Category — Social Branding / Social Media

Right now? Absolutely nothing.

If you’re a technology geek like us at The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing, you’ll be excited to see if it works like they’re promising and to see how it can be integrated into your current marketing and business plans. If you’re not, then once it’s open to the public, you can consider integrating it into your marketing plan or in your business as a project management tool.

Google Wave, for those who don’t know, is a “real-time communication platform.” It combines the online media you are currently using: email, wikis, web chats (instant messaging), social networking, and project management into one browser to help you manage everything. It has a ton of features that, if speculations prove to be correct, will change the way we use the web. For more information, read this article from Mashable.

A note for small business owners: the Google Wave release is not a reason to stop your social media marketing campaigns or to postpone implementing social media marketing. Because it has not yet been released to the public, in fact, it will be released to 100,000 testers tomorrow, 9/30/09, you should continue on as normal with your current social media campaigns. There is still a lot of testing to be done before the general public can adopt the product.

We at The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing want you to know that right now is a great time to see what’s coming up in the future and make plans on how you will test this channel and integrate it into your marketing campaigns.

It’s important to know your best demographic. If you’re trying to market to teenagers your marketing will differ greatly from marketing to 30-something stay-at-home moms.  Nielsen Claritas, part of the well known Nielsen Company, has just reported a new finding: about half of the U.S. visited a social networking website last year. And, not only is this number consistently growing, these social networking users are growing more engaged.

What does this mean for small businesses?

According to Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development at Nielsen Claritas, “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”

As a small business owner, get ready to jump into social media marketing. It’s no longer considered a temporary phase. Interested in what the Nielsen report found? Check out this link to read more on the report.

If you’re ready to start your social media marketing campaign, or are in need of additional help, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We can review what you’re currently doing and focus the efforts to reach your best customers.

Some Arizona small businesses recently found success supporting a nationwide cause, Portraits of Love, to give overseas soldiers professional portraits of their families. So far, 20 Arizona photographers have joined the cause – and already have a story written about them, and their support of our troops, in the Arizona Republic.

Sarah Kerkian at Cone, a brand strategy and communications agency, supports the point of cause marketing for small businesses. Her research shows that 85% of consumers find cause marketing to be acceptable – you don’t need to be humble about doing good for your community.

“American consumers continue to have high expectations of companies to support important causes, even amid the recession, and they are quite supportive of cause marketing…It’s the time to build authentic and lasting relationships with important organizations and causes and to engage consumers and employees in your efforts.”

As a small business owner, your biggest hurdle is building trust and respect for your business: through the community and your employees. Cause marketing is an easy way to build immediate trust and respect and generate a huge amount of word-of-mouth buzz.

Here are a few tips for a small business ready to start cause marketing.

• Find a cause. It should be one you are passionate about and that fits well into your business and customer base. Consider examples like General Mills and their “Boxtops for Education” or TOMS Shoes and their shoe donation for every purchase.
• Be authentic. Only use cause marketing if you truly want to help support a cause. Your customers will know if you’re trying to be “fake.”
• Give it support. Once you’ve determined to go forward, make sure you give this campaign the time and money to make it successful. This is still a marketing campaign, treat it as such to keep it successful.

Cause marketing can be a successful avenue for small business owners… and it really helps your local (or global) community. If you’re ready to start cause marketing and need some help, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing.

It’s all over the web: Facebook made a couple announcements yesterday that are great news for small businesses looking to invest in social media marketing.

1. Facebook now has 300 million users worldwide. In just two months they have been able to increase their subscriber base by 50 million users.
2. Facebook is now cash flow positive: a goal they were hoping to hit by 2010. “This important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.” Facebook plans to stay an independent service and not to sell to Google, Yahoo! or any other major player.

This is great news for small businesses who want to know that the money and time they invest in building up their fan pages and communities on Facebook won’t change… and Facebook is doing everything they can to continue to grow and be an independent service.

If you are ready to start a social branding campaign on networks like Facebook, or would like to take your campaign to the next level, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We will put together a strategy that will help you build your business goals.

Social media is the new big thing of online marketing. Businesses are reaching out to get on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. That’s great. As a marketer, I’m excited to see businesses embrace the new technology when there is such great potential. With over 100 million active Facebook users and over 8 million tweets daily, these are channels businesses should be active on.

However, I have noticed that many companies will chase the new “shiny object” and leave their other channels on auto-pilot. These businesses that have caught ’shiny object syndrome’ are missing valuable contacts with their customer base, and in some instances, can be abusing their customer relationships.

Does your business have shiny object syndrome? Here are some questions to ask:

• How much time do you spend on your “new” marketing channel?
• How much time do you spend on your old marketing channels?
• What is the trend of your old marketing channels since you implemented the “new” marketing channel?

These questions work for any type of new marketing channel, not just social media. Any time a new marketing channel is implemented, it is expected that it will take up more time than any other channel because it is new. And, if you’re working with the same amount of manpower, it’s going to eat into the time you originally spent on your old channels.

But, if your old channels are starting to trend down because they’re not getting the TLC they need, it’s time to reevaluate your situation. Here are some solutions to get out of ’shiny object syndrome’.

• Review each channel performance on a regular basis. When you start noticing a slight difference, immediately look into that channel.
• Reevaluate your department’s responsibilities. See if you can restructure responsibilities to better handle all the channels.
• Hire a new employee. This should only be done if you know the work level will increase.
• Consider hiring an outside firm to handle the start-up phase of the new channel or some of the old channels until the new channel is up and running.

If you need help implementing a new marketing channel or are looking for a new marketing strategy, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We specialize in helping small businesses build and revise their marketing strategies to work with their target customers in their local communities.

You can improve your marketing and increase your market share economically. You don’t need to compete with the “big guys” and do expensive TV commercials or radio ads to create a brand. Those channels may be an eventual part of your marketing strategy, but as a local company, you have some unique ways to market your business. Here are two ways you can utilize the conversations people have about you to increase your client base.

Social Media

Don’t worry about branding yourself through TV or radio. People are spending more and more time online, which, understandably is taking away from traditional media. By putting a focus on social branding, a less expensive alternative, you can build up a brand locally for less than it would take with traditional advertising. By starting these conversations, you can also create more loyalty with your current customer base bringing in repeat business without too much additional effort.

Press Releases

You’re a local business – you can attract local clients by getting your name out there and having newspapers, talk radio, and newscasters talk about you. If you have consistent, relevant press releases and make them interactive with video, social media, and photos, you can get something that’s even better than a TV commercial – your local news authority figures discussing you at a very low cost.

Give your local community something to talk about. Start putting yourself out there – online with social media channels and in the press with press releases and start building your company up with local marketing techniques.

Don’t know where to start? Call The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing and we can put together a localized marketing strategy that will put you in front of your local community and will build up your brand without the traditional media the “big guys” rely on.

Social media branding doesn’t just incorporate Facebook and Twitter. There are over 200 well-known social media sites where you can focus your time and effort to create a great social media brand. An important part of your focus should be review sites. You can easily capitalize on good customer experiences and mitigate bad experiences by consistently monitoring these sites.

Two of the biggest review sites that you should consider are Kudzu.com and CitySearch: these are showing up more and more frequently in the top results of local searches. Other common sites are Yelp, Yahoo! local, DexKnows,

There are also other industry-specific review sites such as HealthGrades.com for reviews on medical doctors or TripAdvisor.com for city attraction reviews. Take a look and see if there are relevant industry specific review sites for you to consider as well as the larger review sites.

Once you have a list of the sites you need to consistently review, take a look and see what customers are saying. Ask yourself a few questions:

• What are you doing right?
• How many reviews have you found on your company?
• Is there anything you can work on?

If you find any negative reviews, work to see what happened on your end. Was there something that should have been done differently? If so, approach the reviewer and try to make amends – show that you care about all of your customers and are devoted to great customer service. By including these review sites into your social media branding strategy, you can improve your social media brand and capitalize on the great customer service you provide.

Looking for help with your social branding strategy? Contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing and we can put together a custom social media branding strategy.

All social media channels aren’t alike: you may not need a Twitter account or a Facebook, MySpace, Ping, LinkedIn, YouTube, Viddler, etc. account. It depends on your goals, your time, and your customers.

Demographics

If you’re targeting 60+ customers, it’s doubtful they’ll be on MySpace. But if your customer base is 14 – 18, you better be on MySpace and Facebook. Targeting professionals? LinkedIn and similar sites are for you. As you get to know your best customers, you can find the best places to spend your time and effort.

Timing and Length

Do you have consistent timely updates for your customers? Twitter may be for you. An extreme example is of an auction house using Twitter to let their regulars know about new items they’re going to have for auction. If they are expensive or hard to get items, people would want to know right away. Can you get your message across in 140 characters? Twitter has a non-negotiable character limit that can seriously hinder your message. For a longer message, consider a blog instead.

Business Goals

What are you looking to do with social media? To make sure that your venture into social media work to your benefit and maximizes your ROI, make sure you set goals that make sense for the platform… and that you give it enough time. Social media is not a quick fix, but a long term solution that should be added to your marketing mix.

Social Media marketing can be a very effective addition to your marketing mix. There are a lot of things to consider, besides just the channels you want to utilize. With over 200 sites as possibilities, you do need to evaluate your business, your customer base, and your goals carefully before embarking on your social media journey.

Do you need help determining your social media strategy and how it will work with your current strategy? The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing specializes in social branding – using social media to create your brand and pulling together your other marketing efforts to form a cohesive marketing platform to maximize your brand and ROI.

Social media is a huge place where you can really get your brand known. In addition to getting your brand out there, by participating in social networks, you are also setting yourself up to capitalize on consumers as they are asking for and receiving referrals and recommendations on products and services.

While people may not make their decision on a social media channel – they typically ask friends and family for their opinion. Social media sites allow them to use their advice networks as sounding boards, getting opinions from people they trust. If you have a conversation on an online social site and have connections to that person’s network, it’s very easy for you to get in on those questions or for them to come to you and ask your advice. And, just like that, you have a potential customer.

To get the conversations started about your company, you need to put yourself out there. Review your options and your customer base and find networks that fit your customer demographics. There are over 200 social media sites out there – you don’t need to be on all of them. Choose a select few that fit into your demographic, business model, and needs and start talking.

As long as you know that you are providing your customers a good product and good service, you won’t have to worry about negative comments. All businesses have them and you’re setting yourself up to respond to them better. They still would have happened, you just may have found out about them too late. Now, with your social networking started, you’ll have great conversations with your current customer base that will open you up to new customers and referrals.

As an extra benefit, you’ll be able to help create a more loyal following with your current customer base and learn more about what you are doing right… and what you can work on.

Get started – and get your name on the “advice” channels to bump up your referral traffic now, before your competitors gain the leading edge! If you need help, give the experts at The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing a call. We’ll review what you’re currently doing and your business goals to put together a plan to get you to where you want to be.

People are moving away from just relying on a search engine to give them the information they need to purchase a product or service. While they may be searching, having review sites like Kudzu.com and CitySearch showing up in the search results does mean that you need to focus on building up your brand on these review sites. People no longer depend solely on the BBB to tell them if you’re a company they should do business with – they look online and see what your past customers are saying.

Listen

The first thing you need to do is listen to what your customers are saying about their experiences with you. Are they saying anything at all? People are apt to talk about negative experiences more than positive experiences, but take a look at what they are saying. Can’t find a review? Talk to some of your customers and see what they would say about your company.

Ask

The best people to review your business are the people who have worked with you. Call some of your best customers and ask them about their experience with you. Since they’ve had a great experience with you, ask them to write a review on one of the review sites. You don’t need to offer a discount or a coupon, you’re trying to build good-will in your community and show that you are the local industry-leader, where everyone should go. You can also ask people to do this though your newsletter, at checkout, etc. Any place that you would ask for a referral, you can ask for a review.

Need some help getting yourself known on the review sites? The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing can help you develop your social media branding strategy and get you seen as the industry-leader in your community.