Thinks I find along the way
I’m a visual guy and as you can tell from reading this blog I love infographics and I curate them quite a bit. This one is better than most. Take a hard look and ponder the data and what it means to you and your organization…
The small business social media cheat sheet [infographic] – Holy Kaw!
Dana VanDen Heuvel shared this with me as something we need to show at our social media bootcamp today. Had to share it here! btw, there’s still time to sign up. You can get more info here…
“The best part of blogging is the people you will meet”- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008.
If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them. It’s the reason I’m an author here at OnStartups, made many new friends, had interesting opportunities cross my radar, and most importantly had the chance to share knowledge that has helped other entrepreneurs.
Wow — this post is just loaded with business case and valuable tips. You can follow the ‘vi a’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in getting even smarter…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want an excellent synopsis of what your small business website needs to be successful. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
Same applies to websites or almost any other type of technical work. If you’ve heard me speak, I’m always talking about “good, fast, and cheap” tools. There are a few — like Google Apps for Business — that are all three! Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
– Heck, yes!
…is a hot topic in every social media seminar I do. John Jantsch has some excellent guidance in this article…
“Facebook continues to grow in popularity with small business to the point where it’s no longer a matter of if you should be utilizing this platform as how. It’s really no surprise to me that Facebook is generally deemed more useful for the small business than other social media tools, such as twitter. The Facebook platform and applications are such that a business could feasibly build their entire web presence there – particularly now that Fan pages can be viewed publicly by non Facebook users.
So, the question I want to dive into today is this: What’s the best way to approach Facebook for your business?” Source: 3 Ways for Businesses to Take Full Advanage of Facebook | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
You’ll want to go to the source to get the answer. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…
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All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…
All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…
All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…
Here’s what’s been fascinating me for the last 24 hours…
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To help website owners take full advantage of the most important online marketing opportunities, here are 3 things small businesses can do to attract and engage new customers.
Content Publishing & Marketing – Consumers are interacting with multiple content sources before purchase and businesses that provide useful information beyond product features and benefits can attract more traffic and referrals.
Tips, articles, videos and experts interviews provide customers with the information they need to buy and refer to others. Useful content optimized with keywords also attracts more search engine traffic and links.
Social Media & Networking – 90% of marketers say that social media is important for their business according to the 2011 Social Media Marketing Report. Word of mouth, referrals and buzz on social networks can increase awareness, build trust and influence sales.
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offer useful platforms for small businesses to be helpful and share information with networks far beyond their customer base.
Local & Mobile – By 2014, mobile Internet will take over desktop Internet according to Microsoft Tag Lab. Small business websites can increase page views by offering a mobile friendly version of their website. They can also increase visibility on local search by making sure they’ve claimed their listings on Google Places and Bing Business Listings.
I just spoke last night to a group of independent home inspectors about these very issues. Some didn’t even have a site. Those that did had ‘brochureware’. The problem, I explained to them, is how will someone know you’re an expert if they can’t google you? That’s now this next generation of buyers will make there decisions…
The answer is as easy as using a free WordPress site as your business blog and adding Google Apps for corporate email. Next, link the rss feed from your blog to your Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn account and your MailChimp newsletter. Then all you need to do is use Google Reader to ‘listen to the internet’ and make the information you need come to you. Out of that listening will come a lot of great ideas for you to create or curate on your website. This is the ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle of ‘thought leadership’ marketing. I call it the ‘e1evation workflow’.
Anyone who can send an email can use these tools to get known by Google and the best news is every single one is free and completely cross platform right down to the smartphone level. Comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…
Sometimes you’re just flat out of ideas.
It’s not a matter of talent — you’ve written great stuff in the past. But lately, when you go back to the well for a fresh idea, it’s coming up dry.
This happens to the best of us — even veterans who consistently produce quality content have their off days.
Yet they continue to write.
They may grumble about how hard it is to get going and create something solid, but they still do. Again, and again, and again.
They aren’t super-human, and they don’t have magical content-producing powers. So what is the secret?
They do it by pulling out the well-worn toolbox of strategies for creating awesome content.
Way #1? Curate content. The author suggests something like what I’m doing here: “Find your ten favorite websites, and then find your favorite post on each of them. Publish a post listing these top ten posts, and explain why you like them. You don’t even have to think about being creative, and everyone you feature there will appreciate it. This is what we do with our Best of the Web feature, and there are lots of other examples.” In this case, I curated a quote from his site to make my point. You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want the rest of the article. Comment or ‘connect’ above if you want to be a world class curator and discuss what this could mean to your organization…
2011 marks my eighth year of blogging. In that time I’ve logged over 2500 blog posts, acquired around 143,000 subscribers and had this blog named by the likes of Forbes magazine as their favorite for both marketing and small business.
If this asset has delivered any measure of success I can tell you that the primary reason is that in that same time I’ve also read some or all of approximately 120,000 blog posts written by others. I’ve stated repeatedly that anyone that wants to start a blog, get better at blogging or make their blog a serious marketing tool for their business must first and foremost get very good at reading blogs…
In a sign that small businesses are finally emerging from the recession and looking to grow, an increasing number of business owners are adopting social media as a way to better market their business and reach more customers, according to the latest Citibank small business survey. The increased use of social media represents one of several findings in Citibank’s survey that shows small businesses are taking concrete action to grow in 2011.
According to the survey, use of social media increased significantly over the last year, with 36 percent of small business owners saying they use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to market their business, compared to just 19 percent a year ago.
Additionally, when asked what steps they will take to attract more business in 2011, 68 percent of small business owners say they will increase marketing and 54 percent say they will offer new products and services. Of those who plan to do business in a larger geographic area this year (38 percent), 49 percent plan regional expansion, 18 percent plan national expansion, and 16 percent are looking toward international expansion.
“As one of the main drivers of job creation and economic growth in the United States, small businesses are crucial to a robust and sustained recovery,” said Raj Seshadri, the head of Small Business Banking at Citibank. “We are thrilled to find that many small businesses believe the time is right to expand their business and find new customers, and at Citibank, we are committed to helping them succeed and grow.”
Interesting information from Citibank that indicates social media is becoming more and more mainstream for small business. Personally? I think the reason why is that smart business owners know that social media is one of those activities that takes more time than money — while both are scarce, owners are willing to get more efficient at some activities so that they can effectively engage in others. Comment below or ‘connect’ above to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…
In order to stimulate interest, businesses are told they have to discount goods and services by at least 50 percent. Even deeper discounts of up to 80 percent are encouraged. On top of that, the group buying site keeps as much as 50 percent (more perhaps?) of the amount the merchant brings in.
You do the math. If you offer a deal of $20 for $40 worth of goods or services, then the group site keeps as much as 50 percent of the amount sold, does that make sense?
Oh, but it’s advertising. Right, I get that. And if you’re advertising budget is big enough, or the margins on your products are high enough, it makes sense. You don’t lose your shirt with every sale. But, not every small business is the Gap. Quite to the contrary, most of us work on minimal ad budgets and thin margins.
One small business, Poises Cafe, lost so much money the owners had to dip into their personal savings to cover what they claim was an $8,000 loss! The owner called it a “terrible decision,” one that was made at the objection of her husband. Consider not only the strain this placed on their business, but their personal lives as well.
Paul Chaney has done a good job addressing the Groupon dilemma here. Personally, as a consumer I love Groupon, but as a small business owner I have a lot of other options that are free or much cheaper. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to read the rest of Paul’s article — comment below or ‘connect’ above to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…
A couple of days ago I filled in for Dana VanDen Heuvel in a class he was teaching at NWTC on social media. As luck would have it, I taught on the topic of Facebook pages — here are two hot posts that popped up today that I wish I had shared with the class. Although the first targets non-profits, much of it is applicable to small businesses and other organizations as well…
“Facebook Pages are where most nonprofits establish a home-base on Facebook. You can send targeted updates to fans, engage supporters on a wall, and give visitors a customized experience by using a variety of applications.
Your Page comes standard with a few applications developed by Facebook like Discussions and Events. But you can also add third-party applications to your Page.” Source: Eleven Killer Facebook Page Applications For Your Nonprofit — SocialFish
Item #6 on the list is ‘Static FBML’. Mari Smith has some good stuff here for those interested in creating a web page within a Facebook page…
“Let’s assume you have your Facebook Fan Page up and running now. (If not, see FANtastic Fan Pages for ideas and help). Some of the basics include adding a custom graphic, installing apps – particularly Static FBML, adding custom content including a landing tab, and ensuring you’re adding relevant, quality content on a regular basis. I’ll be covering all of these subjects and more on this blog and also on SocialMediaExaminer.com.
If you have visitors to your Fan page and they are not yet fans, I call them non-fans, you ideally want those visitors to be directed to your custom Welcome Tab rather than your Wall.
The idea behind this is you want to have a clear and inviting page that provides these visitors with an immediate sense of who you are, what you do, why they should become a fan, AND you want to provide a call to action with a nice visual to your Become a Fan button.” Source: How To Add A Custom Landing Tab To Your Facebook Fan Page | MariSmith.com
You’ll have to go to the sources to get more, but they’re both great articles. If you want to leverage Facebook pages, but don’t know where to start, I can help! Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your business…
John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…
“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.
Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).
It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:
I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…
Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…
“Make yourself a better resource
Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.
Share content to draw attention
Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.
Filter personalized content
A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.
I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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