Month: December 2012

More Feasible Social Media

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I recently answered the following question on Linkedin and thought you might be interested.

How can we make Social Media Marketing more economical and Feasible?

One tool that can help a lot is HootSuite. It’s free (for the basic features) and will allow you to easily post to and monitor several social media platforms from one location.

Additionally, for sending information out, I’d suggest having a blog. You can use the rss feed from the blog, hook it to HootSuite, and have it automatically send out new articles when you post them. It’s post one and done. You can also connect your Blog up to MailChimp and send out a news letter every week/month with your most recent posts.

You have three main goals with social marketing.

1) Bring people into your network (follow me, join my group, etc)
2) Deliver interesting information that your prospects and clients would be interested in
3) Answer questions and respond to people talking about you through these social media outlets.

Regarding bringing people into your network, you have passive solutions like having a link to your Facebook page on your website, and having a QR code on a sign that says, follow us. The active solutions are much faster, where you offer a discount or contest entry if they join a certain network. The best active solution is a viral contest, where the person entering the contest gets one entry for signing up and more when they send it out to their friends who sign up.

You will also want to allocate time for searching for people who you know, and adding contacts to your social networks.

Links:

How to Find Twitter Users in Your City

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Twitter is currently second to Facebook in a long list of extremely popular social media sites. It is recognized as a great way for people to connect with businesses, friends and relatives by letting them know what they are doing via short posts. Since there are millions of people on Twitter, it provides a great ground to increase customers for any determined local business.

Below are a few steps you can use to gather more followers around your city and consequently increase your sales.

Twitter Search

Twitter offers a great feature that allows users to search for people in the same location. There is an advanced feature dubbed “near this place” that enhances the search and will help you find any tweets in a particular location. This can be used to find targeted customer groups around a city or town.

iPhone Applications

iPhone has made it easy for users to find other Twitter users in a local setting using different apps. There are a number of applications which will allow a business owner to view tweets from a location of their choice and convince them to follow them.

Nearby Tweets

This is a website that will show users where other users are located, depending on the information they submitted during signing up. This is an effective tool that business owners can use to find local tweets that can be of importance to their business.

Tallowhood

This is a search function aimed at local searches. This site provides clickable maps that make the search easy and fast. To enhance the search and the ease with which people can find your Twitter profile, it is important that you first register on Tellowhood.

Finding Twitter users around you can be daunting, but with the right information and tools, the process will be fast and easy.

How to Create a Group for Your Local Business on Facebook

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Facebook offers local businesses many different tools and features that can help them effectively market their businesses. The good thing about these features is that they are currently free, which means it is the best time to take advantage of them.

One of the most useful tools available to help businesses build a loyal following is the Facebook “group” feature. Facebook groups are not entirely different from Facebook pages; the only difference is that the group revolves around a particular group of people rather than a brand.

Below are simple steps you can take to create a Facebook group:

1. Sign in to your account and click on the link labeled “Groups” on the left side of the home page.

2. The top bar menu will appear and you should click on “create a new group.”

3. A form will open with fields that you will need to fill. Some of them are mandatory while some are optional. Some of the fields you will need to fill include but not limited to group name, description, is your group public or private, picture upload and many others. To create a group that will not leave any questions, it is important that you fill all the provided fields.

4. After you have successfully created the group, you can now take your time to invite people to the group. You can promote the group through other means outside Facebook, such as inside your business establishment, blogs and other effective social media sites.

It is important to start by inviting people who know you as this will prevent any spamming reports or blocking. Another important thing is to keep your group as active as possible. Active groups are more popular and are more likely to give you results.

Do not overlook the power of Facebook groups in your marketing strategies, as they have proven to be very effective in generating more exposure for small businesses.

How to Be Proactive When Building Online Reviews

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Online reviews are a crucial part of any business because they act as a window that shows the public “how good” your business really is. This means you have to be pay close attention to what is being said about your business online because this will directly impact the number of consumers who will actually choose to do business with you.

If you have several positive reviews posted from satisfied customers, other people will want to experience those benefits for themselves. In fact, the more reviews you have, the better.

As a result, your sales will increase. So it is crucial that you set up, claim, and verify all of your local directory listings to open up different avenues for your customers to leave reviews.

This includes Google+ Local, CitySearch, YellowPages, InsiderPages, Yelp, SuperPages, MerchantCircle; among many others.

Once you set up these listings, more people will be able to:

  1. Find your business
  2. Leave reviews for your business
  3. See what others have to say about your business

You may be wondering “how” you should go about getting reviews from your customers… Simply ask them to go online and let others know what they think about your products or services. This should not be a daunting task and many would be happy to do so.

You can effectively ask for reviews through word of mouth, on your receipts, on your website, on your social media sites, and any other feasible method.

While your focus will be placed on getting positive reviews, keep in mind that some of your unhappy customers will also post their opinions about your products or services online; and that’s OK. A few bad online reviews are to be expected, but when they exceed the number of positive reviews, your reputation is at stake.

So it is critical that you stay up-to-date about what is being said about your business online. This way, you will have a chance to respond to any negativity, which will show people that you actually care about your customers.

Following just these few simple tips will help you protect your brand, generate fresh leads, and build loyal customers online.