, but there was one that stuck out the most — to Brian and to me (but only to me in hindsight).

I told Brian that every customer should enjoy giving to charity. If you act like it was something you didn’t like, then they wouldn’t. Brian took note and approached every customer with enthusiasm about donating a single dollar to the charity. He told customers about how he donated and he thought it was a really great cause.

Pause right here. Every other associate would “go through the motions” and mutter something about donations and it costing something. They didn’t get many donations. In contrast, Brian approached every customer, with enthusiasm and would thank anyone that actually donated. He made people feel good. He made people feel like it was the right thing to do. Brian earned more than anyone else in the store… the district… the company!

Brian believed in what he was doing. He spoke to every single customer and he engaged everyone.

When Brian originally approached me he was seeking a short cut. He was looking for an easy way out to get it done. Unfortunately, there was none. In the end Brian just did what was expected in the first place — just with a different attitude.

In all aspects of business there are no shortcuts. We may have easier ways of doing things (like paying bills online instead of mailing a check). Whenever we seek methods to make things easier we usually trade-off value. There are places that can gain you 20,000 followers on Twitter but none of which will be your customer. That’s as if 20,000 people walk into your store and buy nothing. The flood of people may make you feel good but when you check the register that enthusiasm will quickly fade.

If you want to be successful in social media you need to do some work. There are no short cuts in building relationships.

It’s important to take this opportunity to pause and understand what this all means, and what this has to do with social networking. It’s all rather simple and when you come to the conclusion, it will all connect – similar to a psychological thriller. By explaining this, it will also summarize this entire chapter: humans are attention whores.

Society has dictated a style of communication that encompasses tabloids, reality television and social networks. Popularity has become the focal point for many, and the number of “friends” or “followers” on any given network is a score of how popular they really are. Someone who has a lot of followers is “popular”, whereas someone with a few friends is the equivalent of a social outcast in adolescence.

All of this connects to an important element in properly utilizing social networking for your business, product or image – build on that connection.

I cannot stress the importance of building those connections – speaking to one single person in a public forum or acknowledging someone’s statement makes them stand-out. If you’re positively recognizing an individual, your action will have to positive effects:

1. The person who made the statement will suddenly feel empowered. Being recognized brings an overwhelming positive feeling. That positive feeling will connect to you – creating a positive experience.
2. Others who witness this moment of recognition will seek that attention. Like a needy middle-child, they seek approval. Your communication will suddenly become important and your approval is the ultimate goal.

The most successful companies and people who utilize this form of recognition create positive experiences for consumers who may not necessarily purchased from your company or utilized your product. However, this develops a positive opinion which is extremely valuable.

Connecting with people on an emotional level is as simple as that little piece of recognition. Bring yourself back to a place where you were a child who scored well on a school test. Your parent may have put that paper on the refrigerator, displaying your accomplishment for all to see. Imagine now that with social networking, you’re able to do that for consumers on a mass scale.

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