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Best Practices in Making Social (Media) Connections

We often think of social media as the revolutionary communication tool for reaching a wide range of consumers in the modern marketing environment — and for good reason. It’s a phenomenal tool for inexpensively and intimately communicating with enormous audiences and potential markets. But some commentators point out that the focus on the business-to-consumer benefits of social media might be overshadowing important opportunities for business-to-business relationship building. Continue reading “Best Practices in Making Social (Media) Connections”

Being (Appropriately) Social Online: The Etiquette of Social Media Engagement

As the name suggests, social media is often a very informal means of conveying information. It’s familiar, colloquial and often has a personal touch – it’s social. So, when you’re using social media to support your business’ marketing needs, how should you behave? What’s the appropriate etiquette? Continue reading “Being (Appropriately) Social Online: The Etiquette of Social Media Engagement”

Twitter: Beyond Self-Promotion

In our recent blog post about the best ways to use Twitter for small businesses, we mentioned several uses of Twitter beyond pure advertising:

• Research
• Content curation
• Sharing Information with key target audiences
• Keeping an ear to the ground

Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently published an article titled “50 Companies That Get Twitter — and 50 That Don’t.” The article looked at a use of Twitter that is an important element of the pure advertising we choose not to focus on, and yet has a much broader usefulness: Continue reading “Twitter: Beyond Self-Promotion”

Twitter: Beyond Promotion

Like most forms of social media, Twitter is largely used by businesses to promote a message, product or service. However, there are a number of uses for Twitter beyond purely promotional activities. Twitter, and other social media tools, can actually provide big benefits to businesses in multiple ways. Some of the ways we have used Twitter outside of traditional marketing include the following: Continue reading “Twitter: Beyond Promotion”

Managing the Noise on Twitter

When Twitter first hit the social media scene, it seemed implausible or even inconceivable to many that 140 characters could provide any real value to social media marketing efforts, yet this application has emerged as one of the giants in the field. So popular, in fact, that it’s a daunting task to keep track of all of the activity on Twitter. There’s almost too much information. Some organizations Continue reading “Managing the Noise on Twitter “

The Benefits of Building an Online Community

Engaging with customers has always been important, but it has arguably never been easier than it is today in an era where we have a myriad of online communication channels and means to engage with our audiences. Whether they’re across town, or on the other side of the globe, electronic media allows for forum for marketers to listen to, learn form and leverage their online communities in a variety of ways. Continue reading “The Benefits of Building an Online Community”

Tweeting Locally

One of the many things I enjoy about marketing is attempting to generate the most results with the least among of time, money and effort. I want to get more for less. From an advertising standpoint, that means, for instance, that just because the Super Bowl pulls in a large audience each year, it may not make sense to put your message in front of that audience unless a significant percentage of it might represent potential customers for your products or services.

Social media is a lot like that. Just because social media can deliver an international audience doesn’t mean that it makes sense for you to be out there communicating with an international audience. In fact, for many businesses, Continue reading “Tweeting Locally”

Social Media Best Practices for SOHOs: You Don’t Have to be Big to be Successful Online!

One of the benefits—and potential downfalls—of the online environment is that it is a great equalizer. The smallest company, including solo operations, can present a “big company” feel, effectively competing against the big players in their industries. This can also present a downside, of course, for those seeking goods and services from online providers; all that glitters is not, necessarily, gold, so caveat emptor certainly applies.

Still, for small companies, and even individual practitioners in service industries like consulting, law, accounting, engineering, etc., it can be relatively easy to establish a strong presence online.

We’ve done that for our own marketing needs, and we work with a variety of other small businesses and independent consultants to help them establish a “big brand” online. In doing this, we have found some very important best practices that really must be adopted to generate results: Continue reading “Social Media Best Practices for SOHOs: You Don’t Have to be Big to be Successful Online!”

Are You Making Your Web Site the Hub of Your Content Marketing Activities?

I’ve said it often and will continue to say it to groups I have the opportunity to engage with around marketing communications issues: “If you don’t have a web site you virtually (pun intended) don’t exist.” Think about it. Continue reading “Are You Making Your Web Site the Hub of Your Content Marketing Activities?”