Business Coaching

Thanks to social media, the rules of marketing have changed. Every celebrity, athlete, political figure, and business is using social media to their advantage (and sometimes to their disadvantage). Yes, used incorrectly, it can burn you, but it is a potential goldmine, so if your business isn’t using it, what are you waiting for?

You may have a profile setup for your business on Facebook, but are you using real time social media like Twitter? Twitter can be a powerful ally for your business, so here are some rules you can use to get the most out of your Twitter account.

1.    Determine your goals
You can’t start without the end in mind, so you need to figure out what you want to get out of using Twitter. Some companies are using it to sell products or as a customer service tool. Some use it as a lead generator. Like anything else you do in your business, you need to make a plan with benchmarks so you can test and measure your success. Your goals should be based on what type of business you have and what type of customers you want to attract.

2.    Do you research
Research is one key to finding out what the trends are in the world of Twitter. Research what the major brands and your compactors are doing and then mimic with a twist by adding your own personal touch to your tweets.

Also, research to find what your specific customer wants to see. If you work in a retail shop ask customers directly what they want to see from your brand. Don’t assume you already know, go straight to the point-of-contact and get the real information.

3.    Personalize your profile
Each business is unique and so the face of your Twitter should be as well. You should have a specific look to fit your brand that will leave an impression on your customers. If the look and feel matches your tweets it gives your customer a more personal touch, creating a connection between your business and them.

This means that the point of your profile shouldn’t be to simply push promotional material. If your customer feels like you are a robot then they will reject you and the brand, so keep it fun and informative.

4.    Follow your followers
Twitter is different than other social media in that, to get followers you must follow. Follow the people you would want to follow your brand. Then and only then can your brand go viral.

So are you using Twitter in your business and what are you doing with it?

Every business, whether big or small, needs a social media presence but you have to remember that, while you want to keep it interesting, you don’t want to offend anybody and there can be a fine line.

You don’t want to have a social media presence that is all drunken pictures and stripper poles, but at the same time you also don’t want to bore potential and existing customers to death.

Neither of these will help your business, so how do you walk the line to give customers something interesting, while remaining professional?

You want to keep your customers coming back,  so you should have a social media presence that is professional, engaging and solidifies the message you want to spread about your business.

Keep in mind that, as opposed to some other forms of marketing, social media isn’t a one-time thing.

You want your customers to follow you, watch what you do and give you feedback through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Ideally your customers are an active part of your social media presence and the only way to create that is to keep your presence interesting and relevant.

The personal touch is often enough to build your presence because if people think they are talking to an actual person on the other end of the social media line, they are more inclined to keep the conversation going, just remember to not make it too personal. In other words, engage but always be professional and remember your company’s Facebook page isn’t the same as your personal page.

When building a professional presence, the person engaging customers has to be someone that customers like and want to interact with. One of the best ways to do this is by showing the team having fun at work.

You might post pictures of your team having fun, interesting things that happen during the workday or anything interactive and interesting that customers and leads might want to know about.

Also remember that today people use applications, better known as apps, to navigate the web so the days of internet browsing are long in the past, another reason to keep your online presence fun and vibrant.

Just remember to keep the pictures of your late night at the bars exclusively for your personal social media accounts.

Tools like Twitter are designed to grow any business, brand or image, but, like with any new platform, there are many avenues of wealth still left to be exploited in its use.

Celebrities have been at the front of using Twitter to connect with their fans and deliver their message directly. That was what brought Charlie Sheen to begin using Twitter, and why over a million people follow him setting a Guiness World record by accumulating 1 million followers of his Tweets in less than 24 hours.

It’s been a few weeks since Charlie Sheen was seemingly on every television show and radio station offering pearls of wisdom before moving to Twitter.

Sheen’s very public meltdown (or publicity stunt) gave us such classic memes as “Adonis DNA and Tiger’s Blood” or “Riding on a Mercury Surfboard”, to name just a few, but it also gave him a public pulpit he’d never had before.

While much of what he said was, to say the least, loopy, it certainly helped grow his already well known brand and take it to a new level.

Sheen started his public tirade the old-fashioned way, on television and radio, but he realized he was missing the social media boat. He contacted Ad.ly, a PR company that specializes in using social media and celebrities for commercial endorsements.

Say what you will about Sheen, but he saw that there was an opportunity and found away to cash in.

Sheen is now a member of Ad.ly celebrity roster, which is more than 1000 strong and while the crazy Tweets have slowed down, there’s little doubt his followers will be seeing plenty of Twitter endorsements from him.

Sheen’s story is a great example of how a business or a person can grow a brand with Twitter.

Sure, he was already well known and had the big advantage of being able to say any crazy thing he wanted without serious repercussions but it begs the question, what are you doing with your Twitter account to grow your brand, and your business?

Facebook marketing can bring great results.

If Facebook marketing has you lost, keep these two facts in mind: the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook is 35- to 54-year-olds, and the next fastest-growing demographic is the over-55 crowd.

This is great news for people who are trying to market themselves to potential clients – business owners are in these two age groups, and they’re actively using Facebook.

Now that you know that there are potential clients out there on Facebook, here is an easy way to market yourself and your business:

1) Create a Facebook page for your business
2) Share an interesting article on your page to engage your fans, comment on posts on your page to communicate with your fans, update your page to generate a story about it in your fans’ news feeds, create a discussion section on your page to interact directly with fans, create or join a group related to your industry to find more fans and/or create an event related to your business to meet fans.

As long as you maintain and continually update your page, slowly but surely, you’ll gain fans, interact with people who comment on your events you post on your page, and work up to interacting in person.

That’s the end result…but it takes work to get there.

That seems to be where people fall off the Facebook marketing train. They think it will be easier marketing themselves on social media sites. But in reality, it takes just as much work to maintain and update a Facebook page and interact with fans and friends. As long as you keep this in mind, you should be successful in Facebook marketing.

For other marketing strategies for your business, consider a free business coaching session. It’s a great way to figure out what issues in your business might deserve the most focus.

UK is struggling through some tough times, but that still shouldn’t mean consumers should be helping companies with their marketing efforts.

Mediabistro.com obtained a real open letter “to all of advertising and marketing” from a consumer in the UK. Read how he feels about ads that ask him to work even more than he already does.

As a business owner, can you use the feedback from this letter to help your own business’ advertising and marketing efforts?

Will a social media campaign be able to reverse BP's image?

Can social media save BP?

The world’s current most unpopular oil company is looking to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and other digital tools as a way to clean up BP’s flailing image. The campaign broadcasts content like videos explaining health risks to repair crews, while BP’s Facebook fan page also alerts followers to breaking news, such as the latest congressional hearings.

One BP rep summed up the strategy by telling Adweek, “A lot of people are angry, just as we are. It’s all the more reason to keep going and keep telling people what we’re doing.” It’s still yet to be seen whether the company can salvage its reputation better than it can stop the spill.

A quick way to an SEO ranking is fresh, updated content on your website.

Did you know a website won’t even show up in searches unless there are at least 10 pages on it?

Not many people do. This is why, with search engine optimization, it’s important to put content up on your website, update it fairly often, and, if you’re trying to build an SEO ranking quick, do it quick!

But how?

ActionCOACH’s Social Media blog has some quick and easy tips. Read more here.

GameStop is trying to stay in the video game market by using social media.

Video games are no longer individual time killers, they are social media drivers. People don’t buy games at the store and play them alone or with friends sitting next to them on the couch, the trend now is to play online with thousands of opponents available.

Because of this change in the way games are played, the model for selling video games has also changed. The days of the game store, like GameStop is passing as gamers choose the ease of downloads over the visit to a brick and mortar shop. So what does this trend signal for small businesses as a whole in the ever growing social media age?

The most important thing for any business to remember is to stay on top of trends and take advantage of new opportunities that come your way. How is GameStop trying to fight off the competition in an industry built on trends?

GameStop has been an industry leader in game sales over the years for a number of reasons, one of the most important being its used game program, which allows gamers cash or store credit for old games to use toward the purchase of other games.

One of GameStop’s biggest competitors, Best Buy, recently instituted its own used game program, but took it one step farther by issuing gift cards that can be used in any Best Buy store toward any item, not just games or gaming consoles. Game developers are also challenging stores by expanding their digital content, providing add-ons or expansion packs to keep their games relevant and new so people won’t want to return them.

But the crowded used game market is not the only challenge facing GameStop. The very nature of video games is changing.

Social platforms like Facebook have their own games, while just using some social media platforms like FourSquare feel like a game by itself.

These factors led to sales of games for PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 and popular handheld consoles falling 15% to $531 million in June, another reason companies like GameStop are feeling the pinch.

Gamestop hopes old-fashioned methods can keep them in the black. “We are a specialty retailer that focuses on gaming,” senior vice-president for merchandising Bob Mackenzie told Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “people really value coming in and talking to our associates.” But is that enough to keep GameStop afloat?

Today, buying a game is as easy as downloading it from the comfort of your living room and there are more kinds of games than ever before. Buying habits that have been set for years are changing. Can GameStop use old-fashioned customer service and value to keep their business strong? How can your business stay ahead of trends and turn challenges into opportunities?

The "Will it Blend?" series is entertaining and promotes BlendTec.

…when it comes to social media marketing.

Debate might still be going on as to whether CEOs should be fluent in social media or not, but there’s a new platform CEOs might be taking advantage of now: web video.

Video is a great tool to leverage to promote business — it’s engaging, it gives the chance for CEOs to talk and sell their business, and besides being informative, the most successful web videos are fun and entertaining. For example, Tom Dickson, founder and CEO of BlendTec, has a popular YouTube series, “Will it Blend?” where he puts any imaginable product, including an iPhone 4 and vuvuzela, into a BlendTec blender to see if…you guessed it: if it blends.

See more CEOs who are leveraging web videos here.

There are positives and negatives to social media marketing.

Marketing is the life blood of any business but many companies spend too many of their resources on marketing campaigns that don’t lead to real and substantial results.

How can companies get the results they want from marketing campaigns?

Online advertising already accounts for a $55 billion market, but the fastest growing aspect of online advertising is social media marketing. Over $2.5 billion was spent on sites such as Facebook or Twitter last year, a 14% increase from the previous year.

There is no doubt social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are changing the way businesses advertise. But do the benefits of social media advertising outweight the benefits of traditional advertising?

One of the best aspects of social media advertising is it doesn’t cost a lot of money. In a recent interview on the Today Show, SillyBandz CEO Robert Croak said his company spent, “nothing on advertising” because they allowed the brand to advertise itself through word of mouth on social networking sites.

Social media advertising helps keep you in touch with your customers; you can review feedback, both positive and negative, and even conduct informal surveys or customer polls to find out what people want to buy from you.

There are a few negatives, however, and the biggest negative might be that if social media is used incorrectly, it can create a negative buzz for your business.

When businesses use social media marketing, there are some things to remember so you don’t generate negative buzz:  Social media accounts must be continually monitored to ensure customer content is positive and constructive, and all questions and comments must be responded to in a timely manner. Not doing so can have customers questioning your motivation or commitment, which can hurt business and allow disparaging comments to last, not only in cyberspace, but in prospective customers’ minds.

Using social media to advertise may take time to master, but it can be a great benefit to any business if used correctly. What do you think of the social media advertising revolution? Has it helped your business grow?