Successful Blog

Were you naughty or nice to your customers this year?

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As much of the nation enjoys Christmas and other cherished celebrations this month, many small business owners can’t help but think ahead to 2013.

With the clock winding down on this year, what are your business aspirations for the next 12 months. Simply put, how will you and your customers work together in 2013, making it the best relationship yet?

If you were the small business owner who maybe did not spend as much time as they should have coveting their customers these last 12 months, how will you improve upon that task going forward?

Among the things to review:

* Did you go that extra mile for your customers in 2012?

* Did your employees (where applicable) return customer calls promptly, answer any and all questions, and solve problems when necessary?

* Did you gain referrals from many of your customers because they appreciate the products and/or services you provide them? If not, do you think doing a little more for them may have helped you in gaining the trust of their family, friends and co-workers?

* Did you do the little things like send them a year-end holiday card or email?

These are but four of the items that you should be asking yourself, more importantly, answering without hesitation. Remember, without your customers, there is no small business to run.

Many people make New Year’s resolutions on a yearly basis, but how many truly keep them?

In a day and age when customers have a variety of shopping options, what will you do in 2013 to stand out from the competition?

Among the things to consider:

* Offering online shopping (if you do not already), delivery services (where applicable), mobile payments, and providing follow-up service with each and every customer;

* Utilizing social media to the max. If you are not currently using SM, why is that? You are essentially passing on free advertising when you are not social;

* Surveying customers from time to time on what they like about your business, what they do not like, and how you could improve things.

Lastly, use the coming year as the chance for a fresh start for both you and your small business.

In the event you could have done more for your customers over these last 12 months, make it your gift to them to make 2013 an even better year.

Photo credit: teamaltman.com

About the author: Dave Thomas covers small business topics for a variety of websites.

 

Invest Energy in Your Business Relationships

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Rosemary O’Neill

Relationships take work

Strong relationships, both personal and business, take a consistent investment of energy over a long period of time. Anyone who is selling you “likes,” or Twitter followers, or other nonsense like that is not helping you build your business.

The Tickler File

I love to entertain. Part of the fun is making sure that each person who visits always gets their favorite things. My dad loves blueberries, but not ever baked into anything. My sister-in-law has a particular affection for those little white Russian tea cookies. But I could never hold all of that information in my brain, so I cheat a little. In my Evernote system, I have a “dossier” on each person who visits. It’s my relationship tickler file.

Invest Energy in Your Business Relationships

The most successful business owners and entrepreneurs have a strong network of relationships that they can call on when the chips are down. Liz refers to these as “the people who won’t let you fail.”

But these people don’t just appear out of nowhere. You must slowly build those ties over time, maintaining contact, learning about each other, having face-to-face conversations, and providing support to each others’ causes.

The quick hit of buying followers or making fake reviews will never cut the mustard in the long run. The random stranger who was paid to like your Facebook page won’t be there for you when you launch your new product.

Tips to Build Your Own Tickler File

  • Add notes to your contact system or CRM (e.g., “dog named Babs”)
  • Set up reminders either in Google calendar or in your CRM
  • Start noticing when people share preferences or details about their lives
  • Foster your sense of curiosity about other people, focus on them when they’re speaking, not on what you’re going to say next
  • Don’t just rely on the automated happy birthday status update; get creative and recognize people on days other

    • than their birthday

  • After you meet with someone, write down notes from the meeting for next time, so you can progress each time

How do you invest in your business relationships?

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

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Your Social Media Deficiency Could Be Costing You Business

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What is your small business doing to set itself apart from the competition?

If one of your answers is using social media, a pat on the back to you. If you’re not using social networks to promote your brand, why are you being so resistant?

Despite a number of reports that indicate more and more companies are getting it when it comes to social media, there is still significant lag time when it comes to small businesses talking about social media and actually employing it.

During a small business summit held earlier this year, Godfrey Phillips, VP of research at The Business Journals, noted the following from a study based on 2,200 interviews of business owners and top executives of companies with less than 500 employees:

* Approximately 80 percent of small business owners and major executives indicated they are now using a social network, yet just 57 percent reported doing so in conjunction with their marketing strategy;

* LinkedIn was singled out as the site most utilized for business functions (50 percent) and the least when it came to personal use by those high up in the company (9 percent);

*  Facebook was rated the least used for business purposes (12 percent) and most utilized when it came to personal functions (30 percent).

As you can see by the numbers, less than 60 percent of company owners and top execs not using social media as part of their marketing strategy means countless businesses are missing the boat. In fact, you could even say they are somewhat adrift when it comes to properly reaching out to current and potential customers.

So, you’re in charge of marketing your small business or doing just that for your boss, and social media still seems like a foreign subject at times, why should this matter be rectified?

The reasons include:

* Your brand needs social media – Given the fact that more and more consumers are using the Internet to browse for and purchase goods and services, you need to be alive and breathing social media. With a presence on the major social media sites, you can not only be promoting your brand, but also engaging with consumers, seeing what is being said about your business and staying up to speed with the competition. Not have a social media presence for your business in 2012 is akin to living in the dark ages;

*  Saving money on advertising – When you actively promote your brand on social media, think of the advertising dollars you can be saving. While there is a good chance you will still be doing some of the standard forms of promoting your company like print, and radio/television ads, social media is in essence free advertising. The time and effort required for social media advertising can prove a great return on investment (ROI) for the wise marketer;

* Customer expectations – While your business still may do a sizable portion of marketing via word-of-mouth, traditional advertising and being active in the community, social media exposes you to an infinite number of people who could be your next customers. The days of the customer waiting for you to come to them via catalogs, flyers, phone calls, etc. is in essence a thing of the past. Now, your goal is to market your business via different forms of digital marketing, including social media.

With all that social media has to offer your business, why would you avoid it in the first place?

Photo credit: blog.socialmaximizer.com

With 23 years of experience as a writer, Dave Thomas covers a wide array of topics from finding the right gutter guard for your home to starting a home business.

Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

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Kenneth Javellana

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Social Media Decoded for Small Business Owners

Every small business has a chance to become a bigger fish in a bigger pond, but this opportunity is always tied in with your ability to take full advantage of social media. Unlike other marketing platforms, social media consists of numerous ways to advertise about your business effectively but without paying a single penny for such services. More importantly, social media is a platform in which you rarely require third party services like an advertising firm or a marketing consultant to create and handle your company’s online marketing campaign. Social media is yours to conquer but only if you are willing to work hard at learning its fundamental principles and continuously hone the skills required by online marketing.

Always have a specific goal in mind.

When people talk about social media, you often hear people say it’s incredibly important to be “creative” and “unique”. That’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, social media marketing is still about making money. You still need to establish goals that would result into higher profit margins. As such, the same principles for goal setting still apply. The best goals are still SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Prepare a solid foundation.

At present, every small business should have a consistently active account on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Having your own private-domain website and blog are also critical components of the foundation of your social media campaign.

Be where your market is.

You also hear a lot of people saying that Facebook should be the hub of your social media campaign. That may be true for most markets, but it’s not always so. In the end, you should focus on the websites which your target market spends most of its time in. Are they really active on Facebook or do they prefer LinkedIn?

Knowing which websites your target market frequents allows you to allocate your time and resources more effectively. Of course, this does not mean you should ignore other aspects of your social media campaign. Rather, it just helps make your priorities clear.

Make good use of feedback.

Feedback is incredibly important in social media. It’s the best basis for determining whether a particular technique is successful or not. You can create opportunities for receiving feedback by inviting readers to comment on your posts or email you their opinions. As for unsolicited feedback, you can configure search settings of Google so that it will notify you every time the name of your business crops up in the Internet.

Prioritize quality over quantity.

It’s been said over and over again, but it’s remarkable how so many small business owners still ignore this all-important social media tip. If you want your presence to matter online, then you need to give people a very good reason to follow you on Twitter, like your page on Facebook, and link to your website or blog. For that to happen, you need to consistently provide them with high-quality posts instead of simply maintaining a specific number of posts each week.

Social media success is ultimately dependent on the consistency of your efforts. As such, it is important that you spend as much time online as needed. For this to happen, you may want to contact a broadband expert about upgrading your current Internet service plan.

Author’s Bio:
Kenneth Javellana is a writer on technology, lifestyle and businesses at Broadband Expert. During his free time, Kenneth writes for relevant blogs in order to share his ideas on his favorite niches.

Jump start your social media planning with Tony Robbins

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Rosemary O’Neill

Success in Life, Business, and Golf

Social media planning with help from Tony Robbins

Time to jump up on your chair and say “AYE!” No more messing around with a wimpy Facebook post here and a lame Youtube video there. Your social media plan should be vibrant, purposeful, and radiating crackling energy, just like live wire Tony Robbins.

How does he do it? He uses something called the “Rapid Planning Method” (or RPM). With RPM, you chunk your to do list into a few desired outcomes, and then take immediate, massive action to achieve them.

Tony Robbins is the reason I’ve been blogging here every week for almost a year. “Submit guest post to Liz Strauss” was an item in my massive action plan. At the time, I thought it was crazy on the level of “train to be an astronaut,” but guess what? When you achieve one crazy goal, it gives you the confidence to reach out for the next one. I’m thinking coffee in NYC with Seth Godin would be cool.

Jump start your social media planning with help from Tony Robbins

I thought it would be interesting to apply RPM to social media planning specifically.

Here’s your worksheet:

What specific result do I want to achieve? (For example, increase traffic to my corporate website.)

Why do I want it? (Could be to increase opportunity to convert customers.)

What is my massive action plan? (Write down two actions you can take today, right now, and then a list of action items for this week, the next 30 days, and the next 90 days.)

“Never leave the site of a decision without doing something towards its achievement.” (Tony Robbins).

Let’s go knock off a couple things from our list right now.

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

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

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Colin MacDougal

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Creating a buzz on this ultra crowded web of people, information, and brands is a challenging task. Only by forming a smart strategy and then executing it do marketers succeed.

Know Your Customers

The very first step that marketers have to focus on is consumer research before they can board the brand wagon. It is mandatory that sufficient research be conducted before even the tiniest effort of brand promotion because according to Sun Tzu, ‘Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.’ And strategies can be developed only by someone informed. Demographic and psychographic details are used to develop a customer profile.

Create a Brand

Using information from the customer analysis, focus on the creation of the three following things:

  • Brand Essence – What is the one clear, crisp idea that the brand is about? The people behind Coke have worked to promote is as a brand that represents happiness, Lux is all about star appeal, while BIC characterizes disposability. Remember, a brand’s essence is the one thing about it that can never be change.
  • Brand Values – What values that surround the brand? In addition to being a symbol of happiness, Coke also symbolizes celebration, sharing, love, friendship, familial values, etc.
  • Brand Persona – If brand essence and brand values were personified, they would create brand persona.

Customer Internet Availability

Once the branding cycle is complete, probe into the web browsing behavior of the target market. The timing, the frequency, the websites/social media they use most to interact with others, the things they like to share, the things they enjoy but do not choose to share with others, the average amount of time spent on one sitting at a social networking site, etc.

Keep an Eye on the Competition

Along with details of web browsing behavior of the target market, knowledge about what the competition is doing on the Internet is also crucial. Find out what the industry’s leaders are doing and which and how new entrants in the market have been able to attract significant audiences at different social networking sites and other online mediums.

Select Mediums

Keep in mind the selection of online media the target market uses and the different platforms used by the competition. There are two main strategies that marketers can go for – offensive or defensive. Campaigns with larger resources can afford to adopt an offensive strategy and establish their presence on online platforms that are already dominated by competitors. On the other hand, marketers may also adopt a defensive strategy by attacking the competition where it is not looking. In other words, it can establish its presence on mediums that the target market frequently uses but which haven’t been used by competitors yet.

Some of the most frequently used mediums and tactics for online marketing campaigns include application development, meta engines, online stores, PR engines, blogs, feed services such as RSS, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media and affiliate marketing.

Analyze Results

Having conducted the research, created a strategy, and then applied it, the last yet perhaps the most important step of the entire process is to analyze the results. Thanks to tools such as Google Analytics, the results of an online marketing campaign can be determined. The findings can be used to improve future efforts to promote a brand online.

Author’s Bio:
Colin MacDougal works with www.HostPapa.com company serving over 100,000 customers around the world. Since launching in 2006, HostPapa has offered reliable, budget-friendly, easy-to-use web solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. You can find HostPapa at http://www.facebook.com/hostpapa