Adding Social Media to the Menu- A 30 Day Challenge

April 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Kevin Layne is one of the best local business owners in the Gainesville, FL area and just a great guy.  He has had his Screen Doctors business up and running for several years now, but has recently started his passion business-cooking BBQ.  Bacon’s BBQ has been around now for a couple of years, selling BBQ at local festivals and about a year ago, Kevin decided to officially launch his catering business.

His main goal is to provide BBQ catering for events with 25-250 people around the North Florida area.  So far he’s had a really good response for his BBQ, but since he doesn’t have a storefront presence, we will need to rely on getting the word out via word of mouth, social media, email marketing, and his events.

The Challenge

From April 8th to May 7th we are running our own challenge to increase Bacon BBQ’s fan base on Facebook and start getting him Twitter followers. People can also sign up for his email marketing list so he can send out newsletters and updates on where he will be.  At the beginning we had 42 Facebook Fans and no Twitter followers.  We will use status updates on where he will be and how the catering events go.  Facebook also now has a Questions section for Facebook Pages and profiles so businesses can engage their followers with questions and also gain some great insight into what their customers want to see.

My goal is to show you how a little up front planning and daily updates can really engage your followers, grow your fan base, and help you get some interaction with your customers which will turn into sales.

Filed Under: 30 Day Challenge, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

Do these 4 things to help your customers find you online

December 30, 2010 by Leave a Comment

For the new years resolution, I recommend getting your business found by all the online directories. You probably already have your own website (you do have your business website,online directories right?) and now you need to make sure that when everyone is searching the local directories online that your business comes up to compete with the others.

So what are these online directories?

I covered how to get your business in an online directory before.  Think I find it highly important?  Have you followed the advice yet? Most small businesses don’t think they have time to do this, and if you don’t you can hire someone to take care of these submissions for you.  I handle a few a month for the small businesses, but for the DIY’ers out there, this is a critical step in getting your business seen online so you can drive traffic to your physical location.

Some of the big hitters are Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, and Bing.

Ever search on google for something and get a map with bubbled letters? That’s Google Places working for you. Another great one is Yelp, which is a great review site that a lot of people use to check reviews before they go to a restaurant or hire a professional service. Foursquare is a good directory that allows users with smart phones to check in and let everyone know that they are at your establishment. It even offers Mayorship to frequent check-ins to the same place. The goal for your business is to offer deals for people who check-in to your place, and offer special deals to your Mayor- likely they are your biggest fan. Foursquare also allows them to add tips to your place online. These are likely little tidbits of information that will help the next person. Like if you have fabulous key lime pie, the tip might be”gotta try the key lime pie, best in the state”. Be careful though, if your place has a weakness, the tip could backfire as they might tell people to stay away from something as well. Bing is another search engine that shows people your business on a map when they search for services in your area so it is worth it for you to go through the process of getting seen on their site as well.

These are just the top few for right now. As the year progresses you will likely have others that you need to stay on top of. As always, I will post about the others as they become more popular. You will also need to keep checking on these sites to track the traffic and make sure that the info is up to date and to respond to any reviews good or bad. Many do it yourselfers out there can just set up a schedule to keep up to date with this stuff. Of course for others that don’t have time, we offer package deals that get you set up and monthly maintenance programs that keep your directories fresh-usually cheaper than one advertisement.

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

How to create an intranet site for your business

December 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

If your business has more than one person, you likely would benefit from having an intranet.  So what is an intranet?  It’s just a quick and easy way to keep all your important documents, files, pictures, links, anything to do with your business, in one location online and accessible by anyone in the company.  In previous years it seemed that only the bigger businesses had the luxury of something like this because they would also have the luxury of an IT department.  With the increase of “cloud computing” though, just about any size company can have their business information stored securely in one location.

So what’s the best way to get an intranet setup?  There are a few roads you can go down.  Both are fairly easy to set up and fairly inexpensive.  The first one is mentioned If your company has already invested in a server with at least Windows 2003.  If you have a server, then you can go into the server and setup the SharePoint WSS for your business.  This is a free version of SharePoint and allows you to quickly create a centrally managed intranet site for all of your employees.
The next way to create an intranet doesn’t require that you have any server and will be hosted by Google.  You can actually use Google sites for several online functions, including a  family site or a travel site, they are all sites based on a template.  They even have an Intranet template to choose from.  Once you create the site based on the Intranet template, you have a centralized repository for documents, a calendar for everyone to view and share, a contact area to add everyone’s information in one location. You have a way to poll your employees, and an announcements section for keeping everyone informed of upcoming company activities. 

There are even low cost solutions with many of the same functionalities out there.  A company with growing popularity is 37 Signals and they offer Backpack as a company intranet site for your business.  Their service is safe, secure, and offered at a low monthly fee based on how many users will be accessing the site.  The great thing about 37 Signals is that all of their online applications are offered free for up to 2 users.

Filed Under: Business Productivity Tagged With: , ,

How to use email marketing to increase sales

December 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Email email email

by RambergMediaImages

In today’s business world, there are many options for products or services to choose from, and as a small business owner, you have to remind your customers that you are still around and still want their business.  One way to do that is through email marketing.

Email marketing can be used to showcase your expert status in your business field, send timely announcements that might affect your customers, concentrate on getting testimonials, or even send out customer specials to thank them for still doing business with you.

Over the years, I have tried several of the big email marketing companies from iContact to Aweber, and more recently, I have been using MailChimp.  All of these services follow the no spam rules and regulations by automating the process of an unsubscribe, complaints by a recipient, as well as other tracking mechanisms such as how many people opened your email and how many clicked on a link contained in the email.  Mailchimp even goes as far as to give members of your list a rating of how engaged with you they are.  Most small businesses would do best to use MailChimp because you can sign up and use their service for free for the first 1,000 subscribers you have and you can send out up to 6,000 emails a month.  That is a great value and a great service for small businesses.  Not to mention, they are just a fun company.

You can also add a sign up form on your website for prospects that aren’t ready to purchase yet, but want more information.  This will enable you to create a list just for them so you can start the dialog of providing information that they are looking for.  Establish yourself as the expert in your area and help them with their research process.  The best part about a sign up is you can create several emails at once and setup an automatic delivery to your list when they sign up. 

So how does email marketing increase sales?

  1. Just by sending quality information about your business, customers are reminded why they like doing business with you and will likely remember that they need your product or service.
  2. When you email with a sales offer, you will typically get 1-5% response for your offering.
  3. Ask your customers what they want that you don’t currently offer—and then offer them that product or service.
  4. Use the emails to setup a referral program and reward them as well as their referral.
  5. Become an affiliate to other products or services that complement what you offer and get paid a commission for it.

Once you start creating your email list, you will start seeing all the different ways you can engage your customers and prospects and keep your business at the front of their minds and see the sales increase.

Filed Under: Email Marketing

How to make sure you are listed in the top local directories.

November 30, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Everyone has heard of Google and Yahoo and when you are looking for a local business, yougoogle places usually use either of these or a few others to find what you are looking for.  At the time of this writing, over 84% of people used a search engine or directory to do research before buying.   So as a business owner, you need to make sure your business shows up when people search for your product or service in your area.  To get your business on these sites, just follow these steps.  Start to finish with all the directories, this exercise can take up to 4 hours.  Once you have the description and services that you offer for one directory, you can copy and paste the information for the other directories to cut down on the time.

  1. The first thing you can do is see where you show up first.  Go to www.getlisted.org , enter your business name and zip code and see how you stack up.
  2. Use get listed results to go one by one down the line to enter all your business information and to claim your business.
  3. Many of the directories will either need to call to verify you are the rightful business owner or they will mail you a postcard with instructions on how to validate so you need to setup a follow up date to these sites to enter the data.
  4. Many of the directories, once you enter all the information to claim your business, will allow you to see results of searches in your area and see how your business is doing.
  5. Once you have claimed your business for some of the search engines and directories like Google Places, you can also add offers. These offers are  like special coupons or offers for people who see your business listing.  The offers typically have an automatic 30 day expiration date which is great because you don’t have to remember to remove the offer once it expires, keeping your content looking fresh.

In the next article, we will talk about using Google Webmaster tools to see what keywords your site is being shown for on Google.

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: ,

Why I won’t use Groupon for small businesses in Gainesville, FL

November 29, 2010 by 1 Comment
Groupon sounds like the greatest idea since the invention of coupons themselves, and for consumers, it is.  But Groupon has actually bankrupted some small businesses in the United States that have promoted with Groupon while other businesses have endured months of trying to recuperate from the deal.  Why?  Because Groupon is a company that the small business contracts with for the daily deal and Groupon receives half the deal proceeds.  The small business typically agrees to give the product or service for half off normal price.  Groupon promotes the deal with an initial buy in quantity and time frame of 24 hours.  At the end of the deal, Groupon splits the money and sends it to the small business and the business now has an influx of customers for a 75% discount.
So if a massage therapist agreed to a one hour massage that is normally $50 for $25 and she said that ten have to sign up for the deal to be valid, she would have to give 10 massages for $25 each, but she would only receive $12.50/massage because Groupon gets their share for promoting it. That’s 10 hours of massages for $125.  But, typically if a Groupon deal is made, there are far more than the initial 10 who would sign up that the massage therapist could be stuck doing a whole year’s worth of massages for just $12.50.  That could potentially put her out of business.
In fact, here is an article for a marketing result with a helicopter school where the groupon deal didn’t go so well for them.
At this writing, the inaugural Gainesville Groupon deal is going on with Blue Highway.  So far, they have sold over 270 deals of $20 worth of pizza for $10 and Blue Highway will only see $5.  Now I love Blue Highway’s pizza and I love their new location in Town of Tioga and as much as I love a good deal, I won’t be participating in this because I want to support them in ways that won’t hurt their business.  Restaurants might do better with this kind of deal, because patrons will likely spend more than $20 on their pizza bill, but for the small service oriented businesses out there, I can’t see it doing well for them.
Other people will likely want to say that this could just be the cost for acquiring a new customer, but typically there are two types of customers with the Groupon deal.  The first type is the customer that already patrons the business and would probably go back for a more modest discount.  The second type of customer that the small businesses think they are getting are the ones that are going solely for the Groupon deals and won’t likely become a loyal customer to anyone except the deals themselves.
Now that doesn’t mean that I’m not a fan of saving money but in a time when small businesses are being seen as the backbone of the US economy getting back on track, here are better ways to make the consumer happy, and still helps the local businesses:
Email List: Many small businesses send out email lists of daily or weekly specials.  I currently receive emails of specials from local businesses like Northwest Seafood, Bush Gator Transmission and  Auto Repair, and Gentle Waters Healing Center just to name a few and I see some pretty good deals that the owners give out with them.
Facebook: A lot of local businesses are getting their names out there and offering deals up just for their Facebook fans.  Find a business you frequent and become a fan of theirs to see what kind of deals they offer or suggest it for them.
Support Local Charities: We have some wonderful charities in Gainesville and great charity events where many local companies donate a product or service where the proceeds go to the charity.  You can get good deals and help out wonderful non profit organizations at the same time.  Check out the local Home: Living in the Heart of Florida Magazine for their charity of the month and any upcoming events to support a charity.
Ask for a deal: Most of the time, just asking for a discount with get you one with the business.  You can even use your group buying power the old fashioned way.  Last summer, five of us who wanted a bike went to Mr. Goodbike and negotiated a discount on the bikes because we purchased them all on the same day.  We got great bikes from a great local shop and they had a pretty good sales day.
What other ways can you think of getting a good deal without hurting your favorite local business?
Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: ,

How Can You Use Twitter?

October 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The month of October has been talk about Twitter month where I’ve covered topics from should you use Twitter for your business and signing up for Twitter.  Today we will cover some of the ways you will want to use Twitter daily.

Here are just a few of the ways Twitter can help to benefit your online business:

Establishing repertoire with your customers / readers.

Twitter allows for a bit more personal, less formal, more fun mode of communication. It allows them to catch a glimpse of you just as a regular person sending SMS texts from Wal-Mart, rather than as a serious, detached blogger or business owner.

Why is this useful? It allows people to connect and relate to you on a personal level – it makes you look just like a “regular Joe”, especially if you include random/fun tweets among the more serious, business-driven tweets.

Keeping your customers / readers updated.

With a blog, you might only update once or twice per week. With Twitter, you might send a handful of tweets per day, keeping your followers “in the loop” and reminding them of your existence.

Of course, it’s not recommended to send a million tweets per day. This will only serve to annoy people and they will likely unfollow you.

Building a loyal, steady customer-base:

“BUILD A LIST!” As a marketer, I’m sure you’ve heard this refrain many times over. Building a list is one of the most vital steps you can take in the advancement of your online business. Twitter is pretty much the same as building a list – although it might be even more effective in the long run.

When it comes to an email list, a large portion of your subscribers won’t even glance at the emails you send. Their eyes will glaze over and they may even send it to the trash. With Twitter, your followers will see all of your Tweets. They’ll digest its information in about half a second and if you include a link, they probably won’t get offended.

Chances are, if you include an eye-catching description, they’ll probably click it! Additionally, it won’t SEEM like you are marketing to them, because you’re just another Twitter user tweeting about random stuff!

Building up excitement for a product launch:

Just like with an email list, Twitter can be used to build up excitement about an upcoming product launch. It can start with occasional Tweets about your “new project”, and by keeping your followers up to date and offering freebies and cool stuff that they’ll appreciate, you’ll build trust and anticipation. When your product launches, a well-timed Tweet may likely be just as effective as a blast to your email list.

Driving traffic to your website:

 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly notify hundreds or thousands of people every time you update your blog? Twitter makes this possible. It essentially acts as an RSS feed. By building a sizable list of followers, you pretty much have access to an instant source of traffic to your website or blog.

People who would otherwise not be aware of updates and new content will be notified, giving them a chance to check it out. If your blog is high-quality, people will keep an eye out for more of your Tweets.

Building relationships with business contacts.

 

Twitter makes it easy to keep in touch with business partners and contacts. Traditional instant messaging is on its way out, and you’ll find that most savvy internet marketers use Twitter as their primary social networking tool. So take advantage of this fact! Hook up with your contacts so you can work on building a closer relationship.

Crowd-sourcing:

Crowd-sourcing is a unique form of outsourcing. It works by calling on your friends, fans, followers, email subscribers, etc. to contribute ideas and solutions. Basically, it is a form of “group intelligence”.

By listening to the crowd, marketers and business owners can figure out the exact thoughts, needs, and wants of their customer base. In this way, innovative new ideas and strategies are born that are guaranteed to fall in line with the desires of the consumer.

By directly asking your followers what type of new software they’d like to see developed, or what their biggest setbacks are, or what they liked/disliked most about your last ebook, you can gain an incredible amount of insight about your business!

Twitter provides a perfect platform for crowd-sourcing.

Going viral:

Social networking sites give us a great opportunity to ‘go viral’. This means that you Tweet about something that really catches people’s attention. Your followers are impressed, so they re-Tweet it.

In turn, each of their followers re-Tweet it, and so on and so on, and soon your little Tweet spreads like wildfire, snowballing into a huge storm of clicks and traffic.

Of course, TRYING to make something go viral probably won’t work. It tends to just happen on its own. Tweeting “Hey guys buy my new ebook click here” will never go viral, obviously. But if you find something really interesting, little-known, valuable, funny, etc., you might have a chance.

Very often, Tweets go viral without anyone really expecting or planning on it. This is just one of the many amazing benefits of social networking.

Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter Tagged With:

Signing up for Twitter

October 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment

In my last post on should you use Twitter for your business we covered the reasons you want to incorporate Twitter into your social media strategy. In this post, I am going to walk you through how to setup your Twitter profile.  Fortunately Twitter is probably one of the most user-friendly websites out there. It is practically impossible to get lost or confused when creating an account or setting up your profile.

Signing Up With Twitter

On the Twitter main page, simply click the orange “Sign Up” button. You’ll have to enter your first and last name and your preferred username. This could be your own name, your blogs name, your product’s name, etc. Whatever “brand” you want to build, use that as your username.

twitter signup

First you’ll be able to browse through the Twitter accounts of various celebrities, politicians, businesses, corporations, etc. Follow the ones you’re interested in.

Next you can search your inbox for your contacts that are already on Twitter. Finally, the last step will be to search the names of others who you would like to follow.

Don’t go overboard when it comes to following or you’ll soon find that your Twitter page is far too “noisy” – you might miss the good Tweets among all the noise and clutter. Only follow people if you have a legitimate reason for doing so– don’t follow a bunch of strangers.

That’s it! Yeah, it pretty much doesn’t get any easier than that.

Creating Your Profile

If you wish to stand out on Twitter, it’s recommended that you customize your profile. Upload a picture to use as your avatar – if your brand is you, upload a nice, friendly photograph of yourself. Otherwise you could make it your business logo, etc.

It is also possible to change the background of your Twitter profile. Go to the “Design” tab under “Settings” and you can either select one of Twitter’s default backgrounds or upload one of your own. If you want to truly stand out, I recommend uploading one of your own. Just make sure the picture isn’t too busy or your Twitter profile will look very unprofessional and give people a headache.

Twitter Language / Symbols

As with most modern inventions, there is a certain “language” you’ll have to learn when it comes to using Twitter. When I first signed up, I was incredibly confused about what all of this stuff meant,  but I quickly got the hang of it and so will you!

  • Retweet (RT): This means that the Tweet was originally posted by someone else and you are reposting it because you want to spread the word, you think it’s funny, etc.
  • Hash tag (#): Typing # followed by a keyword will categorize your Tweet so that others can easily find it by performing a search. Once you start using Twitter, you’ll realize that MANY people use the hash tag in their Tweets – this can indicate a meme or trend that is quickly being spread through the Twit-o-sphere.
  • @ symbol: Placing the @ symbol directly before a username shows that you are directly addressing that person (but the Tweet is still public). Clicking the arrow button when you hover over a users tweet will let you do this automatically.
  • Direct Message (DM): Typing d followed by a username will allow you to send them a Direct Message rather than having your Tweet appear publicly.
  • Overheard (OH): OH at the beginning of the Tweet means that you overheard something funny/interesting that is not your own original idea.
  • Nudge: Typing Nudge followed by a username will send the user a reminder to update and start tweeting again.
  • FAV: Typing FAV followed by a username will favorite that user’s last Tweet.
  • GET: GET followed by a username will retrieve the user’s last few updates.
Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter

Should You Use Twitter for Your Business?

October 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Twitter Profile

Twitter Profile by Rosaura Ochoa, on Flickr

Twitter is a social network and micro-blogging platform that allows you to send 140-character “tweets”. With these tweets, you can let your friends know what you’re up to, share links and cool resources, communicate with your customers, drive traffic to your website, and much more.

According to the Twitter website, Twitter allows you to answer the question, “What are you doing?”

Twitter allows you to communicate without the hassle of writing out long blog posts or emails. The format of the Tweet allows you to get away with a link and a few words that can be sent on the go from your cell phone.

This tweet can potentially reach thousands of customers or business prospects, driving them to your website or blog, and draw attention to your products.

In turn, you will receive notices whenever someone you are following Tweets something. You can receive instant notification in your browser, cell phone, email, and even on IM clients like AIM or MSN Messenger. Basically, it’s more or less impossible NOT to keep in touch with your Twitter friends & followers, even if you’re out and on the go.

Twitters extremely simple interface and ease of use is probably one of the reasons why it has caught on like crazy.

Twitter was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, and in 2008/2009 it practically exploded in popularity.

All kinds of celebrities use Twitter on a regular basis to communicate with their fans and followers, from musicians and actresses, to professional athletes and even political figures!  Twitter allows us to sneak a peak at what our favorite celebrities are up to. Politicians like Obama use it as a campaign tool.

Even large corporations and television networks use Twitter, such as CNN, Amazon, Dell, and ESPN.

Filed Under: Twitter

How Facebook Can Help Your Business

October 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment

screenshot by Spencer E Holtaway, on Flickr

I love it when small businesses ask me how they can use Facebook to promote their business. It is rare and it is a great question. Often when I suggest it I get a blank stare.  It’s not a surprise.  Most small business owners had other things in mind when they started creating their business, and being social online wasn’t a part of the formula.

Make no mistake, having a Facebook page where your current and future customers can interact can reap huge rewards for you.  Registration is free and your business can be showcased all over the world once people start “liking” your business page.  We will cover the basic steps to get you started running your own Facebook page. Please note: setting up a Facebook page is different that setting up a personal profile for facebook.

  • Go to www.facebook.com and at the bottom of the sign up page, click “Create a page for celebrity, band, or business.
  • You will be asked a series of questions, like what type of page are you creating, business, band, etc.  Answering this differently will give you different options on Facebook.
  • Once you complete the initial setup, you can start promoting your page to family, friends, and current customers.
  • Once they can start liking your page and this help to get your page out to as many people as possible because your page will show up on all your friends and family members wall since they “liked” your page.
  • Your very first goal after setting up the page is to get 25 people to like your page.  The main reason for this is that is changes your Facebook link from something long and obscure like www.facebook.com/pages/23953069wetri to www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname  and that is much easier to share with others.
Obviously, when you decided to create a Facebook page, you realized that you also need to keep it updated by having real interaction and conversations with your Facebook followers.  You want to make sure you don’t sound too stuffy or only use it to promote your sales.  You want to have genuine interaction with your customers and ask a lot of questions to get your followers feedback and to get them to interact with you.  Open up a dialog with them and keep it fun and informative.
The Ways Facebook Can Help Your Business
If your business is product related, you can upload new images of new or featured products that you can showcase quickly with your fans.
If service is your primary business, then use Facebook to interact with your clients to see how they are getting along and answer questions that people are asking if it relates to your business and if it can benefit them.  Become the resident expert for your field online by being quick and courteous with your knowledge.
Filed Under: Facebook
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