Category Archives: Small Business Marketing

Biggest Facebook Blunders by Businesses

August 31, 2013content marketing, Facebook Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media MarketingPeter Marino

One of the best forms of social media marketing is Facebook marketing. Why? It’s simple there are a huge number of users. This large captured audience is difficult to obtain anywhere else (LinkedIn is next but trails by 900 million!). In addition, Facebook has the most interaction of it’s users and stands head and shoulders above any other social network. Smart marketers have quickly taken advantage of Facebook for marketing their business. But not all the marketers are using Facebook in the correct manner. In this post we discuss the Facebook blunders which most of the marketers are still performing.

Buying Fans of Facebook: one of the biggest Facebook marketing blunders is that most of the marketers buy fans from third parties and applications. Loyal fans are earned not bought and they are earned via advertising, offers and other creative tactics. If you really want to market your business on Facebook successfully and effectively, then try to build loyal fans slowly and gradually.

Ignoring User comments: Most of the time marketers get engaged or distrcted in other tasks and they ignore the comments of the customers on Facebook business pages. If you really don’t have the time to see their comments, then you must appoint a Facebook manager to do so. If your fans on Facebook notice that you are ignoring their comments, then they would probably won’t visit your site again and may leave your brand altogether. If you want to keep your business thriving then it is better to engage with your fans and address or solve their issues as soon as possible.
Not using images: you must publish the information according to the Facebook culture. Images have been shown to be more effective at grabbing the attention of users on Facebook than words alone. So, upload an appropriate and attention getting image that corresponds with your business or post. Using this approach will help maintain followers by keeping their attention and perhaps encourage sharing of your Facebook page which will reward your business in the future.
Posting only promotional content: posting the content which is only promoting your business is not interesting to followers, and quite frankly annoying! Readers are not interested in your ‘salesy’ content and won’t read it and they’ll most likely unlike your page as well . Therefore, post content which is useful to the audience to build trust and credibility in your business.
Over posting: It’s recommended that you should not posts more than two posts per day. You should only post mentions about your offers or sales once or twice a week. If you want to keep your users engaged then pitch less often but post more quality stuff.
Posting the content not related to your brand: Another blunder about Facebook marketing is posting the content which is not at all related to your brand. It is not likely that your fans like everything about your brand so they will not like each and everything that you post. Therefore, to engage them effectively your posts must be professional and be within your niche.
Not investment in time: Not investing quality time in Facebook marketing is another blunder. Setting up a Facebook page and leaving it is useless. Setting up a Facebook page is just the first step in many which includes things like advertisement, content strategy, timing, analytics, etc.

Summary:
Avoid these blunders for effective Facebook marketing, if you don’t want to lose your audience or your time.

Kristine Lise an author who is interested in written on SEO/ Internet marketing related topics. She is currently working with SEO Rank Smart, who offers best SEO Packages to its clients you can see her work on her company site.

The Most Important Social Media Sites For Small Business In 2013

August 30, 2013Pinterest, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Video marketingPeter Marino

Any small business can tell you, time is money. Anything you have to pay for might give you some more time, but it literally takes money out of the college fund in the process. Unlike major international corporations, small business is all about making choices both in terms of time and expenditures. That situation has led me to create this short social media guide for small business, the sites you should be using starting today.

Youtube, or a video site of your choosing: I’ll preface this by simply saying that the average business doesn’t do video marketing well. That being said, there is an abundance of opportunity at play here. Take someone like Gary Varnerchuck who built his own wine store into a 30M+ behemoth (it was originally a small local New Jersey based store) after starting to tape wine reviews that simply weren’t boring like all the others. He also became a social media star in the process, opening an inordinate number of doors along the way. If you’re in an industry without a ton of competition in the video niche, why not give it a try? Some basic video editing software and spending a little cash to have someone create an intro video for you is about all you realistically need. The results can be immediate and long lasting. It’s a well known fact that people tend to stay on webpages longer if they see a human face looking back at them, why not take advantage of that by including some video on your site?

Pinterest: Almost all of us have to take pictures in one way or another for our small business. Be it pictures of wine bottles for my own wine site, or pictures of wineries and vineyards in our blog, I’m sure you have just as many opportunities even if it takes some time to figure out exactly what they are. The good news about Pinterest is that, users seem comfortable with some level of marketing going on. Sure, it’s nice to post a variety of pictures on your account, but more importantly no one is going to have an issue when you put up images of each and every one of your products. If the images and products are good enough, pretty soon you’ll see people sharing them.

Twitter: I saw a car advertisement on television last night that used a hash tag, I think that shows how well Twitter is ingrained into popular culture. While Facebook easily has more users than does Twitter, Twitter makes it much easier to find new business (in my opinion at least). The reason for that is pretty simple, Facebook is a relationship based site, people you know are the people you interact with. Advertising can bring in more views and likes for your business, but that isn’t necessarily cost effective for most small business. Twitter is different in that it is set up by interest. For my small business, there is always a wine conversation and there are plenty of normal consumers on Twitter saying that they enjoyed a Mondavi Cabernet last night, which is an open invitation for me to ask if they’ve ever tried a different, cheaper and better winery. I think if you spend some time on Twitter, you’ll see much of the same thing in your industry.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short article about using social media for small business. I know for small business, it’s all about ROI, so having a clear sense of focus and goals makes sense!

Our guest blogger, Mark Aselstine, is the owner of Uncorked Ventures, an online wine club based in San Francisco that aims to deliver the highest quality wine in the industry each and every month, directly to his customers front door. Oh and yes, he wouldn’t mind being the next Gary V.

Do You Have What It Takes To Run A Website?

August 30, 2013Blogging, Content creation, content marketing, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Web DesignPeter Marino

Running a website is no easy feat and it’s something that a lot of people underestimate. How hard can it be to draw a few pictures and upload a few articles on a topic you find interesting right? Well quite hard as it turns out, and it actually takes a certain kind of person to handle the unique pressures and challenges of running a website. If you’re thinking of getting into the world of blogging/webmastering then, or if you’re building a website in order to promote your business then, the question is simple: do you have those skills? Are you the right kind of person?

Here’s what you need to be in order to thrive online…

Driven:

One of the most difficult things about being a webmaster is also one of the things that can make is so appealing as a full time job. You see you’re not going to have anyone breathing over your neck and telling you what needs to be done, and this can actually make life quite difficult when you need that bit of motivation or when you’re feeling tired.

It’s all too easy as a webmaster then to wake up feeling rough and to decide that today you’re only going to write five articles rather than ten. In order to succeed you need to know that very few excuses are good enough, and you need to be able to force yourself to work even when you don’t fancy it.

Business Minded:

Running a website is essentially running a small business. There are overheads to consider, there’s marketing and there’s administration. In order to make your site a hit, you need to be a jack of all trades and you need to know how to quickly and efficiently create something that’s going to make money. If you have experience as a businessman or woman, then this is actually one of the things that will help you the most in making your site into a hit.

Analytical:

You also need to be someone who’s analytical and who’s able to look at the statistics and maths behind what you’re trying to accomplish. While you need to be a ‘big picture’ person, you also need to be able to slow down and to look at the finer details in order to find bugs in your code, or to understand why your clicks have gone down in response to recent changes. Mathematicians will have a big advantage in running a website.

Creative:

That said, having an analytical brain with an understanding of business isn’t what you really need to make a compelling website – that’s just going to result in a spreadsheet. As well then you also need creative vision and an eye for attractive graphics. The main way that people are going to interact with your site is through vision, so you need to make sure that your site looks beautiful and eye catching and you need to give it a UI that you can feel proud of. No pressure then…

Optimistic:

While running a site can be highly rewarding and a lot of fun, there will be days when you want to pull all your hair out. In order to be successful then it’s crucial that you can deal with those days and that you don’t let them get to you. You also need to be hardy, resilient and ultimately quite confident in order to believe that your site can succeed. Because if you don’t believe in it, then no one else will and you’ll eventually end up just giving up. Go and watch Rocky then apply his attitude to your site…

Passionate:

Perhaps most important of all is that you’re passionate about what you do. You need to be bringing a website into the world that you care about deeply and that you’re incredibly proud of. If you’re not, then the end result is always going to be disappointing and you’ll have a hard time marketing it too. When you’re passionate it will come across in your marketing, in your content and in the quality of the end product. Everything else on this list can be learned and developed (or just outsourced). Passion though is something that you need from the start.

Our guest blogger, John Miller is a freelance blogger who enjoys sharing his personal and work experiences online. He writes for Webfirm, a renowned email marketing company based in Australia. His hobbies include painting and calligraphy.