Small business marketing is a huge kerfuffly beast. Should you be doing online marketing, offline marketing, networking, writing more, writing less, more pictures, more videos…argggg!

Small Business Marketing and Change

Most small biz owners do not go into business to become marketing experts or social media mavens. They go into business because they have a dream of getting paid for doing what they love. Or they have a dream of helping people with something. Or they have a dream of making enough money to support their families, with a little left over for a trip to Disney World.

What they did not think about was how fast the world is moving. My Mother In Law had one of the first black and white TVs in the neighborhood and today she sits and watches all her programs on an iPad whenever it is convenient for her! Today, not only did GM pass on the Super Bowl Ads, but they also opted out of Facebook ads, rejecting not only the TV industrial complex, but also new age media.

I KNOW that they decided to bow out of the Superbowl Ads because of the cost (3.8 MILLION dollars for 30 seconds of airtime, not counting the cost of making the commercial which can run in the hundreds of thousands). Some of the reasons for dropping Facebook paid ads include the popularity of the free biz pages, less response than from Google’s ad networks and the thinking that ad prices will probably rise after Facebook’s recent IPO (I already think that the cost of FB ads is out of reach for most of my readers!)

Small Business Marketing Predictions

Making small business marketing predictions is making feel a little like Johnny Carson doing the envelope trick on the late show, BUT I think it is super important for small biz owners to know what is coming and what is not necessary.

A COMPANY WEBSITE – This is in all caps because I think that the days of having a brochure company website that looks pretty but doesn’t DO anything for the user is over. NO ONE has the time to sit and read about your “strategic partnerships”, “stakeholder capital” or other boilerplate words that talk about what the company does, rather than what the company does FOR YOU! (check out last week’s WIFT post for more on providing what’s in it for them)

what to do instead: You should have a blog with posts about what your customers want to know about. For example, you guys are reading this post because it tells you things about marketing, you would NOT read a post about the blogging services that we offer. Now, does that mean that I should not have a services page, an about us page, etc. Nope, but it DOES mean that I have to catch your attention FIRST before you will even consider working with me!

VIDEOS – Okay, seems like these will be ALL caps…:) Videos are the new way of consuming data. I see a post like this one (long and in depth) and mostly save them for reading later. If there was a video in here that went over everything in a couple of minutes, I probably would get a lot more interaction on this post!

what to do instead: So does this mean that I think you should NOT write blog posts? Nope, blog posts are made of words and the internet is a giant database of words. Google uses words to figure out what to show searchers. What I do think is that getting attention will shift within a few years to VIDEOS then BLOG POSTS then researching to see if they want to use your product or service. Damn that seems like a round about way to do marketing, right? Yep, but if you want to get more new customers, it could be what you have to do to get attention from a VERY BUSY WORLD.

PICTURES – Used to be that I would write a post about this topic, search my photo sites for a picture and then plop it in (SMALL SIZE please to make the load time faster).

what to do instead: Fortunately for me I am a graphic artist so I make a cool quote picture now to go with each post. This allows me to a) have a great picture for humans, b) have a great keyword targeted file name and alt tags and c) have a beautiful picture to share on Facebook and Pinterest, driving traffic from those sites to my blog post.

SOCIAL MEDIA – When we started doing social media for clients, we were looking at the big 3, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Today we are looking at a minimum, Facebook, Twitter, Klout, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube. The places have doubled and once we get them up and running, the time to manage them more than doubles!

what to do instead: Now you need to make sure you have a presence across many different social platforms. You need to like and retweet and repin other people’s content as well as posting your own. I KNOW, it stinks how much time this takes, BUT if you are in business, this is something that is important. The saddest thing to me is that oftentimes, if you do not have a presence, your customers will assume you have gone out of business. That is the economy we are living in and being in business means being social, whether we want to or not!

So those are my small business marketing predictions for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post when everything may have changed when Facebook or Twitter starts doing embedded chips or holograms…:)

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So the other day I wrote a post about Small Business Marketing – A Call To Action and talked a little bit about WIFT (What’s in it for them) but I thought this warranted a bit more notice than a one liner!!!

What Is In It For THEM

I talk to A LOT of small biz owners and they are VERY serious about their product or service. They can go on and on (and on) about how wonderful it is, all the features it has and why you HAVE TO BUY IT NOW! Just the other day at networking, we had a fellow who did his 30 second speech in 3 minutes, waxing eloquent about what he had to offer…sigh.

So, this is what you need to do, shut up and listen! When you have a prospect in front of you, ask them questions about what they are trying to accomplish. Ask what problem they think you can help them solve. Take notes. Ask more questions and listen some more. Write down more. Do this with at least 5 prospects. NOW you have your sales message!

Take those notes and write out your marketing message backward. DO NOT talk about all your bells and whistles, talk about how you can take all of that pain and make it go away!

WIFM Examples

Social media marketing – I KNOW my peeps do not have enough time to blog, tweet, friend, like and all the other stupid things that business owners have to do in the new age digital marketing. Our marketing message is about saving time and getting customers NOT about how we post 5X per week or how you are updated whenever there is a change in the social media sites.

Selling software – I worked as a hired gun speaker for a Realtor software company. When we went out to talk to the agents, the other presenters ALWAYS said the software the software did EXACTLY EVERYTHING they needed to do. While I loved the company and the software, OF COURSE the answer was not always that piece of software and you could see the doubt in some eyes.

Direct sales – this is a biggie for me! Some of the people selling nutritional products may have the answer to all my health prayers, but I have NO IDEA what the hell they are talking about. They use industry jargon and technical terms that I do not understand, blinding me to whatever the stuff really does. Dumb it down! If you have to talk about the science at all make it general and, better yet, tell your prospects how it will help them! It will help you lose weight, get nicer hair, live longer, get more sex, whatever the outcome is, NOT the science of it all.

Well, hopefully that helps…knowing the WIFT, what’s in it for them of it all will help you get more sales and make you more money!!!

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Small business marketing happens for only one reason, to get someone to buy something sometime. Without a call to action, you are flopping around, hoping they get your message!

Ladies, have you ever had a fellow hit you up for a date in such a round about way that you weren’t sure at the end if you were actually going out for a “date” date, or just hanging out with a friend. This is what a sales message with no call to action leaves us with…a feeling like you should, could be doing something but there is no definitive action associated with it!

I call this being factually correct versus having a call to action and it happens ALL THE TIME. Just last week our company did not do anything for a client, although we DID receive an email about some things they needed, sort of. The email was factually correct and stated that there were changes that need to be made but a) it didn’t assign a leader to make sure they got done and 2) there were no call to actions. So let’s break this down so it is easy to understand!

A factually correct statement was, “we are going to use XXX’s Facebook Profile going forward”. Hokey doke, works for me, check I read the email…la la la. A call to action is, “we are going to use XXX’s Facebook Profile going forward, TARA I need you to switch them over to the new timeline and make a cool picture please!” DOH, goes on my calendar with a to do item and the picture comes out the other side!

So what if you are the one who is requesting stuff, do you have to hold everyone’s hand throughout the process and put all the details in? Um, yes you need to ask explicitly for what you want and no, you don’t have to micromanage it, but you do have to take some ownership for it!

Whenever my staff is not doing what I want them to do I think, “how have I screwed this up”. NOT why are they so lame and lazy. My staff is decidedly NOT lame or lazy so if they are not doing what I want, then the blame lies with me!

Call To Action Marketing

Okay, so now you get it with managing your peeps, how the hell does this work in the marketing world? I have been making display banners for number of clients lately and so have done a TON of research into what looks good AND what would make me DO something.

Many of the banners out there are factually correct. They have a picture of a brand and I THINK they think I will know enough about them to spontaneously figure out that it is a button to push AND that there is something wonderful waiting for me there. Huh. I am pretty busy and rarely have time to go “exploring”.

So parts of good banner design (and good marketing in general) are something eye catching, a WIFM (what’s in it for me) and a call to action. Could be a “click here”, could be a “go”, could even be a little arrow, just SOMETHING to let busy people know that they should DO something.

The banners in the pictures are some that I found doing research. In every case, the top one is factually correct while the bottom one asks you to do something. My favorite are the ones for women in Spanish (I think). Whatever language it is, I could tell on the second one that they wanted me to DO something by the button!

What Is Your Call To Action?

Okay, so banner ads aside, what is the call to action in your small business marketing? Does your brochure ask people to call you, do your business cards prompt them to “friend you on Facebook”, does your website ask them to sign up for your list with a free offer?

At every point in the process of designing your marketing you should ask two questions, what is in for them AND what action do I want them to take after they see it!

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2. Easy Small Business Marketing Ideas
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Photo sharing sites and apps are a big deal in small business internet marketing! These are the wave of the future so grab your board and let’s get going!

My prediction is that within 2 years and 9 months (used to say 3 years but gotta move the bar!) ALL initial contact with your company will be through a video or a photo first. Now, I am not one of those who say that tablets and phones will take over laptops and computers BECAUSE I am WORKING on a computer. Love to surf on my tablet, dabble on my phone, the portability of my laptop, but for hard-core, bang it out and get it done, I have to sit my happy ass in a chair and WORK. Not on teeny tiny screen but on a dual monitor, giant processor computer.

So what does this mean for me and using photo sharing apps on my phone? TODAY I draw the line in the sand and figure out which photo sharing app I will use! Here are the criteria:

• Is it easy? This is my NUMBER ONE criteria. EVERYONE thinks I am a techy doll but I can’t even hook my mouse to my laptop so I need ease of use!
• Can I get it from the phone to the other social sites I need (for this experiment I am considering primarily facebook, pinterest and google+ – just to let you cats know, NONE of them shared to either Pinterest or Google+ at this point so focused instead on facebook, twitter, flickr and email)
• Can I take pictures on my phone and NOT have to email them to myself to access them online for other uses like blogging or posting later?
• Who has recently been bought by whom? Instagram has recently been brought into the Facebook fold so this is where I will start BUT want to consider other options because I am not only interested in how it works with Facebook!

As with all of my experiments, this one will be highly unscientific and biased! I will be taking pictures in relatively bad lighting of a duck. SOOOO sorry to my actual social media friends who have to see this on my various walls! Let’s get started!

Photo Sharing Sites and Apps – Instagram

I did not have to research to check this one out. Instagram was bought by Facebook and so will obviously be a good choice for them, BUT are they a good choice for my other needs?

First off, I downloaded the app to my phone. Rats, had it but forgot my login, heading to the website to see if I can reset it…yup! Easy peasy, they gave me my password AND username…score! No picture…I’m sure they want a picture picture but really, just use an avatar (clients could use a logo), not digging this so much but moving on (later was able to pull in my Facebook picture so it worked out okay after all).

Leaving the website and heading to my phone to take a picture of a duck! Push the camera button, bunches of style options come up,picked one, check mark, heads to screen to enable caption, twitter, facebook, email, flickr, tumbler, foursquare. Hooked up twitter, facebook, email and flickr for now. A note, facebook’s authorizer was in french (ack), I did NOT hook up foursquare because it hooks to my Facebook already.

DOH – forgot a caption so it said “just posted a photo” instead of what it is…trying again! Perfect.

Instagram Review – Okay, I like that I can tooggle on an off the the different services and there is an email with the picture as well as being able to pull it down from Flickr. BONUS – the instagram put the picture into my photos on my iPhone so I can upload it Pinterest from there if I wanted to! Seriously two thumbs up.

SUPER BONUS – if you are playing the Empire Avenue game, then one picture adds like a gagillion points (not sure how the points work so my numbers may be inflated).

TruHDR

Okay, this is an artsy fartsy one. It makes pictures look dimensional and I like to think that it makes me look like a brilliant photographer (I have ACTUALLY brilliant photographers all around me so I am a little touchy about this!).

So I took a picture of the duck, then went looking for the sharing bit, NOTHING! Hmmm maybe get creative? WOW!!! I could upload my artsy fartsy photo TO the Instagram and then share it on the ones that I had set up. Holy Buckets batman, have to see if I can find a good competitor to make this a fair race!

Photo Sharing Sites and Apps – Photoshop Express

Okay, take a picture of a duck…:) I am getting good at this! There are MANY more editing tools that I am used to from Photoshop like hue, saturation, cropping, etc. Have to say that I am not good at using a little tiny phone to edit pictures, if I was going to be manipulating them a lot, would probably take them down off the internet and do it on my computer.

Okay, BIG downer here!! I set it up so that I could share to facebook, email and flickr (no foursquare or twitter available like there is on Instagram although you could send it to TwitPix but damn, how many sites do I need?!?!!?) So all happy, hit the share button and I have to do them one at a time. Share to email, share to flickr, share to facebook, are you kidding me?!?!?!

For an editing software, I think this one is hand’s down, the winner. BUT for a click and go photo sharing app? Two thumbs down on this one.

Photo Sharing Sites and Apps – Wrapup

Okay, I am in. Instagram it is. Took a little over an hour to write this post and check out ALL of the different photo sharing app places and take pictures so if you budget an hour to learn it, you should get out the door super easy! The ONLY thing I can see ruining this commitment is if Facebook shuts off the other sharing features and turns Instagram into a Facebook only photo sharing site, but will keep the faith for now!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Internet Marketing – RSS Feeds
2. Small Business Internet Marketing Get Rich Slow
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{EAV:5da08477a9fda337} – funny little empire avenue thingy to verify my blog! Oh the things I will do to be popular on social media…:)

Small business marketing is a grind. If you were looking for something more uplifting and easy, move along, nothing to see here.

BUT, if you want to learn how to grow a marketing empire or really start creating some new habits…this is the post for you! Creating new habits is easy, it is not simple but it is easy. Just start doing it, TODAY!

Let’s start with the creating new habits timelines that I am talking about:

• One week – you should feel GREAT if you are successful at doing your new “habits” for a week. One day, bah, anyone can do a day, but doing it for a whole workweek, that is SOMETHING!
• Three months – this is the timeline that I use for setting habits in place and goal setting. Three months is a good amount of time because you can see the end of it and it doesn’t feel like forever!
• One year – this is how long I use to judge if something is working, GASP! Yes, that is right, I use a social network or blog or make videos and products about something for A WHOLE YEAR before I give up on it! The reason for this is, if I don’t I am just jumping around after shiney objects all willy-nilly getting nowhere – more about this later!

Creating New Habits – See If They Are Worthwhile!

Ok, I am great for making bold pronouncements of new habits that I want start (cleaning my kitchen sink is a biggie!). But for business, I have to make sure that what I am setting in stone is a good habit to have, that it will help me sell more and that it will actually ACCOMPLISH something.

Watch any webinar and you will find something you are not doing right now, that if you could start doing it would make you a ton of money! I love webinars and watched one the other day about affiliate marketing (where you promote other people’s products). I thought, hum, if I just found a product every day, wrote a post about it, pinned a picture on Pinterest and talked about it on Facebook, damn I could be rich in three months!

But….hmmmm. I have my own products I haven’t promoted to the best of ability. I have lists of social media and friend contacts who would disappear if I spammed them with a new product a day and MOST IMPORTANT, I would not enjoy doing that every day. Sigh…another one bites the dust.

So what new habits ARE appropriate for me? Well, one is sending a personal note a day. I did this before and it got me business but then I was busy and stopped (that one ever happened to you?) Another one is to work on an ebook or information product every day. I could go on and on, in fact I have a list in front of me and am working out which are going to make the short list for the next three month period!

Creating New Habits – Be Realistic About Your Time!

If you are like most business owners, you are either really busy or really bored. New biz owners often do not have clients to work with, do not know what will work small business marketing wise and have nothing but time to devote to marketing. You guys, do a lot of different things to find out what you like to do and what works, then finesse later.

This part is actually for the really busy small biz owners (like me). If I had my way, I would do nothing all day but research marketing ideas, check them out, write about them, make videos and get Sonic sodas to keep me going.

Unfortunately, no one has stepped up to pay me for drinking soda, so back to work I go. My work work is running a social media marketing company that works with small biz owners. A lot of the time that means talking with clients, paying bills, making sure we are on track, talking to prospective clients and setting up social media empires for other people. No sodas and no researching.

So any new habits need to have realistic timelines to fit into my super busy schedule! With that in mind, I am adding a personal note and doing custom graphics for blog posts (like the one on this post). This will increase my visibility on a medium I already use (blogging) and add a new area (Pinterest). The personal notes are just a no brainer for me, I like stamps and going to the post office! I ordered a bunch of notecards with my new branding on them.

Still in the realm of time, remember that something that you just start doing always seems harder than doing nothing (deep, right?) The first time you do a custom picture you have to get a graphic, find a quote, do the formatting, size it, say dammit that was wrong, re-size it, save it, post it, etc. The next time you have all those bits already done so it takes half the time. By the forth or fifth time, you will have a plan and a system and be cruising. Too often we take the time amount that comes with the FIRST time we do something and brand our new habit with that HUGE number!

Creating New Habits – Make It Easy To Succeed

If you made it down to here you are probably well on your way to making your new habits stick (willing to listen to all this creating new habits talk means you are committed – or should be committed, it is a toss up!)

To make it easier to do your new habit, make sure you make it easy. For example, I went to the post office and bought two sheets of stamps, put my cards right next to me on the desk and had return address labels printed. Kind of takes the pain out of sending personal notes when I can do it in 3 minutes without leaving my desk!

Online I will oftentimes make a folder on my browser (Chrome or Firefox) with all the pages I need bookmarked there. I can then just right click and open them up all at once. Soooo, for my social media I have a folder with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Klout bookmarked. Simply by right clicking and saying “open all bookmarks”, each of these pages is opened and ready to fly through!

Creating New Habits – Making It Stick

Because I am careful about what I add to my list of todos, I generally can make a new habit stick pretty quickly. But this is the part that I promised to come back to…if it makes the list, I do it for a YEAR! EEEK!

Being an entrepreneur and working with entrepreneurs, I KNOW how fun it is to chase shiney squirrels. Seriously, coming up with a new product, service, plan, strategy, idea, concept…all in my sweet spot. BUT, the problem with that is the herky-jerky stop start that never gives anything time to get off the ground!

Since I decided that I LOVE Pinterest, I am giving her a year. I am going to make videos, like pictures, share pins, etc. for a YEAR. If I do three pins a day for the work year that is 5 (days a week) X 3 (pins a day) X 50 (weeks in a year). That is 750 opportunities to connect with someone new, share something and even have fun doing it. If I do videos about how-tos even once every couple of weeks, that will be 20 plus Pinterest videos.

How often have you decided to do something, tried it for a couple of weeks (or a couple of days) and then decided that it didn’t work? Exercise is like that for me, if I don’t have a 6 pack abs after THREE STRAIGHT DAYS of doing situps, I slither back to my slothful ways. Marketing is like that too! I will see people do three blog posts, no one comments, they say it is stupid and give up. That makes as much sense as exercising for and hour and a half and expecting to look like Jennifer Anniston!

Here is your mission if you choose to accept it…figure out one new marketing habit that you are going to embrace for the next three months! It can be phone calls, door knocking, personal notes, sending a daily email, Facebook, Pinterest, postcards. I don’t care what it is, you have to pinky swear that you will do it every work day for the next three months. No whining about, “its hard”, no crybaby, “but no one likes me”. Just do it!

If you could use a little help creating new habits, or heck even thinking about WHAT your new habits should be, check out my marketing coaching programs – they start with a tiny commitment of an hour and go up to 3 months!

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The level of vitriole and hate on Facebook is amazing to me as a human, let alone as a small business marketing expert. The reason for this post is to maybe let some business types know how their comments look from the other end of the Facebook AND to offer some suggestions about how to promote your agendas and beliefs in a positive way.

Notes about this post…1. I TRY not to be mad on the Facebook as it looks bad, that being said, I have occasionally (like yesterday) vented my anger at people who do not put their email address on their business cards or further back, people who spam on Facebook. I am not a saint, just a little more judicious about who I want to alienate on the Facebook and 2. No names were used and this is not about civil liberties, free speech or any other thing. This is about how you are perceived on social media by potential customers who would like to buy things from you or your company.

Hate On Facebook

So I took a little walk around the Facebook block today after seeing a post denigrating witches (a group I have some friends in). Now I know that this person is not thinking this is hate (because I know him well), but…heck it is hate. Here are some of the other things I found on Facebook this morning…

• Last night, at Bible Study, I was thinking Islam is against homosexuality. Islam is against abortion. Christianity is against homosexuality. Christianity is against abortion. I’m totally confused about just what religion, if any, oblahblah really follows!
• I will never pay any taxes to support abortion in any form. It would have to be over my dead body! I use to wonder how these things happened in red china ,the ussr, and nazi germany. I have not lived this long to ever give in to that. I have worked all my life helping and saving lives, not only as a nurse,but volunteering as a red cross nurse and helping pregnant girls etc. How can this evil be growing in our once beautiful country????
• Criminalizing abortion again? Let’s not let this country be run by over-zealous bible thumping bigots with no sense of practicality and flexibility.
• This is a little old but someone needs to tell me that they agreed with this. 1.2 Billion of our tax dollars given to black farmers only! How come this was never reported in the Lame street liberal media?
• Bill O’Reilly – #1 among the most misinformed people in America. The perfect love story.
• Gays are demons, swine-bandits and crocodiles. In a sane society, they would all be hunted down by the police and brought before a court of law for prosecution. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case in Europe and America, but virtue still reigns in Africa. Perhaps it is not too late for the west to return to the path of righteousness?
• your representative is leading the charge to get those queers in uniform back in the closet where they belong.
• For somebody to say this is repugnant enough, but to take away our rights by law and claim to be doing it FOR us, shows once again the hypocricy of the GOP party.

Those were just a few of the comments I found and they represented the opinions of people who…

• hate gays
• hate republicans
• are anti abortion
• are pro abortion
• think the liberal media is biased
• think fox news is the worse network ever
• truly believe the GOP is killing america
• or think democrats are killing america
• god is good, if you are not following his teachings you are going to perish in the fires of hell
• say that bible thumpers have no place in america
• actually said that blacks and women should go back to their place
• want the world to be how it was when they were young
• or think that there is some kind utopia where we could all live in peace if big business would just go away
• keep the guns, shoot the unwilling
• lose the guns, they are the root of all evil
• execute all rapists and child molesters immediately
• work to fix the problem of child abuse by spending money on programs to help the needy

Whew…that was…well disturbing to say the least. So what EXACTLY am I trying to say here? I am saying that as small business owners, doing small business marketing, you CANNOT afford to alienate potential customers by sounding off with hate filled rhetoric on your Facebook wall.

I KNOW, it seems like everyone agrees (or disagrees) with you. I KNOW you have the right to have opinion and voice them. But here are some fun statistics….there are a little more than 300 million people in the United States, in the last election (2008), 49% of the men in this country who voted voted for Obama (our Democratic nominee) and 48% voted for McCain (our Republican nominee). A poll done at the end of 2011 showed that 78% of the respondents self-identified themselves as Christians. Some women are pro-choice, some are pro-life. Some people are gay supporters, some are anti-gay. To my uneducated eye, it really seems to be about 50-50 on just about every issue out there.

As a small business marketing pro, I can tell you that most of my customers cannot afford to alienate half of the potential buying pool for their product or service. Image you are a plumber who works on pipes. Are you going to turn down a job because the client is against your political idealism, is it even going to come up or do they just need their dishwasher fixed.

Believe me, I DO understand idealism and sticking to your beliefs, but do you really have to share them with the buying public?

So, how would you be able to share you viewpoint and beliefs without running afoul of what I am starting to feel like, the marketing nazi? BE POSITIVE!!!! And I mean positive without that snarky thing after, so no, “dogs are great! and all you cat lovers who think you know the right kind of pet are stupid and uneducated”.

Two of my favorites who do this AMAZINGLY well are GodVine and the World Wildlife Fund.

Godvine

What I think they do well is spread the good parts of Christianity, the love and acceptance and GREAT THINGS HAPPENING, without judgement and stating that their way is the only way. While I have not seen the inside of a church in a while, I do visit Godvine almost every day, watching a great coming home story or a dog rescue. They epitomize how to share a message without having to hit people over the head with it! (PS – I shared the story about the dog and his military dad on my Facebook wall).

Klout and WWF

Okay, this another favorite, Klout and WWF (World Wildlife Fund) paired up (IE – the WWF did a marketing campaign with Klout). I LOVE that this has a real marketing component! So the thing that jumped out at me was the free FB Timeline photos you could download. Happy pictures of polar bears and pandas without one dying or starving animal in sight (I KNOW, shock and fear sell, but not to me, I am all about the positive!) The idea is that Facebook peeps can use the photos with the WWF logo on the picture, a subliminal reminder to help and support the WWF.

So now I feel like I have written war and peace about the subject of HATE ON FACEBOOK. I am really hoping that getting this off of my chest will make a difference in how my small biz peeps post to their Facebook accounts! Happy, not hateful. Sunshiney, not snarky. Just remember that no one wants to work with someone who is perpetually angry so be aware of what you look like from the other side!

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Social media marketing is HARD! I have never worked with a marketing platform that changes more than this giant kerfuffle of sites and places that you need to have a presence on, oh and they change it constantly so that you have to be on top of what you should be doing now!

A little bit of social media marketing background. I just checked the “when did you join Twitter” website and it says I started my Taradactyl twitter account on November 30,2007. WOW, That is going on 5 years now and over that time I gathered well over 10,000 followers. The reason I start there is that this was my first foray into using social media as a marketing platform. According to facebook, I started over there July 21, 2008 after talking with a friend who said it might have some further marketing implications than posting pictures of kitties and puppies.

Upon discovering that social media marketing would work for me, we decided that we would take our mad marketing skills and start doing social media for clients. At the start, this was relatively easy as it was just a dorky LinkedIn profile, a Facebook Profile and a Twitter account that was fed by a blog. BOY did we think we were cutting edge, and dang, looking back was it easy-peasy compared to today. Basic graphics and post some stuff, and BANG you are done.

Today I have to say that if you are NOT a graphics artist or video maven, social media, website design and blogging are out of the reach of most small business owners. We have targeted for our clients the top social media sites that are effective for small business marketing today (I will break out what we recommend below, just remember that if you are reading this tomorrow it may have changed again by then…:)

Blogging for social media marketing

I am a HUGE proponent of blogging for social media marketing. I have this site and get SCADS of opportunities from having a big robust site with lots of content. People find us through SEO (search engine optimization), I have a place to put my speaker stuff, talk about entrepreneur marketing and discuss small business and social media marketing. Because I take the time to write good content and have a strong opinion, people read what I write and I have become an expert in my industry.

Now let’s talk about blogging for the small biz owner. Seriously, who has the time to post 1-2 times per week, getting “pinable” pictures in there for your additional social media sharing (more about “pinability” later)? Additionally, aggregator sites like networked blogs and rss graffiti no longer have the impact of posting so you need to pop over to Facebook and the like to post your entry.

Having a blog means having graphics, the overall look and feel, marketing buttons, and blog post pictures.

Facebook for small business marketing

Okay, I go back and forth on this one. Originally, we used the customer’s profile (human) to do marketing, then we switched when Facebook launched business pages, and now I am in a quandary. I REALLY like some of the new features of the business pages and you HAVE to have one like the old yellow page ad was mandatory, BUT…and I think this is a HUGE but for our small business people (not corporations, small biz owners) people don’t like to talk to your brand, they like to talk to YOU.

What does this mean marketing-wise? We manage lots of different types of social media, restaurants, resorts, doctors, realtors, art sites, etc. Some of them have great results talking as a page (our restaurants are especially effective this way), but the realtors, spa owners and the like bomb as pages. If you are considering hiring a new hairdresser (ladies, you KNOW what a big deal this is), you don’t care as much about the salon as the service and personality of hairdresser right?) This makes it hard. How much personal information to share while still keeping a professional demeanor.

I share mostly marketing on my Tara Jacobsen profile but do have pictures of my puppy after having tater tots. The tater tots post got a lot of likes and comments, while some of my marketing posts fall on the floor with a thud. Seriously, most people are on the Facebook for socializing and learning more about people, and not so much for buying stuff.

Does this mean you can ignore a page and only use your person, nope! It could change again and you would be WAY behind the curve AND it is just a cost of doing business today. You have to have a presence, both as a person and a business.

Twitter for small business marketing

Everyone who loves twitter, raise their hand. Okay, the two of you can put your hands down now. But seriously, twitter is a GREAT platform for social media marketing. It allows you to post your message, target specific geographic or cultural users and computers love twitter.

WHAT? Why would computers like Twitter? Twitter has what is called an “open API” which means developers can make programs that pull from twitter. You can hook your blog directly to Twitter and there is nothing to stop it from appearing to all your followers. You can use hashtags (#) to mark your posts as being in #denver or about #marketing.

It is also easy to connect with people on the Twitter. I have “talked” with best selling authors, my marketing heroes and even a politician (accidentally) once.

Google+ for social media marketing

Google+ is still in it’s infancy. The thing to know about it is that THE GOOGLE owns it. Seriously. Right now, that is all that we need to worry about. You need a business page, you need a profile and you need to post on there.

The other thing you want to do is to start circling people (same as adding friends on the Facebook). You can have 5,000 people in your circles and can target different industries.

As a business tool, right now, it is not that great, but it will be!

YouTube for small business marketing

Videos, that’s right, videos are going to be half of the backbone of the new internet within a few years. People do not have time to read anymore, they want to watch a quick 2 minute video that gets the point across. Think about it, what if I had a video right below here where I TELL you my top pics instead you reading them. I can tell you that I had to CRAM all of this into 2 minutes which was not easy BUT now I will have a place to put a backlink to my blog and you get to “hear” my picks instead of reading them!

Pinterest for small business marketing

Again, this is a rather new entry to social media marketing scene and I have heard from more than one person that Pinterest is for women. Not so and I will tell you this one or one like it will be a hot player in the next few years.

So what is pinterst? It is a visual photo sharing site. You can make “boards” with your interests and save things to look at later. So let’s talk about this. I have a board with marketing (of course), a board for good website buttons for future reference, a board on crafting and a board on bees. Most of my repins (sharing on Facebook) come from my success quotes, but I am building a circle of friends on here just like I did on Twitter and Facebook in the past.

WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP

Okay, I know for many of you who have reached the bottom of this page, doing this type of marketing is out of the question time-wise and ability wise (believe me, I KNOW, I was sad this morning thinking about all the changes we would have to make our clients new Facebook business page timelines next week!!!)

That having been said, if you think this is too much to handle and would like to find out how to hire a top-notch social media marketing company, give us a call today to find out more!!! 727-415-9165

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1. Social Media Marketing Twitter Events
2. How To Find Stuff To Post On Social Media
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Many of our entrepreneur marketing coaching clients are involved in Direct Sales or MLMs. Because I was not sure I actually knew the difference (okay, I admit, I didn’t know there WAS a difference!), I thought I should get some help from an expert in the industry!

Guest post by Direct Sales Expert – Tina Kraft

There are many articles out there about direct sales versus Network Marketing (sometimes called MLM or multi level marketing). I find it interesting how varying the opinions are on this subject. First off, I have been involved in both so this comes from first hand experience. Having said that, each and every company has a different sales model and compensation plan. Every company has a different percentage of commissions.

Network Marketing Companies

Most Network Marketing Companies have an auto ship for both the customers and the distributors, and to receive your royalties as a distributor it is a minimum monthly autoship to receive your products for “wholesale” – every company is different. Network Marketing is based more on signing people up to be either a customer or distributor and have them on autoship. They are normally consumable products. You make less money on your individual sales and about the same on your downline as in direct sales, but again EVERY company is a little different.

Direct Sales Marketing Companies

Direct Sales is more relationship based and face-to-face sales. Most Direct Sales companies use the party plan module. The commission made by the distributor from their personal sales is usually very good so YOU are more in control of your income. You can also build a downline and have residual income from your downline. Most companies have incentives and bonuses for sales and recruiting and also have incentive trips you can earn for FREE! Being more of a relationship based model, you have repeat customers and hosts for your “parties” or events. This is also why it is dominated by women as we are more relationship based in business.

How To Pick A Company

So what type of company do you want to be a part of? First when picking a company you need to figure out what you are passionate about. Are you passionate about health and wellness, decorating, bling, cosmetics, fashion, coffee? The list goes on and on! Also look at the compensation plan structure, do you want to build a team and become a leader in the company? What type of support will you need?

Direct Sales and Network Marketing are great ways to become an entrepreneur. It DOES take hard work, dedication and time to build your business.

Remember that nothing in life that is worthwhile is easy!! But it is very gratifying!! Make sure you are committed to your venture and don’t become discouraged easily.

Tina M Kraft is an Accountability Coach and has built a multi million dollar team in the Direct Sales Industry. She lives in Denver with her husband of 35 years. Visit her site at tinamkraft.com, Friend Tina on Facebook, Follow her on Twitter or Connect on LinkedIn!

Entrepreneur Marketing | Direct Sales, Network Marketing, MLM

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2. Features Versus Benefits Part Deux
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Local marketing experts will tell you that the only thing that matters is getting to number one on google, or having the most fan page likes, but rarely will they tell you about the things that REALLY matter to sales. How you treat people IN PERSON, once you get them there matters even more!

So, local business owners, first I want tell you about some marketing books you need to go get and read right now:

• Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
• The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping–Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond, by Paco Underhill

I would love if you read them and then came back, but at least put them on your book list or radar to read if you own a local business and care about local marketing.

What they mostly say is that to succeed in business you have to be customer centric and unique in the marketplace – BOILERPLATE ALERT. So what do those fancy terms mean? I thought it would be easier to tell you about a great local business, rather than describe them (ad nauseum) in a blog post.

Water 2 Wine in Greenwood Village, CO

I do not wax eloquent too often about service from a local business. I am generally happy to snap a picture and throw something up on FourSquare to show my appreciation, but last night’s experience required a little more. I was meeting some friends before a networking event at a wine bar (I am a beer girl) so had low expectations, plus I was early, again…sigh.

Walked in the door and was greeted by a nice lady who didn’t push me to order and who headed me in the right direction for the loo (restroom for those of you who don’t know the technical terms). Now, ever since I was a little girl and saw a fountain in a bathroom, I have been fascinated with facilities. These were gorgeous, clean and (gasp) had wonderful high-end toilet paper. Seriously, they had me at Charmin!

Next was the nice bartender (who I found out later was the owner) who asked me about what kinds of wine I wanted and proceeded to give me samples of three I tried. PS – he knows what he is doing, every time I tried one I thought I would like, WRONG, all of his, spot on!

The networking started and he mingled, made sure everyone had a nice time and generally helped make the evening great.

So onto paying…first off, I had trouble understanding that they were not charging me for the tasting….really? Okay, well here’s the charge, where is the tip line so I can add a nice little gratuity…what? No tipping?!??!!

They are nice to everyone AT A STORE LEVEL…from the owner, to the bartenders, to the nice man who seemed to be a barback and who got me a glass of water, apologizing that they don’t have ice (probably so goobers like me can’t ice the red wines!).

Okay local marketing class? What have we learned today?

• A culture of caring starts from the top down – Employees are like kids, they model what they see and if you have a caring attitude, it will shine through to your employees.
• Give more than you said – No tip means that I saved $2 – I charge between $100 and $250 an hour for consulting and you can’t buy a promotional post on my blog so for less than the price of a cup of joe, they guaranteed that they got one more raving fan (and some free marketing).
• Raving fans – when I was saying I was coming down for networking (I usually don’t leave the home at night) the ladies I know all said I would LOVE Water 2 Wine. These kinds of apostles out in the marketplace, telling everyone how wonderful you are – priceless.
• Multitudes of Awards – you don’t even have to take my word for it that this place is BRILLIANT, they have won the 2011 Denver’s #1 Wine Shop and Wine Bar AND the award for Denver 5280′s Top of the Town.

I KNOW, not all that much marketing and more customer service today, BUT SO important to sales! If you know a great place in your area who could use a customer service shout out, post a link and I will add it!!!

Lastly, thanks Marcus for being such a good business owner and a downright nice guy! If you would like to check out Water 2 Wine, click the link to visit their site! Or better yet, head over there for glass of grapes…

Water 2 Wine
9608 East Arapahoe Road
Greenwood Village, CO 80112
303-799-9463

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1. Direct Sales MLM Case Study – Green Cleaning Products
2. Small Business Marketing Case Study – Body and Mind Enrichment
3. Small Business Marketing Case Study – Intuitive Organizing

Social media marketing, is not having friends or connecting with old acquaintances, but actual marketing that is about brand building, getting new opportunities and when possible, generating leads for your business.

Social networks (like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+) are places where people gather to communicate, share pictures of their doggies, quotes, and just random bits of their life. If you had asked someone even a few years ago if having an omelet for breakfast would be worth telling the world about, they would have looked at you like you had a brain problem, but many of us now share A LOT of the minutia of everyday life online through these media.

Right now, there are some main social networks where people share their info and which communicate with each other pretty well:

• Facebook (first really big one)
• Twitter (great for searching, computers and getting to people you never thought you could reach!)
• LinkedIn (more for industry, not just a job board anymore but not as SOCIAL unless you can devote a LOT of time and attention)
• Google+ (a late-comer but owned by google so fast out of the gate and one of my favorites!)
• Foursquare (good for local businesses)

Time

So how do you decide how many social networks you should join? I go by which ones have the most people that I am going to get opportunities from. What kinds of opportunities do you ask? People to sign up for my mailing lists, opportunities to speak on webinars or in person, leads for our social media marketing company, potential coaching clients, basically the same leads I am trying to get by writing targeted blog posts every day or so.

Notice I did not say sales. In service industries or big ticket training programs or expensive products, the chance that I will post something and someone will buy it on the spot are pretty slim. NOPE, social media marketing is about kissing the girl, not getting to third base on the first try! (thanks to that nice @garyvee for the Paradise By The Dashboard Light analogy)

Okay, most small biz owners are overwhelmed, disgusted or confused by social media. What is it, why do they need it and how should they fit it into their already busy schedule?

We work with small biz owners to help implement a social media marketing plan that will work for their company! Find out more about our social media marketing services or call today to talk with real live human being! 727-415-9165

How Do They Make Money?

The next thing I check is how do they make money. Google makes money from selling advertising, Twitter has a less clear profit model, but they are working on it. Facebook sells ads and LinkedIn sells premium memberships with enhanced communication capabilities.

Little social networks that want to grow up to make lots of money need people. They will make VERY little on the front end and OOODLES when they have millions of users. Unfortunately, with the exception of the big 4, I have not found other social networks with lots of people yet. Not to say someone won’t come along BUT it doesn’t make sense for me TIMEWISE to join 100 little networks, hoping that they will grow.

I will give you a perfect example…Plaxo. Plaxo came along early and was very proactive about connecting with Facebook, in fact, you could have all your FB posts go over to Plaxo. Huh, not as many people, same stuff over there as is on Facebook….why not just use Facebook?

But Someone Asked Me To Join A Little Social Network and I Don’t Want To Disappoint Them!

Because I have big networks across multitudes of platforms, I get “invited” by other people to join other networks that they belong to. Little networks with nothing particular to set them apart from the big networks I have. Some warning signs of little networks that are not wise to spend your time on:

• it is a “craigs list” style website – why not just use craigs list?
• like facebook, with a little linkedin and some twitter thrown in – seriously? first off, having that many interfaces would be a nightmare to use and again – why not use the ACTUAL Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?
• NOT like Facebook, we focus on creating relationships with our members – Facebook COULD be about relationships if you choose to use it that way, so could Twitter and LinkedIn

So Do You HATE All Little Social Networks?

I do NOT hate little social networks with a purpose other than copying big social networks.

I have a client who started a social network for lightworkers and metaphysical people (who I believe are an underserved market) and is busting her ass to get members and grow her business. I belong to this and contribute to her offerings when I can BECAUSE her client base are people who fit well into the consultation and coaching part of my business.

There are some up and coming social networks I like a lot (some are tools for using with social networks but they have a social factor too!)

• Pintrest – a visual kind of bulletin board where you share social stuff
• Instagram – Mobile picture sharing site that works with Facebook
• Spotify – for music sharing
• Tumblr – a micro posting site (this one is a dark horse, have it on here because there are socially connected people pushing for it!)
• Klout – tracking your social capitol and can share with others (I am writing a whole post about this one – keep your peepers open for it!)

So how did I pick this list? They are ones that come on my radar because friends use them or they get press or I just find them cool. That does NOT mean that I should spend all of my time growing friends and followers on them, but it does mean I will make an account and see how it goes, using them when I have time.

So let’s cut to the chase, if you are doing social media marketing and are focused on it as an aspect of brand building, networking and promoting your business, joining a million little social network wanna-bees does not make sense. What does make sense is to focus on the big 4 and have a smaller presence on a few smaller networks that make sense to you personally!

If you have a network that you ADORE and want to share here, please leave a comment and I will review it…we all may find a great new “place”! If you are just a spammer, I read all comments before publishing so don’t waste your time!!!

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