Is Social Media A Fad?
Facebook For Small Business: Top 3 Rules
If you are a small business owner and you are looking to use Facebook to find new customers,then I say, good for you!
However I will caution you at the same time. Marketing your small business on Facebook can be hugely successful if done right. For instance, Harvard Business Review did *case study on Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain. The findings were that as DG engaged their customers on Facebook, those fans visited the cafe 20% more often than non fans, and were also more likely to recommend them to their friends.
Not bad for free advertising.
There are some do’s and don’t with Facebook marketing and I will list the Top 3 Rules to get you going.
1) Start Off Slowly
You can actually get your account shut down if you violate this rule. There are companies that offer to add friends for you which sounds good, but Facebook doesn’t like that. What you will want to do is start adding selected people from high profile people in your niche.
For instance, if you have a website offering business coaching, then look for clubs where business owners are spending time. You can do a search in Facebook looking for fan pages that cater to business owners like “Forbes” or “Business Development”. Then you would “like” those pages and add people who subscribe to that page.
This process works in any market and will bring your site targeted traffic.
2) Follow the “Oprah Marketing Method”
Oprah is a perfect example of how when you educate your audience, they will like you, trust you and buy what ever you recommend.
You want to offer valuable content related to your market. The more you help them, educate them, the more you position yourself as the trusted expert in your field. Do this on a consistent basis and you’ll watch your sales increase.
3) Respond Quickly
If you consistently sent out messages of value, you will get questions from your target market, usually before they buy. This is like a little test. If you don’t treat them with care before they buy, they won’t trust you enough to buy from you.
Sign up for social monitoring tools like hootsuite.com. It’s free and it will really help you manage all the feedback you get in one centralized location.
Facebook is huge. Your future customers are on there, so go get ‘em!
Happy Marketng!
Arlina Allen
* Resource: Harvard Business Review, http://hbr.org/2010/03/one-cafe-chains-facebook-experiment/ar/1
Google Places – Adding Video
Are you using videos to advertise your local business? Videos are a great way to do that because people are 10x more likely to click on an image link than a website link.
Places account, so I thought it would be good to do a basic walk-through.
It is an easy process (detailed below) that entails:
- Set up an account with Google
- Enter your business details and information.
- Upload your videos to YouTube
- Indicated in your Google Places listing which YouTube videos to show.
- That is it.
First, you’ll need a Google Places account (formerly Google Local Business Center), which you can sign up for here. This is a vital thing for any business to do regardless of whether or not they’re looking to add video to it. I’ve had countless clients ask about how they can get their company listed “on that little map on the Google search results,” and Google Places is the first step.
Essentially, Places was born as a way to help businesses “claim” themselves on a map in order to offer consistent Google data on a company’s location and contact information. You’ll need to verify your Places account, so that Google can tell you’re who you say you are, and you can verify by phone (instantly) or mail (2-4 weeks).
Happy Marketing!
Arlina Allen
How To Build Trust & Grow Your Business
What is the number one reason people don’t buy online? It is lack of trust. Your customers either don’t believe you can deliver what you say you can, or they don’t understand the value you are offering. The internet is known to be a hot bed for scams, so you need to arm yourself with a strategy that will help you convert that hard earned traffic into sales.
If you have a website and you are using it as a tool to market your business, then you need to know how to overcome this hurdle. Here is another grim fact before we move onto the good news. Almost all of the costly traffic going to your website is being lost. Why? People are not typically ready to buy the first time they visit your site. If you don’t have an obvious way to capture their information, then they are virtually lost to you. Wasted traffic, wasted time & wasted money. Ouch.
The good news is there is one simple thing you can do to both build trust and demonstrate that you can deliver. That is to set up an email opt in form on your website and set up an autoresponder system. The idea is to offer valuable content in exchange for their email address so you can send them valuable content on a regular basis and they get to know and trust you. This practice is commonly known as “Email Bait”.
By offering email bait in the form of a newsletter with something like members only discounts, a free e-book or pdf resource guild, the visitors are getting valuable content they are interested in and the site is getting the opportunity to develop a relationship with its potential customers. The subscribers will receive regularly scheduled information through an email service, also called an auto responder system, like Get Response.
With an auto responder system, you can set up pre-written, evergreen newsletters ahead of time in regular intervals so you can stay in front of your customers. If you are providing valuable content, then a weekly or monthly newsletter is a welcome email, not an obnoxious intrusion and here is the key, you are actually helping your prospect!
Here’s the magic part: when your customers are ready to buy, they will think of you since they have become familiar with you, they begin to feel like you care about them and they begin to like you, trust you and they will buy from you.
By setting up a simple auto responder system, you have automated the process of capturing leads, building trust and increasing your return on your investment. After all, traffic can be time consuming and expensive. The successful website owner who has an auto responder system like Get Response will see amazing results.
Don’t waste any more website visitors, money in lost sales or time. This is a system every website needs to have to increase the return on the investment made on a website. Capture those lost sales today!
Don’t have time to write 12 newsletters? Consider leveraging our Newsletter Service and get that automated selling system in place today. We can set up 12 custom newsletters with “evergreen” content and 6 timely newsletters that you can use for special offers.
Happy Marketing!
Arlina Allen
Arlina A. Allen is the founder of Social Media Manager, the most effective resource for “Do-It-For-You” social media marketing.
Arlina invites you to sign up for “The Social Media Manager” newsletter. Small business owners will find out how to use the social media space to get massive exposure at a fraction of traditional advertising.
To get your free copy, visit http://www.SocialMediaMgr.com
Feel free to use this post in your newsletters or blogs as a “guest writer”, as long as all the article is published unedited with credits listed.
5 Twitter Tips To Attract New Clients
If you want to improve the results with Twitter, and attract new clients, I have 5 quick tips that will help you out.
1) Provide valuable content
Whatever niche you are in, you want to be seen as the expert because people buy from those they trust. By providing helpful tips and suggestions you will be offering real help, real value and your market will come back again and again.
2) Use Automation Tools
My favorite tool to automate my Tweets is Social Oomph. You can set it up so every time a person follows you, you can automatically follow them back which is good for growing your followers list. You can also send a DM (direct message) automatically. It’s a friendly way to say hello and engage your followers. A paid membership is what I use because of the “Bulk Upload” feature. With this feature, I can write all my tweets ahead of time and schedule them to go out over time. I personally like to upload my content every two weeks and have them delivered every 4-6 hours.
To start using Social Oomph, visit: http://bit.ly/socialoomph-smm
3) Follow & Unfollow Strategy
What I did to grow my Twitter list of “targeted followers” is to apply my “Follow & Unfollow” Strategy. Remember, this is about quality, not quantity. Use the keywords from your market to find people on Twitter who would be your customer and add them. By adding as many people as you can, you will quickly grow your list. The unfollow part of this strategy is key. You can set up Social Oomph to also automatically unfollow people once they unfollow you. Listen, if they tell you they aren’t interested, let them go and give the spot to someone who will be interested. I also like to use Twitter Karma to bulk unfollow about once a month. You can find the tool here: http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
4) Retweet!
Try to retweet a few times per day. People love it and will respond in kind. It’s also a fast and easy way to keep you content fresh. You can check to see who is retweeting you and return the favor. People see that others are retweeting you and it’s like a personal testimonial from them. It’s a vote that says you are an expert and you show up other people’s pages, attracting more attention.
5) Change Your Profile Picture
This is a hot little tip nobody is talking about. If you change your picture periodically, it moves you up the list on the list of other people’s followers. Your picture will get more exposure and again, you will get more followers!
I sure hope you test out these tips! Make sure you take a count of how many followers you have when you start. Keep track and chart your growth.
Leave a comment and share your results!
~Arlina
