Lisa, what I took from some of your post was that the SMB owner needs to do offline things, too. Poll their customers. They might do that via email, but in person would work great and give you the chance to engage.

Chris Hughes, the guy on the cover of Fast Company or Inc this month, talked about if you’re doing stuff only online you’re missing the point of building communities on Facebook or Twitter or wherever. And that point is to help you build stronger relationships with the people you serve — customers, members, voters.

I’m glad for your summary as I knew about this webinar, but couldn’t make it. I was meeting with one of my online connections, in person all afternoon!

http://www.ideablob.com/5362

and vote for GO GREEN CAMEROON

Excellent article. I fully agree and understand first hand why getting involved in a unfinished conversation can be a real time waster.

It can be a difficult process of weeding out all of the social media outlets online and finding where your customers hang out.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about surveys and asking your readers to fill out a poll.

I have recently put together a short article on some simple ways to build a list for your online activities and asking your readers to fill out a survey was one of the tips that I suggest you try, with the lure of a free report or qoute etc..

I do disagree with the comment about using a blog.

One of, or my main business that I own,has a website using WordPress as the CMS and allthough I don’t write my content in a blog style or conversational manner I do get the bennefits of being quickly indexed and found by the search engines, there fore increasing my exposure every time I add a new peice of content.

None the less you have pointed out some really useful and practical information Thanks.

Did you record the webinar? Do you have an URL?

Thanks for putting this recap together, sounds like it was a worthwhile discussion!