Webinars are online seminars or presentations used to provide information about any subject your company feels your potential customers might be interested in. They can be interactive or not.  One big advantage of webinars is they presented live and then placed in archives for others to view later.

I personally have used webinars extensively for training, usually when we launch product upgrade we take the opportunity to conduct a webinar on how to the new features. We also conduct periodic webinars just to stay connected with our user base. The response to our webinars varies depending on the topic, ranging from only a few participants to fifty or more. Based on the number of registrants and attendees we have had at our webinars demonstrates that most of our users are comfortable with the technology.

During the course of the webinar, we get the opportunity to ask questions of our audience. We also record all our webinars (minus the audience interaction) and made it available on our website for people to view at their convenience. Given the positive response to the webinar and the positive feedback we have received, we believe that our webinars will increase our subscriber “stickiness.”

In addition, offering instructional content on your website can significantly increase the likelihood of visitors “returning another time to learn something more, and ultimately make a purchase.” According to Ken Zwerdling (CEO of Foreign Translations)  “Some visitors just want to learn more about the service and the industry before they make the decision to [make a purchase].” Stephanie Chandler, author of From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur, agrees, saying that by adding informational content to your company’s website you have greater power to attract traffic from search engines. Chandler has built her business around the power of marketing with web content. webinars can be an important part of the instructional content you offer on your site.

While training is the most common use for webinars, they can also be used to reach your target audience and help you increase sales of services or products.  Some Internet marketers use them to help teach potential customers about the products they are selling.  Most webinar tools have a registration feature which allows you to identify prospects who register and then see if they actually attend the event and for how long.  This can give you a pretty good feeling as to how interested a prospect is in the products you are selling.

Many Internet users are more willing to view a webinar about a subject than to just read about it.  This allows Internet marketers can to use them as teasers or bait to help convert prospects.  Webinars gives you a portal to provide information in a way that helps you build branding, image, and customer loyalty.

There are a wide variety of webinar tools available online and I have tried several of them.  When choosing a webinar tool things to look for include the number of concurrent visitors the tool allows, polling capabilities, ability to invinte participants, require registration, track attendance and record the webinar.  If you are interested in exploring how a webinar tool might be used for your organization, you might want to look at DimDim. They offer a webinar tool that is free for up to 20 participants.  While the tool lacks some of the features of some of the full feature commercial tools, it is more than adequate for webinars for a small number of attendees.

I have found webinars to be a great way to connect with customers and potential customers and to build a library of content that contributes to the credibility of my company.


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References:

Free Coaching on How to Market Using Webinars http://www.squidoo.com/marketingwithwebinars
A Case for using Webinars: http://www.ctinnovations.com/blog/?p=355
Drive Sales with Tutorials http://bestwebtutor.com/wordpress/?p=383

Labels: online marketing, social media, website tips

Increasingly businesses are utilizing  multiple social media outlets to connect with and engage customers or potential business partners.  For a small business keeping up with all of the social media sites can be a daunting task. But it is possible to utilize multiple social network tools to provide a uniform face to the world.


Personally, my first problem is keeping fresh content on all of the sites my company is currently active on (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and my company blog). Here are a few ways you can manage your social media presence to minimize time spent and maximize your company's visibility and credibility online.

First: I maintain a company blog to establish myself and my company as experts in the special education data tracking domain (yes, I do two blogs).  The way I manage this is to use scheduling features for my blog which allows me to write posts one or two months in advance and have them appear at regular intervals.  I mix this up with writing "current" blog posts in response to events in the news to keep my content fresh and interesting.  I try to never go more than a week without posting something new to my blog.

Second: I use TwitterFeed to automatically send my blog post titles and shortened URLs to Twitter.  This helps me to keep my twitter feed current.

Third: I use Hoot Suite to schedule other types of posts to my twitter account including, retweets of interesting tweets I see from people I am following, re-posting the links to my past blog entries and commentary on current events that I think will be of interest to my followers.  I try to post to twitter every day.  Again my goal is to keep my content current - not to become one of the twitterers that posts multiple times an hour.

Fourth: I use a custom background on my twitter page to allow me to brand my twitter account and keep it consistent with the image portrayed on my company website. You can put a variety of company relevant information in the Twitter background, including logos and contact informaiton. See my Twitter profile (ddtracinfo) for an example.

Fifth: I keep my company Facebook page current using RSS Grafiti which grabs all of my blog posts and all of my Twitter tweets and puts them on the Wall for my company page.  Again this helps to keep my Facebook profile current - so all I have to do is check in on the discussion board to see if people are asking questions I need to answer.

Sixth: I use Twitter to help with my business networking.  I used Twitters search feature to find people interested in or involved in the disability community and followed them.  Many of these people then followed me back. It is possible to invite those that follow you back to connect with you on LinkedIn to enhance the relationship. You obviously need to put the information in your Twitter account about the fact you are on LinkedIn and that you would be happy to connect.

Seventh: On LinkedIn it technically against the rules to have any personal contact info in your profile and depending on where you put it you could get your account suspended. But you can put your Twitter name in your LinkedIn account with out risk and on your Twitter account you can give people the information to connect on LinkedIn.  In addition, you can invite you rLinkedIn connections to follow you on Twitter. Twitters more lenient policies on chatting with others allow you to communicate more easily.

These are very simple ideas but they do add tremendous power to your social media networking if you use them to your advantage.

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http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/07/using-twitter-to-help-your-linkedin-networking-and-vice-versa/

Labels: blogging, facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter

The nice thing about social media is that small businesses can effectively uses it for a small investment of time and and a very small investment of money. One of the easiest social media tools to adopt as a small business is Twitter.  Many other social media tools (like blogs and facebook) can require months of consistently contributing quality content to build a following, but on twitter, you can build a following and have an impact relatively quickly.

There are numerous uses for Twitter that a small company might be interested in.  These include:

• Getting market research. Twitter provides the fastest way to get feedback for your ideas, word of mouth topics, or new products.
• Find leads. Using Twitter search allows you to find people talking about your industry’s key terms in real time — making Twitter an efficient way to find leads.
• Build a following:  If you follow key players in your industry (or in potential client industries) there is a good chance they will follow you back. 
  

Here are some tips I have picked-up that can help a small business get started with Twitter:

1. Create your Twitter name today: I created a personal Twitter account to learn how to use it and then a few weeks later was ready to set-up my company Twitter account.  In between those two dates someone else had signed up for my product name as their Twitter name. Twitter names are free, so sign up for yours today before someone else grabs it.
2. Search for key industry terms:  Search for people talking about issues in your industry and if they appear credible follow them.
3. Observe what people are saying: It is always a good idea to observe the social norms of any social media site before jumping in and actively contributing.
   
4. Search for your name. If someone is talking about you, you need to know it!
5. Search for your product & company name. People will frequently post positive and negative comments about companies on Twitter.  If Someone complements you you need to thank them.  If they are complaining about something you need to address that complaint before it becomes a tidal wave of complaints!
   
7. Search for your competitor’s name, company or products. This can give you an idea of what people are saying about him and give you a leg up on the competition.
8. Search for like-minded people. This can be for local people or anywhere. Networking with others gives you a whole new circle of business contacts. You can search for terms like your city, state, niche, or anything else that might help you find people to follow that could work with you. Again this is a good source of followers as well.
   
9. Search for people who can complement what you offer. If you are great at building websites, but cannot write worth a hoot, then search for writers that might want to partner with you.

Using Twitter can take as little as a few minutes a day and it could potentially allow huge benefits for your organization.
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References

http://www.socialnetdaily.com/twitter/the-best-use-of-twitter-for-online-marketers/

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/06/02/andys-answers-3-ways-a-small-business-can-use-twitter/

Labels: social media, twitter

Once you have created your basic profile on LinkedIn and connected to the people you know there are a number of extra steps you can take to build your credibility within the site. The LinkedIn site allows you to do a few key things that will help you gain followers, show off your expertise and, possibly, find a new job or investors.

Start a group: Linked in allows you to create groups which can be an extremely powerful assets for your personal brand. If you start a group in an area you want to establish yourself as an expert in you are automatically portraying yourself as a leader. Groups can take time to establish, but if you deliver news content, promote helpful articles and regularly start discussions on topics that will be of interest to group members you can greatly enhance perceptions of your expertise on those topics (see Dave Taylor's Secret of Linkedin Groups for more info).

Create a Company Profile: As an entrepreneur, one of  your primary focuses must be on promoting and enhancing the credibility of your company.  LinkedIn supports this by allowing you to create a company profile.  While LinkedIn company profiles are generally short, simply having one does make your company appear to be a real company in the eyes of people evaluating you online.

Use LinkedIn Applications: If you have a blog, then you should definitely use either the “WordPress” or “Blog Link”applications.  This will show two or three of your recent blog posts on your profile. This helps you keep your profile current and (again) allows you to show off your expertise to the LinkedIn community.  Other applications that can be used to demonstrate your expertise are “Slideshare Presentations” and "Box.net Files." 


Update your status: Make sure that your LinkedIn status message is extremely professional because the audience is more career minded people and hiring managers.

Ask and answer questions: If someone in your network asks a question pertaining to an area that you have knowledge in, you should answer it.  By participating in these types of discussions, whether you’re asking or answering them, you are perceived as a valuable contributor to your network and someone to go to if people need help.

Conclusion

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to demonstrate your expertise to individuals and companies that you might want to have a professional relationship with. Adding additional information to profile can help you expand your networks awareness of the scope of your talents. However there are some things you should think of before adding to your profile:

• When asking a question, make sure it is articulate, relevant and that it is note easily answered from other sources. Close you questions once you get a good response and be sure to rate responses you get so respondents know you value their input.
• When answering questions make sure that you take the time to give a thoughtful andswer that highlights your expertise.
• When contributing auxiliary informaiton (e.g. via Blog Link or SlideShare) make sure it is a professional blog that will be relevant to your connections.
  

As with creating you initial profile (see http://dawngregg.com/news/2009/09/enhancing-your-credibility-with-linkedin.html) it is important that all the auxiliary information you contribute to LinkedIn enhance your credibility (instead of detracting from it). 

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References:

• Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
• Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/

Labels: linkedin, social media, tips

LinkedIn is all about developing your professional network that you can potentially use to improve your career or the success of your start-up. Once you have created your profile (see my last post on creating a credible profile) you will want to start to build a network of contacts that can help you build your company.

In LinkeIn your network consists of first, second and third degree connections.  First degree connections are  people you know and they are the center of your network. Each person connected to your direct connection makes a second degree connection and those who are linked to your second degree connections, make up your third degree connections.  Your first, second and third degree contacts are visible to you and can help you with career opportunities, answer your questions or help you connect with potential employees.

Building your Network

There are a number of things you can do to start building your network of connections:

• Import your contacts from  Windows Live, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! and AOL.  You can also search through lists of LinkenIn members that went to your college or had the same employer and invite those people to join your network.
• Invite professional contacts, business partners and clients who are not LinkedIn members to set up accounts, this way your network broadens.
• Get introduced. LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to contact somebody directly unless you have their email address or you hlist the same school or employer.  To connect with these people you have to find a mutual connection that could forward an Introduction on your behalf. There is a limit of five Introductions per month at the free basic account!
• Use InMail (if you have a paid account) to send private messages to any LinkedIn user without showing your email addresses. You can see these messages only if they are accepted by the recipient. 
• Promote your URL by taking your distinct LinkedIn profile URL and puting it  in your email signature, on your traditional resume, on your blog, your website, your presentations, and possibly on your business card.

When asking people to connect with you on  LinkedIn there are a number of best practices you should follow:

• Always include a personal message that offers good reasons for making the connection. 
• You can put value items, free reports, links, resources, tools, and even connections in this message.
• You should make sure the language of th message is professional and that it does not contain any spelling or grammar mistakes.
• You should never put anything in this message re selling your products or services.
  
• Avoid being intrusive.
• Don’t send invitations to people you don’t know and don’t accept invitations from people you really don’t know  (see LinkedIn Etiquette for best practices for connecting to people)
• If you invite someone to LinkedIn, remember to remind that particular person under what circumstances you two have met and then you can choose to connect.

If someone decides to connect with you it is always a good idea to thank them for connecting.  Again in this message you want an offer of value - what you can do for them, not a sales pitch or description of all the great products and services you think you have.

Getting References

Once you have begun to develop your network of contacts you are going to want to ask some of them to provide recommendations for you.  Recommendations allow people on LinkedIn to describe why you are a good person to work with - and they appear right in your profile. You have control over what recommendations appear in your profile so if you don’t agree with the things written about you, you can reject the recommendation. The more good recommendations you can get the better you will look in the eyes of recruiters and potential investors or business partners.

Note: the ability to reject recommendations is a feature you need to be aware of when evaluating people on LinkedIn as well.  Since negative information can easily be blocked by LinkedIn users, LinkedIn recommendations are a good place to start evaluating a candidate - but they are by no means a substitute for traditional channels for obtaining references.

Provide Value to Your Network

One of the principles of effective networking is to provide value to you network connections.  When creating your network you likely are focusing on those connections that can potentially be of value to you - but equally important is to think of how you can be of value to them.

Once you have linked to someone try  to connect with them to see if there is anything you can do for them. One way to do this is to look at their profile to see if you have any connections  that they might be interested in knowing.  You might also be able to identify a resource such as a website or a blog that would be of use to them. You may find that if you contact them with something that they might find useful - they will be more likely to think of you when a pottential opportunity arises.

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References:

• Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
• Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/
• How to Use the LinkedIn Profiles of Others to Improve Your Network: http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/07/how-to-use-linkedin-the-profiles-of-others-to-improve-your-network/

Labels: linkedin, social media, tips

LinkedIn is currently the premier professional online networking site.  Currently the site has  over 47 million registered users in over 200 countries and territories around the world. According to the LinedIn website, executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies are members.

However, in conversations with many people in my personal LinkedIn network, it is apparent many of them joined LinkedIn because it is the "thing to do" and are uncertain how to leverage the site for personal and professional gain. Many people think that you should be on LinkedIn if you  are looking for a job or are interested in doing hiring.  But LinkedIn offers a number of benefits beyond recruiting that entrepreneurs can use to build their business, including:

• Manage the information that’s publicly available about you or your company
• Find and be introduced to potential clients, service providers, and subject area experts who can help you grow your company
  
• Create and collaborate on projects, gather data, share files and solve problems
• Be found for business opportunities and find potential partners
• Gain new insights from discussions with likeminded professionals in private group settings
• Discover inside connections that can help you close deals

There are really three primary steps to building your personal credibility with LinkedIn, today I am going to talk about how to build a credible profile.

Creating your profile

Your LinkedIn profile summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments. Your profile is your calling card on LinkeIn and many business professionals indicate it is one of the first places they check when looking for informaiton on potential employees or business partners.  So, it is essential that your LinkedIn profile create a positive first impression.

To create a profile you first need to create a free LinkedIn account, then you can add a variety of information to your profile

• Snapshot: An overview of your name, location, past positions, education, recommendations, and links to your websites. Use a meanigful headline under your name, this is what members see first. It defaults to your current title, but you can change this.
  
• Status: Your status message allows you to share professional updates with your network. 
• Photo: Be sure to include a professional photo
• Summary: This is intended to be a short paragraph summarizing your professional experience and goals.  It should be engaging and short. In the first paragraph of your summary, try to say a few words about you, as well as talking about your professional experience. Be sure to include your unique abilities and differentiators, such as industry awards and honors.Include a second paragraph that discusses your career aspirations.
  
• Specialties: List your areas of expertise.
• Experience: List your professional experience, include position descriptions, what the company does, and what your main responsibilities and accomplishments were. 
• Education: List all of the schools you ateended, degrees received along with associated activities and honors.
• Additional Information: Often overlooked, the additional informationsection can provide a richer picture of you as a person and should definitely be completed along with the other parts of the profile.  It includes:
  
  
  
  • Websites: link to up to 3 websites (e.g. personal blog, company website). Instead of leaving each title (for each link) as “My Website,” you should change them to the actual title of each of your links, so that the link can be associated with the URL.
    
  • Interests: list the things that you enjoy doing, learning about, etc
  • Groups and Associations: either list professional organizations or display badges of LinkedIn groups that you are a part of
  • Honors and Award
  
  

When creating your profile there ate a few things you can do to enhance your credibility and make it easier for people to find you.

Create a Custom URL: Your LinkedIn URL should appear as “http://linkedin.com/in/yourfullname.”  To do this, go to your profile and click “edit” and then next to where it says “public profile,” click “edit” again. At the top, you’ll want to click “edit” one more time next to “your public profile URL,” and then type in your full name, without spacing, and click “set address.” If the unique URL is taken, then try using a period between your first and last name or use your middle initial.

Change your Headline: Your headline will automatically be displayed as the last job you’ve had, unless you change it manually.  I recommend that you revise your headline provide the information you most want LinkedIn members to see.  This can be the name of the job you want to have or a unique ability you want to highlight (e.g. Social Networking Expert).

Do not use your email address in your profile: It is advisable not to put your email address under your name on your profile. Putting the email address there, make people aware that you are willing to connect with just about anyone which could damage your credibility.  It also makes your email address available to spam emailers, something most people want to avoid doing. It is better to leave the email address out and have people interested in contacting your go through InMail or a mutual friend in order to get in contact with you.

Maximize your Specialties Section of your Profile: The summary section of your LinkedIn profile is the one place where you get to showcase your (our your business's) talents. The secret to maximizing your summary is use the “specialties” section of the summary to list any unique or extensive skills that may be superior to your competition. Use this section to set yourself (and your company) apart.

As an example, check out my LinkedIn profile: View Dawn Gregg's profile

Conclusion

Your LinkedIn profile needs to be completely professional and absolutely flawless because people will be using it to evaluate you and your company.  It is essential to keep your profile up-to-date so you are always creating the best possible impression on anyone that may want to do business with you.

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References:

• Using Linked In: http://www.avangate.com/articles/using-Linkedin-125.htm
• Creating your Personal Brand on Linked In: http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/
• Maximizing the Specialties Section of Your LinkedIn Profile http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/09/maximizing-the-specialties-section-of-your-linkedin-profile/

Labels: eimage, linkedin, social media

There is a great deal of research that has been done both in marketing and in information systems that shows that your reputation online can have a dramatic impact on the willingness of potential customers to d business with you and the prices you can charge for your goods or services (Ba and Pavlou 2002, Lee et. al. 2000, Standifird 2001, Standifird 2002).  Whether or not you decide to formally launch a social media campaign to promote your company or your brand it is important for you to monitor what people are saying about you online.  So you have an opportunity to contribute to the conversations that are occurring.

Entrepreneurs usually are trying to increase the visibility of their company or products.  Depending on how new you company is, there may be few if any people discussing or you online. Before you begin any social media marketing campaign you need to begin by tracking the conversations that are occurring around your products and services.  This will allow you to assess any changes that occur as a result of your marketing efforts.

One way to contribute to and help shape the dialog that occurs about your company is to use tools that allow you to monitor what is being said about about you online and track who is saying it.

Step 1: Sign-up for Alerts

A good place to begin is to sign up for a feed reader like Google reader or Bloglines.  Feed readers aggregate syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Once you have a feed reader you can sign up for Google Alerts, RSS updates Google sends to you when they find new web pages that include the search terms that you specify.  The alerts track blog posts, news articles, videos and even groups. You can set alerts on your company or product name, topic terms, or even alerts about your competitors.  Google will then will notify you of stories, as they happen, so you won't miss it when someone is talking about things that are important to you online.

If you have a blog, then you will also want to claim your blog on Technorati, which is the largest blog search engine in the world. Once you register, Technorati tracks blog reactions (blogs that link to yours). Technorati allows you to subscribe to RSS alerts so that when someone blogs about you, you find out.

Step 2: Search for Social Mentions

There are a number of places where your company can be mentioned that will not appear in the Google or Technorati alerting feeds. This includes people using your name in comments on blog posts, in discussion boards,  bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. There are a number of tools that can help you search for and track these social mentions:

• Backtype is a tool for monitoring blog comments that allows you to find, follow, and share comments from across the web.
  
• Social Mention, Serph and Keotag are social media search engines that searches a variety of social media sources such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. It allows you to track mentions of your company, product (or competitors) across social media sources, like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Twitter etc.
• boardtracker.com, Boardreader and Big Boards allow you to get instant alerts from discussion board threads citing your name.
•  Twitter search, Twilert and TweetBeep are tools that you can use locate your name, or other topics in Twitter messages.
• If you have a lot of activity around your name you might want to use, Filtrbox, which only delivers the most relevant, credible mentions of things you need to track. Its "FiltrRank" technology scores content based on three dimensions: contextual relevance, popularity and feedback.

Most of these services allow you can subscribe to your results by either RSS or email (or both).

Using these tools you can track the amount and nature of activity surrounding your name.  If the social mentions are positive you can take steps to highlight the positive.  If the social mentions are negative you can take steps (promptly) to address any problems that have arisen.

Step 3: Track your Contributions

As you jump into social media you should develop a mechanism for tracking all of your company's contributions to the online social sphere.  This can be challenging if you are making contributions to a variety of social network sites or if more than one person is your company is actively contributing. There are tools available for you to monitor your social media contributions allowing you to ensure that contributions are consistent with your messaging strategy.

One tool that is ideally suited to monitoring your companies social media contributions is FriendFeed, a social aggregator. Friend Feed allows you to aggregate all of your social accounts, (e.g. Delicious, Twitter, Your blog, Flickr, and YouTube) into a single easier to manage feed.  FriendFeed allows you to conduct searches on your company throughout all social networks at once. It also allows you to analyze comments that people make on them.

Other tools you can use to monitor your activity on the web includes:

• coComment is another tool that will help you manage your comments across the web.
• Yacktrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources, such as Blogger, Digg, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, and Wordpress blogs.
• You can also use Commentful and co.mments to track your social comments on the web.

Step 4: Develop your Monitoring Plan

After you’ve selected which sources you want to monitor and the tools you want to use to manage your social media campaign management you need to create a plan for for monitoring all of the sources you have identified.  Your plan should include:

• A schedule for how often you will to check your monitoring tools.
• Who will be responsible for monitoring and updating each site or tool.
  

Your schedule will depend on the volume and types of comments you receive. When you start, monitoring each source once a day or week will generally be enough, but as your activity level increases you will probably need to monitor more often.  This allows you to respond to people that are discussing you, network with people who are talking about topics of interest, thank people who have complimented you.

Following these four steps will allow you to stay on top of your e-Image.  Contributing to and monitoring a variety of social media sources will allow you to manage your social network reputation and allow you to better project the image you want to have online.

______________________

• Ba, S., and Pavlou, P. A. "Evidence of the effect of Trust Building Technology in Electronic Markets: Price Premiums and Buyer Behavior," MIS Quarterly, (26:3), 2002, 243-268.
• Lee, Z., Im, I., and Lee, S. J. "The Effect of Negative Buyer Feedback on Prices in Internet Auction Markets," in Proc. of the Twenty-first International Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane, Australia, 2000, 286-287.
• Schawbel, D. "Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation," Mashable: Social MediaGuide, http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/
• Standifird, S. S., "Reputation and e-commerce: eBay auctions and the asymmetrical impact of positive and negative ratings." Journal of Management, (27:3), 2001, 279-295.
• Standifird, S. S. "C2C marketplaces and the Importance of Reputation Type," Electronic Markets, (12:1), 2002, 58-62.

Labels: online marketing, social media

You have looked at the data (or read my last post) and you know you need to be out there, using social media to improve your e-image and to interact with your potential customers or investors.

The question is:
"What should you be doing?" 

The answer is not simple. There are many things you can do with social media but the trick is choosing what makes the most sense for you and your start-up company. Some of the options are:

• Blogs are ideal if you are in a complex environment and you have lots of information and ideas you can share with your customers.
• Wikis are a good choice for publishing user guides, best practices or other documents where your customers can contribute to.
• Forums are useful for complex product or service domains where users have lots of questions and having a knowledge base of questions and answers to those questions is useful.
• Social networking Web sites (e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) are useful for connecting directly with your customers and creating a dialog with them about the things they like and don't like about your products or services. They are also very useful for launching specials and promotions.

Before you start

Before you adopt social media in your business it is important that you understand how these sites can work in your specific situation. You need to find out how social media is being used in your industry and among business partners and competitors (if no one in your industry is using social media yet then look at related industries).

Start Small

Once you have a feeling for how other people are using social media create a social media profile on the sites that are popular in your industry and/or in related industries. Once you create your profile it is generally wisest to begin contributing in small ways. For example, instead of creating your own blog, begin by commenting on posts and answering questions on existing blogs that are popular in your industry.

Avoid establishing your own blog, wiki, forum or social network site until you feel you understand the expectations the community has for such a site and you have the time to monitor and update the site on a regular basis.

Remember, social media is about contributing to and conversing with a community and that require a commitment. If you regularly contribution to online conversations you can develop establish an online audience over time. If you do not dedicate time to your online presence your e-image can suffer and ultimately cost customers. Nothing looks worse than a corporate blog, wiki or forum that has not been updated recently. I have seen sites that have a blog that has not been updated in years. This looks much worse than not having a blog at all (If you start a blog, wiki or forum and find you do not have time to maintain it - take it down).

Listen Actively


Even if  you are not ready to actively create a blog or a wiki you still need to search for your company/product name on social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to see what people are saying about you.  You will need to be prepared to respond to comments you receive online.

When responding to comments about your company or product, keep your message positive and let them know you value their input and will use it to improve. Always provide full-disclosure that you are the one representing the brand. Ask people what they think about your product. Remember, when operating in a social media environment you are there to listen and engage, not sell.

Long term Benefits

Social marketing and networking can provide a number of benefits to your company - if you have the time to invest in the social media process. It can:

• increase customer loyalty
• enhance branding awareness.
• allow you to gather instant feedback on your products
• improve sales of new products
• provide evangelists that sell your products to others without even being asked.

One of the things to remember as you create your social media presence, social media is about conversations and information not selling. Be sure what ever you put out there is of value. If it is, people will pay attention to it.

Labels: online marketing, social media

Social media is increasingly the people interact with businesses and with each other.  Over 60 % of Americans used Social media in September of 2008 and the number has grown dramatically since then [Cone 2008].  According to one study, people in the US expect to be able to intereact with companies using social media When asked about specific types of interactions, Americans who use social media believe [Cone 2008]:

• Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
  
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
  
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
  
• Companies should market to consumers (25%)

What does that mean for your business?

This means that your potential clients will be expecting you to be using tools like blogs, wikis, and forums on your website (or linked to your website).  They will be looking for your  at social networking Web sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

The question you need to ask yourself is: Are you ready to contribute to the social dialog your potential customers are increasingly turning to to discuss products and services?

If you aren't ready, how many my potential clients do you think you are losing to competitors that are engaged with social media?

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References:

Cone Finds That Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media, September 2008, available at: http://www.coneinc.com/content1182

Labels: social media

When entrepreneurs think about building an online image for their company, they typically think in terms of their website and the content they put on it.  While my last few posts clearly demonstrate that your website is important, there is so much more to a companies e-image than just what they put on their website.

Your e-image really consists of all of the information that is available when a potential customer or investor searches the Internet for information about your company or your brands. Some of this can be content you still control, like your facebook page, your blog postings, your white papers, your business and web names, your twitter messages as well as the people you friend or follow on various social media sites or link to from your website.

It is important that all of this information helps to build your credibility in the area you are doing business in.  On Twitter, for example, you should be following the authorities in your field and should be tweeting on topics that will be of interest to your potential customers and business partners.  However, it is important to realize that social media is different than your website and people don't use Twitter or read blogs to be sold something.  Instead it is an information resource that connects them to other people.  It is much better to use these resources to inform as opposed to using it to sell.

Another important aspect of your e-image is what other people are saying about you online.  Tweets, facebook nessages, blog comments, forum postings and product/company review sites all allow people to comment back to and about you.  Often a favorable comment from a third party is worth 100 postings from someone in your company but negative comments can be very damaging.

Running away from these public forums is not the best way to control your e-image because if you make someone mad they can post negative things about you even if you are not participating. Instead you should strive to control your online image the same way your image in person:

• Provide a good product or service
• Provide good customer service
  
• Respond to emails promptly
• Clearly state and honor your terms of service or return policies
• Always be courteous

If you do get a negative comment online, respond to it courteously and publicly.   If you did something wrong and the complaint is warranted, own up to your mistake, apologize and make some form of restitution. If the complaint is not warranted, apologize anyway but then make it clear why the client is mistaken. Research done in the eBay feedback forum has shown that negative comments have less of a negative impact if the seller responds promptly - even if the seller disagrees with the comment made.

In today's information driven world people will have lots of place to find out about you, your products and your services.  Make sure you provide the information they are looking for even if they are not looking at your website.

Labels: brand, eimage, social media