Review Crushers

4 tips to help you avoid online overload

Much has been touted about the new social media tools that allow small businesses unprecedented access to marketing channels in the digital space. Now a small business entity can become as famous as a major brand, thanks to the power of viral online marketing.

One thing to keep in mind is that Google has elevated the value of social media efforts in its search algorithm. You can see this for yourself: Google several different people you know. If any of these folks you entered have a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn profile, these pages nearly always come up in the top spots of the search results. Because of this, you can quickly and constantly modify your overall online profile using these tools or others such as YouTube or the photo sharing site Flickr.

However, even most social media experts agree that the constantly changing digital world, with its wide array of social media tools and platforms, can be overwhelming. As a small-business owner, you have to wear a lot of hats: You have to sell, you have to execute, you have to manage your human resources, and you have to maintain your finances. The only goal with you is making sure your company performs and profits. How on earth are you going to be able to keep up with the latest and greatest social media tools?

So what should you focus on before jumping full-force into a social media marketing effort? Actually, the focus should not be so much on keeping up with every new tool that comes along, but on effectively reaching and staying connected with your target market.

1. Define Your Goals
First of all, you need to define what outcome(s) you hope to achieve through your social media efforts. Define your goals. Then ask yourself, ‘What are the easiest and fastest ways to achieve these goals?’ Whether you own a dry cleaning company, a retail store or a small accounting company, you need to be able to clearly spell out your goals, and then choose the tools that will help you most effectively achieve them.

You need to ask yourself, “What social media platforms will help my company accomplish its goals the fastest?” Focus on only one or two of the sites you determine match your needs and really make them work. (You can see why you need to have a clear understanding of your company’s goals before you can begin defining your social media goals.)

2. Walk the Walk
If you’re going to promote your company on social media channels, your product or service should appear to be very strong. Whether prospects or clients visit your site, your blog, your Twitter page or Facebook fan page, or see it described on other people’s social media sites, you need to make sure they see a very professional, on-brand product. Your company’s profiles need to be attractive and in sync while showing readers that you and your team know exactly what you are doing.

3. Make Your Profile Dynamic
Remember, since most established and effective sites will be around for a while, you don’t have to go crazy and sign on to all of them at once. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business owner is to set up a profile for your company on a social media platform and then not maintain it.

As I say in my book Design and Launch an Online Social Networking Business in a Week (2009, Entrepreneur Press):

No one likes to frequent a store that is empty most of the time … People are influenced by what other people are doing and where other people are going, in the virtual world just as they are in the real world. If someone pops in to your network and sees a lot of activity–new members joining, a new post or two written by you or other members, maybe some great new photos to browse–the buzz of activity will hold their attention and make them want to stay awhile. But if that person visits your site and sees no new activity or commentary added in the past three days, they’re outta there.

This phenomenon has occurred with many [social media profiles] as they have evolved: the ones that are updated the most are the ones that people come back to more frequently.

4. Delegate and Manage
Make sure you have designated or hired someone to maintain the profile. If you make an in-house person responsible, make sure he or she understands how to use the platform(s) and is fully engaged in the process. Another option is to hire an outside company to ensure that your profile pages are updated regularly with content and news that is interesting to the audience you’re trying to attract.

Don’t let yourself become overwhelmed. Try working on just one or two (three at most) social media sites at a time. Once you get these up and running, and you feel that you and your staff has the time to manage it, you can think about adding more. Constantly evaluate where people are finding you or interacting with you to determine any new social media avenues.

Regardless of what tools you use, you need to ensure you have chosen the ones that enable you to set up an online profile that is the most effective for your company. And you need to commit the necessary time and effort to ensure that these tools will continue to help your business.

You can do it with these 5 savvy internet marketing strategies.

The great thing about the internet is that it opens you up to huge numbers of potential customers, but it can also open you up to tons of potential competitors. Gone are the days when your business could be quietly unique in your local market; now, you have to be unique in the global market. The upside is that if you are truly unique, the internet can propel your growth and make life difficult for your potential competitors. In the era of the internet, the winner takes all–just ask the founders of eBay, Zappos.com, Amazon.com and Salesforce.com.

So, how do you come up with a unique strategy? Here are 5 tips to help you think it through:

Skate To Where The Puck Is Going: As Wayne Gretzky famously explained his secret to success, so shall you design your strategy. Great companies recognize tectonic shifts in the marketplace and get there first. For example, the smart folks at Zipcar recognized that big sections of society were migrating into cities–as their nests emptied or they stayed in cities after college–and that sharing cars might be a better option than owning. The company recently filed an IPO.

Innovate Across Boundaries: It’s hard, but try not to focus on existing competitors when coming up with your strategy. Instead, focus on alternatives to those competitors in the marketplace. A great example is Apple and the iPod: Rather than build yet another MP3 player that only appealed to geeks who could figure out how to get music on them, Apple made a far simpler device and focused on making the device easy to synchronize for a vast majority of people. By ignoring the established rules of the MP3 marketplace and focusing on alternatives, the folks at Apple were able to transform their company and our listening habits.

Have a Narrow Focus: Because the internet is so vast, and you’re competing with so many companies for attention, you’re much better off with a narrow product focus rather than a broad one. A great example of that is Whole Foods. In the long-stagnant grocery industry, Whole Foods is winning–even though it carries fewer products at higher prices–because of a strict focus on focused organic foods and sustainable farming practices.

Polarize: If you want to get attention, polarize your marketplace by taking a different stand. Salesforce.com famously stated that the era of software was over when the company was first founded. A small minority of people agreed, which was enough to get the ball rolling for a company that’s now worth over $7 billion.

Focus Business Model, Not Product: Sometimes the best way to build a great company is to focus more on creating a unique business model and less on building a better mousetrap. What set Google apart was its auction-based model for purchasing advertisements, as opposed to the standard impression-based model.

The first step to a winning internet presence is a differentiated company stance paired with a remarkable marketing strategy. That strategy will encompass everything–laser-sighted content, smartly implemented SEO, ways to measure the results and a plan for optimizing the conversion rates from all your visitors.

Brian Halligan is CEO and founder of the Internet marketing software company Hubspot and co-author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs.

by: http://www.entrepreneur.com

7 shrewd strategies for forging alliances–and staying ahead of the pack.

Business is war and the competition is the enemy–right? Wrong. Though competition is a fundamental aspect of being in business, savvy entrepreneurs know that viewing competitors exclusively as adversaries is shortsighted and potentially damaging. A better strategy is to build alliances with your competitors and let them help you become better and stronger. Here’s how:

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It seems that over the course of the entire year, we’ve been waiting for Google to get real-time search. Now it’s here. If you have ever had a hard time finding a direct relationship between social media and search engine marketing, it doesn’t get any more direct than this. Real-time search results (from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other sources) right in regular SERPs.

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“Social Media for the Little Guy” from SES Chicago

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There have been many articles written about why to use Twitter, and we’ve certainly published our fair share of them. However, the landscape is constantly changing. New trends, ideas, applications, and features come out, and they further emphasize Twitter’s place in said landscape. Following are some reasons why it is becoming increasingly important to marketers.

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By Doug Caverly

In the olden days, PR professionals might have gotten an hour or more of face time in which to sweet talk someone over a meal.  Now, they occasionally make pitches in 140 characters.  So you can imagine how the information shared during a conference session titled “Online PR: Where to Next?” could prove quite useful to a lot of people.

Beth Harte, who wears a number of hats (including that of Community Manager) for MarketingProfs, started by stating that press releases and visibility are just part of the game.  Advertising, issues management, public affairs, lobbying, and investor relations all count, as well, and she stressed, “Real public relations is relationships.”

Harte also said, “Social media tools will change.  People being social won’t.”  She recommended listening, communicating, partnering, telling your story, and getting people to talk as a result.

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Featured Article

Using Google Alerts to Earn Free Media
Listen and then talk to the media

Earning coverage of your company in the publications and shows that your ideal customers consume is one of the most effective ways to build trust. (See my definition of marketing)

The problem most small businesses experience when it comes to generating PR is that they go about in the wrong way and so they see little or no results and give up trying. You must treat journalists, the folks that can write about your company, like a target market segment. Journalists don’t like to be sold any more than your prospects – they do need your stories, but a lot of folks are trying to sell them. Be different, stand out by targeting the journalists that write about your industry and build relationships with them, educate them, build trust – then you will start to see some PR results.

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Featured Article

Look beyond traffic and links and you will find the real value.

Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social networking and social book marking sites, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.

But, if that’s the only way you view social media, as a set of tools to perform a set of tactics to reach the set of objectives you have always tried to reach with your marketing, then not only are you really missing the opportunity, you will probably find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about.

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How Google Alerts Can Keep You Informed and Bring You Traffic

By Randy Duermyer, About.com

Many of you may be familiar with Google Alerts and may have subscribed to one or more alerts to provide ideas for blog content. Others may not know that Google Alerts are available and aren’t sure how they could benefit by subscribing to one or more Google News Alerts. Finally, those who are familiar with Google Alerts wonder how they can get their blog included in the listings.

What are Google Alerts?

Google describes its news alerts as:

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