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How to Decide if a New Social Tool is Relevant to Your Business

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By Rosemary O’Neill

Remember how uncool bell-bottom jeans were 10 years ago? Then they became so uncool that they were cool again (they’re now uncool again, just FYI).

The world of social media works in much the same way. As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway, “one day you’re in…the next day, you’re OUT.” Facebook is the big kahuna right now, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay on top.

For that reason, it’s a good idea to at least take a glance at new or revived social tools once in a while. This post will give you some strategies to help you evaluate whether a new shiny object is “hot or not” for your online business strategy.

How to Evaluate a New Social Tool

  • Can I afford it? Remember that free tools aren’t really free. Your time is money too. Also consider whether you’d need to upgrade to a pro option to get maximum benefit from the tool.
  • Am I familiar with it? Unless your schedule allows time for training and learning curve, think about how hard it will be to get up to speed. Will it take priority over other, more important tactics?
  • Is my audience there? Try to find out the key demographic using the tool. Does that overlap with your own market strategy? A great resource for demographic information is this Ignite Social Media report.
  • Is it a relevant topic? Some social tools are topic-centric (like the new MySpace). Does the topic relate to your business in some way? Can you leverage it to support your marketing plan?
  • Does it work with the rest of my strategy/tool kit? Hopefully you’re making life easy on yourself by creating a cohesive set of tactics. You don’t want redundant or clashing applications in your portfolio. For example, you probably don’t need to use both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.
  • Is it stable/supported/funded? It’s good to take a look at new social tools, but don’t go “all-in” until there is some traction or proof that it’s going to last. You don’t want to be caught losing your data or content if a startup pivots or goes out of business entirely.

These are just some of key considerations for when you read a Mashable article about the “next new thing” in social media. It’s important to stay abreast of changing technology, but you don’t want to chase shiny objects!

How do you decide whether to jump into a new social application?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

A 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your New Business

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Jacob E. Dawson

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Building a new business is challenging, frustrating, exhilarating and rewarding. If you’re embarking on the journey of entrepreneurship, it will be the hardest yet most satisfying adventure you can imagine. You will have a million things to take care of on a daily basis, and a seemingly endless check-list of tasks you need to undertake in order to reach the success you’re striving for. In addition to discovering your customer’s pain-points and creating a great product to satisfy their needs, you’ll also need to take care of the books, understand the legal requirements and make sure you can keep your head above water as you approach profitability.

A 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your New Business

If that seems overwhelming, you can take a deep breath and relax. There are plenty of valuable guides for new business owners. in order to give you a helping hand, which is why we’ve put together a 5-point plan to help you differentiate yourself from competitors once you’ve entered the market with a new product.

  1. Embrace Your SmallnessEveryone has dreams of building a giant business that experiences hockey-stick growth and explodes onto the market. That’s fine, but one of the best ways to turn a weakness into a strength is to embrace it. Acknowledge the small size of your business in the early days and use it to your advantage. People love to root for the underdog, and will often support you and your business more eagerly than they would a larger, more established company.
  2. Pour Your Personality into the BrandIn addition to embracing your small size, you can also help to build a strong customer relationship by pouring a lot of your own personality into the business. Large corporations are renowned for feeling faceless in their customer communications, and this is a huge point of differentiation that you can use to your advantage. You can cleverly insert quirks and idiosyncrasies into your brand character, helping your business to feel unique, friendly and approachable.
  3. Encourage One-On-One ConversationsWhen you are establishing your new business in the marketplace, marketing and promotion are some of the most difficult parts to get right, especially when you have a very limited budget to work with. There are, however, a few ways to maximise what you have by utilizing the power of word-of-mouth, by finding your most passionate customers and lavishing them with attention. When you invite them into your world, share your business’s journey and give them access to unique insights & offers, you can turn a customer into an evangelist – someone who will passionately share your business with the world – maximizing your valuable marketing dollars in the process.
  4. Show Yourself as a ‘Hands-On’ ExpertIf you can’t compete with larger businesses pound-for-pound, you have to find other ways to outdo them. One of the best ways to do this is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Write informative blog posts and ‘how-tos’, start finding forums and seminars that you can speak at, seek out public-relations opportunities where you can show your expertise through the media. Before long your customers will see you as an expert in your field, strengthening your business reputation, and enabling you to compete with larger, less hands-on competitors.
  5. Tell Your Personal StoryYou know that starting a business is one of the hardest journey’s that you can embark on, so why don’t you share the challenges you encounter with your customers? When they know much effort you put into offering them the best products and services possible they will become more attached to your brand and feel much more invested in your future success. Let them see the ups-and-downs and your willingness to share will be repaid with stronger customer relationships and, eventually, a successful business.

I hope that this 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your Business has given you some ideas and inspiration to help you to sharpen your new business and begin your journey towards success! What are your thoughts about these techniques, and which ones do you think that I’ve missed? Do you have any personal experience that you can share with us? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Author’s Bio:
Jacob E. Dawson writes for Delivery Hero, the best way to find local home delivery . Jacob E. Dawson is an entrepreneur, marketing and SEO / SEM expert with a passion for making the most of every day! You can follow him on Twitter as @jacobeddawson

 

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

3 Steps to Start a Successful-Online Business

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Danielle Rodabaugh

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Take Charge

If you have a tech-savvy entrepreneurial spirit paired with an old-fashioned hard work ethic, starting a web-based business might be a great option for you. By managing web-based businesses, innovative entrepreneurs can work from home, set their own schedules and take charge of how much they earn each week. But what does it take to start, and then manage, a web-based business that’s profitable?

1. Choose a product or service in a profitable niche.

The first step to starting and running a successful web-based business is determining the products or services you should sell. As with traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, you’ll have to do a great deal of market research before you even think about starting an online business. If you want to make a profit for the long-term, you need to choose a market in which people consistently spend money. Then you need to find a niche audience within that market to specifically target online.

For example, my boss was interested in starting an online insurance company. He soon realized how difficult it would be to build one from scratch when so many national brands had already claimed substantial ownership of the market. So, he zeroed in on a very specific segment of the industry: bond insurance (http://www.suretybonds.com). This allowed him to market his company to a specific online audience that insurance providers had largely been ignoring.

You can determine whether a niche is profitable by researching keywords related to that market. A variety of free and paid SEO research tools can help you determine what your potential clients are looking for online. These tools can also give you an idea of what the competition looks like within the industry as a whole or one of its specific niches. Once you’ve gathered a comprehensive understanding of how your market works and what it’s missing, you’ll be able to develop a brand.

2. Launch a professional website.<.h3>

Once you’ve selected a niche that has the potential to turn a profit, you’ll need to launch a website that features your products or services. Although you could hire a professional web developer to create a fully customized website for your company, you might not want to invest a significant amount of your start-up capital on web design right away. If you want to keep start-up costs down, consider using a template for your website.

Free templates usually don’t offer many ways to customize the look, feel and navigation of a website; however, you can usually purchase a $100 template that offers a great deal of customization. These templates are simple for beginners to install, and many provide user dashboards that will simplify the way you manage your site’s layout, colors and other features.

3. Implement a commanding online marketing strategy.

Simply setting up a website doesn’t guarantee that customers will find your online business (http://www.sba.gov/content/setting-online-business); you’ll have to heavily market your company to garner traffic that generates sales. Paid placement advertising can drive traffic to your site immediately; however, doing so requires a substantial investment upfront. If you choose to use paid placement ads, start with a small budget and test your options before spending a ton of money.

Setting up free profiles on social media sites such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter is one cost-effective way for you to build interest in your business and attract potential customers. When you work with these sites, though, keep in mind that most of your interactions should build trusting relationships rather than promote products or services. You should focus on promoting your company though on-site content development and other SEO marketing strategies.

As a professional who works with entrepreneurs every day, I’m aware that many more factors go into managing a successful web-based business. However, I firmly believe that developing strategies to achieve these three goals from the beginning will give any new business owner a solid starting point.

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Author’s Bio:
Danielle Rodabaugh writes about surety bonds, business licensing and entrepreneurship at SuretyBonds.com. You can find her on Google+ or Twitter @darodabaugh (https://twitter.com/#!/DaRodabaugh).

Thank you, Danielle, for getting us started!!

–ME “Liz” Strauss