Small Business Marketing Solutions through Social Media Networking
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Share by emailThe need for a small business to incorporate social media into its overall marketing strategy is crucial. The costs of advertising in local newspapers, printing of business cards, putting a small sign out by the curb in front of your shop, and producing promotional items such as caps, t-shirts, banners, and Koozies, can all run into the hundreds of dollars.
These are dollars that may be better off spent on the tools or utensils that you use in your business to bring in revenue. Keeping your overhead down, and your enthusiasm up, is brought into play by smart dollar making decisions. With any garage start-up business, free is good. Do all you can do free first, until you absolutely have to pay. This is where the Internet and social sites can pay off with great dividends.
When creating your home page on a social site, always try your best to keep one thing in mind, FUN. Remember that the idea behind social media is that you want to be social. Most people go to social sites to meet and chat with their friends. Normally an after work day event. No different than if on the way home they stop by a friend’s house to talk, or maybe catch a ballgame on TV. Make as many friends as the site will let you make. Let the content on your site do the selling. Keep your content high quality. The "KISS" theory works great with content: "Keep It Simple Stupid."
Promotions that you do on your social site should bring enthusiasm and excitement for friends to participate. Contest and prizes are always fun. Try not to put yourself into any particular peer type group. Stay on an even keel. People are people. The bad ones will weed themselves out in time and move on. Every site has its haters. Always try to conduct yourself online as if you are representing your company. Because you ARE your company. If you’re using a blogger site, let anyone comment about anything except the use of curse words. Post on your site, “Anyone Can Comment, All Comments Will Be Posted” instead of "Only Registered Users Can Comment" selected on your comments settings page. Show the world that your business is welcome to any ideas or suggestions from anyone, be it good or bad. The use of IPO Look-Up has become very popular, and most blogger pages and social sites now accept this app: http://www.revolvermaps.com/
These apps can show you and all your friends or potential customers who and where you do business. They can also be used to scare off any silly hater getting their kicks by pulling some sort of Internet prank. The more you show how large your customer base is the better. You are a global business. You are large and in charge. Hundreds of widgets are now available for most blogger sites. Widgets can connect you to other sites that will in turn bring more people to your site. Widgets can act like a spider web of transmission lines reaching out to customers like magnets. Website hit counters are available for free in a vast array of fonts and colors. Paste your counter in a spot easily found on your home page.
Let everyone see how proud you are of your sites traffic and your business. The use of blogging as a social site is growing by leaps and bounds. Webcams can be attached to most blog sites. Ustream.tv is a site where you can have your own TV show or make your own commercials that start automatically when someones hits your site. On FaceBook you can link your blogsite to a network of bloggers called “NetworkedBlogs” for even further spider webbing. Use your .com site as your spider’s home. Use your blog and other social pages as your spider's webbing. Social Web pages allow your .com spider to catch customers without having to expend energy, $$$, by running it down.
Thus it is an efficient method of gathering food, $$$. Constructing your social media Web is in itself an energetic activity. It can also become addictive. Don’t lose site of your marketing goals. Know where your line in the sand is when it comes to giveaways and promotional items. Without revenue your spider passes away. Once again, when starting your small business free is good. When beginning and managing your social Web pages, you pay your Internet Provider a small fee, and pay your sites with a lot of your time. But how bad do you want your business to grow? How bad do you want those muscles? Simple equation. It’s all about hours in the gym.
when my paper was posted to the DEU site for the contest, someone went as far as to change the title. why? no respect i guess. sr
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