Making Social Media Work for Your Business

I hope that the information I shared in last week's column to get listed locally was helpful . If you liked that information let me know. Today I wanted share a couple of other “tricks” that we use at the ASU Small Business and Technology Development Center with clients when setting up a social media marketing plan.
Most small business owners looking at Social Media Marketing are mainly interested in how it can “make their cash register ring” by finding and connecting with customers. But… social media has some easy tools to help conduct market research and see what people are saying about you or your brand.

Millions of people blog, tweet, Facebook, bookmark, and interacting on the web daily. Here are two very useful tools that you use that will “alert” you when anyone posts on subjects you want to know about. For new clients we set up alerts on key words or subjects that we think are relevant to the client’s business on Google Alert and TweetBeeps. Both tools are free.

Google Alerts is a monitoring tool that sends you notifications anytime your keywords or phrases are mentioned in an online article or on a web site. Go to www.google.com/alerts. You will have to set up an account but it is free (you may want to also set up a special gmail account just to monitor the alerts although it is not necessary). You just enter the search terms you want to monitor like: “resorts” “Ozarks” “trout fishing” “Herb’s Rustic Resort on the White River” etc. and Google does the work. Every day you receive an e-mail from Google telling what it found and links to go see what was written. You can have as many different alerts as you want and can change them as often as you need as you refine your search. Here is an example of 1 of 50 alerts on Massage from Google Alerts.

Kent's Lemon Drop Skin Care & Massage Celebrates Its Third Anniversary
PRLog.Org (press release)
PR Log (Press Release) – Mar 02, 2010 – Lemon Drop Skin Care & Massage, a boutique-style spa in downtown Kent, March ...
See all stories on this topic

A second alert we like to use is TweetBeep. Go to www.tweetBeep.com and sign up for a free account. This will keep you on top of the same type of key words that are being “tweeted” on Twitter. TweetBeeps is great for brand management to see what people may be “tweeting” about you or your competition! Below is an example of one TweetBeep notice for antiques
AndCountyMuseum: Make plans to attend … English antiques this Saturday Coffee and refreshments will be... http://bit.ly/aM0Xvm

Tuesday, March 2nd at 16:02:37 • Reply • Retweet • View

Both of these tools are easy to use and set up, provide lots of “marketing intelligence” to stay on top of what’s happening in your world. Try it out; let me know what you think. If you have problems setting either account up or have questions please e-mail me hlawrenc@astate.edu, comment here at the Bull Shoals Beacon, or friend me on my Facebook www.facebook.com/herb.lawrence. If you like these two you will love one I will show you next week!

IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FOR EVERY BUSINESS?

I hope you enjoyed the video “Social Media Revolution” that I posted in last week’s article. If that video didn’t get you excited about the opportunities for every business or organization to use social media to grow their customer base then you didn’t have the volume up loud enough. Go back to the archives crank the volume up and listen to it again.
Social media certainly is not a fad. With 74 out of every 100 Americans using the internet the opportunities for any type of business to take advantage of what it offers should be apparent. The main question is, with all the different social media outlets which one is right for? Obviously the options available to a resort or real estate agency to find and communicate with potential customers aren’t the same as for an auto repair shop or for a convenience store. But even an auto repair shop can take advantage of the power of social media marketing.
We recently helped an auto repair shop significantly increase traffic and sales simply by giving them an internet presence even without a website by making sure they were appearing in on-line local business listings. With so many customers “googling” for location information and using GPS in their cars or cell phones to locate a business, “owning” your businesses on Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines makes a dramatic presence and is easy to do.
If you do not “own” your site for local listings use these three local search engine sites to claim your business:
www.getlisted.org will allow you to own your site on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Best of the Web. By entering your business name and zip code it will let you know if you “own” your site or not and walk you through simple steps to claim it. Some of these will let you post photos of your business or logo, include on-line coupons and more. After you “claim” all four on get listed use these other two to finish the task.
http://listings.yellowpages.com and http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php will ensure your business is not only listed but owns the site and they are all free.
For any business not yet involved in social media this is a great first start. It is easy, free, and will help you stand out against your competition. If you have questions or problems listing your site, let us know the ASBTDC staff is available to help walk you through the process if needed. Try these out and let me know if it was helpful or not. Comment on this article here at the Bull Shoals Beacon, shoot me an e-mail hlawrenc@astate.edu or join our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/asu.sbtdc and leave me a comment on my wall! I look forward to hearing from you. Next week we will talk about other easy social media options that small businesses can use to dramatically increase their on-line presence and grow their businesses. Until then…happy social media marketing!

Meet the Candidates Forum

All candidates running for U.S. Senate in the Republican Primary have been invited to speak to the Independence County Republican Women’s Club on March 11, 2010 at Western Sizzlin Restaurant in Batesville. Candidates confirmed to attend are Randy Alexander from Fayetteville, Curtis Coleman from Little Rock, Fred Ramey from Searcy and Col. Conrad Reynolds from Conway. All are announced candidates and have been actively campaigning for the office of U.S. Senate.

The program will begin at 12:00 noon and each candidate will be provided the opportunity to speak and answer questions. Dutch treat luncheon will be available beginning at 11:00 a.m. or after the program concludes. The public is invited to attend this event.

Social Media For Small Business

Small Business owners are constantly looking for new, cost-effective ways to communicate with customers and to develop a distinctive edge. Social Media Marketing is exploding as a viable option to connect with customers. However, many of our small business clients are unsure about what social media really is, whether it is just a fad, or even how to use it. If you are wondering whether Social Media Marketing is worth the effort for your organization I suggest you take a minute to watch this short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhPgUcjGQAw
and come to your own conclusions. If you have problems with the link just go to YouTube and search for Social Media Revolution, it is worth the effort.
What really should hit home to small businesses about this video is the sheer size of the potential audience you can access. For example, if Facebook was a country…it would be the 4th largest nation in the world! Another interesting point is how quickly social media has been accepted by users.
• It took radio over 38 years to get 50 million listeners,
• television took 13 years for 50 million viewers,
• even the Internet took 4 years to get 40 million users
• But… Facebook added 100 million users in under 9 months
The fact is your customers are using social media to connect and look for information about your business. The real question is… are you there to link up with them or are you letting your competition make the connections?
Watch the video then let me know what you think. Over the next few weeks I will spend some time talking about how small businesses can use social media, develop effective social media marketing plans and target potential customers. In the mean time send me your comments; ask questions, we will get you answers. I look forward to hearing from all the readers between now and next Thursday. Let me know what you think of the video. Comment here, send me an e-mail hlawrenc@astate.edu or comment on the ASU SBTDC Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/asu.sbtdc

Small Business Corner

It has been over a year since I was able to post to The Voice of Batesville due to a number of issues at the ASU SBTDC that prevented me from being able to contribute. However I am back and will be posting regular contributions on issues of interest to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Independence County. Look for weekly posts on a variety of topics. Since it has been so long however I thought it best that my first post for 2010 be a little background on me and on the work I do at Arkansas State University Small Business and Technology Development Center. I apologize in advance if it looks like an “info-mercial” but thought it a good idea to give readers an idea of what I do and how we assist small businesses.

The Arkansas State University Small Business and Technology Development Center, ASU SBTDC, is part of a statewide net­work of seven cen­ters work­ing out of uni­ver­si­ties across the state. We offer eco­nomic devel­op­ment help to start-​up and exist­ing busi­nesses through con­sult­ing, train­ing work­shops & sem­i­nars, as well as mar­ket research assis­tance. Our assis­tance areas include:

· fea­si­bil­ity studies
· busi­ness plans
· mar­ket research
· finan­cial analysis
· loan pack­ag­ing
· marketing
· e-​commerce and social media marketing

All of our con­sult­ing assis­tance and mar­ket research is free of charge and com­pletely con­fi­den­tial. Our train­ing sem­i­nars gen­er­ally do have reg­is­tra­tion fees from $25 to $49 depend­ing on the type of seminar.

I have been the cen­ter direc­tor at ASU SBTDC for over four­teen years help­ing entre­pre­neurs and small busi­nesses in a fif­teen county area with a vari­ety of busi­ness needs. For more infor­ma­tion about how the ASBTDC can help your busi­ness please visit our state web­site, shoot me an e-​mail or join us on Facebook. We would love to talk to you about your busi­ness and how we might work with you.
I will be post­ing weekly arti­cles on a vari­ety of top­ics that are gen­er­ally of inter­est to our small busi­ness clients. I hope they will prove use­ful to you. We need your opin­ion so let me know what you think. I thought a good way to start would be to dis­cuss a topic that has caught the inter­est of a lot of our small busi­ness clients, Social Media Marketing. Look for that arti­cle next week about how social media marketing can work for your business.