Archive for category Social Media Networking

Social Media for Business

Based on our research and experience, the first thing you should do for your small business is create a brand, figure out your target audience, and get your website created and launched. These fundamental steps put you ahead of many of your small business competitors.

  • You will need to keep actively feeding new, interesting, and helpful information to your website.

social interaction via social mediaTell people about your services – what you do and a little about the way you do it that makes your service stand out from your competitors. Do you wear face masks and booties to go into people’s homes? Are you and your technicians trained and certified by a well known resource in the industry? Do you have a special Quality Assurance team that follows up and checks every job? Your potential clients will not know all the bonuses that your service provides unless YOU tell them.

Tell about your products, or the products you use to perform your services, and be sure to let people know why you have found these products to do the best job. Does this product last for 50 washing cycles? Does your product provide a shiny surface without buffing? Write your descriptions as factual statements, adding data when possible for more credibility. Don’t write to sound like those annoying commercials that you don’t like to hear on the radio or television. You don’t like to hear those obvious sales pitches, and most of your website visitors don’t either.

helping handsThe next step is to add social media for your business.

Social media for business is just that – people getting social on different media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Each social media platform has its own personality. Some messages are better shared on one platform than on others. But the most important thing is to START!

On Facebook, you should start a personal profile about yourself, and a business page.  You can also create a personal profile and business page on LinkedIn. Twitter does not have business pages, so your Twitter profile should be a combination of your name and your business.
Please consider how what you are sharing with others (which may include current and potential clients) how what you are saying, and the photos you are sharing my be received.

“You never look good trying to make someone else look bad.” – Zig Ziglar

And please don’t start by setting up as many social media for business profiles and pages as you can. To be worthwhile, each social media account will need a regular visit and some interaction, so the more accounts you set up, the more you will have to keep up with.

It’s good to friend, contact and follow some other people and businesses that you do business with; they may share some good information that you would like to share too, and sharing like that is good for both of you.

Before you start posting status updates and Tweets, take a look at some of the messages shared by your peers, to get an idea of what is good to post. If you see a post by one of your friends that really impresses you, sharing or re-Tweeting it is OK. Just don’t always post information about your business, and don’t like or share EVERYTHING that’s posted by a friend or another business; too much is just too much. Share something funny, interesting, positive, or helpful most of the time. And you don’t have to post more than one or two messages. Every 4th or 5th time, you can share something interesting about your business.

This article shared by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers helps bring awareness to the value of social media in many areas: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/social-media-is-not-an-option

From a helpful and recently re-posted article, Social Media Tips from Forbes magazine provides some more perspectives.

If you have questions about helping market your small business, please Contact me at Jax SEO Works.

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Fall Harvest – How is that like Social Media Networking?

Fall, the time of year when we think of harvesting the crops that have been growing all through the summer.

Pumpkins at harvest.Think of your social media networking (FacebookTwitter, Linkedin, and other sites) as opportunities to make and grow new social connections, making new friends and participating in new communities.

Some business people confuse social media networks as advertising platforms, and attempt to SELL, SELL, SELL, with every comment.

Then they wonder why others don’t come running to buy their product or service.

Oddly, the same people will turn the volume down on their TV when a commercial comes on, or change the TV channel, or leave the room for a snack or bathroom break.

Interesting to me that they don’t enjoy hearing pushy advertising, but they expect others to like their pushy advertising comments on social media.

Not that you can’t mention your business, your product, or service to your social media connections, but that you need to be more social than focused on advertising.

You need to get to know others.  Tell them a little about yourself and what you like.  Share a helpful, positive, informative, or even funny comment.  Think of social network platforms like social functions where you are interacting with real people.  If you only talked about your business every time you went to a social gathering, you would be pretty boring to others.  You need to develop human connections before you occasionally mention something interesting about your business.

As talented Internet marketing professional Michelle Chance-Sangthong, the Online Marketing Goddess, once said:

“Are you building trust into your marketing? Do you deliver on your promises? Your social media activity should be a positive extension of your brand, of your values and of your corporate promises. It should not be a bunch of “clatter” that constantly talks about how wonderful you are.”

If you cultivate trust in your social networks, you will be able to harvest the results of your efforts socially and in your business as well.

If this make sense to you, and you would like to get more ideas how you could get more social with your clients in your business, please Contact Jax SEO Works. We like to help small businesses do better.

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Small Business Marketing to Attract New Customers

Attracting customers with beautiful Merry-Go-Round horses.What do you do to attract new customers to your business?

Most of us cannot attract customers with a colorful merry-go-round, and so we turn to marketing plans.

There are two general categories of small business marketing:

Outbound or the old “PUSH” marketing – sending out advertisements on websites, in e-mails, on flyers, in magazines.  Based on past experiences with outbound marketing, fewer people react to words like “New!”, “Sale!”, “Amazing!” and other overused terms, and it is more difficult to get the attention of your prospective customers in the clutter.

Inbound marketing – attracting people to your brand and your products with engaging content – attention getting, interesting, useful, helpful information, supplemented with nice, related images and videos.

There are three main points to remember for successful Inbound Small Business Marketing:

1. Make a social connection, using one or more social media platforms for your business.  Use social media that you are comfortable with.  Remember to add regular updates, and occasionally mention your product or service, or a special event you are hosting, but not all the time.
An optimized business Facebook page is a great way to start.  For some tips on optimizing your Facebook page for small business, take a look at this Search Engine Journal article.

2. Get more attention for your message with interesting, topic-related images and videos.

  • Create a YouTube video channel for your short, optimized business videos.
    • Then share those videos in your website blog articles can be a real boost for your site’s ranking.
  • Ask clients to send in videos of themselves using your product.

If you post interesting or helpful information about your business on your company FB page and Profile, your followers will share the information.

3.  After attracting these potential clients, don’t forget to provide a CTA (Call To Action).  As excited as you may be to get hundreds of visitors reading your blog article, remember you also want to get them to engage with your business.  Ask a question and invite them to share an opinion, Ask them to share their experience in a similar situation.  Tell them if they have any questions about the information you’ve shared, you’d be glad to provide your insight and make sure your telephone number and link to your Contact page are prominent on your website.

How is your small business marketing going? Do you have questions about this article?  Do you want to help market your business better online?  Contact Jax SEO Works.

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Start a blog on your small business website!

A blog is a good way to communicate with your website visitors.A blog can be a part of your social media program, a way to reach out and begin communicating with your web site visitors.

Your small business blog post should share information people want to read. Some posts should (of course) be about your business. Tell people about a new product or service you offer. In alternate posts, choose a topic that’s interesting, helpful, believable, and sometimes even something funny.

You can also pick a topic for your blog that you can relate to your small business.  Your blog topic should be something you know about, or you will have to do research just to find subjects to blog about.  For example, if your business installs gutters, consider blogging about home improvements.

Do some research on the Internet.

  • Find out which small business blogs / bloggers are rated most popular for your blog topic.
  • Read some popular blog posts.
    • If you can add helpful information to the discussion, leave a comment and (sometimes, if you feel it’s appropriate without being “spammy”) a link to your web site. (It is considered bad manners to just leave a comment like, “Nice article.” or “Very informative.” And even worse when you add your name, business name, and website link to your too casual comment.)

A blog is a good way to communicate with your website visitors.Your various blog posts should mix in a little marketing, advertising, and promotion. Your posts should always include an easy path for web site visitors to contact you for more information.

Your goal should be to make new posts on your small business blog on a regular schedule. You might, for example, one to two times each week, or that often each month.  Regular posting also adds new content to your web site, which both visitors and search engines like to see.

What do you think ?  Do you have any other helpful ideas to share ?

Like some help improving your small business web site?
Contact Jax SEO Works today!

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Business Marketing – Collaborate with Good People

Business Marketing is necessary to keep your business going.

We all want to do more, but there are only so many hours in a day.

Projects can be easier if you are working as part of a collaborative team.  A team of good people working with you can help improve your business exposure to new potential clients, and help you continue to grow your business.

Rock My ImageMost of us have developed good working relationships with other small business owners, and even refer business to them when the need seems like a good fit.  These associations are sometimes called affiliates, and being introduced and recommended by others can help build and extend your brand.

Kenny Harper of Key Theory and Manny Torres of Torres Creative have launched a collaborative venture, Rock My Image, a strategic marketing team to work with design and image aware companies.

Rock My Image will develop cohesive and creative marketing campaigns for clients that need strategic planning, message development, creative execution and deployment in all mediums.

You probably can think of some other small businesses that you can collaborate with to benefit the community as a team; a team effort able to accomplish more than an individual small business could?

For example, your business may re-roof homes, and you may collaborate with another small business who installs vinyl siding.

Or your business may be a neighborhood gym, and you collaborate with local small businesses that sell sports shoes, sporting clothes, and healthy, organic food.

There are lots of ways to collaborate and help others and also help your business.

Are you already part of a collaborative business effort that you have found helpful?  Please leave a Comment so we can share your idea to help others.

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