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Social Media Marketing for Small Business
Social Media Marketing
Just about every business function including networking, marketing, advertising, reputation-building, hiring, researching and even socializing that we businesses owners cut our teeth on in the “real-world” are now shifting – faster every day – to the virtual world.
Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In weren’t even around 10 years ago, yet look how these social media marketing companies have changed the business climate. (click graphic to open and enlarge in new window)
Social Media Marketing - courtesy of Crowdspring.com
Social Media Marketing specifics
As a local business owner, of particular interest to me is the ease in which we can identify with our customers. Take for instance Facebook. With Facebook a business can set up a company page where members of the company can interact personally with their customers.
Social media marketing works both ways. It also gives the customer a voice and it is an excellent way to interact with companies before or after they do business. Not to mention a customer is able to associate with fellow customers.
Social Media Marketing for small business
Now you might think that setting up and running a fan page or focusing on social media marketing as a whole is reserved for big business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creating fan pages and connecting with your clients using Facebook and other social media marketing tools such as using Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Google Places, is excellent for even the smallest business. I look at social media marketing as the “Great Equalizer” for small business because it is a cheap or even free way to get exposure that only big businesses could afford in the past.
Social media marketing strategy
Like every business strategy, the first step in developing your social media marketing presence is to create a plan, and that starts with strategic differentiation followed by goals, and finally outlining the tactical plan itself. Here is a quick mind map of social media marketing networks and easily-achievable goals.
Social Media Marketing Plan - click to open
After you’ve created your plan, I’ve found it easier to use automation tools, such as Hootsuite and Ping.FM, to leverage your message to the masses.
In conclusion, social media marketing is especially useful to small business to connect with prospects and clients as well as to gain exposure in your marketplace.
Scott
How to screen capture
How to screen capture using Jing
In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to screen capture, either using full-motion video or still. For short videos I use a freeware video capture program called Jing that copies whatever you are viewing on your computer screen, as well as audio. Let’s go over some uses for Jing:
- Marketing
- Troubleshooting
- Brainstorming
- Training
- Collaboration
- Sharing information with family or friends
…and many other uses.
I use Jing mostly for marketing and training; however, it’s great whenever you need to do a quick video. Recently I had a software issue and I simply cut a 30 second video with Jing and uploaded it to screencast.com to show a software tech exactly the problem I was having. He watched the video and diagnosed the problem very quickly. Many times it’s much easier and more effective to show rather than explain via email.
Here are some limitations you need to keep in mind with using the free version of Jing:
- You are allotted 2 GB of cloud space on screencast.com. Screencast.com is the website where your videos are automatically saved to after you click the Share button in Jing. (the share button looks like a trident) If you plan on archiving your videos after their useful life is done, it’s best to copy them to your hard drive and delete from screencast.com.
- WARNING! Deleting a video from screencast.com will cause the link that you shared of that particular video to be permanently broken, so only delete off screencast.com when you’re sure the video’s useful life is complete. Remember, you only have 2GB of cloud space so use it wisely.
- If you’re going to do a lot of videos, or videos that require a longer shelf life, it’s a good idea to save the video on your own hosted account, YouTube, or some other permanent location and share that link instead so that the link may be used over and over again. Remmeber my warning above! Once a video is deleted from screencast.com, any links you shared will no longer be useable.
- Each video may be no longer 5 minutes.
- Use a high quality USB headset with mic, if possible.
How to install Jing screen capture freeware
Alright, so now we know what Jing is, let’s put it into use. First, we need to download and install it. Here’s a short video on how to do just that. By the way, I used Jing to make this video – but YouTube does not allow .swf uploads so I had to convert to .mp4 first using Camtasia Studio – also from Techsmith.
After installation, using it is a snap. Just follow the directions below.
How to screen capture with Jing
I’ll let the video do the talking 
So there you have it – how to screen capture using a freeware screen capture program called Jing. I think you can figure out the still capture part of it, but if not drop me a note and I’ll do a short tutorial on that function as well.
Yours in profits,
Scott
The Big Banana of Business
feed shark pingback
Hiring great employees is easier with a mindmap
Hiring great employees (I call them “Team Members”) is one of the hardest parts of the job that we business owners face. Every employee in your company is a representative and reflection of your business – good or bad. Therefore it’s critical to do your due diligence and ensure the people you hire are cut from the same moral and ethical fabric as you and your company.
Hiring great employees with an easy system
Most business owners I have met who do the “tail chase shuffle”, meaning they hire someone, train them, and fire them (or the Team Member quits soon after), hire and train by the seat of their pants – and it almost never works out. I’ve had my share of bad Team Members throughout the years also; but I cut way back on bad hires by following a systematized way of hiring about 6 years ago.
Click to launch Hiring Process Mindmap
What you see above is a Mindmap, which is a list of topics and subtopics. Notes and links are intertwined throughout the Mindmap to provide discernible flow to the process. Personally, I prefer to use Mindmaps over static/linear documents (such as a Word document) as much as possible because Mindmaps work like the brain thinks. As you think of something you don’t have to reorder the topic, unless it makes more sense. You just plop it into the most relevant category and move on.
What is a Mindmap?
With a Word Document your thought is forced into linear mode – meaning top-to-bottom, left-to-right… like reading a book. Not so with Mindmaps. I’ve taught classes on marketing using Mindmaps and for many students who haven’t used them before it’s a real “A-HA!” moment. I’ve been using Mindmaps for 6 years now and don’t know what I’d do without them. They provide a quick graphic representation of ideas, thought, and flow vs ordinary note taking or writing. I digress – back to hiring…
Since using the orderly and systematized approach above, hiring great employees is now easier and my long-term hire rate (meaning 1 year or more) is now at 92% success rate vs 66% before creating the whole system. Give it a try on your next hire and see if you like it.
For those interested in Mindmaps, I use Mindmanager 9 for Windows by Mindjet; however you can find free Mindmap software online as well, like Freemind and Bubbl.Us
Happy hiring great employees!
Scott – The Big Banana of Business
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Dude, stop sending junk email
Stop Sending Junk Email
I live in a pretty small and tight-knit community and for the most part the junk email spam that I get (easily 50+ a day) is not from my local community. Once in a while I get added to a local community interest list without my knowledge (like a Chamber of Commerce sub-list), which I’m usually ok with; but five times now in the last 2 weeks I’ve been added to an individual local business mailing list without my permission.
In another recent incident my email address got added to a mailing list without my permission where the local business owner didn’t use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC:) when he sent his message. Everyone he mailed to (probably a couple hundred people) now had their email address exposed to unknown quantities of malcontent marketers. The reply to all responses were full of terse words cast upon the spammer. It was not pretty.
Now I’m sure you already know that sending unsolicited email is a big no-no for honest business owners – especially for local firms because word travels at light speed when it’s close to home. But if you’ve lived under a rock for the past decade, now you know. Stop sending junk email. It’s not only annoying, it’s an invasion of privacy and a waste of your marketing time – unless you’re ok with making one sale every 12.5 million emails sent.
Yesterday’s email took the cake. Once every few days I check my junk mail folder to see if I mistakenly overlooked anything important. And there it was – an unsolicited message from a local health care insurance salesman. Here’s what it looked like. (contact info redacted to protect the guilty)
At first I was annoyed that this local guy spammed me, but after I pulled it from my junk mail folder and read it I decided it would be fun to pick it apart piece-by-piece and critique his poor marketing etiquette.
1) I was added to his list without my authorization. Now it’s quite possible that he got my name from the local Chamber of Commerce list or local business directory. Our company is well-known locally, and my last name is part of the business name so it would be easy to put 1 and 1 together.
The problem was that he arbitrarily added me to his list without asking me. That’s bad for him, too. He has no idea if I’m a good prospect. Had he bothered to pick up the phone and called me, or sent me a postcard, or even introduced himself at a business event – at least I wouldn’t automatically disqualify him as being my insurance provider.
I will never call him now because he has shown me he’s lazy, he lies (you’ll see soon), and he doesn’t respect me. If I was a total douchebag I’d turn him in for a Can Spam Act violation, not that he would ever get in trouble since it has no teeth. It’s the douchiness factor that’s at stake here. BTW = is it douchier to spam people or to turn someone in for being a casual spammer? I’ll let you answer that one.
One thing is clear, though. As ineffectual as the Can Spam Act is, the real danger to the spammer is loss of IP access. All of the big internet providers have cracked down hard on spamming not only because they get a ton of complaints by users, but also because spam is a huge load on their servers.
If a marketer gets too many complaints the internet service provider will pull the plug on the spammer, oftentimes without warning. IPs also use and share blacklists of entire domains of known spammers. Professional spammers are pretty crafty and can deliver their email crap other ways, but “Sam the Spammer’s” local business probably relies heavily on his IP, and since his choices are limited he should be very careful to not send spam.
The ethical way to use email marketing is by asking permission and then using a formal (double) opt-in process. If Sam the local Spammer had sent me a simple email asking if I would be interested in joining his list – and I said yes – then it would be ethical for him to send me an email which requires me to at least click a link or button authorizing Sam the local Spammer to – well – spam me. In a future article I’ll go over how to create effective autoresponse messages.
I’m familiar with 3 very good and affordable double opt-in autoresponder programs:
Aweber – Claims to have the highest delivery rate amongst all autoresponder programs. This is my favorite for mid-sized lists. What I like best about Aweber is that the creators of the program are email marketing ninjas and will send you TONS of free super helpful email marketing advice. They’re running a special now – sign up for $1 for the first 30 days. If you don’t like it they’ll even refund your buck.
Constant Contact – I liked this service, but I found it a little too “corporaty” for my likes. I prefer down-to-earth, approachable business models and Constant Contact, while still very good, was a little too big for my britches. It was my first autoresponder – and it worked well. Currently they’re running a 60-day free trial.
MailChimp – Very UN-corporate-like, which for me was appealing. What I liked most about it is it’s cheap, straightforward, and pretty easy to use. I did have some issues configuring the signup formatting but it wasn’t a huge issue. Be aware that I have heard from others that Mailchimp is very picky about the type of business you run and they frown upon scammyish industries (like gambling, health juices, MLM, etc.) , even if you’re legitimate.
2) It showed up in my junk mail box – and the meat of the message was an image that I needed to right click to be able to view. Never ever – in a million years – make your most important content an image. 2 reasons:
a. because, just like in my example above, by default many email programs disable automatic image views. There are image Trojan Horse viruses circulating and if your email auto opened the image – BAM – guess what you’re going to be doing for the next couple of hours (or more)? That’s right, trying to get rid of that Trojan Horse.
b. because only text is searchable, not images, videos, or other multimedia. Now ok, he’s sending me what appears to be a rate quote and it is a short message, so in this example we don’t get the full scope of the issue of non-searchable components. If it was a longer sales letter and if I was interested, I may be inclined to hit CTRL-F (find) and search for a particular word.
Regardless, in email marketing less is more and copy is king. An image is not a wise choice for your meat and potatoes content. Unless you’re selling art, images are designed to enhance the message and help sell.
I will give Sammy the Spammer one point for including an opt-out link at the bottom of his message. Always include an easy opt-out button – preferably a one-click-and-you’re-out button. As a consumer there’s not much worse than being stuck in a loop of unwanted junk email.
Scott
Big Banana of Business
