One feature small business owners want to specifically be aware of is the ability to create company profiles on the site. By claiming and building out your profile, SMBs will be able to increase your company’s prominence on the site, help prospective employees find you, and use it as your own personal recruiting network. If you’ve ever had to hire locally, you know important this is.

So how can small business owners take advantage of this new feature? Here are five easy tips to get you started.

1. Create/Claim the Page

Your first step to creating a rocking LinkedIn company profile page is to create and your claim your page. By creating your page you give your brand an outlet to highlight your products or services, keep followers updated on what you’re working on, show career opportunities within your organization, tell your personal story, and highlight various aspects of your company. To get started, perform a company search to see if you’re already listed on the site. If you are, it’s a simple process to claim your profile. If you’re not, once you’re in the search feature you’ll see an option on the right-hand side of the screen to add your company. Select that and claim your company page.

Once you’ve added your company (or have found an existing listing), it’s really important that you take the time to fill out the profile in its entirety, including:

• Your Company Overview
• Company Product & Services pages
• Information about Career Opportunities

The more information you provide, the easier it will be for like-minded prospective customers to find you, AND the more likely it is LinkedIn will show your company for prominent search queries.

2. Get Your Employees Using LinkedIn

The more involved you can make your company with LinkedIn, the bigger payoff you’re going to see. For more information on how to use your employees to create a rockin’ social media presence, check out a recent Blueglass post entitled 8 ways employees can improve your company’s LinkedIn presence where writer Kerry Jones discusses, in impressive detail, what steps SMBs should take to maximize their exposure. I won’t ruin the post for you, but she mentions things like:

• Taking advantage of the activity field
• Properly highlighting the teams skills & expertise (and why this is so important)
• Including customized links
• And lots more

If you haven’t used LinkedIn much in the past, that post is a really great primer to get any business up to speed. SMBs can really increase what they’re showing up for simply by showing employees how to set up and use their own profiles.

3. Follow Relevant Companies

Another thing SMBs may not know is that with the creation of LinkedIn brand pages, you can now follow companies of interest. For example, maybe you want to follow what your vendors are doing. Or companies that you’re considering partnering with in the future. Or people whose radar you want to get on for media opportunities. Or to hire down the road. This feature allows businesses to do stay up to date on what other businesses are doing, who they’re hiring, what they’re working on, etc. If you like your social media with a high amount of signal and very little noise, you may prefer to follow a brand on LinkedIn instead of on a more socially-inclined site like Twitter or Facebook.

4. Build Followers To Your Page

Obviously if you’re taking the time to build a brand page, you want to get people follow that page. Doing so will help you increase your visibility and authoritativeness with relevant users. Without that following, all the work that you’re doing on LinkedIn may go relatively unseen.

Encourage people to follow your company page by:

• Using your profile to share exclusive information about your company and/or articles and news pieces relevant to your audiences’ interests.
• Highlighting your brand’s LinkedIn page on your Web site and in all company information (in email newsletters, direct mailings, etc)
• Following the LinkedIn pages of other companies in your neighborhood/industry with the hopes that they’ll follow you back and you can create a local referrer network.
• Participating in industry-relevant LinkedIn discussion groups and let them know about your business (without spamming them).

5. Stay Active

Unfortunately, you can’t simply create your LinkedIn page and then step away. Even though LinkedIn is a business social networking site, it’s still a social networking site. That means you’ll still need to be active there to develop a real presence and following, and keep the relevance of your company profile Being an active site contributor means making sure you’re using your page to share information via your status updates, participating in relevant discussions, joining and being active in groups, acting like resource in Linked Answers, and otherwise be a good site member. If you don’t keep up your site investment, you’ll lose all the goodwill you’ve created.

Those are some quick tips to help SMBs develop a strong presence on LinkedIn and keep it going. Are you using LinkedIn for business? Why or why not?

From Small Business Trends

How To Build a Rockin’ LinkedIn Presence

Well, there are.

Today is Tuesday. Below are five simple things to tackle so you can start next week off ahead of the game and with a stronger Web site.

1. Focus On Your Navigation

Often overlooked, your site navigation is crucial to creating a successful Web site. Your nav is what a customer will use to get around and find the information on your site. To aid them in this journey, you want to make your navigation as intuitive and easy to use as you can. Don’t hide your navigation, don’t try and be “clever” when naming certain items – focus on giving your customers something they can use, and use quickly.

As general rule, your main navigation bar should be easy to find, look and feel consistent, have properly named tabs (“trash cans” not “garbage receptacles”) and should always let customers know where they are on your site. If you’re not sure how well your site navigation does at helping customers on their way, a service like usertesting.com can help you see, from a user perspective, what it feels like navigating around your site. It may also be time to do some keyword research to make sure the keywords and phrases you’re using in your site navigation are still relevant.

2. Create a Better About Page

If you’re like many small business owners, you do a pretty good job ignoring your About page. I mean, you created one. Mostly. You threw in some bio information, your address and you even included a nice stock image of a woman dutifully at work. It’s not like anyone really uses that page, right?
Wrong.

As an SMB, one of the worst things you can do for your Web site is to ignore your About page. This is where customers go to learn more about your business, to gain trust, to see what you’re about, and, ultimately, decide if you’re a company they want to do business with. Stock your About Page with the Must Haves like:

• Your story
• Your credentials
• Pictures
• What they can expect from you/your value
• Where they can get more info about you
• Humanizing details

It’s easy to look at your About page as a chore or something that makes you uncomfortable. Instead, think of it as your formal introduction to your audience. What do you want them to know about feel about your brand? Show it here.

3. Update Your Blog

Sometimes bringing life (and customers) back to your Web site really is that easy. Spend some time this week to update your blog. Create a new post that takes a look inside your business (and maybe highlights your new About page), answer a long-standing consumer problem, share your thoughts on where the industry is going in 2012. Just get writing and talking to your audience again.

Updating your blog not only gives your audience something to find and engage with, it gives the search engines something to find, as well. It gives them a reason to revisit your site

4. Get That Contact Form User-Ready

The goal for many service-based Web sites is to guide a customer to that all-important contact form. We need our visitor to fill it out and give us their information in order to continue a dialogue with them. If they leave our site WITHOUT making it to this point, we’ve lost them. Forever. Probably to a competitor.
What does your own contact form look like? If you’re not confident in its ability, you may want to go grab a family member, sit them in front of a computer staring at your Web site, and then ask them to navigate through your site with a specific purpose in mind. Are they able to get there and make it to the contact form or convert? Or do they get scared off along the way?

Your site’s contact form should follow a few rules:

• It should be intuitive.
• It should be simple.
• It should only ask for the information you absolutely need to take a relationship with your customers to the next level.

Where contact forms go wrong is when they either try to get too much information in one sitting or they intimidate your visitor – either due to length, scope or language. Keep it simple, only ask for the information you absolutely need, and you can be confident you have a form that will due it’s purpose.

5. Show Off Your Social Media

Another quick way to add some life to your Web site is to do a better job showcasing all of your different social media profiles. Are you on Twitter? On Facebook? Google+? Have a LinkedIn profile? Sweet. Make sure you’re including a prominent call to action for visitors to follow you on these networks. Include the icons directly on your home page and on other prominent pages of your site (like your blog, About page, or Contact Us page, for example). Not only does cross-linking these profiles increase their strength, it also gives customers another place to go engage with you. They can go to your Twitter account and ask you a question, or see what questions you’re already answering. They can head to Google+ and see the media you’re sharing. Or head to LinkedIn and hop into a discussion you’re leading. These are all great trust signals.

The more connected you can look to your customers, the more they’re going to trust that you’re a reputable SMB that will be around in the morning should something go wrong.

Those are just five small things you can do to your Web site this week to increase its strength and make it more valuable and engaging to a user. What plans do you have for your Web presence this week?

From Small Business Trends

5 Ways To Improve Your Web Site This Week

To help you do just that, below are seven tips for how to use Gmail smarter. Because if you think Gmail is great on its own, you don’t even want to know how powerful it is once you supercharge it.

1. Get a Gmail account at your own domain with Google Apps: Just because you like the simplicity of relying on Google for email doesn’t mean you want @gmail.com to append your email address. You know that customers will trust your business more if they see you have a branded email account connected to your business. They’re looking for that name@yourdomain.com in order to trust your business and that you’re a “real” company. And you don’t have to sacrifice this important authority metric just to use Google. You just have to become a Google Apps users. For five dollars (per email address) a month, small business owners can become a Google Apps users andCanned Responses comes into play. By turning on Canned Responses it gives you the ability to write your message once, save it, and then use it based off certain keywords in your message.

2. Juggle multiple email accounts from one interface: You probably don’t have just one email address. Most of us practically collect email addresses. There’s our personal email, our work email (name@domain.com), the generic company email (info@domain.com), and other email addresses we use for other purposes. But just because you have five different emails doesn’t mean you have the time to be logging in and out of accounts all day. By setting up Mail Fetcher in Gmail, you can download messages from up to five other accounts in one interface to help you centralize all of your email. This way you’re spending your time answering it instead of trying to access it.

3. Use Labels: SMBs can use labels to help organize their inbox and keep them on task. To create a label, select the message you want the label to apply to, hit the Label button in the toolbar (it looks like a tag), and then choose Create New. Once your label is created, you’ll be able to apply it to different messages in your inbox or even nest it under a broader category. This is really helpful in organizing your inbox. You can even then create filters to have certain messages removed from your inbox until you have the time to deal with them.

4. Use Boomerang: Boomerang is a Gmail plugin that lets you take back control of your inbox by giving you the ability to write emails now and schedule them to go out later. Want to respond to an email to get it off your plate but don’t want to have to respond when the other person tennis balls it back to you? Schedule it to go out in an hour. Or at the end of the day. Or perhaps you can’t sleep and you’re answering email at 4am. You don’t have to alert your business contacts to your raging insomnia. Write it now and then schedule it to go out at 8am when the rest of the world is awake. You can also use Boomerang to remind you to check up on people who haven’t gotten back to you or use it for link building.

5. Answer faster with canned responses: Take a look at your email right now. How many emails are waiting for you to write the same answer to the same question over and over again? If you’re like most small business owners, probably a lot. And that’s where Google’s Canned Responses comes into play. By turning on Canned Responses it gives you the ability to write your message once, save it, and then use it based off certain keywords in your message.

6. Reply by chat or video: Or why answer the email with another email at all? End the cycle and take advantage of Google’s option to reply by chat or by video.

7. Mute emails: For emails not sent directly to you (for example, if you’re part of an email group or listserv) you can mute emails that you wish not to see. Perhaps there’s an email discussion going around that you’re no longer interested in or people are all leaving their thoughts on a topic that doesn’t involve your business, by using the shortcut M, you can actually mute the thread to hide the emails so you don’t have to deal with them. It’s like magic.

Those are some ways that I supercharge Gmail to work better. What works for you?

From Small Business Trends

7 Gmail Tips Every SMB Should Know

Because of the success of the original pilot, Google has created a new Business Photos Web site so that small business owners can find a “trust photographer” in their area. SMBs can get started by finding a photographer from Google’s list and then both parties work out a time and price on their own. Within days your photos will then be available on Google’s properties. Google has essentially taken itself out of the equation and is now playing match-matcher between SMBs and photographers.

A few things worth noting about the program:

In its FAQ, Google does disclose that these photos may be used outside of just your Google Places profile, including possible Google Maps integration. By allowing a Google “trusted photographer” to take your business photos, you license the photos to Google to use. This probably isn’t an issue for most SMBs who want their photos out there, but something to keep in mind for certain businesses. If you want full rights to your pictures, you may want to hire your own photographer and not go through Google.

Something else to keep in mind is you won’t have the ability to review the photos before they go live on your Google Place page. Again, from the Google FAQ:

Because of the technology takes individual unstitched and unreviewed images that need considerable processing after they are uploaded by the photographer, to produce the attractive ‘walk- through’ experience, you will not be able to review the images before they are uploaded to Google.

However, if you find a major issue, you can ask Google to blur some areas of the panoramic images. You can also ask to have all panoramas removed, but they’re unable to take down individual ones, which may be a bummer.

Months after our original post, I still think small business owners are better off finding their own photographer rather than looping Google into the process. By doing your own legwork you can potentially find a photographer you can barter services with (allowing you to get the photos for free) and you get full control over how many photos are taken, which are used, and how they’re used. Maybe I’m just paranoid but I don’t see the value of bringing Google into the equation.

However, if you’re interested, Trusted Photographers is currently available in 14 US cities (Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco/Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, DC.), as well as in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France.

Happy photo taking.

From Small Business Trends

Google Makes Business Photos Self-Service

No. Dangerously wrong.

Weber Shandwick recently released a new report called The Company Behind The Brand: In Reputation We Trust [PDF] that breaks down exactly why business owners should be concerned with the online footprint they’re leaving (or not leaving) behind. One of the most interesting parts of the report for me was the finding that any disconnect between corporate and brand reputation triggers a sharp consumer reaction. That means even if your product or service is excellent…if the image of your brand is less than stellar, it will still hurt you.

According to the report, when a consumer learns that a product they like is made by a company they have a negative relationship with (54 percent of consumers responded they’ve experienced this), 96 percent of consumers took some kind of action.

What kind of action?

The most frequent response was that consumers stopped purchasing the product (40 percent). In fact, surprised consumers were twice as likely to STOP buying the product as they were to continue to buy it. And this is a product they originally admitted to liking! That was pretty startling to me. Just as noteworthy – consumers who didn’t immediately stop buying the product went online to try and learn more about the company.

Both of these statements speak to the importance of creating a positive Web presence.

1. Consumers are using social word of mouth, online reviews, and other online content to form a judgment about your company. The judgment they form is then strongly tied to whether or not they decide to purchase your product.
2. When consumers are conflicted, they go to the Internet to answer the “should I trust you” question. They’re then using the information they find about your brand to help them make that decision.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not trying to target a national audience. Local consumers are using the Web to find information about local businesses. It’s up to you to make sure they’re finding the right kind of information.

What should every small business be doing to help build their Web presence?

1. Create a Web site: Your brand Facebook profile or Google+ business page is great. But your business still needs a Web site. Some place where you can talk about your product/services, establish credibility, introduce your team, offer resources, and be found for hyper-local keywords.
2. Blog: There are few better ways to build industry authority than with an active blog. Producing content on a regular basis also ensures there’s always something you can promote and be found for.
3. Get involved in social media: Maybe that means getting active on Twitter or Facebook. Or maybe it means developing a presence on a Q&A site like Quora or participating in a small business networking site like BizSugar. Either way, find out where your audience is engaging online, and set up a satellite community there. Talk to your audience and let them get to know you on a more human level. Just don’t get too human.
4. Get involved in your community: Whether it’s sponsoring your town’s little league team, speaking at local events, or putting together an industry-related group at the local high school, by getting involved in the community that you live in you help to build a positive reputation offline, which can then carry online when people write about your efforts, link to sponsors, etc.
5. Guest blog on relevant sites: Guest blogging is a great way to build goodwill, establish industry credibility, and introduce your company to people in other networks.
6. Solicit & manage online reviews: This is a biggie and it’s only becoming more important. We’re going to sites like Yelp, Google Place Pages, TripAdvisor, etc, to learn how the experiences others had with your brand. Make sure you’re not only doing what you can to encourage customers to leave reviews, but positively responding to any negative or neutral comments that may be there. You not only help save that relationship, but you show everyone else who may find that review in the search results that you’re listening, you care, and that you hear them.

Online reputation management is important for businesses of any size. It’s about creating a positive Web presence to make your brand one that people trust and want to engage with. Because, as the report mentioned above shows, it doesn’t matter how great your product is – if people don’t trust you, they won’t be interested in it.

From Small Business Trends

Why Online Reputation Matters to Small Business

Intrigued? I was.

BrandMyMail is a new startup that helps business owners ramp up their email by allowing them to build customized templates that include hand-selected segments of their social media presence.  Operating through a simple browser extension, BrandMyMail is able to pull the content sources in and include them as part of your messages. Right now that gives SMBs the ability to include Facebook statuses, Twitter feeds, video and photo content from YouTube and Flickr, blog posts from services including WordPress and Tumblr, and eBay content listing the user’s available products directly into the messaging they’re sending to customers.

I took a few minutes to set it up on my personal Gmail account and must admit the process is really easy and creates a very clean template to work from. Here’s a sample template of what the integration could look like:

You’ll notice the content above, a dynamic email signature below, and Twitter and Facebook links on the right-hand side. For a small business owner, this is an interesting application for a couple of reasons.

First, we’re always looking for relevant ways to tie our social media presence into everything else that we’re doing. If you’re spending time working on those social media resolutions, you want to make sure your customers are aware of what you’re doing. You want them to see your tweets, your Facebook updates, what’s new on your blog, what videos you just uploaded, etc. Including this type of content in your messaging gives them something else to interact with and exposes all the different elements of your brand. This is a great way to get it all done in one step.

I also like that SMBs are able to create a variety of templates. For example, if you’re responding to a customer service issues, maybe you want to make sure your YouTube videos are included in the messages so that your customers can see the tutorials you have available and you can even direct them there in your email. Or if you’re sending out an email newsletter, maybe you want to highlight your Facebook feed or make sure they see the products you just uploaded to eBay. This extension gives you the ability to target content based on the message.

Another reason I’m interested in this extension is because it makes your email more interactive. Google allows for some of what BrandMyMail does, but it only pulls in static information. BrandMyMail takes that one step further by almost making your email real-time and syncing your social media activity. And because you get to pick which activity is included, you get to craft a stronger message. I like that.

Right now BrandMyMail works with your Gmail through Chrome or FireFox extensions, as well as iPads and iPhones. Integration into other clients [Hotmail, AOL, Android] are reportedly forthcoming, so keep your eye out for that if you’re nor a Gmail user.

What do you think? Would you use a browser extension like BrandMyMail?

From Small Business Trends

BrandMyMail, A New Way To Integrate Social Media & Email

What is it? It’s your Web site.

Earlier this week, Myles Anderson wrote a great piece for Search Engine Land about the key to converting local consumers to customers. In it, Myles argues that the key to boosting rankings is simple Web site improvements.

Actually, it’s really, really simple Web site improvements.

In an environment where it’s all too easy to chase the next big thing or make things more complicated than they need to be, Myles post reminds us that sometimes our customers’ needs are pretty simple. And that’s pretty awesome.\

To find out what IS important to local consumers, Myles’ company ran a short survey with their local consumer panel and asked them their opinion on four questions related to local business Web sites. You can read the full findings over at Search Engine Land, but I wanted to share a small snippet. To read about all the findings you’ll have to go read his piece, however, I wanted to share one questions

When asked what information is MOST valuable on a local business Web site, the responses shaped out like this:

Hear that? Consumers are on your Web site most looking for

• Pricing information
• Your list of services
• Contact information
• Your address
• Driving directions
• Testimonials

That’s it. Sure, the social profiles and the fancy site features may be nice, but when it comes to really converting a local consumer, the above information is what they’re really after. They’re looking for the basic and most essential information about you so that they can get off your site and make a purchase in your store.

As we head in 2012 with those long To Do lists, keep that in mind. Take a look at your Web site and make sure you’re taking care of those core needs and information points.

If a consumer landed on your site today would they be able to find clear information about your products and your business? If not, then you need to change that. Because all the mobile-friendliness and social media won’t help you if your Web site doesn’t address the questions that a customer would have about your business.

From Small Business Trends

The Consumer Needs Every Site Must Meet

Below are a handful of my favorite infographics for small business owners to check out.  They share a lot of great data, takeaways, and visualize the data we sometimes have a difficult time trying to wrap our head around.

1. A Brief History Of Google Places

For a service as young as Google Places, it sure has gone through a lot of iterations over the past few months. In fact, David Mihm, the wonder boy of local search, felt like there had been SO many changes since April of 2011 that he wanted to see whether he was losing his mind or if Google really had kicked its Google Places product into overdrive.  The result of his wondering is this killer infographic documenting the brief (but busy) history of Google Places. If it was a Places announcement, initiative, interface update or even an algorithmic change, you’ll find it noted in the above graphic.  Small business owners will want to give this one a look to remind them of everything that’s happened and even introduce themselves to some updates they may have missed. And if you have missed some, we certainly can’t blame you.

If you want to go really crazy, there’s even an interactive version that lets you toggle things based on feature releases, SERP/interface changes, etc. Check it out!

2. Web Equity: Owning Your Local Search Presence

This infographic was created by local search expert Mike Blumenthal and I think it’s arguably the most useful infographic available for small business owners. It’s an incredible resource and something all of us could benefit from printing out and tacking up next to our computer. Mike’s infographic details the elements that go into really owning your Web presence online, breaks down all the terms, and gives SMBs a clear action plan for how any SMB can own the SERPs.  I somehow get a “thank you” in the footer, but this is all Mike’s brilliance.

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.

3. Local Search Evolved – MDG Blog

This infographic was created by the folks over at MDG and does a great job showing the evolution of local search and what that means in terms of the actions of local consumers and local search revenue. If you’re looking to build a local search campaign, this infographic offers numbers and behavioral data to help you see not only how lucrative it is to build your search presence, but some of the untapped areas that you may not have thought to optimize for.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

4. The Rise of the SoMoLo Shopper

SoMoLo was identified as one of the hot Internet marketing trends for 2012 and this infographic depicts how current technology trends are creating a new breed of shopper, one that uses different tools, and shows different behaviors and expectations. SoMoLo shoppers know how to use social media and apps to complement their shopping needs. First this infographic created by Commerce in Motion gets you up to date on the trend, and then it provides some tips for how to use it to your advantage.

via

5. BizSugar Asks: What’s Your Startup Style?

Okay, this one falls a little more squarely on the just-for-fun side of things. BizSugar, the business networking sister-site of SmallBizTrends, put together this infographic to help SMBs and entrepreneurs identifying their “start up style”, while also paying homage to the 110 million people who were in the process of starting a business a few years ago. In this one you get to learn a little bit about the people who call themselves “entrepreneurs” and then determine which style matches your own

To learn more about entrepreneur statistics and trends, visit BizSugar.com.

Those are some of my favorite small business-inspired infographics.  Has your company made one? Is there one that you always point people to? Drop it in the comments.

From Small Business Trends

5 Infographics For SMBs to Check Out

Have a local event, training or meet up you want to spread the word about? Here are six ways to use the Internet to your advantage.

1. Talk Early To Generate Buzz

One of the most effective ways to promote an offline event on the Web is to start early and build that first touch of buzz. Maybe it’s a blog post announcing a conference you’ll be speaking at or it’s some early photos as you prepare for your company birthday party or photos of a product you currently have in development. By using social media outlets like your blog, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, to tease people about what’s coming down the pipeline you build awareness for what’s happening offline and create that initial excitement. It’s that first spark of interest that’s going to make someone want to tune in or show up in person to see what the commotion is all about.

2. Make It A Facebook Event

If it’s an offline event, why not make it a Facebook event? Small business owners can create Facebook events around product releases, community events, things happening in-store, and anything else. By doing so you give people a place to gather and talk about what’s going on. You’re able to share information with your audience, take advantage of targeted Facebook advertising, and it can be used to incent others to promote your event in their own networks. After the event, you can also send a call-to-action encouraging users to upload media (photos, videos) from the event that you can host on your Facebook page.

3. Blog About It

In the weeks leading up to your event make sure you dedicate some time to blogging about it. Announce the event, talk about what you’re doing to prepare, host some giveaways or special offers that will be taking place at the event, etc. Blogging about what you’re doing can help get the word out and it also gives people in your community something they can share to encourage their friends to come out, as well.

4. Turn it Into a #hashtag

A hashtag is a symbol used to group or mark related information on Twitter. Hashtags are often created by topic (#business) or by event (#blogworld) to help people find the information they’re after or to associate themselves with something that’s happening on a larger scale. For example, Affiliate Summit is an affiliate marketing conference that just took place in Las Vegas earlier this week. Attendees of the conference used the hashtag #asw12 to talk about what they learned, get information from sessions they weren’t at, or just to meet up at the networking events. Trying to get people talking about an event you’re creating or are part of? Assign it a hashtag and encourage people to use it when talking about the event. Twitter is a great way to connect with people online about your offline event, both before, after and during!

5. Allow People To Register Online

Just because the event is taking place offline doesn’t mean you can’t let people sign up and tell everyone they’re coming via online channels. Use a site like Eventbrite to create an online registration page that you can share, promote, and drive traffic to. Creating this page will also allow others to see who ELSE is attending and give you some social proof to drum up registrations.

6. Use Video

Video is another great way to spark buzz about your event. You can create a video of yourself talking about what’s coming up, film the preparations or even encourage attendees to upload videos talking about why they’re so excited about your event. This gives people something to share and produces a different type of content you can put on your site and show off to visitors.

There’s no shortage of ways small business owners can use the Web to promote offline events. And the earlier you start, the more time you’ll have to

From Small Business Trends

How to Promote Offline Events On The Web

Do you know which side you fall on?

If you’re not sure, don’t worry, you’re not alone. To help you figure it out, below is a short checklist with questions to determine whether your small business is social media-ready or if you still have some work to do before sending out that first company tweet.

1. Do you have a clear reason for being in social media?: One of the biggest business mistakes you can make is to do something just because you think you’re supposed to. And by now, you’ve probably heard a lot about social media and the positive effect it’s had on other people’s businesses. But that doesn’t mean you should give it a shot. Not necessarily.

Before you spend time in social media, ask yourself:

• What are you hoping to get from your participation?
• What business goals will you be able to achieve through social media?
• How will social media aid lead generation?

If you don’t know, then you should spend time figuring it out, not entering the space. Because if increased engagement in social media isn’t going to help your business, then it’s a waste of your time. And if you don’t know what your end goal is, you won’t know if you’re any closer to reaching it.

2. Do you know which social media sites are for you?: You know what you’re looking to get from social media and still think it’s a great fit. Fantastic. But what does that mean in terms of where you should be spending your time? What social media sites are best for your specific purpose? Once you know what your goal is for your participation, identify the best social network for your business, the site that is most geared toward helping you accomplish your goals. You may also want to check your analytics to see which social media sites are already sending you traffic, if you’re not sure. Because while social media is great, not every site is going to speak to your audience, not even the hottest site of the moment. You want to hone in on the site(s) that will.

3. Do you have the resources to continue the investment?: Okay, you know “why”, you know “where” and now it’s time to ask yourself “how long”. How long are you willing to commit resources to being a part of social media? Can you pay someone to blog, tweet and Facebook for you? If not, can you commit to doing it yourself on top of all your other activities? If you’re not and you’re thinking this is something you can do for a few weeks before backing out of it, stop now. Social media is an ongoing process. If you’re not going to stick with it, don’t waste time starting it.

4. Have you carved out a social pipeline?: What are you going to do with the information gleaned from social media? If someone approaches you about a customer service issue or makes a recommendation for a new product or feature, do you have a process for how you’ll quickly get that information to the right person on your team so it can be used? Before you enter social media, create that workflow or pipeline for how you’ll disseminate social media information internally. It will help ensure that you’re getting the most value possible from your social media investment.

5. Is there a social media plan on record?: When jumping in the water, make sure you grab the life vest known as your social media policy! Your social media policy is an internal document that helps a business to navigate the social media waters. It breaks down rules for engagement, how to handle common occurrences, what you’ll do when negative mentions appear, how to start conversations, how to use the different networks, etc. It’s vital to the success of any campaign and I wouldn’t recommend any business enter social media without it.

6. Can you measure it?: Remember, social media is a tool, it’s not a destination. You want to measure your use of social media just like you would measure anything else you’re doing as part of your marketing efforts. Based on your initial goal for social media the metrics you use to judge success may differ from others, and that’s okay. You may choose to track Facebook Likes, ReTweets, change in sentiment, number of mentions, engagement, etc. What’s important is that you’ve decided which metrics are important to your business and that you’re using social media tools to help measure them.

Just because you keep hearing about social media doesn’t mean you’re ready to jump in.

From Small Business Trends

6 Ways To Tell If You’re Social Media-Ready