Can social media serve as the savior for a dying business. Is it magic to revive the failed aspirations of a business? Can social media succeed where conventional marketing techniques and legacy business tactics prove to fail?

I personally believe that the world is yet to see the full potential of social media, at least when it comes to its application for businesses. Whether a flourishing business needs to expand its horizons or a dying business looking for a ray of sunshine, a well-planned social media strategy can work wonders for any type of business.

Back to the basics

Social media operates on the simple principle that ‘humans are social animals’ and it lets a business derive the best out of our social needs. Building a business is not easy and growing it is even tougher. A business can not survive if it doesn’t care about its customers. Since users/ customers are the focal point of social media, it ensures that they are in good hands.

Customer is king and social media is the kingmaker.

Improve Customer Service

I’ve come across several businesses which fail or die despite having fantastic products and spending an exorbitant sum of money, why? – Because they overlook the most important aspect of running a business successfully – good customer service.

Social media takes the customer service experience to an unprecedented high by letting businesses answer queries on leading networks such as Facebook & Twitter. Throw in the combo of blogs, wikis and forums and you have a highly interactive on-demand customer service center for your business for no extra cost.

Reputation Matters

What matters most for a business is its public reputation. Build great products, build a good brand and see your business flourishing as the word spreads. On the contrary, if customers are unhappy about your product or services, your reputation is bound to take a public beating.

Social media is a double-edged sword for businesses. It can do wonders to enhance your reputation in quick time and it can help revive a brand’s tarnished image. Likewise, if a dying business doesn’t do anything to prevent its downfall; social media can often unknowingly prove to be the last nail in its coffin.

Contacts and Networking

Social Media isn’t just effective for reaching out to customers; it works equally well for building contacts with suppliers, resellers and channel partners. A great product is of little value if it doesn’t have an effective sales channel. I’ve come across many businesses that’ve managed to overcome troubled waters by building contacts and seeking help using social media. In today’s age of globalization, we live in a unified world and a global economy. It’s fair to say that social media is a business’s gateway to globalization.

Startups and Social Media – Made for each other

Running a startup company or business is often a mountainous task – limited funds, stiff competition and high risk. However, a well-planned strategy for social media adoption can help a startup business minimize the risk of failure. Startups can’t always afford hefty marketing and advertising bills and with social media, they don’t need to.

Don’t let your business die, adopt social media and see how it revives your fortunes!

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A social media manager simply manages the social media networking and marketing on behalf of individuals and organisations.
Social media is now the most cutting edge form of marketing and networking. Why? Because it takes us back to basics, back to real time two way communication. Done well it is about communication to and from a service or product provider and customers. It is all about finding out the needs of the customer through direct communication and following triends. This is done through various platforms like blogging and websites, networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, video and podcasting sites. customer reviews and book-marking sites. After all, you only have one reputation.
As you can imagine, that takes quite a bit of work, some technical skill, an ability to write well and the discipline to maintain it all. Many businesses do not have the time or are lacking some of the skills to do this well. Some people would argue that unless these platforms are maintained regularly and kept dynamic and fresh that it is better not to do it at all. It is also important that businesses understand web etiquette and best practice when making posts or submitting articles and videos.
A social media manager has a number of roles and can offer a wide range of services.
These can include training individuals and organisations or managing the whole thing.
Management involves:
helping people to set up a social network package,
explaining the interconnections between the various platforms,
creating a routine and schedule for posting,
helping to streamline existing routines,
making them more efficient or
partially or completely managing all of the social media and networking.
A social media manager becomes the front line of customer service and can pick up communications from existing or potential customers in real time and feed them to the appropriate person. The manager can also keep an eye out for any potentially damaging or incorrect information that is being posted by others. A good manager will gain an excellent understanding of the business and be able to spot opportunities as they arise, plant seeds and connect with the right people. He/She can deliver content, build links, network and translate digital information from the online community.
Bear in mind that if facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world…this is not child’s play.
A good online presence is not about just having a website or ranking well on Google anymore, you need a presence on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and You Tube. Your blog is where people will go to make sure you are current and credible but it also floats your site.
Good managers are passionate about social media are there to help you shine online!

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Many business owners spend much of their time, money and energy promoting their products and services instead of building their brand image. If your main emphasis is on your product offerings, then you don’t have a brand, you have a commodity. You are most likely competing solely on price because you have not clearly defined your unique marketing position – what it is that makes you different, special and more compelling than anyone else in your industry.

Why do most business owners avoid branding their companies? In short, because it’s hard work. It takes time, attention and honesty to “drill down” and determine a company’s core strengths. And it takes courage to devote a company’s future on owning a niche market. Instead, most owners will think they are playing it safe by trying to be all things to all people. But in the end, that strategy fails because there is no unique focus. Customers can’t remember what they can’t recall. So if you say you are known for price, quality, service, selection, reputation, honesty and being family owned and operated, that’s just too much for anyone to remember. Even major corporations will only attempt to own one niche of a market, such as Wal-mart’s focus on price, Volvo’s focus on safety and Apple’s focus on innovation.

If you want to successfully brand your company, you have to be willing to take chances and commit to promoting your main strength. In reality, you are giving up nothing, and actually gaining recognition for excelling at something. Rolls-Royce is not missing the market by not having a cheap version of their car. In fact, their image would suffer, even it they gained a few more sales. Their brand is based on prestige — that is their focal point. A good way to measure if your company really has a brand image at all is to ask this simple question, “What one word defines our company?” If you can’t come up with one, chances are you are scattered in too many directions.

To build your company into a brand name, start by defining your core strength. Then ask if your company brand name reflects and supports that attribute. If not, consider rebranding to better communicate your message. Then look at your tag line (you do have one, right?) and determine whether your tag line further supports and clarifies this brand message. Then do the same thing with your company logo. If you want to be known for being cutting edge, does your logo look tired and outdated? If so, revise it and define a standard set of logo colors that will appear wherever your company brand name is marketed, on brochures, web pages, collateral materials. Be consistent in everything you do, and have your company name, tag line, logo, and design speak with a unified voice.

Once you have aligned your brand name, brand message, and corporate image, you will find that you start to gain more attention and recognition in your field. Customers will recall you more easily and know what it is you stand for. You may “lose” some potential customers, but these will be the ones that would never had been a good fit in the first place. If you become known for quality, these are the ones who would have complained about your prices. So by aligning correctly, you will attract a better matching clientele – customers that love your business and refer you to similar wonderful customers.

Making tough decisions is never easy, and defining your company’s main purpose, its reason for being, is one of the most crucial tasks you will face as a business owner. But by doing so, you will be able to transcend the role of a commodity seller of goods and services. You will begin to represent something meaningful to your client base. It may be service extraordinaire, unmatched quality, knowledge and expertise, or innovative leadership. By focusing on what you do best, you will become “branded” in the minds of your customers, command greater dollars for your services, and gain a loyal and dedicated following. That’s much better than being all things to all people. And instead of being just another seller of products and services, you will have a company that has made a name for itself!

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Since marketing isn’t free, social media marketing can’t be free either.

The corporate world recognizes the cost of social media marketing and is overwhelmed with ROI concerns.

Small business owners, on the other hand, tend to remain pretty much in denial and haven’t fully accepted that social media marketing entails a very substantial labor cost.

It is imperative that marketers come to terms with the high cost of social media initiatives and then make a business case for social media marketing by assessing social marketing’s many potential benefits.

Since social media is taking the world of advertising online now is the time to get your business set up and be ahead of the rest. The huge guys are into social media already so please do not miss the boat.

By Larry Brauner

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Twitter is a social networking website that is rapidly increasing in popularity. It is a great way to stay in contact with friends and family, but it is also an amazing way to market a website, blog, product, or service. If you have one of these four, are you using Twitter to its fullest extent? If not, continue reading on for tips on how you can transform this service into an internet marketing wonder.

Get started now. The longer you wait to join Twitter, the more opportunities you miss. Whether you sell a product, a service, or make money through affiliate links, the longer you wait, the more income you lose. You are not paid for using Twitter, but you need to consider it a moneymaking opportunity, as it is.

Create separate accounts. Do you already Twitter to stay in contact with friends and family or would you like to? If so, create two separate accounts. Unless messages are set to private, all followers will receive them. If your follow list is composed of potential clients, you don’t want them reading about the family wedding you attended.

Make lots of contacts. To use Twitter as an internet marketing tool, you must have a large contact list. This list should not just contain friends and family. These individuals may already know about your website, blog, products, or services. So, develop a new list of followers. These individuals should be your targeted market.

Determine what your target market it. Determining who is your targeted market is a lot easier than it sounds. Ask yourself what products you sell and who can benefit from buying them. For example, pet owners will buy pet products, parents will buy products for children, and so forth. These are individuals you want to target on Twitter.

Find your targeted market on Twitter. An easy way to find your targeted market on Twitter is to visit Search.Twitter.com. Do you work as an internet marketer? Search for Tweets where blogging, internet traffic, or making money online is discussed. These people can use your services. Send a quick @reply explaining your job. And, become a follower. This means that you will receive updates from the user in question. Many times, they will return the favor.

Follow those who follow you. On Twitter, someone who follows your Tweets or updates is referred to as a follower. Whether you solicited followers online or gained a new reader through the grapevine, return the favor. Remember, not only can you send advisement though updates, but also through @replies. If someone sends you an update saying “Trying to list my auctions on eBay, I hope they sell,” direct them to your eBook that shares eBay tips for sellers.

Answer questions on Search.Twitter.com. As previously stated, you can use Search.Twitter.com to find your targeted market online. You can also market your product, service, blog, or website by sending @replies. If anyone asks a question that you can answer, send a reply.

Master the trade of selling without really selling. To use Twitter as an internet marketing tool, your goal is to drive traffic to a website or blog. This could result in a sale. Unfortunately, advertisements are frowned upon. No one wants to believe that they are used simply for advertising. So, cleverly market yourself. Instead of saying buy my product or service, provide a link and ask for feedback.

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What is social media? Social media is any online application that allows peer to peer conversations. It can take many different forms that include blogs, forums, social networks, picture sharing, email, video and more. What is the coolest change from traditional marketing channels? You and your company now get to participate in a two-way conversation. It is one to one conversation, amplified ten thousand times over.

Social media marketing utilizes those above referenced channels to get conversations started about a brand, celebrity, politician, product or movement. It works in much the same way as old fashioned word of mouth that took place at the Farmer’s Markets each week except it’s much faster, can reach millions in seconds, is fairly inexpensive and you can participate all day long or limit it to a few minutes a day. Social media marketing allows companies to develop a deeper relationship with existing customers, introduce themselves to new audiences, open the lines of communication, and manage crisis.

Because it is relationship driven, it is less like an advertising or traditional public relations launch campaign with a specific start and end date and more like the ongoing feud you had with your neighbor that started back in the 1940s and only ended because she moved away. And just like a relationship, it can take a while for a commitment. Finesse is the name of the game. A little flirting and courtship is a good thing.

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6 Reasons Every Small Business Should Be Blogging… Are You Missing the Boat?

I am amazed at the reluctance of many small businesses. I hear things like “I don’t have time to blog”, “blogging doesn’t make sense in my industry”, and sometimes even the dreaded “what the heck is a blog?”

The reality is if your company provides unique products or services, you should be blogging. (And if your company doesn’t, you should probably consider a career change.)
Of course, the overall return on investment on a blog will vary from business to business. But there are 6 fundamental benefits to corporate blogging that should not be overlooked:

1) Gain Visibility as a Leader
Each post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect. For example, a summary of recent trends in your industry, or a reaction to a recent news article can be extremely effective blog posts.

2) Engage Customers in a Dialogue
If you blog using a solid blogging engine, readers will have the option to comment on each article. People who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views. Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.

3) Every Blog Article is an SEO Opportunity
The much-discussed “long tail” of search refers to highly specialized, low-traffic search terms that represent a significant amount of total searches. Translation: lots and lots of people are searching online for lots and lots of random things. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly write blog posts targeting niche keyword phrases that are likely to draw highly qualified prospects. For example, blog a reaction to a speaker in your vertical at a local tech conference. You may not draw much natural search traffic, but there is a good chance your blog will rank well very soon for searches like “vertical + conference + speaker + city”, and those visitors may be highly interested in your reaction to the speech.

4) Blogs Are Link Bait
Very few websites or bloggers will link to the “products and services” page on a corporate website. People don’t link to corporate advertisements. On the other hand, a good blog article is an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful critique. Blog articles garner links because they are interesting, informative, and not overly corporate or sales-focused. The benefit to you is that more links means better search engine rankings and more site traffic, which translates into more sales leads.

5) Humanize Your Brand
Blogs offer an opportunity for a company to present its insightful, helpful, thoughtful side. Through a blog, prospects will get a sense of your company’s people, culture, and vision. Blogs are an opportunity to provide a less antiseptic view of your company that is more personal and less “corporate”. Blogs can humanize your brand.

6) In Google, Fresher Content = Better Website
Google will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content. In general, it is better to have Google crawl your site as often as possible. Sites that get crawled more often have more frequent updates and more authority. Blogging consistently ensures there will be fresh content on your site.

Despite these reasons why companies should be blogging, the same 2 objections surface time and time again:

1) I Don’t Have Time to Blog
The truth is you don’t have time *not* to blog.  You probably already write blog articles, you just don’t call them that. Blogs are the new email newsletters. Most anything that could go in your newsletter can go in your blog. You can still send the content out via email, and readers can subscribe to your blog to get posts via email. Portions of white papers can also make excellent blog articles. But a blog is better than a newsletter or a white paper because readers can join the debate and be positioned to respond to other “calls to action” you may place adjacent to or within posts. In addition, readers will be able to navigate your blog to read older articles that would otherwise be in a deleted newsletter or white paper. Best of all, each blog article you post will provide lasting benefit because it is a web page that can be optimized, indexed, and drawing natural search traffic for you ad infinitum.

In addition, quality blogging engines can support multiple authors, so more than one leader in your organization can post articles. This takes the pressure off any one individual.  And remember that a good blog post might just draw a parallel between two or three recent articles, or suggest an explanation for a puzzling industry phenomenon. A good article doesn’t have to be a PhD thesis.

2) What if My Customers Actually Find Out What I’m Thinking?  Some professionals don’t like the idea of blogging because it means relinquishing control over some elements of the corporate brand. A blog is less formal than a press release or an official marketing message, and the comments left by readers cannot be predicted. The point here is… too bad! In today’s world, consumers have access to thousands of opinions about your brand, and thousands of articles, commentaries, product reviews, etc. that will certainly impact the buying decision. The idea that you can control exactly how your brand will be perceived or keep consumers in the dark is outdated. The truth is your best option is to engage customers in an honest, open dialogue. Be confident that transparency is the best policy, and customers will reward your candor.

In closing, Get a Social Media Manager to help you with these tasks.

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Not to long ago if your business wanted to get noticed all that was needed was to place some ads in the yellow pages or newspaper. These things just do not work as well as they used to. Now days everyone is on the internet and do not waste their time looking in phone books or newspapers for their answer. The answer to their question or query will almost always start with the search engines. It is much easier to type what you are looking for in Google than it is fumbling with books or papers.

Now the new age has arrived nas business know they have to have a presence on the web. So to get that presence businesses are joining the social networks to gain popularity. This is good but it is also bad. By that statement i mean joining social media sites is good but not knowing how to set up accounts can be a disaster for your branding.

To set up the profile on these sites it takes someone who has studied and learned how to make a profile pleasant to look at. To get this correct many businesses are hiring social media managers/assistants to do their work for them. This is great except it is very costly. Having to have another employee is quite expensive compared to the little it costs to contract to an outside social media manager/assistant.

Either way the social media needs to be used to compete with all the big boys who have already got their profiles set up. Hire a social media manager/assistant to get your products in front of the right people because people is what the world is made up of so why not get to know everyone you can for a better and happier life

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I found this post and just had to share It gives the real point of the Social media manager position.
Social Media. Social Media Manager. Social Media Strategist. Social Media Agency. Which is right for you? Today, companies can no longer afford to deny the importance of social media marketing, and take hold of their brand’s voice. While managing a social media campaign should be considered an integral part of every company’s marketing and PR efforts, it can require more work than you think. Directing the discussion surrounding your brand is increasingly important, but you have to trust the right people.

Many companies believe that they have to hire in-house social media managers (or “strategists”) to oversee these efforts. These individuals typically hire and work with a social media agency to develop, coordinate and implement a social media marketing campaign. But, in a case where the agency is creating and spreading content, it might not be as important to have someone in-house as your social media manager. Below, we’ll take a look at several reasons why marketing executives may want to rethink their hires, and instead outsource this increasingly important responsibility to real specialists who know what needs to be done, and have the tools to get them done. Or, of course, when you find that the fundamentals are in place and you need someone on social media 40+ hours per week for your brand, how to go about hiring the right person.

1. The Money

The most obvious reason why a company would avoid hiring an in-house social media manager is in order to save on expenses. While hiring an additional employee will not set a larger company back in a noticeable way, for startups, or for companies with lean social media budget allocations, an in-house social media manager can be an unnecessary expense. For the former, a co-founder in a marketing role can just as effectively give directives to the social media agency. For the latter, when social media marketing budgets are lean (vis-à-vis other avenues of PR or marketing), the money used to pay for an in-house manager equates to money that is being taken away from the social media campaign, which could be better used to retain additional services of a social media agency, to increase the level of engagement, or to be re-allocated to other important business development projects.

2. No one Likes Redundancy.

If a business hires for an in-house social media role, they are essentially hiring someone to serve as a liaison between the marketing director (or CMO), and representatives at the contracted social media agency. In effect, this person would serve as an intermediary between the two specialists: one that knows what is needed; and the other that knows how to get it done. Some could argue that such a role is merited, because the marketing director is too busy to worry about the social media side of marketing the business. To this argument, we’d say that this is exactly the type of marketing director that does not understand social media marketing, and thus would benefit from a close, working relationship with their social media agency. Further, and even more importantly, communication is streamlined – the agency is able to get immediate answers on new projects and budgets from the marketing director (or CMO) and to trust that their projects and initiatives are being approved by someone with the authority to do so.

The fact that a company needs to hire based on their social media needs, is evidence that they do not know exactly what they are doing (which isn’t a bad thing in itself). With that said, bringing someone into the mix unnecessarily can also result in delays (waiting for approval on projects), lulls in conversation and miscommunication (nuanced expectations). These are the characteristics of an unsuccessful social media campaign. Don’t give your outside contractors and agencies too many gatekeepers and/or conflicting creative feedback.

3. Get your Marketing Director more involved

By having an outside agency report directly to the marketing director, you will ensure that the agency (which should be comprised of seasoned exports) is not micromanaged (they hate this). Any marketing director will invariably be more concerned with establishing success metrics than a social media manager would be. Once metrics are established, the marketing director should hold the agency accountable to promptly report on progress towards goals each month. As was mentioned above, by having your marketing director working closely with an agency, the marketing director will learn about and stay abreast of what is working in social media. Because the director will not be micromanaging a campaign, but rather overseeing its overall efforts, the agency will be able to remain creative. The marketing director can step in if necessary – to make sure that the brand’s integrity remains intact, for example, and to ensure that everything checks out with the legal department if necessary or possibly controversial.

4. Disadvantages?

Of course there are disadvantages to sourcing your social media campaign to a social media agency: they will not live, eat, breathe and sleep your brand, in the same way that someone internally (hopefully) would do. An in-house social media manager may seem more of a brand evangelist on the surface, and want to see the company succeed for the sake of their own job security among other things. If they do not have equity, they at least will want to keep their job. In the same way, you can overcome what could be seen as this lack of love for the brand, by tying a portion of an agency’s engagement to performance. People respond to incentives, and accountability is key.

5. When Should You Bring Someone In-house?

At a certain point in the process, with a presence established across multiple social sites, you will have multiple campaigns and more people involved. For example, at the beginning of your campaign you barely had a blog set up, but after a couple of years, your company has grown, your product has launched, and people are talking about you on Twitter. The team that managed and promoted your blog content and showed you how to set up the Twitter account and grow it in the first place might not have quite as much incentive (or time) to respond to every single Tweet to protect your brand. At the stage when you want to expand to create videos, have budget for big viral campaigns, want multiple in-depth blog articles per day AND you need to engage tens of thousands of fans and followers, you might want to have someone there in your office alongside you. Make sure that your vetting process runs deeper than confirming that their Twitter profile says “social media guru/ninja/consultant/strategist/hero” and look at how they have established a social media presence for themselves or their previous employers and/or clients (and on which sites – are they relevant to your brands goals?).

In Conclusion…

Ultimately, the goal is to get the right combination of someone who knows what they are doing with the most streamlined communication possible, at a price that works for your company. If, for you, that means putting someone in a chair for $40k-80k/year to relay your emails/directives to a social media agency or to (if you are lucky) have the skill-set to execute the campaigns internally, and your company is in a position to pay them, then go for it. If you find someone who really gets it and your company culture in relatively insular and you want to have some live and breathe your brand day and night, that might be the best fit for you (but be prepared to pay for the best talent, and in some cases they will definitely be worth it, especially if you are a large, established brand with a lot of years of brand equity on the line and an existing fan/customer base to engage). However, if you are running on early VC money and you want to keep things lean and mean, cut out the middleman, set expectations early and get a personal recommendation from one of your advisers or a trusted friend who has worked first hand with an outside social media agency or freelancer.

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