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

Great article written by Lorrie Thomas – Web Marketing Therapy

Had to pass it on to all of you, she’s right on target!!

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Social media platforms build buzz, boost business and serve small businesses as low-cost/no-cost marketing tools. Small business owners need to understand how these tools strategically serve and support small business first so they best implement social media strategies to sell products and/or services.

How Social Media Serves and Supports Small Business

Social Media, simply put, serves users and organizations in marketing in three ways:

1. Communication

Marketing is all about building relationships — relationships start with communication. New web tools like blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning), podcasting (BlogTalkRadio), video distribution (YouTube), event coordination tools (Meetup), wikis (Wikipedia) photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), and product review sites (epinions.com) allow small businesses to communicate, educate and share information directly with their current and prospective customers.

Content in the form of blog posts, audio, video, comparison/review sites, tweets and social network messages help share information in a less-formal way that builds the know, like and trust factors that influence decision making. Content is no longer just text. Small businesses can use audio or visual content for a “show me” and “tell me” to make communications a pack more interactive punch.

Social media’s direct communication distinction serves and supports small business as it brings the people you want to attract directly to you and makes direct communication possible. Social Media makes communication a conversation so small business owners can share, receive feedback and connect on equal ground with their target markets.

2. Collaboration

When small businesses empower their target consumers, they feel powerful. When your target market feels powerful, it trusts you, buys from you, and stays with you. Social media collaboration transforms consumers into prosumers. In an era of social media prosumers, it’s people (not companies) who make, shape, or break purchase patterns.

Small businesses can ignite collaboration for marketing by creating their own communities and/or joining communities. By doing so, they can listen and connect to their target customers and build a free forum to bring their market together. Collaboration = Marketing Acceleration.

Social media collaboration tools like review sites, video sharing sites, blogs, wikis and more allow users to self-serve, collaborate, and potentially serve as an endorser for your small business. Social media works as a marketing tool because people are more likely to trust peers rather than companies.

The power of mass collaboration serves and supports small business owners in a distinct way. Tapping/creating valuable collaborative options can bring people together to share ideas, exchange information, and help each other — and support relationship growth. Removing the “company/client” disconnect can break down elitism and boost marketing mind power.

3. Entertainment

The most important reason that social media works as a marketing tool is simple — because it’s fun. People want to go where they feel they belong, have a voice, are listened to, and enjoy themselves. Small business owners need to be where their target markets are — and these days, the masses are on Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Linkedin, Photobucket, YouTube and more because it has entertainment value.

Remember the Will It Blend? campaigns by Blendtec? They were a perfect example of social media marketing in brilliant action. Videos were relevant as they showed the product, were entertaining (they blended an iPhone!), and they were viral! People could easily share the fun with friends due to the ease of social media sharing widgets.

You can’t put a dollar amount on free promotion. The way social media stores data as an “Interactive Rolodex” also has an entertainment factor. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming the “new databases” because they are fast, easy, and fun. People are more likely to update their Facebook and LinkedIn information than a sterile address book because it is fun.

Small business owners use social media’s entertainment factor to build their online database of contacts and connections, be visible to prospective customers, and get the word out in creative ways like YouTube videos, blog posts, images, podcasts to make people smile and spread the word.

How Social Media Helps Small Businesses Sell

Social Media Marketing helps most small businesses boost sales indirectly by increasing relationships. Understanding that social media marketing serves users for communication, collaboration, and entertainment is the first step to considering how to strategically implement the multitude of social media marketing tools and choose the ones that work best for your unique organization.

The key thing that small businesses need to remember when using social media to help sell is that efforts must have value. There has to be value to your content, community, and execution to get people to engage with you or your organization. Social media doesn’t sell things — people sell things. Engaging in social media marketing starts the relationship-building process. Start small and snowball. Social media takes understanding, passion, effort, and commitment to make it work. Give your small business an authentic voice with social media and commit to providing value and you will be off to a smart start.

Lorrie Thomas, MA is a Marketing Therapist that helps small businesses get BIG with web marketing. Her team of “wild web women” at Web Marketing Therapy empower professionals with healthy doses of marketing advice to gain maximum wealth from the web. Lorrie speaks nationally and teaches Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing courses at UCSB and Berkeley Extension.

Hi all,
Hope everyone is having a great summer! We are continuing to add new accounts and enhancements to our program.
Some of you who are new to the program will note that your blogs are set up on our own servers now.
That gives us more control over content, rights, and information, and SEO options.
We will be sending out new URLs and usernames and passwords to those of you who were moved over.

A few reminders:
1. If you haven’t downloaded the community presentations, please do so at any time!

2. If you would like to watch the Do-It-Yourself Video Course, you are welcome to do that.
There are 15 short videos that walk you through a lot of what we do. Some of the info has changed over time,
but you will get the drift.

We will be having our usual private monthly webinar soon. Watch your email for instructions.
Also, be sure to register for our conference this fall- we will absolutely sell out before August 1.
Very few seats left! Register ASAP!!!

www.PowerMarketingConference.com

Thank you from all of us!
Valerie and Staff

Interesting Facts:

70% to 80% of consumers’ clicks still happen within natural search results. (iCrossing). Search spending totaled more than $13.5-billion in 08, 88% of that spent on paid search/pay per click advertising. (SEMPO, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization).

So, even though, 70%+ of traffic comes from organic search, business is only devoting 12% of its resources to that, 88% to pay-per-click. YOU can be smarter!

Knowing how to attract your ideal customers from their own active search activity gives you enormous advantage!

If you want all of your social media marketing and natural search engine results Done-For-You, be sure to contact us to set up a time for conference call and by all means visit http://www.LTCSocialMark.com  right now!

The site does say that we are sold out- but we will take new clients by private referral or interview on a case by case basis. We’re ready to get started, are you next?

Senior services and the elder care market are our specialty, our niche, and our expertise!

http://www.LTCSocialMark.com

Valerie

I found this article in the New York Times online. Interesting take on seniors using the internet to stay connected, especially those who are homebound perhaps, but able to easily communicate and contribute given the opportunity. I would encourage everyone to read this important article. Which gives me an idea—I think we just found our next territory exclusive program for home care providers and maybe even some reverse mortgage professionals out there.

Boy, you aren’t going to want to miss this Fall’s POWER MARKETING CONFERENCE. It’s only June and we are almost sold out, so get off your duff and get registered. Your competition might be there….hmmmmm. www.powermarketingconference.com

Online, ‘a Reason to Keep on Going’

 Here’s the link to the original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02face.html?_r=2&ref=technology
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: June 1, 2009
Like many older people, Paula Rice of Island City, Ky., has grown isolated in recent years. Her four grown children live in other states, her two marriages ended in divorce, and her friends are scattered. Most days, she does not see another person.
FAR FROM LONELY Paula Rice, 73, had been “dying of boredom” before discovering social networking sites. She spends up to 14 hours a day on the sites.  But Ms. Rice, 73, is far from lonely. Housebound after suffering a heart attack two years ago, she began visiting the social networking sites Eons.com, an online community for aging baby boomers, and PoliceLink.com (she is a former police dispatcher). Now she spends up to 14 hours a day in online conversations.

“I was dying of boredom,” she said. “Eons, all by its lonesome, gave me a reason to keep on going.”

Found this post over the weekend and thought it would interest most of you.  Remember, the more you practice social media marketing and transparency, the more POSITIVE results you will see…..

This full story is originally posted at: http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=1207

As social media usage becomes more ubiquitous, affluent consumers are using social media channels to share their personal customer service experiences and learn about others’ care experiences when making purchase decisions. This is among the initial findings of a new Society for New Communications Research study, Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media, which will be presented at the SNCR’s New Communications Forum in Sonoma County, Calif. later this week.

More than 300 consumers who are active Internet users participated in a survey focusing on how customer care influences brand reputation given the widespread adoption of social media. Top findings include:

• 59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience
• 72.2% of respondents research companies’ customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes
• 84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care at least sometimes in their decision to do business with a company
• 74% choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online
• 84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care in their decision to do business with a company at least sometimes
• 81% believe that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, but less than 33% believe that businesses take customers’ opinions seriously
• Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research, according to respondents. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%)