Business Coaching

FourSquare and Gowalla have new apps to help promote business.

Wonder how social media apps could help your small business? Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and Gowalla just have apps that could benefit just about any business.

Over on ActionCOACH’s Social Media blog, there’s a post that describes how certain  apps are benefiting certain businesses. Things as trivial as users tweeting from a small business — a restaurant, a retail store — and mentioning how good the products are or how great the service is can go far nowadays with social media marketing. But apps take this even further — Twitter, FourSquare and Gowalla allow users to send messages about a particular place or business and the business’ location is sent along with the message. Tweets from all three networks can be relayed through Twitter and Facebook, meaning users can spread the word about certain businesses — good or bad — to a variety of connections on a variety of social media mediums.

Read the full post about new social media apps here.

Will marketing be dependent on Twitter? And is that a good idea?

With all the hubbub about social media, it begs the question: is social media marketing hype? Social media marketing is useful now…but will it be in the future?

Several successful CEOs, like Brad Sugars, Tony Hsieh and Guy Kawasaki are huge fans of social media marketing. But will investing everything in social media be a big mistake down the line?

Marc Brownstein, writer for Advertising Age, says it will. In his article, he writes about how marketing decision-makers everywhere are slashing media budgets and relying heavily on social media — too heavily, in his opinion:

“Brands that already have, or are planning to go dark, in favor of a Facebook page and a steady diet of Tweets.

Some of you might say I’m a hypocrite for feeling this way, as my agency is a leader in social media since 2004. I speak publicly about its attributes and have written frequently and glowingly about it in this column. And our clients are certainly benefiting from digital strategies, none of which are weighted all toward social media.

I love the power of the unfiltered consumer voice — the dialogue between brands and customers as well as customers and customers, vendors and customers, agencies and customers. It’s all good. It’s just that I believe some marketers have gone too far in their reliance on all things Twitter. No doubt their brand awareness, and brand identity, will one day suffer.

My mother taught me that things in moderation won’t hurt you. In this case, she’s right. Social media belongs in the media mix. But it shouldn’t be the entire mix.

How will customers find you? Why should they care about your product/service? What are you going to do when your competitors crank up their promotional spend and start taking your customers?

This message is simple — the short-term delight of not spending any media dollars on advertising will surely have a long-term effect: brand erosion.”

Do you agree?

Can MySpace make a comeback?

MySpace has been considered dead for a while now among the social media-savvy. But could MySpace make a comeback?

Five years ago, News Corp. acquired MySpace for $580 million…and then the losses came. Although MySpace Music is listed as the number one music site from comScore, it’s had a steady decrease in popularity since News Corp. has owned the site.

News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said, “We’ve got to admit that during the last two or three years, I think we made some big mistakes. But we’ve got fine new management now; they’ve started to introducing new features. There’ll be a lot of changes coming through the summer. The early indications—and they’re only early indications—are we’re getting more visitors and they’re staying longer. When that gets more substantial, we’ll get more advertising.”

News Corp. has also called MySpace a “work in progress,” as it plays with its number one music platform ranking to try to get back on top of the social media scene, and plans to roll out a number of enhancements to the site in the next few sites.

What do you think? Can MySpace regain its status in the social media site scene?

Blogging is a new way to market a business.

If you’ve been following this business coach blog, you know blogs are gaining more and more traction as a legitimate marketing tool in the business world, as well as a legitimate news source for journalists. They are far-reaching and cheap to produce and to maintain. They’re not a substitute for traditional marketing materials like press releases and direct mail, but they do provide a way to reach a mass amount of people in a short amount of time that can be well worth your investment.

Blogging or being a guest blogger on a reputable website will increase business visibility, increase leads and add revenue. All you have to do is write a blog every few days.

If you want to set up your own blog, here are a few quick tips to get you started:

Choose a Blogging Platform: Choose an easy to use blogging platform to start writing for. WordPress and Clearspace are some good ones that are clear and easy to figure out.

Figure out Blog Ideas: Some content ideas for your blog might include industry trends, hot topic news, interviews with other industry leaders, your position on industry issues or innovations, book and article reviews, and lessons learned related to subjects that might be important to your readers. Think about what lessons you’ve learned along the way, and shed light on the complexities of running a small business.

Be a Credible Source: Remember that as soon as you put something in writing on the Internet, it’s out there for all to see. So be careful about what you write and make sure you’ve done adequate research and covered all your bases.

Learn How to Engage your Readers: Your blog’s success will depend on the number of readers you have. Increasing readers is all about motivating them to come back time and again. Make sure your blog is structured in a way that’s easy to navigate on your site. Besides useful information, a little humor never hurts. Think about linking to other blogs you enjoy reading that relate to what you’re blogging about, and establish links to monthly archives.

Happy blogging!

Social media marketing is how many companies market campaigns today.

Regardless of whether you read BusinessCoaching.com regularly or not, unless you’ve been under a rock this last year, you should know that social media marketing efforts have increased — and have reaped great rewards. Track how many sales or clients you get from Twitter, APP, drive traffic to your website and ultimately, market yourself via the Internet and social media sites. Social media marketing is a great business coaching resource.

But if you’re still overwhelmed by how to market your company with all the sites and strategies out there, hopefully these five tips will help make it a bit clearer. You don’t have to use all the sites out there to market yourself.

1) Thoroughly explore your options: You don’t have to join the big sites like Facebook and Twitter to have an effective social media marketing campaign. There are several smaller, lesser-known sites that cater to specific niche audiences. For a list of these sites, click here.

2) Tailor your efforts to each site: It’s important to remember, especially if you’re marketing via niche sites, to interact with users in a manner they’ll relate to. Customize your message to every different audience you’re contacting so you’re “speaking their language.”

3) Track your efforts: It’s easier to do than it sounds. Incorporate shortened URLs when you campaign on each site. TinyURL, bit.ly and owl.ly are great free services that allow you to shorten a normal URL (key for Twitter, where you can only post 140 characters at a time), making it easier to share links, encourage others to spread the word, and make it easy to track your efforts, providing in-depth stats like where users who clicked the link are located and how many times each link was clicked. Then all that’s left to do is see what’s working, what’s not, and alter your campaign as needed.

4) Keep it real: No one likes spammers, shameless self-promotion or trained parrots. Don’t keep repeating the same things over and over again, or you won’t sound genuine at all…more like a repetitive ad. Also take into consideration that usually if you’re a big brand, you’ll be targeted more harshly. So be careful, but also be honest, be real, be interesting, and don’t insult people’s intelligence. The easiest way to do this is to touch on hot topics in the news, or newsworthy stories and issues that relate to your business and industry. These will attract attention, start conversations and will eventually relate to your message and draw even more attention to your campaign.