Small Business News: Social Media Small Business
What’s a social media small business? More than just a tool for marketing, social media can be an integral part of your business from products and services to branding. If you want to know more about social media and other important small business tips for today’s entrepreneur or small business owner, you’ve come to the right place. It’s time for another small business news roundup from Small Business Trends.
Social Small Business
Do you have a social media small business? Social media is more than simply another kind of marketing. It can substantially change the very nature of your small business venture. A social media small business is one perfectly adapted to spread its message quickly and efficiently on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. Here are some tips to get your small business started toward social media integration. blogworld
Tools to track your Twitter efforts. How are you doing on Twitter? No, how are you really doing? It’s one thing to check your followers. But plenty of tools exist to track your progress on the microblogging platform in a variety of ways. This post from TJ McCue will get you started on the right track. Small Business Trends
Are you a social media believer? We hear plenty about the importance of social media in today’s small business world. But does this stuff really work, or is it just a load of crap? Are there businesses out there that are really making money with an effective social media presence? You bet, and here’s more about them. USA Today
Online Marketing
Keyword marketing expertise. Lots of time is spent researching the right keywords for an online business or marketing campaign, but what is sometimes more difficult is determining what people are actually searching for. This article from Stoney deGeyter looks at the more difficult question of not only what keywords your audience is using but also what they mean. Search Engine Guide
How do customers come to you? Learning more about how your customers come to you and why they make the decisions they do can be the key to making your product or service more attractive to them and targeting the customers who want your service the most. New tools to help you accurately track the way your online customers arrive at your Website make it easier than ever to learn who your customers are and how to serve them better. M4B Marketing
Finance
Why are businesses closing? The reality is that 1.5 million businesses have already closed their doors during this recession. But what may be most surprising, given the talk of credit crunches, is that the main causes include unaffordable loans and poor consumer spending. Can more business loans really be the answer? How will such loans be paid back if consumer spending remains low? Wall St. Cheat Sheet
Can small business credit cards create jobs? Well, yes, according to a study commissioned by the banking industry, credit cards did increase the number of jobs created by small business between 2003 and 2008. But what about all the jobs lost during the recession that followed? Check the infographic in the previous story for more on the problems that resulted in 1.5 million business closings since the recession began. Inc.com
Going Viral
What makes a video go viral? The often touted method of using highly popular videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites or through social media, e-mail or other online means for marketing is well known. But how much do the creators of such highly popular content really know about why their videos became so overwhelmingly popular? And what can online marketers learn about creating or identifying highly popular video for their own purposes? Fast Company
Sales Innovation
The truth about cold calling. Cold calling, the process of calling folks with no referral out of the blue to pitch your product or service, is a sacred rite among sales professionals. But does it really work? Well, some of the time, but check out these discouraging stats from John Jantsch before you put your faith in cold calling for your small business. Duct Tape Marketing
Bootstrapping
22 plus bootstrapping tips. If loans and investment are scarce, bootstrapping remains a viable way to create your business with little or no startup capital. There are probably literally hundreds of techniques out there for starting a business with little or no money, but here are some of the best submitted by other small business owners. Feel free to add your own as well. Infozooms
The Franchise King
Founder of Infusionsoft
Author of Business Plan Pro
I’m learning a lot here and glad to know more stuff about social media sites.
Really great overview and links. There are so many social media networks and applications out there that it can get confusing on how to most effectively market your products and services. The key is to really think about what exactly you’re trying to do with your marketing and then find the most effective social media outlets to do this, instead of using every single one just for the sake of it.
Great summary of current articles. With the Internet there is amazing information but you have to spend a lot of time finding it and setting a feed to get it on a regular basis. I have you on my blog roll so I won’t forget to check your site.
Great collection of resources. Thanks for sharing this information. Social Media is really the way to go for small businesses. Finally the ‘little guy’ can compete with the ‘big boys’ and even beat them. Social Media is THE marketing tool of the 21st century for small business owners. Thanks for the great article.
Wow. Huge Social Media resources. I’ll try this all and say my thoughts. Thanks
-John
Hi Great Post, got me thinking.
I would like to make a comment about the online marketing and how customers come to you. This is becoming very important that is tracking and testing. With the right tools you can know a great deal about your customer, but also the pages visited before purchasing, where the customers come from, why they purchased and much more. When you think about the low percentage of affiliates that make money and the 80/20 rule, really having a real focus on what is working will save you a lot of time.
Good thoughts….
Social media optimization play an important role in small business promotion. We should update with latest business news via the internet.
Nice article! Many people use Twitter for direct marketing, instead of getting more sales, their reputation may go down if your tweet has a marketing pitch.