St. Louis Missouri (MO) Small Business Social Media Marketing

Most of us are probably not in a position to throw caution to the wind when it comes to our own marketing budget. Most of us want our marketing programs and strategies to work well the FIRST time we try them, and as we know, that’s always a gamble. Postcard mailings aren’t what they used to be. Direct mail doesn’t have the same impact. Seminar and workshops are expensive when food is served, and there’s never a guaranteed ROI on any of it.

Today there are other ways to market to your local community without spending tons of money. I will be the first to say that “in person networking” can never be replaced. The handshake and the ability to look someone in the eye is still just as important as ever. However, with a little web savvy, you can start those conversations a lot sooner, and educate a lot faster than ever before. Your reach has been enhanced by the power of the internet.

I’ve written about this before but the truth of the matter is that this method of marketing is not only the latest trend, but it is one that I expect will last. If you aren’t on this bandwagon yet, get on fast.

The important part of understanding today’s marketing techniques is that total transparency and relationship building with your target market is the key to success. Long gone are the days when we can hide behind our websites.

Transparency does not mean writing on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog about the latest fight you have with your spouse, or what the neighbor’s bad kids are up to. What it does mean is that you are willing to share enough about yourself and your value system to build a level of trust with your local community that is unmatched. The more “accessible” you are online, the more accessible your prospects will be and the more credibility you will gain. Talk about yourself as the owner, add a picture, talk about your personal experiences that lead you to this business, or to want to work with seniors. Be real. Be honest. Depending on who is reading this I would suggest that most seniors have lived longer than you. They have made more important decisions about their lives than you have, and most can spot dishonesty or half-truths a mile away. Transparency means earning the trust of a skeptical customer.

Social media marketing is free, and it works if done correctly. Plain and simple.

More baby-boomers and seniors are on the internet than ever before. Suddenly there are tons of articles out there talking about Grandpa on Facebook and MySpace. You need to be where your target market hangs out!

I’m about to give away my secret formula that will transform your business into a marketing machine. Yes, it takes a little time, sort of like a weekend painting project, but once it’s done, the time you spend updating your information takes just a couple of hours a week. (But you will be addicted to it, so I know you will spend more time than just 2 hours a week!)

Equipment

The equipment needed for a project like this is minimal- you might want to invest in a good headset with a microphone for your computer so that you can record audio or video if you like. Amazon carries a wide variety of headsets at a reasonable price.

Step 1: (The longest step in the process)

Setting up your online accounts may take a bit of time, but well worth the investment.

Here are the initial accounts I recommend for the fastest and most sustainable results:

* Facebook Personal Account (using your own name, your picture, etc, no logos). Connections on Facebook personal are “friends”.

* Facebook Business Page (this is where you use your logo and other business related items. Connections on your Facebook business page are “fans”.

* Your Blog. Use Wordpress to create a fast and easy blog that lets you get the message out about your area of expertise. Be sure to use their tutorials to learn how to use categories and tags to your advantage. Remember that when you post on your blog use titles that identify your location and your product or service. For instance, instead of a title like “April Events”, use “April Reverse Mortgage Seminars in Miami, FL”. See the difference? The search engines will play their hand in your favor with the second title.

* Set up your Twitter account. I know, you aren’t really sure WHY you need twitter, but believe me some amazing deals go down every day because of good Twitter Posts (called tweets). Once you have your account set up, go to twellow and type in a search for people in your area. Start connecting with your local community by “Following” people in your town. They will follow you back.

* LinkedIn is next. This is an important website for professionals because unlike Facebook, Twitter, and other places, LinkedIn is for the true business to business networking. Many connections that you make on LinkedIn will turn into in-person meetings down the road. Use it to your advantage. Be sure you use the “Wordpress” feature to add your blog posts directly to your LinkedIn profile instantly. (Automation at it’s finest!)

* Use FriendFeed to link everything together. FriendFeed ties all of your accounts together. Once you connect your accounts to FriendFeed, you will notice that when you make a blog post, it automatically shows up on Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, and many other sites. This is another great lesson in automation. Once this step is completed your BLOG becomes the center HUB for all of your information that you want to share.

* Squidoo is important because it serves as another “web page” about you and your business. You can link Twitter, Facebook, and your blog to your Squidoo page for extra backlinking and content.

* Scribd is an odd little site that pulls a lot of punch. Turn all of your print marketing material into online material that works in your favor. Anything you have in your marketing arsenal that can be scanned or uploaded to Scribd is worth taking the time to load. When you place a document on Scribd be sure to title it the same way you would a blog post- make sure your business (plumber, elder care, home care, etc) and your location (St. Louis, MO) is in the headline or title area.

* MerchantCircle- one of my current favorites! This group has done a really good job of creating a system that gets you noticed by the search engines FAST. Open a free account. They try to upsell you at every turn, but I dare say you can do just as well with a free account. The key to MerchantCircle is to make sure the name of your company portion is filled in with your line of business and your location. So instead of “Tom’s Financial Services and Loans”, a better business listing would be simply, “Reverse Mortgages, Findlay OH”. Another tip on MerchantCircle is to make sure that you put your blog posts on from your main blog right on to your MerchantCircle blog. The more content you have the faster you move up website page ranks.

* Ideamarketers is a website where you can post articles about your niche. There is no waiting time for approval. Keep the same rules in mind- article titles should reference your location and your line of business.

* GoArticles is a similar story. Post your articles, make sure they are over 500 words. Check for spelling errors etc.

* Finally, type in the words that you would use to search for a Reverse Mortgage provider or plumber in your area on Google. Who comes up first? What websites are showing on the first page and can you get listed on those? If so, go for it.

Step 2: This step is super important.

I’ve written about this before. If your website is homegrown, old, outdated, and has no “call to action”, then you will never have good lead conversion results. Spend the money or the time to update your website.

* What is a “call to action”? A call to action means giving the viewer of your webpage one simple task that he or she

Valerie’s motto and favorite saying is: “Impact is not created by big budgets, impact is created by innovative marketing ideas!” Valerie VanBooven is President and CEO of LTC Expert Publications LLC., a company devoted to empowering small business entrepreneurs and senior service providers with the tools to enjoy thriving businesses and freedom-based lifestyles.

Join us for a Webinar on December 3

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/777444579
Thursday December 3, 2009, 7pm Central Time

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN, owner of SeriousSocialMedia.com

Social Media Marketing for Business Owners- Local and World Domination is Possible

Please attend to learn more about:

*What social media marketing “is’ and what it means to for small business owners

*How social media marketing can decrease the cost of your current marketing budget by decreasing reliance on print and pay-per-click campaigns.

*Which accounts you should sign up for, and which ones you should avoid.

*See actual screenshots of what it looks like when your business dominates the first page of google naturally! (all a result of social media marketing)

*How much time and skill it takes to set up a good program.

*Learn from the pros- one hour of amazing content that will show you how to get the most attractive lead generation website ever put together for your Home Care, Elder Care, or Senior Service  business (or maybe you need more than one!).

*Learn the secret search engine optimization techniques that will work for any website that you currently own.

*Learn why web masters are TERRIBLE about making changes to your site, take way to long, or never respond at all- and what you can do to change all of that once and for all.

*Learn about the “new” websites that allow you to make some changes on the fly all by yourself, and meet a web designer who is not only a sales professional like you, but is obsessed with great customer service.
Title:           Social Media Marketing for Business Owners- Local and World Domination is Possible
Date:         Thursday, December 3, 2009
Time:         7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/777444579

Free Social Media Marketing Class: St. Louis MO
Thu, Nov 05, 7p-9p
Objistics Computer Lab, 1405 Jungermann Road, Suite B,
St. Charles, MO, US
Free Social Media Marketing Class: St. Louis MO for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and consultants!

Limited to 16 seats- we use a computer training lab. Please RSVP at www.SeriousSocialMedia.com

The Original Post: What is the cost of thinking? Can be found at: http://www.relationship-economy.com/?p=5232

Your boss says”Our competitors are stealing our customers using this social media stuff. We need to use this stuff and do it better than our competitors and we need to do it NOW!”

You are then tasked with “doing it” but you have no experience or knowledge of what to do. So you look for help and find an outside resource whom supposedly has the experience and knowledge to know what to do. You bring the option of hiring this person to your boss and they ask about the cost and what will they get from using this resource.  You tell your boss the cost but aren’t sure exactly what it is you’re going to get. Then your boss says “I know we need to do this but I don’t know what it is or what we’ll get from it”.

How can a company put value on something they don’t understand?  How can they understand if they have no reference to “think about it”?.

What Is Required To Think?

Thinking about social media cannot increase understanding without the appropriate knowledge. Anything new or innovative takes time to understand and determine how to use it effectively.  In order to think effectively one must first acquire the knowledge necessary to think about using social media strategically, tactically and with specific purpose. Without the knowledge thinking will only produce the wrong outcomes because your thoughts are limited to what you know, not what you don’t know.

The reality is that learning to leverage social media requires people and organizations to reThink everything. This thing everyone calls social media has serious strategic implications and to just “do it” without gaining the knowledge to think about what needs to be done is a sure disaster.

Think About This

A business runs on communications. Without being able to effectively and efficiently communicate you end up wasting time and money. Money represents time and cost in rework, fixing misunderstandings, setting the wrong customer expectations and  not effectively and efficiently communicating to your employees, customers and your market.

The cost of not thinking about these issues is increased cost. However being able to “think” about these issues may require the infusion of new knowledge which may not exist in your organization. W. Edwards Deming once said “knowledge required to change the existing system to a better system must come from outside the existing system”. Why? Because the existing system is blinded by its own thinking. Get it?

Thinking About Social Media?

Who isn’t? The Corporate Executive Board said “Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management”

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

If you dive into the social media water without knowing its depth or where the rocks are you are likely to break your neck.  To avoid breaking your neck you should first get the knowledge about that which your about to dive into.  Without knowledge people, and entire organizations, perish.  Think before you jump. But before you can think effectively you must first get new knowledge.  Social media knowledge doesn’t come from self appointed gurus or experts who know how to get you followers and traffic. The cost of thinking increases when you don’t think. Get it?

What say you?

St. Louis Missouri Small Business Owners Need to Know About the 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

Great article by Soren Gordhamer read the original here: http://mashable.com/2009/09/22/social-media-business/

Soren Gordhamer writes and consults on ways we can more creatively and effectively use the technologies of our age, including social media. He is the author of “Wisdom 2.0″ (HarperOne, 2009). You can follow him on Twitter at @SorenG.

Social media is helping to forge a new era in business transparency and engagement, creating both new challenges and opportunities. Gone are the days when companies could rely on carefully crafted press releases or flashy ad campaigns to communicate with their customers, often in an attempt to convince people that their products are the best in the field. In the age of social media, the rules have changed radically, and people today demand a more honest and direct relationship with the companies with which they do business.

Companies now face a clear choice: wall themselves in and become increasingly controlled and hidden, or use social media and other means to reveal their human side, welcome transparency, and forge new relationships with their customers. The old game is undoubtedly over, and the question now is, “what can businesses do to transition and succeed in this new era?”

Below are the top four broad shifts that social media is causing in business. Please feel free to share any others you have observed in the comments.

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1. From “Trying to Sell” to “Making Connections”

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In order to change the context of customer relationships from trying to sell to seeking to engage and connect with customers, companies need to use various means, including sites like Facebook () and Twitter (), to socially interact with people. The most popular brands in social media tend to post less about their products or services and more about things that help their customers get to know the people and personality of a company. Their goal is less about “selling” and more “engaging” — and, as a result, through such engagement people feel more comfortable doing business with those companies.

Jeff Swartz, who is the President and CEO of the Timberland Company, is a great example of this. Swartz uses his Twitter account to show his personality by tweeting about his life and the social issues he is passionate about, rather than the shoes his company makes. He also links from his Twitter bio to Timberland’s Earthkeeper project that supports environmental awareness, rather than to the company homepage, in an effort to make a connection with people around something that goes beyond just the products Timberland sells.

Lesson: Release fewer “official statements” and more personal ones that help you make a connection to your customers and audience.

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2. From “Large Campaigns” to “Small Acts”

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With sites like Facebook and Twitter, we all essentially have our own broadcasting network, and businesses are beginning to see that rather than spending millions of dollars on traditional ad campaigns, small acts can be more valuable because people will inevitably share such experiences through the social web.

In the past, if we had a very bad or very good experience with a company, it could take days or weeks to tell all of our friends and relatives about it. Today, in a matter of minutes, we can let all our friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter know about what happened. When every customer experience can be easily and widely broadcast, small issues become super important.

Loic Le Meur, CEO of startup software company Seesmic (), once told me that one of the most important jobs of a CEO today is to hear what people are saying about the company’s product across social media channels, and to respond to them directly. In fact, much of his Twitter stream is @replies to people commenting on his company’s product.

Bigger companies, such as Southwest Airlines and Comcast are using Twitter in the same way, making sure customers’ concerns are addressed. Because bad experiences are broadcast just as fast and just as easily as the good, it pays for companies to pay attention to the one-on-one customer relationships forged via social media.

Lesson: Instead of only relying on big campaigns, make authentic, helpful relationships and communication the new campaign.

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3. From “Controlling Our Image” to “Being Ourselves”

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Of course companies need to have employee policies, and there is such a thing as bad press, but look at the most popular companies in the era of social media, and you’ll generally find the ones that give their employees freedom to be themselves in online spaces. The goal should no longer be to create a very controlled and polished image that everyone in a company tries to reinforce, but rather to give employees the means necessary to be human beings that can put a friendly face on the corporation.

I am not sure how NBC directs the social media efforts of their employees, but in watching NBC newscaster Ann Curry (@AnnCurry) on Twitter it is clear that she is not simply trying to get people to watch her shows. Curry is someone who speaks out about women’s rights, deeply cares about justice, and likes to quote the Persian poet, Rumi — there is a person there, not a company representative, and as such, I am much more likely to pay attention when and if she does talk about any of her television shows.

John Nack, the Principal Product Manager for Photoshop at Adobe, offers another great example. Adobe is a company that smartly encourages and provides the means for their employees to blog, and anyone who reads Nack’s blog will notice that Adobe doesn’t put many restrictions on what people write about. Nack’s blog is focused almost exclusively on his area of interest — graphic design and photo manipulation — but he doesn’t post solely about Adobe products. Many of the interesting art projects and articles he links to have nothing to do with Adobe and some may even have been created using software from competing companies.

Lesson: Forget the unified company image, give staff the freedom to be themselves, and trust that the relationships that they build will help the company in the long run.

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4. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”

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To engage with customers, it is no longer enough to have an email address and customer service number on one’s website. Today, people want to interact with and engage businesses via their chosen means of communication, whether that is Twitter, Facebook, discussion forums, or a feedback site like Get Satisfaction ().

If I want to communicate with a company, I tend to look them up on Twitter first. Knowing that I can communicate with a company on the networks upon which I am already most active makes me feel more comfortable doing business with them, because I know that if I have an issue, there is someone at the company I can communicate with through those means.

Companies like Dell, for example, have fully embraced multiple channels of support. Their community site lists all the ways customers can connect with them through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (), YouTube (), forums, blogs, email, and more. Dell wants people to be able to connect with them through whatever channel is most comfortable.

Lesson: Rather than expect customers to communicate through your chosen means, allow them to do so through their chosen means.

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The New Business Paradigm in the Age of Social Media

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In this new era of social media, companies are asked to be increasingly transparent and personal. Of course, traditional advertising and press releases will still have their place, but social sites such as Twitter and Facebook allow a whole new type of communication to take place that has previously been unknown to most businesses. Possibly more important for businesses than getting a large number of followers on social media sites, is following through on the opportunity to forge more genuine and direct connections with their customers.

Businesses who choose not to adapt to the new culture will be at an increasing disadvantage, as their customers slowly build personal relationships with their competitors. We are now in the age of open communication, engaged dialogue, and transparency, and business success may now have less to do with the size of ad budgets, but on the quality of interactions with customers.