Social Media – Local Web

TGID 7 Must-Do Business Success Steps

Back To Business

With only 12 business days left in 2011, it is time to start planning. January kicks off a new season of business management, sales and marketing initiatives. I am a believer that the basics of these business areas are fundemental to a business’s success. They are also quantitatively tied to the level of success. The basics needed are: 1) a product or service that people want, a business plan, marketing plans, an employee handbook (task-checklist),  point of sale and/or CRM software, employee training in customer service, sales, and communication skills (starting with the owner). They can start as outlines but need to grow and be maintained. These make up the vehicle that is your business. Sales revenue is the fuel needed to keep your engine running.

Various forms of marketing are like the pistons of an engine, the engine that power your business forward. Too few pistons running with out attention or maintenance and the vehicle may move, but probably while sputtering and running slow. If you have the maximum number of pistons firing and make sure they are maintained at their optimum efficiency? Now you have a race car!  And the best part is, you don’t have to be a mechanic! Just know the basics, keep your business tuned-up and be an aware, smart driver.

Real Success Statistics

The negative statistics on failure rates for small business and start-ups are well publicized and quite scary. BUT of course what is not publicized nearly as much are the success rates on franchises and businesses that follow sound business fundamentals. They are very positive and extremely comforting. The above business necessities, software and items are available for very affordable prices and in some cases free.

Your Best Chances For Success

If you do nothing else, follow these most important revenue oriented basics and your chances of survival will increase dramatically. These will also allow you to find support for time management, updating a business plan, tracking expenses and professionally measuring your marketing dollars.

1)      Get (or update) your website immediately. If you can’t afford one, make a free one (or see Yellowbook bundles above). Buy your name at GoDaddy and fill out the form and POOF you have your own website. It is easy to rank high in searches especially locally. How? Update it weekly, optimize it with keywords, good paragraph titles, add your own home- made business (or relevant YouTube videos, testimonials, customer pictures and then copy and paste lots of articles on your area of expertise and supplier materials. You will rank on the first page of google in no time! If you are busy and have the money… PAY SOMEBODY TO DO IT RIGHT! PS: Keep away from “Supplier sites and/or “Shared” YourTown.com- local newsletter sites, they’re useless)

2)      Capture as much information on every customer and every visitor that comes into your business. No excuses. Include purchase info, email address, mailing address, and Facebook if you have a Facebook Fanpage (see below). This will become your businesses most valuable asset.  Cost? FREE

3)      Email is still the ultimate tool. There are free email platforms out there, starting with your own web host. As you grow to larger lists or if you need an easy picture and layout program, get Constant Contact. Email your customers as much as they will tolerate! It is free and if you are not doing it someone else will be. It should be you! Cost? Free

4)      Use the IYP’s (Internet Yellow Pages)! Most allow free enhancements and rating/comments. Claim your Google Places and Yahoo Local address. Add pictures, coupons, business profile, comments and ratings (just ask!) FYI- Most local businesses still do need and should be in the yellow pages but more imortantly their “Online Directories”. (NOTE: Yellowbook’s print, website, and Internet-SEO-SEM marketing bundles are easily the most effective and cost-effective packages available. And they guarantee an R.O.I.!) Now I may be biased, as I’ve been working with and consulting with YB for 4 years now, but I also know my stuff! Look at the “non-search engine” statistics: Most buyers are not there because of your website’s google ranking! Heaven help us all (myself included) if that were the case! Remember, do not give up your local advertising, add to it. Believe me, the yellow pages are affordable and easily the best value going and you still need that balance.  IYP’s Cost- FREE     Google / Yahoo Maps- Cost: FREE     Print and Enhanced Directories- Cost: Minimal

5)      Facebook, Google+, Tweet and  LinkedIn as many of your customers as you can. Do this as much as you can. Start with 10 if you have to, but do it and grow it! (Yes you must have an appropriate social media presence! Remember, there is a new social order in marketing today: gratitude, information sharing, personal/customer fun, and then an occasional but “compelling” offer is the way to use social media. Don’t ALWAYS sell, that is just annoying.  Cost? Free

6)      Advertise in your particular “appropriate” media. Do not cut back on your local advertising in slower times. Think about adding to it! Cut something else! Keep your marketing as high (uncomfortably so) as fiscally possible. It is better to be smaller and consistant, than trying big one time ads. Find out what paper your current customers read most. Ask your “successful” business neighbors and window shoppers! Local- weekly papers usually do the trick, especially if you are pulling from a local demographic. The daily papers will cost you more but see if you can get a smaller regional run. You say you can’t afford it? Well I’m saying you can’t afford not to. Cutting back on advertising and marketing in slower times is a mathematical equation that equals (=) double whammy disaster!

7) Network, network, network! (And I don’t mean just attending a quarterly happy hour-card swap! By all means Go but truely network every day) Meet your business neighbors, refer your doctor, dentist, hair salon, cleaning service, carpenters, painters, etc… If you know people (and you do know people), helping them find contacts is gold in the currency of business contacts. And you simultaneously build your, Facebook, email, regular mail, comments and ratings (just ask), web links and your word of mouth business buzz! Cost? FREE

Follow these and you will dramatically increase you awareness and prospects for success. – Jamie Siracusa, Executive Director

Excellence in Social Media and Web Branding

From the AP newswire-

Web Savvy Companies Hire Social Media Pros

A woman had just bought a new car at the Mile One dealership, but she was sad to see her old one go.  So she let a dealership staffer take a picture of her with both — and Mile One connected her with the buyer of her old car online.

“They became friends on Facebook,” said Nicole Hayes, e-commerce director for the Mile One Automotive Group, based in Pikesville, Md. Hayes says that such interactions, which she sees as helping to foster a community around the Mile One brand, have convinced her that the company needs to double down on social media. Mile One is now looking to hire a full-time social media pro.

"Hire marketing experts"

 Just a few years ago, companies considered Twitter and Facebook only as afterthoughts, leaving their online corporate identities to be managed by college interns or office tech geeks.

Now, companies and nonprofits on the Web are paying closer attention to their social media presence, and defining roles and tasks for their employees. Worried about public relations gaffes and embarrassing tweets, many are crafting social media policies for their employees.  Not everyone has signed on. Managers who believe in using social media for business often have to wage internal campaigns to convince higher-ups and staff of its value. In such cases, software such as HootSuite and SocialToaster can be used to measure the impact of a company’s social media campaigns — key to persuading top executives of their worth.

The firms also crave feedback, as well as opportunities to build loyalty and good will. With Twitter and Facebook, now attracting hundreds of millions of users, they are spending money on advertising and marketing campaigns on those platforms.

“Just about every public relations campaign has a social media strategy now, both a proactive and a reactive strategy,” said Lisa Miles, president of the Maryland chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. “It’s one of those things: Once you open your mouth, it’s out there.”

The new emphasis on social media is helping drive growth in the public relations field. The Department of Labor recently projected that the “public relations specialists” sector will grow 28 percent through 2018, with social media fueling much of the growth.

Online job forums are filling up with openings for social media professionals. Indeed.com, a top employment site, listed the term “social media” recently among the top 10 job trends. The prevalence of the term “social media” in job titles on the site has steadily grown over the past three years, from virtually zero to thousands of matching job postings.

The jobs that are advertised often straddle public relations, advertising, marketing and customer service.

“The person that we’re hiring needs to be able to write, has experience with PR and is able to represent our brand,” said Hayes, of Mile One. “Thinking before you write something is essential. But you have to give them freedom.”

Many public relations and marketing firms now offer companies guidance on social media strategy. Companies are even outsourcing some of their social media efforts to firms such as [Jamie Siracusa and the Business Excellence Center] MGH Inc. in Owings Mills, Md.

“It’s a weird role,” said Ryan Goff,  director of social media marketing. “It’s pretty much all over the place. We have some clients who are dedicated to handling their social media accounts, and other companies still have their IT guys doing it.”

Companies that aren’t hiring full-time social media staff are still trying to set guidelines for how their employees use such sites. Stories abound of teachers, employees and job candidates losing jobs after producing out-of-bounds tweets and Facebook posts.

Even pros can get into hot water. A newly hired social-media specialist at an economic development agency in Pennsylvania was fired a few weeks ago for tweeting that employees left early on Fridays to play golf.

“I see these people who get fired for this sort of thing, and that always makes me cringe because I think you have to have a certain sense of humor,” said Amy Phillips, who runs Baltimore-based Social Pollen, a social-media consulting firm. “There’s lots of ways to turn what you consider a bad tweet around.”

Companies seem increasingly willing to accept the risk of an embarrassing tweet in exchange for the opportunity to engage with customers. In 2009, 19 percent of companies surveyed by Robert Half Technology allowed employees to engage in social media for business purposes. This year, the recruiting firm reports, 51 percent permitted such activity.

Workers at the Association for Public Health Laboratories in Silver Spring, Md., are encouraged to use Twitter and Facebook to talk about what they do. The nonprofit association, which works with federal and state laboratories to promote public health issues, employs a senior media specialist, whose job includes handling the news media.

Over the past year, Michelle Forman’s job has involved doing more with social media. She interacts with people on Twitter and Facebook, and pitches stories and files guest posts with bloggers who write about public health.

“I was sending more press releases when I first started than I am now,” Forman said. “Not that we’re reaching out to the press less; we’re just doing it differently.”

Now Forman is working with a consultant to craft a social media policy for the association’s 95 employees. She said the guidelines will encourage employees to use social media for their work, but the messages they write will not be considered an official reflection of the organization’s views.

“We felt like it was necessary to have a policy in place,” Forman said.

Mile One takes a different approach. The company has 56 car dealerships across the country, but it is centralizing its communications and marketing from its corporate headquarters.

That means car dealers and salesman and auto mechanics aren’t expected to engage customers on Twitter and Facebook — Hayes and the company’s marketing and communications staff will.

BGE is also in the process of writing rules for social media. For now, it’s using the policy of its parent company, Constellation Energy Group, as guidance. Employees who send messages on Twitter and Facebook that mention either company must identify themselves as employees.

The information must be accurate, and employees can’t speak outside their scope of work or responsibility, said Diane Hughes, BGE’s director of social media and Web engagement.

“Employees have to be transparent if they’re going to say something about BGE,” Hughes said.

Jeff Davis, a partner in Sawmill Marketing Public Relations in Baltimore who advises clients on social media strategy, said more companies will recognize the importance of social media.

He also believes that the social media profession will continue to deepen because companies can’t afford to mismanage their brands online.

“Just because somebody knows how to set up a Facebook or Twitter account doesn’t mean you should turn over your 100-year-old brand to them,” he said.

Article Written by: By GUS G. SENTEMENTES of The Baltimore Sun

Enjoy- To your success- Jamie Siracusa

Updated- 3 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Of the 3 most common mistakes I see in local South Jersey Social Media Marketing…

Jamie Siracusa on Social Media Business Mistakes

Second is they just stop after a few weeks or months and say “That Facebook stuff doesn’t work.  We tried it and didn’t get any new business.”  

My question always is: tried what and to who? Knowing how to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Yelp is one thing, turning your pages into effective money making marketing channels, is another! Please do not hold it against these helpful, well-intentioned friends. For one, these platforms are very new. Two, they were never intended for commercial sales use and people these days are smarter and very jaded. And three, even seasoned marketing experts are struggling with conversions on old dependable ad techniques that just don’t seem to work on these new platforms.  BUT, the good news is people are having great success with Social Media!

Your social media strategy just like your advertising, sales letters, sales presentations, signs, image and customer service, need to be smart, have value and quality. Crappy, one run ads or sales letters will not work. Hand written, ugly, boring signs will not work. Non-interested(ing), unhelpful, non-engaging, rude employees will not work. Boring, non-descript storefronts or offices will not work. Make your pages stand out, make your messages, offers and responses interesting and friendly. Make people want to “stop in” look, read, tell a friend, write back and remember you. Give things of real value away, something free, things with a Wow Factor.  

Keep it going, open it back up tomorrow (if you stopped your posts, or haven’t been active). Tell everyone to join, have it on your website, on receipts, signs at POS, letters, thank you notes, coupons etc… I think you get my drift!

And another very common mistake, and not just a social media one;  but a big money missing opportunity, is marketing or advertising in a silo approach. Many businesses are only using one or two forms of marketing and advertising. I.e., just newspaper ads, or radio spots, only a facebook pages or just a website.  Make sure you are reaching as much of your demographic in the ways they will see you! Yes, the internet is growing, it is killing the Yellow pages and local print newspapers. But are ALL your customers and prospects looking for your product and services there? Probably not.

New platforms are coming like Quora, Gowalla and Aardvark!

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