Will Facebook Fade?

There’s a rumor floating around that Facebook will go public in the first quarter of 2012. This has caused some to speculate whether it’s a wise move to invest, considering it could burn bright then fade fast like MySpace. But just like we now Google things and a Kleenex is commonly misused term instead of the word tissue, Facebook has ingrained itself deeply into the fabric of our culture.

Businesses are hopping on, teachers are sending out assignments through it, and proud parents and grandparents can share photos. The platform is continually evolving and users are continuing to evolve in the way they utilize it.

Recently, SmartPulse did a “non-scientific poll” that asked, “Who do you think has benefited from social media engagement the most?” Results were interesting to say the least and obviously didn’t just relate to FB.

• Business-to-consumer companies – 32.08%
• Celebrities – 31.13%
• Media – 10.38%
• Not-for-profit organizations – 9.91%
• All have equally benefited – 6.60%
• Politicians/governments – 5.19%
• Business-to-business companies – 2.83%
• Some other group – 1.89%

But it does speak to the fact that if you know how to use it correctly, FB and other social media outlets can be your friend and a powerful sales tool. Look at the Old Spice resurgence or Betty White’s thunderbolt back to fame on the back of a 'lil old Snickers commercial.

Just make sure you know what you are doing and consider your audience. Once something is out there, it’s out there and can go viral in a heartbeat. Just ask some of the recent blushing and scandalized public figures how they feel about social media’s reaches.

Easy way to FAIL!

I opened my email the other day to find a message from BranchOut, asking me to "Like" its page and I'd immediately be entered for a chance to win a new iPad. Good enough, I thought—it's an easy click on the button, I already enjoy the service, and who wouldn’t want a new iPad. So...

"Click"

Immediately, a new window appears stating "503 Error—Request could not be completed."

Hmmm….okay, let’s try that again. "Click."

Same message: "503 Error—Request could not be completed."

At this point, I'm done. Out of here. If you can't do a simple thing like process the link from your OWN email, then I don't have time to wait, and won't remember to come back at a later date. It's not THAT important.

That's the message here. When you engage the customer—whether through email, social media, print advertising or face-to-face, make sure you can complete your offer and satisfy the customer’s need or want AT THAT MOMENT. If you take the mindset that they will return later, or there's another chance tomorrow, or you will "get around to it," you've shown the customer that he or she is less important in this exchange than whatever you are doing. Your customer has a variety of things to do during their day—things that are important to them—and if they've taken part of their valuable time to interact with you, they want to know that you're giving them you undivided attention.

Because if you don’t, there’s certainly no shortage of others who will.

To blog…or not to blog. That is the question.

Corporate websites are often little more than interactive brochures that display basic information and describe what the business offers. But if you’re looking to do more — establish yourself as thought leaders in the industry, develop relationships with customers or gather feedback from prospects and clients — then a company blog is a much better choice.

"A blog can also be the centerpiece for a social media effort, driving visitors from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn back to the blog through calls-to-action and landing pages," explains Douglas Karr, the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies. "A blog has the flexibility to produce content easily, syndicate that content through any medium using RSS, and convert that audience into customers."

Unfortunately, if approached incorrectly, a company blog has just as much potential to embarrass your company or alienate customers. Mashable recently asked Karr, internet marketing experts, and small business bloggers about the most common mistakes that companies make when starting a blog — and how to avoid them.

• Starting Without a Strategy

Don’t take starting a company blog lightly. Even if only a handful of people visit it at first, those few people will likely be clients or have the potential to become them.

"The biggest mistake that most small businesses make when it comes to blogging is to assume that it’s an easy task," explains Marjorie R. Asturias, the president of web marketing firm Blue Volcano Media. "That sets them up for a cascade of mistakes, starting with the fact that they generally jump in without a discernible strategy, much less something as essential as an editorial calendar."

When thinking through your blog strategy, consider:

• Is a blog right for my business? "Some companies aren’t social and never will be. If you can’t keep generating content, then don’t start," explains Karr. "If you can’t be transparent, don’t start. If you can’t respond to negativity, don’t start. You need to understand the ramifications of making mistakes or blogging poorly before you decide haphazardly to begin."
  


• What business objective do I want to accomplish? Your goals should drive your content. If your goal is to connect with industry thought leaders, for instance, your content will be much different than if your goal is to drive more sales. Christian Russell, who runs sales blog Dangerous Tactics, found this out the hard way. "Originally I was operating on the belief that having a blog and posting good content regularly was the recipe for sales," he says. "But I found a huge separation between people reading my blog and those who were buying from me. I’ve only just recently begun making changes to the site to make offers much more clear, and I’ve already noticed important changes. Instead of just getting subscribers, I’m getting more inquiries and leads for what I sell." Karr says that acquisition, retention, building authority and customer support are all strategies to consider.
  


• Am I willing to allocate the necessary resources? As the saying goes: No pain, no gain. If you set up a blog, expect to dedicate time and resources. Josh Chan, an online marketing specialist at Chromatix design admits that his company’s blog underestimated the commitment. "Trying to come up with valuable content even just once a day means someone in your small business has to spend at least 30 minutes to an hour preparing and posting it," he says.
  


• Making it All About You

It’s a fact: Companies tend to talk about how great they are. But a blog exclusively discussing this point is bound for not-so-greatness. Before posting a shamelessly promotional blog entry, please note:

• A blog is not a press section. There should be a section on your site that is dedicated to company news, if you’re willing to share it. But using your blog this way can be detrimental. "Blogs allow consumers to view the human side of a business, but repeated promotional posts take away the brand’s personality and position the blog as a one-way advertising medium rather than an engagement platform," explains Whitney Sewell, a social media manager at Social Media Solutions.
  


• Your audience’s needs. "Businesses want to write dry, information-based articles that highlight their own accomplishments," explains Angela Neal, an online marking consultant based in Scotland. "I see blogs full of statistics and product details that are full of jargon and technical terms that only somebody within the company would know or understand."

Take a step back and think about what your readers want to learn about. Is it advice? Analysis? Industry news? Figure out what you can provide that is valuable to your readers.

• Failure to Link

Links should be an integral component of anything that calls itself a blog. To embrace them to their fullest:

• Don’t be afraid to link out: "Many business blogs get so carried away with minimizing PageRank leakage that they end up stifling their blog’s narrative potential," says Rohin Guha, a community manager at online marketing firm Blue Phoenix Media. "As a company, you want to present the impression that you know what’s happening in the world around you, and unless your daily archives can fill that role, you’ll have to turn to other sources." Guha suggests setting a minimum number of links for each blog post to get in the habit of linking out.



• Don’t forget to link to yourself: Digital filing company OfficeDrop hosted a blog on its site for more than a year without linking back to the main page. "Some of our blog entries are the most visited pages on our site, and some of them are very high PageRank sites," says Head of Marketing Healy Jones. "Now, we take advantage of the SEO power and readership of the blog to have SEO links all over the blog that link back to different pages on our website. Since the blog has a lot of search engine juice (it has a lot of inbound links), we now use it aggressively to transfer rank to the most important pages on our main site."
  


• Not Being Yourself

Being yourself means a couple of things:

• Don’t make the intern write the blog: Have someone who can represent the company write about it. An intern impersonating the CEO does not cut it.
  


• Let some "human" show: No one wants to read stiff, corporate jumble. Plus, it’s easier and more engaging to write like a person and not a corporate entity.
  


• A personal tone doesn’t mean that you blog about personal matters: "This isn’t the opportunity to post your favorite ’80s video off of YouTube," Karr says. "This is the opportunity to wow your audience by being a subject matter expert in your field. Keep your personal stories on your personal blog or on Facebook — where your next prospect won’t be offended by them."



• Blog what you know: What works for everyone else might not work for your company. When Stella Fayman started a blog for FeeFighters.com, she looked at other small businesses’ blogs and saw they were all blogging about social media. Seeing how this topic worked for them, she started blogging about social media even though it was only tangentially related to the company.

"After a while, I realized that in order to establish our brand as a small business finance resource, we needed to blog about what no one else talking about and what was more related to our business: small business operations and finance," she says. "Our traffic increased significantly after we made this switch."

• Ignoring Social Media

Your posts are not going to promote themselves. Get the word out by leveraging your company’s social media accounts. When you write a new post, discuss it on Twitter and Facebook. Make sure all of your social profiles include a link to your blog. When someone comments on your blog or contacts you about something you wrote through another channel, respond.

"Remember, the biggest benefit of the social web is building relationships, so you must make an effort to engage your readers and respond to them in a timely manner that not only acknowledges them, but makes them feel like valued members of your online community," says Susan Gunelius, CEO of marketing communications company KeySplash Creative.

Avoid These 6 Common Email Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make

If email seems a little old school to you, you’re right. Email turns 40 this year, and it’s being outpaced by texting, instant messaging and Facebook messaging. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed out last year, email is too much of a “cognitive load” for younger people.

Yet you probably haven’t given up your Gmail account yet, have you? That’s because, despite the stigma of being a middle-aged technology, email is still useful and universally accepted. In fact, those who make a living from email marketing say there’s never been a better time to do what they do.

“Email marketing is getting more exciting because of some of the things you’re able to do with it,” says Chip House, vice president of relationship marketing at ExactTarget, “because of the ability to bake in social sharing. You can follow me on Facebook or tweet about this.”

For small businesses, email still represents a cheap, effective way to establish or maintain a relationship with clients. But there’s the rub. While the medium is fairly neutral-to-positive, the content has the power to either attract or repel. So before you hit “send” on your next batch email newsletters, take heed of these six common email marketing mistakes.

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Optimize Your E-mail Marketing for Social Media Results

Marketers plan to increase spending on e-mail and social media marketing more than any other tactics in 2011, according to a recent survey.

As marketers find opportunities to build audiences, conversation and conversions with clever cross-promotion between the two mediums, e-mail and social media tactics are becoming increasingly popular and intertwined.

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Read More...

Sometimes, a marketing opportunity just falls into your lap!

Sno-Kone syrup comes in a wide variety of flavors. From your typical like strawberry and grape to the more exotic Blue Hawaiian or Kiwi. And unless you’re under the age of 14, you probably pay very little attention to it. That can make it a somewhat difficult product to market. At Gold Medal, we’re no exception. We’ve been making the stuff for the better part of 50 years, adding and subtracting to get flavors that appeal to a wide variety of audiences. Course, it can be hard to relate the appeal of a mango or fuzzy navel concentrate to someone who has never tasted. But, we keep making them and looking for ways to stand out in the Sno-Kone crowd.

...and then, Charlie Sheen falls into our lap!

See, we’ve been producing a cherry/coconut syrup named…you guessed it…”Tiger’s Blood” for more than 40 years. And suddenly, thanks to people’s interest in one eccentric Hollywood celebrity, we’ve got a hot seller on our hands.

So, from everyone here at Gold Medal Products, we’d like to say “Thanks, Charlie.” You’ve done for our marketing what it would have taken two and a half men to concept and create!

The Mistake That Can Kill Your Business

Too many times, as entrepreneurs, we get consumed with trying to do it all. We cram in one more email, one more blog post, one more sneak peek at Facebook or Twitter. We stay up late into the night tweaking one more ad, putting one more image on our website, or adding one more item to our to-do list. Sound familiar?

And pretty quickly, we go into overwhelm mode, where we’re busy putting out fires instead of believing in ourselves. We begin to crumble under the weight of our growing business, and we lose ourselves in escapism. We focus on only what has to be done today instead of looking forward to tomorrow, and we’re just relieved when our inbox finally gets to zero.

But is that what really matters most? Our inbox getting to zero? All those piddly things getting done?

No.

What matters most is to keep moving forward with our business. To block out the tidal wave of new emails, new Tweets, and “one more thing” and to remember, instead, to create every day. To bring something new into the world.

Do Phone Calls Beat Social Media?

Recently, there has been a lot of chatter about the best way to reach your customers. Some claim the speed and instant gratification of Twitter and Facebook are the best way to handle PR and respond to clients. Others angrily shout true customer service can only be given with human contact.

While both have their pros and cons, you must use your best judgment on how to respond to customers. For example, social media is great way to promote upcoming sales, events, and generally keep your customers informed. But nothing can beat the calming, effective way of diffusing a problem one-on-one.

Or, consider combining the two for the best results. Shout good news from the mountain tops with Twitter teases and phone calls to your best customers. Or, if you are trying to turn a prospect, lead with your accomplishments on the call.

Lastly, you can test out what works best for your market. Offer a specific deal for FB and Twitter followers, then a separate one to only those customers who you speak with on the phone or in the office. Assign each one a specific code and track what gets the best results.

Whatever you do, do not to put all your eggs in one basket. There isn’t an exact science to the perfect customer service. People will respond to different campaigns and may turn to another business if you don’t offer options.

Let us know what you think?

Marketing trends for 2011

As we jump into 2011, certain marketing trends will serve us well in the coming year:

1. Social media is here to stay. This is a trend that will definitely continue in 2011. We need to stop thinking about the “cool factor” and really focus in on the true customer interactions that can happen with an effective SM strategy. Let’s figure out how to use these interactions to inform future marketing efforts and maximize customer value.


2. Lead nurturing is at the forefront. For years, marketers have discussed demand generation and have looked at increasing the number of new leads as the most important activity. It is certainly an important focus and continues to drive revenue. But it seems that now we have turned a (good) corner. The focus should not only be on how many leads we have coming in, but how we can nurture these leads, generate true interest and improve their sales readiness. In this way, we can maximize the ROI of our lead generation programs and cost per lead while passing truly qualified leads to our sales teams.


3. Understanding the marketing system. In the past, marketers had a tendency to take a top-down approach to their strategy. We worked on campaigns, on PR, on our websites, etc. But reality has finally set in. We must look at the overall system. Instead of looking at your efforts in a linear fashion, think about it as a circular process – for example, how to create a Website so that it takes advantage of social media, uses content to fuel media interest, and how the next campaign will feed off of this content and maximizes the value of the online interactions of customers and website visitors. Then, use the results of all of these to inform what you will do next week, next month, next quarter.


4. Focus on building relationships. This one is really nothing new or earth-shattering. But we do think that it is critical and one that’s easy to forget as we are all under pressure to generate leads and increased revenue, to do what is new and exciting especially in our digitally-focused world. The key is to figure out which of these strategies will really enable us to engage, to connect and to build the relationships that are so critical in our ever competitive-environment. How do we show the marketplace that we really understand the challenges and then how we bring the right solutions to the table? We need to think about PEOPLE and their NEEDS to solve real problems…not companies, not just demographics.

Social media builds biz - Video - Small Business