How to turn your business’s news into publicity to attract more customers.
Jane Russell, the actress, once said “Publicity can be terrible. But only if you don’t have any”.
It’s true. Your business needs publicity and here is no better marketing tool for your business than publicity.
It’s vital to the growth of your business because it gets people talking about you and brings customers through the door or to your website. It is so powerful that companies have huge marketing budgets and hire specialists and agencies in order to generate a steady stream of publicity for their company.
The internet has created a level playing field because now any business, no matter how small can generate publicity easier and more efficiently than ever before. It is now possible to generate publicity online very quickly and your business has the power to reach hundreds of thousands of people every day.
If you have ever struggled with ideas on how to promote your business you will get a lot of inspiration from these tips and ideas which will show you how to turn your business’s news and events into publicity and attract more customers.
Turn your story into an online press release:
At first you might be thinking that you don’t have any stories to release but when you think about it, as a business you make news regularly.
In addition to the obvious milestones such as opening your business or launching a new product or service you can easily turn everyday events that you take for granted into stories that can generate publicity. For example:
- Has your company or member of staff recently won an award or have you had a major breakthrough like land a large contract? If so, that is a story to people interested in your industry.
- People always like to read inspirational stories, so if you have been successful in your business or you have recently run a marathon for charity, tell people.
- If you are a skilled craftsperson or your business specialises in a particular niche why not share some of your expertise and teach others how to do something similar. It helps you to build credibility and be a real expert in your field.
- Are you passionate about a particular charity? You can create awareness about a cause you believe in and create some publicity for your business. Companies do this all of the time and that is why so many of them are keen to sponsor charities and be involved with them.
- If you can identify and positive or worrying trend happening within your niche (for example you may be a dog breeder and want to warn people of the growing number of illegal puppy farms where the dogs are not looked after properly) you can share this news and turn your knowledge and expertise into a marketing asset for your company.
- There are lots of holiday events throughout the year and almost every type of company, organisation or industry marks these events in a particular way. So why not inform the tons of people in your area who are searching for events and shows with a news release.
- Put an end to a popular myth or misunderstanding in your industry. For example, if you are a dentist you might want to release a story explaining that bad breath can be caused by several factors, only one of which is poor dental hygiene. Explain some of the causes of bad breath and what people can do if they experience it. There will be a common myth in your industry too. Journalists and online bloggers love these kinds of stories and they can go viral very quickly.
- Is your business contributing to helping the environment? In the days of global warming don’t underestimate how making even slight changes to the way that your business does things can make a difference. You can win customers over with a ‘green’ story.
- Turn to any magazine or news story and there will be some kind of stats or survey result mentioned. Everybody loves stats and surveys and none more so than journalists. Why? Because they find ready-made stories to write about in this type of news release. Stories like this are quick to go viral too as readers love to share facts and figures and will provide links to them on their blogs, they will tweet about them and them to their Facebook or other social media page. If you can share new market studies, research, survey or poll results from your industry you will find that this will be a popular story for you and your business.
- Provide helpful tips. Be generous and get your industry out there by publishing a few helpful tips. You will be rewarded by converting search engine users into potential customers. If you sell cameras for example you could publish a list of features that potential buyers should be looking out for when buying a camera or produce a guide on which type of camera would best suit the kind of photography that they are wanting to do. As an expert in your niche you have all of the knowledge and tips and there are thousands of people out there searching for them so press releases and publishing these tips is an ideal way to get connected. It is worth remembering that just one or two brilliant tips are much better than a long list of useless ones.
You can no doubt think of many other ways that your business can create PR stories and get your business noticed.
Breathe some life into your story
Now that you have received some inspiration it is time to bring your story and press release to life particularly if your story about your new product or promotion seems boring.
- Give it a human element
If your story feels a bit flat try putting people at the forefront of the story. You story will have much more success because people are much more likely to share stories that involve people rather than the story being focussed on the product, especially if it features people that they know or who are local to their area. For example if you have got a happy customer who got great results using your product or service write about that. Or perhaps you have an employee who could demonstrate how effective your product is.
- Link your story to a current trend
If you have a story that comments on and contributes to industry trends it will get a lot of buzz on social networks because that is what people interested in your industry are interested in and want to read, not to mention journalists and bloggers who cover your industry. By linking your story to an industry trend can help give your story more legs and the potential to create a buzz so that people will share it.
- Attract attention with an image
The Internet is very visual so it is a good idea to break up a copy in your press release with a well placed image that gives visual impact to your story. Don’t worry too much about the image itself. You might just want to include your logo or a picture of your product or service. It will add interest to your story and make people more inclined to read it.
- Direct people to your website
If you have submitted a great story that captures people’s imagination don’t leave them hanging at the end of the story. It is the perfect opportunity to direct them to your website using a strong call to action. This could be something as simple as “Find out more at www.YourWebsite.com”. It doesn’t really matter too much how you phrase it. The aim is simply to instruct your readers to take action and to make it easier for them.
Use Social Media to create a media buzz for your story
Once you have created your press release it is time to promote it on your social media networks. This is going to give your publicity and even bigger boost and drive thousands of extra people to your website.
How to promote your press release on Facebook
- Link to your story in your Facebook status:
This is a simple way to promote your news to your whole network in a single click. If your network happens to include bloggers and reporters your news will reach them without you having to do a single pitch and they will be able to run with the idea immediately.
- Share an interesting fact from your story
Despite having a great headline for your press release it is a good idea to give your readers yet another reason to click through to read the press release. You can do this by adding an intriguing quote, fact or statistic out of your press release and make that the main focus of your Facebook post.
- Ask for a Like
This is one of those occasions where you should not be afraid to ask for likes or reposts when you promote your story on Facebook. If you have already built a loyal following of fans and have been an active part of the community they will be happy to spread the word for you, especially if your story is interesting.
- Promoting Your Press Release on Twitter
Twitter is perfect for telling people about your press release because you can easily reach a wide audience and it is easy for your followers to share and re-tweet your post. You can literally spread the word in seconds.
- Tweet your story more than once
Not everybody will see your Tweet depending on the time you post it and where in the world your audience are so don’t be afraid to repost your Tweet a day or two later and at various times. To avoid annoying the ones who might have seen the tweet already, change the headline and be careful not to post it too many times.
- Be Generous and promote those who promote you
If one of your followers has been kind enough to re-tweet your post acknowledge it by thanking them. Not only is it courteous but it is also a good way to create a second round of buzz and publicity on Twitter. It means that your story will appear twice in the feed every time it is re-tweeted.
- Use Hashtags
Categorise your story by adding a Hashtag to a keyword or phrase relating to your story or industry. As well as getting your story seen by people outside your network of followers it will also put you on the radar for journalists and bloggers who follow that particular Hashtag.
Getting the story out there
Social media of course goes beyond Facebook and Twitter. You can Pin your story on Pinterest and Google+ it as well as blogging it and sharing it on LinkedIn.
The online world really is your oyster and provides you with many exciting opportunities to get your story out there and have people all around the world reading about your brand in a matter of minutes.
If you have got an announcement or newsworthy story about your business there are so many places that you could promote it.
Our job is to help businesses like yours to get the word out and drive thousands of new clients to your website and company.
Contact us and discover what we could do for your business.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Creating Your Social Media Marketing Plan in 10 Easy Steps
The success in social media marketing comes from building strong and long-lasting relationships with customers and professional contacts over many months and years and giving them the type of content that they will want to share with their family, friends and colleagues.
This approach will help you to attract and keep loyal customers and connections, and get them to sell your business for you, not the other way around.
While this approach is a world away from the way that most traditional marketing works, this open, two-way communication is now what billions of consumers around the world expect from the businesses and brands to whom they invest time and money.
This article will help you make get the most from your social media marketing with a ten-step process for creating a successful marketing plan.
1. Determine Your Goals
Determining the goals of any marketing strategy is absolutely vital. This is probably the most important step because if you don’t aren’t clear about what you want to achieve, or why you are doing a specific task you won’t be motivated to do it correctly and eventually, you are going to stop doing it.
It is like kicking a ball in the middle of a football pitch in a championship game and not knowing that the idea was to get to the end of the field and kick the ball into the goal. You wouldn’t stand a chance against the pros and you would walk off the pitch in shame.
To help you to determine your goals, ask yourself these questions about what you want to achieve when using social media for your business:
- What do you want to get out of your social media marketing efforts? Do you want more customers/leads? If so, how many?
- Do you want greater brand awareness? If so, you need to clarify exactly what this means for your business.
- Do you want more visitors to your website?
- Why exactly are you doing social media marketing?
The goals are endless and vary from business to business. They key is to determine what your goals are and to make them doable and measurable. Write them down and then move on to the next step so that you can work through creating the foundation of your social media-marketing plan.
2. Decide who will manage your social media networks
Again, this is very step. Why? Because social media requires interaction, and if you are going to use social networking as one of the tools you need to know who is going to maintain that and where the content that is going to be used is coming from. It is crucial because this is your online reputation that we are talking about. If you ignore this, your strategy will suffer and you could cause lots of problems for your business in the future.
To help you, answer these questions:
- Who is going to create the social media content? (Blogs, articles, videos, images, status updates etc.)
- Who will maintain the social media accounts?
- Who will be the voice(s) of your business, the one responding to questions on your company’s behalf?
- Do you have an in-house technical expert to be part of the online conversation and look after your social media accounts? If not, are you or a member of your staff willing to learn or are you able to outsource the work?
- Can you, or someone you have on your team, write well?
Knowing if you have the right people in place is vital. Without the right people your social media marketing campaign will fail, regardless of how incredible your plan is. If you don’t currently have these key people, talk to us and we will help you.
3. Know Your Audience
We are going to assume for a moment that you know who your audience is. You may have already spent the time needed to establish the demographic you are after based on the products and services you offer. When it comes to social media marketing, understanding your audience is really what you need to do.
You also need to understand where your target audience is online. This isn’t the same as your demographic or running an ad in the newspaper or putting up a billboard somewhere to catch the attention of everyone, including your market. No, social media marketing is about getting to know your market on a more intimate level.
This is where a little research needs to be done. You have to determine the places that they frequent online. Everyone almost always assumes that Facebook is the first place, or even the only place to go. While it is true that Facebook is an excellent start, it should only be part of your social media marketing plans. There are many more platforms that your target audience may be using instead, depending on their age and what they are interested in.
Each social media network has their own audience, and this is why Facebook can’t be the only social network that your business uses.
Beyond the social networks, there may be particular discussion forums or online communities that your audience prefers to visit. Think about where they would go and seek advice if they had a particular problem to solve relating to your niche.
Once you have established where your audience is you can figure out what type of information they want from you. You will need to know their likes and dislikes. Never forget that social media marketing is really about getting to know your market and catering for their needs. The selling and promotions come later.
All of your communication on social media needs to be helpful and engaging. Your aim is to find out their exact needs and start building a relationship based on trust and respect. You are giving them a reason to buy from/work with you and not your competitor.
4. Create Amazing Content
Once you have figured out where your audience are online and you have spent time finding out what they want, take the time to create content that gives them what they want and makes them feel happy that they found you.
If you notice that your audience prefers videos or images and that really gets them excited and talking, it really wouldn’t make sense just creating a plain old text blog post.
This isn’t about reinventing the wheel. This is about making the wheel you are offering better than everyone else’s out there, so check out what is working with the other wheel makers and do it better or different (in a good way).
5. Integrate your marketing efforts
All of your social media marketing efforts need to work together. This means that they need to feed off one another. Cross-promote your social media accounts to your audience. If your audience is on a social network and they tend to visit specific blogs and they like video, then you need to make sure that they can find more great content on your blog with integrated YouTube videos and on playlists on your YouTube channel by promoting this on your social media network page.
Your social media marketing and the traditional marketing you are doing also need to work together. You need to be promoting your online endeavours on your brochures, advertisements, letterheads, radio etc. These marketing efforts should all be working together to support one another. This is marketing synergy at its core.
6. Create a schedule
If you are an entrepreneur starting and running your own business, creating an effective social media schedule is very important. It is very easy to spend more time than is actually needed on a social network. If you are using multiple social media platforms you want to make sure that you are allocating enough time in your day to use them effectively.
Getting sucked into emails and social networks are two of the biggest productivity killers that a business person or employee can get caught up with. From a marketing perspective, you don’t need more than 20 minutes on a social network.
7. The 80/20 rule
This is an important rule to remember regarding social media marketing. We have already stressed that social media isn’t really about you; it’s about your audience. We have also mentioned that social media isn’t really about where you sell your product or service right off the bat. So when you are online using your various social media tools, keep in mind that 80 per cent of your time should be spent on activities that are not self-promoting. Social marketing is all about helping your customers and clients. Only around 20 per cent of your social media posts should be about promotion.
8. Quality over quantity
On social media, time is twofold. It is far better to post content that is useful to your customer whether it is just once a day or a couple of times per week than to flood them with useful valueless posts. It is also better to have 1,000 loyal engaged followers than to have 10,000 followers that sign up to get something and then never interact with you again.
Quality goes a lot further than quantity. Less is most definitely more.
9. Control
It is your audience that will dictate the flow of any online conversation. The reason that you want them to do this is that you want your audience to feel as if the conversation is theirs. When someone is able to take ownership, and make something theirs, they develop an emotional connection to whatever that thing is. You want your current and potential customers to have an emotional connection to you, your company and your brand. They need to feel as though they are the most important thing to you and not their wallets.
10. Adapt your business and watch your profits soar
Social media marketing is exciting. As you use it, you will learn more about your audience and this knowledge will only grow the longer you do it. Who your audience are today may not be who they were 18 months ago or who they’ll be in a year’s time. Needs change, likes change, people grow and change. Social media is your inexpensive way to stay on top of and anticipate what your customers will need next.
You can use these changes to create and launch new products or services. Think about how compelling it is to the consumer that a new product or service was created just for them based on what they have said to you. Can you imagine anything more powerful than that? Over time, as you change and adapt your business providing exactly what your customers want, your business will be in a very powerful position and you will watch your profits soar.
You Don’t Need to do this Alone
We realise that social media marketing can seem daunting for some small businesses. Although it will be hugely profitable for your business it requires patience, time and commitment in order to see results.
We are here to help and are happy to offer advice and assist you setting up a profitable social media campaign. We have helped many businesses just like yours to succeed online.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside.com. He works with PC99Solutions, a technology consulting firm focused on services for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Which Social Media Platform is Right for YOUR BUSINESS?
Social media is mainstream. Your customers are using it and your competitors are using it. The question is: Are you?
As a business owner, you may need little convincing that social media marketing is something that you need to do. In 2010 it might have been a completely different matter. You may have needed persuading back them as some people were still writing social media off as a fad.
Today, however, there is no battle between social media and mainstream marketing. Social media IS the mainstream. Facebook has over a billion users. Twitter has over 600 million accounts, and people spend more time on social networks than they do on email.
Despite this, there are still many business owners who still don’t know which social media platform is the right one for their business or how best to use it. This article will give you a brief overview of each of the most popular social media platforms and we will also share some of our valuable tips showing you how to make it more effective for you and your company.
Blogs
Blogs are among the most important sources of ‘rich’ content. They are the real fuel for your social media engine. They are the oldest form of social media and give the average web user the ability to publish long-form content quickly and easily. Instead of static websites, blogs are interactive in nature, allowing visitors to leave a comment on individual articles or blog posts. Many newspaper websites and even online magazines now operate like blogs as readers have the ability to interact and post comments and views and articles.
Blogs began as online diaries, giving people the ability to share their thoughts and ideas online. However, in time, blogs grew in popularity to become a common and powerful tool used by businesses. In fact, many company websites are built on blogging platforms to allow website owners to easily upload content. Today, blogs can support many different business strategies, attracting employees and helping out customer service. Some companies have hundreds of blogs segmented into regions, product lines and customer demographics.
One important aspect to remember about blogging is that it can be a powerful source of search engine traffic. Some companies make the mistake of having a blog separate from their website. That doesn’t make sense and is bad for business. Don’t let anybody talk you into a separate blog. It is better to have a blog integrated into your website and drive people to directly to your site. After all, that is where business gets done.
Podcasting
Podcasting is a bit like audio blogging and is another potential source of rich content.
Although it has been around for quite a long time, the platform has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance because of the growing use of mobile devices. It has become very easy to carry these “radio programs” anywhere you go and listen to them while multi-tasking, driving or working out. While the popularity of podcasting has created the a whole new generation of radio “celebrities”, a lot of businesses have lagged behind in adopting this platform as part of their social media marketing strategy.
One of the reasons is because starting and maintaining a podcast is the most technically complicated channel and also requires a modest investment in audio technology as well as some practise. Don’t let that put you off using it for your business. Because of the slow adoption by many companies, look at podcasting carefully as a potential niche point of differentiation for your business and over time you will have a targeted core audience of dedicated and loyal fans for your brand.
Twitter
Twitter might not need much of an introduction because it is now used by everybody from marketers and celebrities to teens and members of the media thanks to it’s ‘in the moment’ and public nature. Unless you choose to keep your messages private, everything your post on Twitter is available for the world to see. In today’s social media-driven world, breaking news often comes in the form of a Tweet.
Twitter has also become the de facto ‘second screen’ for commentary while viewing television and has attracted a lot of attention for the advertising ‘ripple’ it is causing with its new relationship with TV. This platform has many advantages for businesses. It’s probably the fastest way to grow a targeted audience and Twitter has also introduced a variety of advertising platforms. Most brands are now utilising Twitter as an extension of their customer service department. This makes sense as research has shown that people who follow your brand on Twitter tend to be very loyal.
There are probably as many ways to use Twitter as there are business strategies. However, the most powerful advantage is networking. The open and public nature of Twitter allows you to develop relationships with new customers, potential employees and business partners in your region and beyond. If your business can benefit from live networking events, it can benefit from Twitter. A good tip is to explore the advanced search function on Twitter. Many business owners and marketers believe that this is one of the most powerful sources for marketing research and insight ever created. And best of all, it is free.
You can even save your Twitter searches to monitor discussions about brands, watch competitors, and discover new customer wants and needs. Perhaps the biggest downside to Twitter for many small companies is that it is difficult to understand, which inhibits adoption. It can be like entering a new world with a different language and a new set of customs but with patience and consistency, you will soon get in the swing of things.
Facebook
What began as a network for college students has transformed into the biggest social network and the largest website in the world today.
For many people, Facebook is now part of their lifestyle. It is global, addictive, useful and it is the largest media entity in history. You can’t ignore it because that is where your customers are. Facebook is unsurpassed in its ability to connect businesses with its customers in a rapid and human way. It is an ideal platform to spread the word quickly, monitor reactions, and collect data.
By setting up a Facebook Fan Page for business, you open up a myriad of marketing opportunities. What’s more, Facebook’s domination extends onto Smartphones as well as desktops, with an ever-increasing focus on mobile users and location based marketing that businesses just can’t afford to ignore. In addition, Facebook has been evolving and improving its analytics capabilities and ad reporting systems. Since becoming a public company it has been focussing on new revenue streams and advertising platforms, particularly on mobile.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is considered the social network for professionals. LinkedIn showcases your business experience and connects you with contacts from your email address book and places you’ve worked.
LinkedIn profiles are much like an online resume, detailing your education, skills, experience and recommendations from your colleagues and friends. It also gives you the opportunity to link to presentations, blog posts and your portfolio. Among the major social platforms, it is unsurpassed as a place for sales leads and connections, particularly if you are in B2B. There are over 2 million LinkedIn Groups devoted to every professional vocation, company and cause imaginable. Some of them are noisy and spammy, but the majority of them are populated with caring professionals who devote a lot of time helping people in their groups.
Despite the fact that LinkedIn has continually innovated and is a multimedia powerhouse of a platform, the truth is, it is normally a little boring there. There isn’t much socialisation going on. A top tip for better engagement on LinkedIn is this: If you are ever stuck for an idea for your content plan, go to your favourite LinkedIn Group for your industry. Each group has a place where members can post questions and ideas relevant to the topic of the group. Find an interesting question and write a blog post as an answer. Then go back to the group and post a link to your post as an answer to the question, in an authentically helpful way.
This simple exercise helps you to accomplish three important objectives at the same time. First, it provides you with a meaningful source of content for your blog. Second, it provides a kind and helpful service to the person who asked the question. You will certainly be on their radar screen from now on, as well as from others in the group who also read your reply. And third, by answering the question with a link, you are driving highly relevant eyeballs to your website. This system is efficient and really works.
Pinterest
If you are in a business related to fashion, style, food, travel, interior design or crafts, Pinterest is a must for your business. The addictive site can be described as scrapbooks of ideas, dreams, inspirations and aspirational purchases.
The users base is more than 70 per cent women and it is now one of the top five social media platforms in terms of active users. Pinterest is practically made for business. Where ‘selling’ is discouraged on other sites, Pinterest fans actively look for images of favourite products, with the price tag included, and many of these users are ready to buy. In fact ‘pins’ with price tags usually attract 36 per cent more likes than those that don’t. The average Pinterest user spends 1 hour and 17 minutes in the website per visit.
Here is the most important thing to know about Pinterest. It drives more web traffic and actual purchases than any other platform, including Facebook. The Social Habit Report from Edison Research showed that Pinterest users not only click on photos to find the original source, they also go to company sites after leaving Pinterest, inspired by the photos they have seen there.
If you want people to start pinning from your website (which is an incredibly efficient way of spreading the word about your business) then you have to make your website and blog very visual. Spend some time on Pinterest getting to know the style, subject and compositions of the photos your potential customers are pinning.
Google+
At a basic level Google+, (sometimes written Google plus) is an attempt by Google to reinvent the social media network on mobile devices and on the web. But Google+ is also Google’s attempt at being Facebook. Launched in 2011, it has now over 300 million active users. It is an impressive number but is still around a quarter of Facebook users.
Google believes Google+ is a “social layer” on top of your normal browsing, rather than a standalone single website. Google+ is based completely around the concept of sharing, not just links and photos, but also to get interesting information sent to you. Google wants to keep it nicely curated in one place. Google+ is continually changing. By merging Maps and Local Business Pages, it is making all business directories redundant. Google+ operates like Twitter in that it’s not merely enough to add someone as a friend. They must also add you to get notified about your content. Unless they’ve got a good reason, they are unlikely to add a brand as a friend.
However, they may add your business as something else. Google+ makes you put people into categories, known as circles, which you can create to suit your purposes – whether that’s family, friends, work colleagues or something else. To make an impression, post frequently and keep your profile up to date. Remember, posts on Google+ don’t have to be long. By default, only the first few lines of a long post are shown, so either keep them short or link out to other sites or blogs. Choose carefully how you can share with which of your circles, and encourage people to comment or +1 your posts, which helps in search results.
Another way it is good for local business is the fact that positive reviews may get you into the local results carousel on the main Google search page. To drive most traffic to your page, visit your profile and set a custom URL in the links box. Use this URL in emails and marketing, including Google Adwords campaigns. You can also add a custom Google+ badge to your website.
Make sure your Google+ page has a link to your website. Google will provide a code snippet to add to your homepage that helps it keep track of traffic and advertising, and which improves your pages SEO. Finally, use your brand to comment on other people’s posts and honestly review other local businesses to help further bump up traffic to your brands page.
YouTube
Just a few years ago, the most popular videos on YouTube were homemade productions of piano playing cats and brides falling into swimming pools. Those days are over.
Today, YouTube is mainstream entertainment, viewed by commuters on trains and at home on big TV screens. We are living in a video crazy world and experts predict that the percentage of video-related content we will consume in the next few years will double. Because of its popularity and predictions such as the one we just mentioned, major brands are capitalising by creating increasingly epic mini-movies exclusively for their dedicated YouTube channels. The bar for quality is constantly going up.
In addition to feeding the publics nearly insatiable hunger for video content, companies also realise that YouTube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine in the world. Billions of videos are watched on YouTube every day. As a small business, it may seem daunting trying to enter this crowded world of Hollywood-quality videos but there is still room for small businesses in this space. Remember that search results are typically local so even start-ups have a chance to compete for attention by providing useful, informative and entertaining videos.
The most effective way to successfully compete and get a huge, loyal following is to concentrate on creating practical, informative and engaging videos for topics within your field or niche. While every business dreams of creating the perfect “viral” video, the fact is that it is extremely difficult to predict what is going to go viral. However, many businesses are ruling the airwaves (and search results) with very simple videos to help customers solve their problems and answer their questions.
Slideshare
Slideshare is not normally considered a “major” social media platform, but we have included it in this overview because as you consider adding more content and information online this is an excellent place to start.
The idea is very simple: Slideshare allows users to upload and share slideshow presentations on any topic, but it is particularly powerful for marketing your business knowledge and expertise. It has often been called the Sleeping Giant of the social media world as, despite its massive user base, it doesn’t receive the same amount of attention as the other big social networks. However, with the right approach, it can be a brilliant tool in your social media arsenal. Slideshare accepts videos and various types of documents, but it is the PowerPoint slideshows that tend to perform best and attract the most views.
To get the most from Slideshare use it in conjunction with your other social media platforms. For example you could show your Twitter feed on your Slideshare profile to gain Twitter followers from your shares. It is easy to d as Slideshare allows you to insert your Twitter feed on to your profile page. The benefit is that it gives your profile viewers a quick and easy way to get taste of what you and your business is all about, and a link to click-through to Twitter and get in touch.
Another cool Twitter-related feature is this: when someone tweets one of your Slideshare presentations, they will automatically be prompted to follow you on Twitter. Slideshare has reported that this feature has helped some users to considerably boost their Twitter following. If you do this too, who knows where that could lead for your business. The possibilities are huge.
Instagram
Instagram, the fun and quirky image app for iPhone and Android devices has taken the world by storm. Millions upon millions of people use it as a way to transform everyday photos with filters and frames, into memory-laden content, which can be shared with the world on an online gallery.
It is a superb social media tool for businesses to engage with their customers, build relationships, and increase sales. You can use Instagram to promote your new products, services and offers through images and a tempting description. Virtually every major brand now has an Instagram account. Be creative by featuring customers using your products. There is no better promotion for your business to brand new customers than to show photos of existing customers enjoying what you offer, so take advantage of this idea when using Instagram.
You can take snaps from inside your store, restaurant or business. You can also use images submitted to you by happy existing customers. For example, pen manufacture Sharpie, regularly features sketches drawn by its customers via Instagram. Show behind the scenes of your business. To increase intimacy with your brand and make customers feel special, use Instagram to snap photos of behind-the-scenes goings-on at your company.
It is easy to kick-start your follower base on Instagram. Simply announce your Instagram presence on other social media, including Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr. In Instagram’s “Sharing Settings”, enter your social media usernames and passwords for the various accounts on offer, to make sure that your Instagram photos are seen by your various followers on each site when you publish them. The importance of photo-oriented content is being driven by a couple of market factors. First, the use of mobile smart devices has brought the barriers to creating and sharing photographic content down to zero. It is fun. It is fast and it is easy.
Second, in our information-dense world, we may only have time to consume images rather than read huge articles. It is very easy for people to fill a few seconds of spare time thumbing through Instagram photos. Finally, you can do it at work. Many companies may block access to Facebook or Twitter on company computers, but people can easily sneak some time with a site like Instagram on their smartphone. The Social Habit research showed that 85% of the people who use Instagram do it at work, easily the most work-friendly social media site around. If you are a ‘visual’ brand, the emerging popularity of photo sites can be a goldmine of opportunity.
Now that you have an overview of the various social media platforms what would you like to do now?
As we said at the outset, as a business owner you already know how important social media is for your business. However a lot of business owners we speak to are too busy running their businesses and simply don’t have the time it takes to even plan a social media campaign never mind run a social media account. Even if you do run a moderately successful social media site you might want to take it to another level.
No matter what your situation is, we can help you to give your social media marketing a kick-start and show you what huge profits and brand awareness awaits you and your business as a result of a success social media marketing campaign.
Contact us today to see how we can help your business.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside.com. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
If you own a business, there is a good chance that you have spent many years, investing time, sweat and tears into building it, and have missed many family functions and events in order to make it a success. Building a business is hard work and you don’t want that hard work to be undone by comments made about your business online.
Of course, no business can please every customer, and there isn’t a business out there that has not had an issue arise. Ideally, problems can be resolved quickly and quietly, before they reach a point where the customer feels that they have to warn others about your business through a public forum. The Internet has made it so that there are no barriers between customers, and word of mouth can travel further and more rapidly than ever before.
Regardless of the type of business you are in, a lot of your customers are going to be active users of social media websites. Which means if they are happy, or unhappy with your business, there is a very good chance, they will share their feelings online, usually in the form of location check-in’s, reviews, or Twitter and Facebook posts. If they are pleased with your business, that is fantastic. However, if they are unhappy, a complaint on a social media network can quickly turn into a disaster.
To combat this, you should make sure that both your customer service and public relations departments are socially perceptive, work quickly on resolving and defusing problems, and keep an eye on customer feedback and make improvements to your business when necessary. Social networks are a great way to interact with your customers, and turn around any experiences for those that are unhappy.
If you and your staff have prepared and planned how to handle online criticism, the impact of any complaints can be greatly reduced, and you will probably be able to respond more effectively and quickly to minimize any potential damage.
For any business owner, the reputation of their business is extremely important, and even one bad review, regardless of whether it is true or false, online or off, can negatively influence a business and its sales. Fortunately, there are things you can do to monitor and protect your reputation online.
Keep an Eye on Social Media
In order to monitor, protect and maintain your online reputation, you must keep an eye on social media websites so that you know what people are saying about your business. However, if you are not particularly Internet savvy, you may not know what types of things to look for.
Begin by looking for anything that references your business name, services and products. Make sure that you include abbreviations, nicknames and possible misspellings in your search. Other things that you can search for include seasonal campaigns, special offers, sales, the names of the business owners, including your own name, and the names of CEOs and stockholders.
Once you have a good idea of how your business appears on social media websites, run similar searches for some of your competitors. This will help you determine if your online reputation is better, or worse than theirs is. If it is worse, try to determine what the other companies are doing well. On the other hand, if your company has a good reputation and your competitors do not, find out what they are doing wrong to ensure that you do not make the same mistakes.
Social Media Tracking
Of course, you could run these social media searches manually, but completing them on a regular basis can take a lot of time. Fortunately, there are many free, or low cost programs available online that can track social media for you.
Apps such as Social Mention and Hootsuite, paired with free services such as Google Alerts can make social media monitoring much easier. Many of these apps even allow you to schedule posting times and reply to comments.
Customer Service via Social Media
Tracking and monitoring your social media reputation is only the beginning. In order to leverage social media efficiently, you need to interact and talk with your customers.
If someone posts praise about your products or service, reply to the post and thank the person for their kind words, you could even offer them a small, one-time discount. If someone posts a negative comment, reply and ask what your company can do to resolve the issue and make the customer happy. Of course, you cannot satisfy every customer, and even if they remain unhappy, you are showing other social media users that you take customer service very seriously.
Additionally, find the time to get involved with forums, message boards and other sites where your business name, or your competitors names crops up. If you become an active participant in these conversations, you are increasing your reputation and brand awareness.
Maintaining Your Social Media Presence
In today’s technological world, many businesses have some kind of social media presence, but many of them treat their social media pages the same as their static web pages.
However, a social media page and a static website are completely different. A social media page needs frequent attention. You should be adding photographs of new products, offering special discounts to social media users, and of course, linking to your business’s website.
Nevertheless, simply posting is not enough you also need to engage. Ask your social media followers what types of things they would like to see in new products and services. Take customer satisfaction poles, or run contests specific to social media. The more comments you can generate, the better your online reputation will become. Just remember to read what people are posting, and respond in a timely manner to both the good, and the bad comments.
Turning Unhappy Customers into Happy Ones
Because online posts can act like word of mouth on steroids, one or two unhappy customers can become a real problem. All businesses should allocate the necessary resources to be able to monitor mentions of their company. However, what should you do if your business gets a negative comment or receives a bad review? The most important things are to keep calm, address the issue, be professional, and attempt to solve the problem.
Online communities are typically anonymous, allowing people the freedom to post damaging comments without repercussion. Because of this, feedback can become very negative quite quickly.
When dealing with negative feedback, it is important to remember not to take it personally, because if you do, it will stop you taking an honest look at what improvements need to be made. For example, if you get a lot of negative feedback about a particular site feature, then you should be prepared to take immediate action to change, improve or remove that feature to rectify the problem.
One of the main points when dealing with customer complaints is empathy. In most cases, unhappy customers are simply looking for a solution to their problem, they have merely chosen social media channels to voice their concerns, opinions and problems. Empathy helps to set the tone for any public responses. Remember in many cases, customers just want to be heard.
When it comes to positive comments, you should still ensure that you keep track of what they seem to think you are doing right. Of course, you should also make sure that you thank them, and share their comments with others when appropriate. Ultimately, your customers, users, clients and shoppers are using social networks, which mean that you need to be using them too to ensure you hear what they are saying and respond appropriately.
Don’t Opt Out of Reputation Management
Many small businesses do not realize the importance of reputation management, and without it, they are left in the position of a sitting duck. If a business only has a website to represent them online, they are in a precarious position if someone creates a site to target them, or simply posts something negative on social media. This is because these items can rank on search engines when someone does a business name search. Believe it or not, people frequently search for businesses online by using their business name, so having negative comments and other bad stuff rank in search results can directly impact the bottom line.
Online reputation management and repair has been a large part of online marketing for many years. Many businesses have had to spend many man-hours repairing their reputation. If a business neglects to develop their online presence and reputation proactively, they may find that they pay the price later in lost revenues, and additional man-hours repairing damage and developing a presence that they neglected.
Any business that is closely tied to the identities of their founders, the name of their executive officers may be another area of reputation that needs to be proactively managed. While many executives avoid social media because they have chosen to keep a low profile, having no online reputation built around their name, they may also be sitting ducks for reputation damage if someone decides to post something negative about them.
While under-engaging in online media is bad, handling social media badly can be much worse. Nobody can cause as much damage as you can if you do not know what you are doing. Many entrepreneurs and employees of small businesses develop a case of over confidence, possibly because many people who open small businesses find they have to become jacks-of-all-trades in order to be able to run the business effectively.
However, the ability to create a great product and do everything necessary to manage and run a small business does not automatically make business owners effective communicators, especially on the Internet. With this in mind, below are a few helpful tips to help business owners successfully manage their online reputation.
1. Set Up Online Accounts and Monitor Them
At the very least, your company should have a Twitter, Facebook and Google+ account. For many high-tech, B2B and other professional businesses, you may also want to set up a Linkedin account. If you sell visually oriented products, Pinterest, Flickr and Instagram may also be useful. Finally, if you want to benefit from shared videos, consider Vimeo and YouTube.
2. Don’t Neglect These Accounts
Simply having these social media accounts is not enough. Once you have them set up, it is important you build them to develop your audience. Use your social media accounts to interact with customers and increase your influence.
3. Consider Brands and Products
If you have specific brand or product names, you may want to develop web pages, social media profiles and materials to help claim and reserve those names.
4. Protect Individuals Associated with the Business
Develop a social media presence for the names of your owners, founders and executives, especially if their names are unique.
5. Read Posts and Reviews Carefully
Typically, the first reaction to a bad review is to get mad, or to argue. However, neither approach is productive. Instead, read the review as carefully as possible. It may be raising a problem that needs to be acknowledged and addressed.
6. Address Any Issues
If there has been a negative review, address the issue and find out what the problem was that caused it. This will allow you to turn a potential disaster into an opportunity to connect with existing and potential customers.
7. Blog
Blogging can greatly help with site’s rankings and provides content for social media accounts. It can also help to build and maintain your company’s reputation and give you a platform where you can respond to any allegations made about your company.
8. Listen
When you respond to bad reviews or online complaints, remember to listen to what your customers are saying with an open mind. You may find that there is a weakness in your company that needs addressing. Always try to be flexible, and come up with creative ways to give your customers what they want without creating more problems.
9. Apologize
If you, or your company does something wrong, own up to it and make a genuine apology. This can quickly help to diffuse a situation and move the process towards a speedy solution.
10. Do Not Argue
It doesn’t matter how bad the review is, show your class by thanking the reviewer. Write a short note of appreciation, thanking them for taking the time to provide feedback. If you take the time to be professional and personal, your response may actually gain some new customers for your business.
11. Make an Investment in Your Reputation Management
Developing and maintaining a social media reputation requires an investment in both time and money. Many small businesses either ignore reputation management completely, or attempt to do it themselves on a shoestring budget and an as needed, or as time allows basis.
However, a social media reputation is a vital element of almost any business and not simply something, which is nice to have. Additionally, if you do not have adequate experience interacting with online communities, doing it yourself may not be the best idea. If you do not have the experience, or time to do it properly, or simply don’t know how, make an investment and hire an online reputation management service to take care of it for you.
While proactive online reputation management may cost a little to set up and put in place, it will save you time and money in the end. Your online reputation is very important. With so many consumers reading, posting and sharing business reviews on websites such as Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and Foursquare, it is critical that every business manages and monitors their online reviews, as they play a major part in shaping your business reputation.
Prevention is Better Than Cure
Even if you have not had any issues online, prevention is better than cure. It makes sense to apply the tips in this article and have a monitoring plan in place.
If, like many small businesses, you simply don’t have the time or the staff to monitor your online brand, why not give us a call and see what we can do to not only protect your brand but promote it.
As online marketing experts, we can present a positive image of your business to the world and attract thousands more customers to your site. Give us a call today.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He works with PC99Solutions, a technology consulting firm focused on services for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
How To Be Found On Local Web Searches & Drive Local Customers to Your Website
Have you ever searched for a local business or shop online? You are not alone, thaere are plenty of others out there looking closer to home for what they want. Appearing for these queries requires local search, and it’s vitally important to the success of your business.
Location, Location, Location
It doesn’t matter where you’re based, you need to be found in the search engines if people are searching for products and services in your area. Even though the global village is getting bigger, people still want to source their goods and services locally. Local businesses rely on local customers.
Being Found by on Local Google Searches
For most local searches, Google now shows map listings with (usually) seven businesses listed. Obviously, placement in this list is highly coveted and the strategies that we use to rank businesses well in local results are the subject of this article.
Take Ownership of Your Google+ Local Page
Many local businesses already have a Google+ Local (what used to be called Google Places) page, but often these have been automatically generated by Google and are not managed by the business itself.
There are a number of advantages to claiming your Google+ Local listing, including being able to link it to your website, add pictures and videos, update contact information and write a nice detailed description mentioning the products and services you offer.
If your unclaimed listing is already showing up in Google search results, click on the listing and you will notice a “Manage this page’ button towards the bottom. This will take you through the verification process, which usually involves requesting a postcard with PIN number or an automated phone call to your business phone line to make sure that you are the authorised business owner.
If your listing isn’t showing up, or you’re not sure if Google has an automatically-generated listing for your business, you can try creating a new listing. If Google finds duplicate details in their system, they’ll ask if you’d like to manage the existing page rather than creating a new page.
When you’re managing your Google+ Local page it’s best to include as much information as possible because Google tends to favour fully completed listings. So be sure to add pictures, videos, opening times, contact information and anything else you can possibly cram into that page to give Google exactly what it wants.
Establish a Process for Obtaining Reviews from Customers
It should be the goal of every local business to try and get as many reviews from their customers as possible. Getting your customers to leave reviews on your Google+ page is a great way to boost your local visibility and attract more clicks to your site.
The main obstacle for most local businesses is actually creating a system for collecting the reviews. Early on they might ask a select few customers for a review on their page, then every so often they’ll do another spurt of requests, but in most cases they don’t have a fixed repeatable system in place, seriously limiting the number of reviews that they collect.
Creating a system doesn’t have to be hard work to either build or implement. In fact, with a little creativity, it can even run automatically. For example, if you have followed our advice you will already be collecting customer information for your database, so as part of your email marketing sequence of your early automated emails can be a simple request to leave a review along with a link to your Google+ page, Tripadvisor page, Trustpilot or any other review site that you are targeting.
If you’ve dealt with a customer who is particularly happy with your service, or you have gone out of your way to help a customer and want to make the most of the goodwill that you have generated, why not ask, “If you think we have done a good job for you, would you be willing to leave a short review on our Google+ page (include your link). It really helps us to grow our business and show potential customers what sort of service we offer.”
If you or your team follows up with customers or clients after the sale is made, ask for a review. If you sell or deliver a physical product, drop a “Will you review us?” postcard in with each purchase.
However you decide to ask for your reviews, focus on making it as easy as possible for your customers to leave them. Google+ page URL’s are long and difficult to type correctly, so you might want to consider making a reviews page on your website which has links to the different review sites you want to direct your customers to.
Create Pages on Your Website to Target Each Location
One of the main challenges for local businesses that target a number of different local areas is including enough quality and relevant content to their websites to target each individual area.
For example, you might offer a wedding planning service to a number of different counties around your local town or city. Your challenge is rank the business in an area outside of where your business is located.
However, because you would be competing against actual local competitors situated in the towns and cities you are targeting, there are some things that you should never do. One of these things is a Google+ Local ranking. Unless a local business has an office (or virtual office) in each town, it is extremely unlikely that the Google+ page will show up on maps far outside it’s area. In this case, organic SEO and Pay Per Click advertising is useful.
To combat this and target organic SEO in this instance, you could set up pages on your website targeted at each local area. These pages will be optimised for the area and include plenty of locally relevant content.
So, for the wedding planning business for example, you could set up a page for each of your different target areas and write a guide to getting married in that particular area. You can use links to different local wedding venues and suppliers and write about the different styles of weddings popular in each area. The result would be a set of highly optimised pages targeting a very wide area, but with focussed locally relevant content.
So if you need to target lots of local areas for your business, work out which sort of targeted content you can create which will be genuinely useful to each of the local audiences.
Putting this content on distinct pages will give them more chance of ranking well in each area, and also builds more affinity with your audience.
We’ll Drive Local Customers To Your Site
We understand how important this is for your customers to find your online and we can direct local customers to your website.
How Local SEO Will Help Your Business
- Get found by local customers online
- Gain more traffic from customers searching for your location
- Increase your conversions
- Raise your local profile
- Enhance your branding
- Get more people contacting you in person (phone/in store)
Optimising your site so you’re found locally will help boost traffic and conversions hugely. It will also increase your footfall and encourage more people to get in touch personally. Get ready to say “hello” to your neighbours.
Local Search Results on Mobiles
Think about the number of people searching on the move. Mobile technology and mobile Internet have been a game changer. More people are searching when they’re out and about, providing you with a great opportunity to attract new custom on the move. It’s true and we can help them to find your business.
By choosing to use our services you’ll get more from your local search campaigns. Not only are we dedicated, highly experienced and knowledgeable, but we take a personal interest in seeing your campaign succeed.
If you succeed, we succeed; and that’s the way we like it.
Whether you have existing SEO campaigns, or are looking for an agency to help with a new strategy, we can help. We develop local campaigns that will complement, not replace your existing SEO work.
So, if you’re fed up with not getting found by your local customers in the search engines contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside.com. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Networking is an important part of growing your business and is a crucial part of marketing your business. You can attend networking events for businesses to grow your business contacts and get your businesses name circulating through the community. If you use business networking events for marketing your business, you will see a huge growth in your marketing attempts, and this will pay off in a huge way down the road.
Finding Business Networking Events
It’s actually quite simple to find local business networking events since the wonderful internet and social media is at your disposal. There are many ways to find them, you just need to know where to look. Facebook is a great way to find business networking events, and if you already have friends on Facebook that attend networking events, you can simply ask them to send you invites or you can join a group and never miss one again. An alternative to this is the awesome sit that is Meetup.com. You simply put in what you’re looking for in your area and it will find all of them available.
Before the Event
There are a few things you want to have taken care of before you attend your event. First, make sure you have eaten beforehand, some might offer finger foods, but it’s hard to actually network with a plate of food in your hand. Write down what you want to achieve before you attend the event. Ask yourself questions about what your most important goals are that you want to meet by attending the event. Make sure that you dress accordingly, some network events have dress codes that you need to follow.
During the Event
If you allow yourself to show up early you will beat most people to the punch and it will be much easier to talk to other people before the huge crowd comes in. Even if you’re feeling nervous and not confident, act as though you are. Make sure to smile and seem inviting and personable, nobody wants to approach someone who looks miserable and doesn’t want to be there. Make sure to spend plenty of time meeting new people, which is what the event is for! Don’t spend the whole time talking to people you already know, take a step outside of you comfort zone and introduce yourself to new people.
After the Event
If you have obtained contact information for a few people, make sure to contact them within 24 hours after the event. You want them to know that you are interested in pursuing a business relationship with them. If you really hit it off with someone, why not invite them out for a cup of coffee or lunch? This will give you time to get to know them even more and to possibly grow your business even more.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
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