Twitter Chat: How SMBs Can Take Advantage of Consumer Holidays

Twitter Chat: How SMBs Can Take Advantage of Consumer Holidays
Don’t Make Customers Pay For Your Digital Marketing Mistakes
Beginner Steps to Effective Business Networking
Pin Your Company to the Top with Pinterest for Business

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 03:00 PM PST

Holidays are terrific opportunities to call attention to your business, hold a sale, offer a special, and motivate customers to shop. While many holidays are focused on consumer sales, even companies that sell business-to-business find ways to leverage consumer holidays to increase sales and get customers to buy.

Holidays are more than December 25th — there’s Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and more. These holidays will be here before you know it. Share ideas with us on how to make the holidays a great time for your business. Join us for a one-hour Twitter chat on the subject on Thursday, February 7th at 8 pm Eastern (5 pm Pacific time), presented by FedEx Office.

Tell us what’s on your mind and what you’re planning to to do to promote holiday sales volume — whether it’s running promotions, decorating your storefront, or simply having some fun in your email newsletter in honor of an upcoming holiday.

$25 Gift Card Giveaway

In addition to providing great tips on preparing for the holidays in minutes, we’ll also be giving away several $25 gift cards, courtesy of FedEx Office, which is presenting this Twitter chat.

Be sure to join us:

TOPIC: How SMBs Can Take Advantage of Consumer Holidays

DATE: Thursday, February 7, 2013

TIME: 8:00 pm ET (New York time)

WHERE: Twitter.com, of course! Simply follow the hashtag #SMBValentine.

Be sure to follow me, @smallbiztrends as well and if you're new to Twitter chats, check out "How to Participate in a Twitter Chat."

Disclosure: FedEx Office compensated me to participate as a small business expert during the FedEx Office Tweet Chat program and write this post. FedEx Office also provided the gift cards. The ideas in this blog post are mine and not ideas or advice from FedEx Office.

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Don’t Make Customers Pay For Your Digital Marketing Mistakes

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 12:00 PM PST

marketing mistakes One of the biggest reasons people get into trouble marketing their small business online is the common perception that our digital communications are free.

And it's true: it won't cost you a penny to go out and set up a Twitter profile – or two, or three, or four.

What's the big deal if you've got an old MySpace page that's absolutely overrun with spam, or if the phone number for your business is wrong in some local search engine directory? You won't be fined or incur any financial penalties of any sort.

But as you know, nothing in this world is free. Every single digital marketing mistake your organization makes (and you can discover what mistakes you may have made by performing a digital inventory) comes with a cost. These costs manifest in terms of wasted time and effort – and you don't pay them. Your customer does.

When your customer searches for your company and they find empty social media profiles, pages full of spam, and incorrect contact information, they're not accomplishing what they set out to do.

Don't make your customers pay for your digital marketing mistakes. Luckily, many of the most common digital marketing mistakes are actually relatively easy to fix. And here’s how:

Multiple Populated Social Media Pages

Do you have two Facebook pages, six Twitter accounts, and four Instagrams?

If you do – and it's not part of a deliberate, articulated strategy – it's time to simplify. Consolidate when you can. Facebook pages can be merged, for example. In other instances, you'll want to engage with your followers on each platform and direct them where you'd like to go which is, ideally, the active social media account you're using on a regular basis.

Don't forget to close down old accounts if you have decided they are officially obsolete.

Empty Social Media Profiles

During the digital marketing inventory process, you may very well discover that you have social media profiles that were set up but never used. It's time to make a strategic decision. Do you want to be on this platform? Will it help you connect more effectively with your customers?

If so, start moving ahead and using the tool to promote your brand. If not, deletion may be in order. If you want to keep the presence in order to protect your brand name, but don't want to use the tool, make sure you have messaging there to make it easy for customers who are searching for you to connect with you.

No Social Media Profile At All

You may discover that a digital marketing tool you thought you never had actually existed. It happens. At that point, be strategic. Is this still a tool you want to have? If yes, move forward and create the missing profile and begin using the tool.

If this tool no longer fits your strategy, no one says you have to set it up.

Spam City

If you have a social media presence that has become overrun with spam, your first step is to look at your website analytics. How much traffic are you getting from this site?

If it's significant, take the time to clean up the spam, and change your user names and passwords to keep the problem from recurring. If the site isn't sending you any traffic, decide if you want this profile and, if not, delete it.

Incorrect Information In Local Directories

Edit your profile to reflect the correct information. Make sure to check the site after performing your edits to make sure they've updated correctly.

A great trick here is to Google current and past phone numbers. This way your sure not to miss something or cross-check with some tips from this local SEO article .

Moving Forward: The Best Mistake is the One You Never Make

Making sure that all of your digital marketing efforts are accurate, correct, and in alignment with your strategic plans is a form of customer service. When you get it right, it's easy for your customers to find you quickly.

To make sure that you're consistently providing this level of customer service, plan on assessing your digital presence at least quarterly.

Oops Photo via Shutterstock

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Beginner Steps to Effective Business Networking

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 08:50 AM PST

beginner business networking At 15, I landed in Canada from a land far, far away. The very same year, I got my first taste of entrepreneurship.

I started by converting the good ole’ paper forms to digitized databases for insurance agents. For an added fee, I also downloaded the data to a Palm V with automatic syncing. Fast forward 12 years and now the portfolio includes a manufacturing business, snow blower import business and most recently, a transmission repair shop.

Still, one of the hardest things that I ever had to teach myself was networking. Below are four beginner steps for networking:

No One Sits at Home and Networks

As scary as it may sound, networking requires one to meet people. It is entirely understandable that not everyone is a natural people person. But that is not to say that a little bit of effort and willingness to venture past our comfort zone cannot yield new opportunities. There are three very simple, yet effective, ways to meet new people and get past the initial inhibitions:

Join your local community center. Just walk in ever so frequently and see their list of upcoming events. Sooner or later, some event of interest is bound to show up. The next step is simple – attend the event.
Use social media to your advantage. If you have a Facebook profile, then surely you must receive some invites for events, certainly the mass invites. Those invites are sent out because those people would like you attend. For a change – attend one such event.
You can also attend the place of your preferred worship if you have one – say a church or a temple. These places have historically served just the same purpose; i.e. to bring communities and their members together. There are always alternates to theological gatherings. However, the idea here is not to find like-minded people, but rather to leave one's safe nest and venture out into the world of seven billion people – some of whom may be receptive your wildest and most outrageous ideas.
Attend trade shows. Lots and lots of trade shows.

Eventually, your efforts would become increasingly targeted for networking. But it all has to start somewhere.

Create an Online Presence

With every sunrise, the world is a little more digital and a little more online then the night before. It is entirely unsurprising that more than 72 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube every minute; users on Twitter are now sending 200 million Tweets per day and Google adds several billion new web pages per day.

Consequently, whoever is not using the greatest resource mankind has ever conceived and created, the World Wide Web, they are sabotaging nearly all of their networking efforts. Why? Because the moment someone finds out about you or your business, it's instinctive that they will look for you online and if you’re not online, then chances are that you just missed out on an opportunity.

So how do you go about doing that? For starters:

Have a Facebook page.
Have a LinkedIn page. But one that is filled with relevant details about where you stand today and where you intend to be in a few years time. Think from a recruiter's perspective for a moment; nothing can be more frustrating when a recruiter "friends" you on LinkedIn and nothing relevant shows up.
Not everyone needs a Twitter account, but if you or your business are positioned as such that you need one, then maybe it’s time to have a Twitter account and some real followers of your brand.
Make sure you exist in specialty databases such as the Industry Canada's Canadian Company Capabilities database (or your national equivalent) or contacts databases such as Jigsaw, Manta and Hoovers.

Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You

When you meet new people with the intent of networking, always remember that they are giving you their time because they too believe that you may hold something of value to them. Be ready to part with whatever they value in exchange for some future potential benefit. The benefit could be the company of your charming and exciting personality or the name of your former colleague who now heads the HR department in a Fortune 1000 company.

However, there exists a thin, but important, line between being a narcissist and a moocher. Never, ever get labeled as a moocher or freeloader. It may take years, if not a lifetime, to get rid of such a label. One simple way of avoiding such a label is by not being disingenuous when you meet new people or make new contacts. Let them know of your intent from the start.

Always Stand Out

When anyone enters a room, they must stand out. Always stand out if the other attendees are to remember you. Remember, people will meet your brand long before they meet you. Therefore, your brand must reel them in so they can meet the truly awesome person that you are.

The real lesson here is that networking isn't easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. Let's face it. Anything worth doing isn't easy and if it is – chances are, it's not worth doing.

Beginner Business Networking Photo via Shutterstock

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Pin Your Company to the Top with Pinterest for Business

Posted: 03 Feb 2013 06:00 AM PST

pinterest for business Auto buffs always marvel at the newest sports cars that hits the road. Last spring, I marveled at the Dodge Viper during its New York Auto Show debut. And the start of 2013 heralded a fully redesigned Corvette.

Social media can also elicit ephemeral excitement, with businesses eager to gain customers through the latest platform that amazes people. The book Pinterest for Business: How to Pin Your Company to the Top of the Hottest Social Media by Jess Loren (@chitownjess) and Edward Swinderski (@eswiderski), will leave you transfixed in its coverage of the fourth largest network. The authors’ savvy pedigree on all things Pinterest comes from being managing partners of Kambio Group, a digital marketing agency that has worked with many Fortune 500 firms.

The book provides comprehensive guidance on a platform that is outdoing Facebook in driving effective conversion traffic in many instances. I discovered the Que/Pearson book during last September’s Social Media Week presentation in Chicago and requested a copy.

"Welcome to Pinterest. We think you'll like it here."

The authors proclaim it loud and clear – their notion is certainly well deserved. With a current U.S. audience of over 27 million according to Nielsen's 2012 Social Media Report.

Pinterest has done more than become the fourth largest social media platform. It has gained much ground in providing online users a new way to discover products, services and their associated interests. Loren and Swinderski note where business fits in with Pinterest in their opening segment:

“Where using Facebook for business allows a lot of room to create and generate the story that engages users with the purpose of creating conversation, Pinterest makes a statement that forces the user to create the story. It's in this fashion that businesses can use Pinterest to weave a visual statement that compels users to insert their own stories into the pictures.”

Some of the notable chapters that best explain the aforementioned fashion include:

Integrating Pinterest in Your Business

Pinpointing Your Target Audience

Examples in Winning By Pinning

The most analytics-themed chapters, Tracking Your Pins and Virolocity, won't delve into building a dashboard to cover an API. And not many analytic tools outside of Pinerly (now called Reachli) exist. But the book not only mentions Pinerly, but it also explains how to improve your reach in Pinterest. This emphasizes Pinterest's unique quality in the social media world – no one requesting "likes" in exchange for something or begging for you to retweet a note. But Loren and Swinderski also note a Pinterest weakness – that there are fewer mechanisms to maintain attention:

"Bear in mind that Pinterest's short-term attention span is both a blessing and a curse: Your failures are forgotten quickly, but your successes will also struggle to remain at the top."

With that said, the authors enlighten on what works well in Pinterest. Infographics are highlighted, as well as activities that can even incorporate your other social media with Pinterest, such as a Scavender Hunt:

"…one method to run a scavenger hunt would be to load five images on your site. Each image contains a clue that can be used to solve the bigger puzzle. In order to unlock the clue, users must pin the images from your site. To determine which images need to be pinned from your site, you can offer clues through your other social sites. For the first day, the hint is released on Facebook, the second, on Twitter, and so on."

Another tip, coordinating your Pinterest boards with an email campaign, is a top notch suggestion. In fact, the most wonderful aspect of the book is that Loren and Swinderski write as they say – they suggest tactics with clear, excellent business perspective. For example, read this quote from Chapter 2 on boards and how they should be used:

"Being cute or cliché is a good start, but don't lose focus. When users come across your board, you want to treat them as both a regular and a potential customer. Disguising your boards with something overly clever can push potential customers away."

The authors later suggested some great ideas for board names, keeping your descriptions…well, descriptive.

Chapter 9 offers useful integration across other social media while Chapter 11 notes the etiquette that should be displayed while using Pinterest.

I don't like salespeople that hype up products or services. Same for media. Refreshingly, there's no hyperbole in this book. Pin this on the “real deal” board. Pinterest for Business does a splendid job of offering insights that will push your marketing plans past a mere interest in Pinterest.

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