Below are some of my personal favorites and options you may want to consider if you’re thinking cloud storage may be right for your business:

1. Dropbox

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t love Dropbox. Like many of the other cloud storage options, Dropbox offers you the ability to store your files, documents, photos and videos in the cloud and keep them synced with your computer, phone, and online Dropbox account. What really stands out for me is the ease in which all of this happens. I can create a Dropbox folder, invite other people to it, and it’s as if I’ve created that folder directly on their computer. Other sites many offer similar sharing options, but it’s the simplicity of Dropbox that has made it such a crowd favorite.

Dropbox offers tiered pricing plans which begin with a free 2GB option and extend all the way to a team pricing model offering 1TB of storage. If you’ve wanted to incorporate cloud storage into your business, but weren’t sure how to get started, I’d recommend doing so with Dropbox.

2. SugarSync

SugarSync is a great service for business owners who will be heavy on the file syncing. With SugarSync, you can backup, sync, access and share all your files on-the-go, instantly and securely from virtually any device. It learns the way that you organize your files and folders so that if you’re working on a report from home, it will be synced and in the right folder when you head into the office tomorrow. For a frazzled SMB, that’s a neat benefit. SugarSync also boasts a number of pretty intuitive features and value adds like robust file sharing capabilities, an admin dashboard, optional password protection, and integration with Microsoft Outlook to help business owners manage their businesses from where they are and do it securely.

SugarSync offers a number of pricing plans for individual use, as well as a powerful small business option.

3. Bitcasa

Bitcasa differs slightly from other cloud storage applications in that instead of copying your data to the cloud, Bitcasa gives you unlimited storage directly on your desktop by “cloudifying” that folder. Once you do, you’ll be able to save as much data into that folder as you want. No external hard drives. No buying more storage space. Nothing. Also, when you share “cloudified” folders with team members (or, you know, family and friends), that folder will immediately appear on their desktop so that they’ll have instant access to it. You don’t have to wait for the whole folder to download. Sending large files is also now made a breeze, with SMBs being able to send terabytes of data by just right clicking any cloudified folder.

Currently, users can only sign up for a private (and free) beta account for Bitcasa but there are more “pro” options in the works. I’ve heard lots of good things about Bitcasa from friends already in the beta, so this is one I definitely have my eye on.

4. Google Drive

The long-rumored Google Drive was finally introduced to the world and users at the end of April. With Google Drive, business owners can once again seamlessly access all of their data regardless of where they are or what device they’re working on. Business owners who currently rely heavily on Google services may find a certain ease with Google Drive, as it’s essentially a more powerful version of Google Docs. It brings together Google services like documents, spreadsheets, images and more and puts them in one place so you can collaborate with team mates. And because it’s Google, you can easily search for documents based on keyword, file type, and even browse through scanned documents.

However, because it’s Google, it also comes with some scary privacy concerns. Like the fact that Google can use and/or modify whatever you upload whenever they want. That’s not exactly winning it fans with the small business crowd.

If you want to give a try, you can get started with 5GB of storage for free or choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month.

Those are just four of the cloud storage applications getting a lot of buzz right now. Which one are you partial to? And how has cloud storage changed the way you do business?

Cloud Computing Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

4 Cloud Storage Options for SMBs

It’s no secret that I’ve long been a fan of Google Analytics. For a consultant or small shop looking to monitor keywords or keep their ear open to conversations, Google Analytics provides a simple, yet powerful, way to do that. However, with the new data tucked inside the new Social reports, you can now get your Google Alerts data directly in your analytics. It’s a one stop shop!

Over on the Google Analtyics blog, we hear about new ways to expand Google Analytics Social Reports and track links (aka trackbacks) to your site content directly from your Analytics console.  By monitoring trackbacks, webmasters learn who is linking to their sites and which content generates the most links. This is invaluable insight for any content marketing strategy.

To access the reports go to Traffic Sources -> Social -> Source and click on any data hub partner (Google+, Blogger etc.) Above the graph a tab named “Social Referral” will be selected, click the next one “Activity Stream” and in the top selector hit trackbacks.

From there, you’ll get an automated list of all the sites that are linking to your content. Use the data to thank the author for mentioning your content, keep track of what content is being most passed around, or to use it to build a larger influencer list.

According to Google:

These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.

I couldn’t agree more. While setting up Google Alerts was already an easy way to help site owners keep track of links and mentions, putting this information directly into their analytics data makes the process even easier. It’s also a great incentive for sites who haven’t set up analytics on their Web sites to do so.

But it’s not just links you can track via your analytics, you can now spot the actual conversations happening, in near real-time.

To use Google Analytics as a conversation tracker, go back to the Activities Tab screen and select Conversations. Once on this tab you’ll get an interactive look at how your content is being shared on Google’s social network, as well as the specific users who are doing the sharing.

Those are the people talking about your brand in the wild. In the drop down on the right, select the option to View Activity, Google will take you directly to the page where the comment happened. From there, you can interact, answer a question, thank a user for the mention, etc.

This is incredibly powerful information now sitting perfectly (though a little hidden) in your analytics. Currently, this information is only available for Data Hub providers, but with any luck Google will be able to expand it soon.

Alert Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

Find Link Alerts Directly in Google Analytics

Google revealed several new changes last week which have been implemented to help SMBs and enable the follow actions:

• Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once
• Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors
• Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface
• Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link

Google has also uploaded two tutorial videos to walk both new and verified users through the process.

Tutorial for new, unverified users

Tutorial for Verified Users

If you’ve visited your Google Places dashboard recently, you may have already noticed that it went through a makeover. Personally, I find the updated dashboard considerably more user-friendly and intuitive. I especially like how easy it is to find listings with errors. The easier it is to spot errors, the easier it is to fix them!

If you’re a business owner with 10 or more locations and you’ve been avoiding uploading and/or correcting your information on Google Places because it was too much of a hassle or you weren’t sure where to start, these new upgrades and the accompanying videos help remove both of those obstacles.

We’ve said this many times but taking the time to ensure that all of your online business listings are claimed and showing correct information is one of the most powerful things you can do to build your Web presence and your offline customer base. Nearly 20 percent of all Google searches are users accessing Google Place Pages – that adds up to millions of searches a day! If a user can’t find you or it looks like your information is incorrect, they’re not going to keep trying. It’s going to deter them away for your business and push them toward your competitor. This isn’t something you can afford.

The release of this new tool from Google is a good reminder of how important it is to claim and optimize all of your business listings. If you haven’t checked to make sure they’re accurate, use today to do it.

Consider it a little Spring cleaning as you:

1. Claim your Google Place listing (and all other online business listings)
2. Make sure the information is as accurate as possible and that it’s consistent with what else is out there about you on the Web. It’s vitally important that you align all of your listings and allow them to work FOR you and show your relevance.
3. If you have already claimed your Google Place listing, work on optimizing it. Add some new Google business photos/videos. Update your keywords. Start thinking up new ways to build reviews or point people to your page. Don’t leave it static.

The updated Google Maps Bulk Listing management tool is great for businesses for with 10 or more locations, but even if that’s not you, it’s also an important reminder that these listings matter and that Google is looking at them hard to determine relevance and search placement. If it’s been awhile since you’ve optimized your Google Place listings, give it another look. It could be the difference between showing up and being invisible to your audience.

From Small Business Trends

New Bulk Listing Management Tool From Google Places

If you’ve heard the buzz surrounding Pinterest but weren’t quite sure how to jump in and take advantage of it, keep reading. Below are some handy starter tips that every small business owner can use to build an audience via Pinterest.

Getting Started

If you don’t currently have a Pinterest login, you’ll have to request one as the site is still invite-only. Luck for you, it shouldn’t take more than a few days for Pinterest to send you an invitation to join. Once you get it, you’ll be asked to log in with either your Facebook or Twitter account. Don’t worry too much about which to choose as you’ll have the option later to switch it or to have your account tied to both.

With your account created, go into your Settings and take some time to fill out your profile. You’ll want to set your email settings, fill out your About section, include a Web site and then decide how you want Pinterest to interact with your other social media accounts.

Do you want all of your pins to sync to Facebook? Do you want to link your Twitter account? Depending on how you plan to use the site, this will change. If you’re not sure yet how you want your pins displayed, don’t worry too much. You can always come back and edit these settings.

Create Unique, Interesting Boards

Life on Pinterest starts here. When you start creating boards, focus on putting together boards that show off the lifestyle and beliefs behind your brands, not your actual products or services. The key to mastering Pinterest is to realize that it’s less about promoting your products and more about promoting how you do what you do and how you see yourself in your market. That means creating boards to show off your company beliefs and culture, not your inventory.

For example, maybe you’re a local catering company. If so, you may want to have boards related to:

• Healthy Eating
• Buying Organic
• Going Local
• Green Living
• Family Picnics
• Dinner Recipes
• Holiday Recipes
• Food Mentors

These types of boards are related to what you do in your day-to-day business, but they also go a step further to show people what you believe and what you represent. That’s what users are looking for.

Do your best to come up with creative and compelling board names, as these will get shared when people pin your content. Similar to titling your blog posts – putting something eye-catching in there will help your content spread faster.

Assessing Your Pin-able Assets

This is where many business owners start to freak out. Don’t! It’s easy to think that if you’re not in the business of pretty or quirky pictures that Pinterest can’t work for your brand. But it absolutely can! Every site has visual assets that they can take advantage of. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box. For you, pinable content may come in the form of:

• Infographics or other data visualizations
• Video stills that link off to media where you appear
• Covers of books or eBooks you’ve written
• Eye-catching visuals for blog posts
• Images of customers using your products
• Images of how your product could be used

Take a look through your site to identify assets you already own. Once you do that, think forward to brainstorm new ways to incorporate visuals into your Web site. For example, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using images in every blog post or newsletter article you’re creating so that you (and your readers) will have something to pin. Maybe you’ll want to build more data visualization into your content strategy or focus on creating things that lend themselves to visuals. Build the assets you’ll need later.

Get Your Team Involved

One of the fun features Pinterest offers is that you can add contributors to any of your boards to help keep them updated and engaging. As a small business owner there are a lot of neat ways to take advantage of this. You can:

• Add employees as contributors to boards about company culture
• Add frequent blog commenters/community members to boards related to content/ industry finds
• Add your executive team as contributors to charitable pursuits.

The more people you get involved, the more life you’ll add to your Pinterest account and the more others will want to follow what you’re doing. To add board contributors, go to the board you want to add a contributor to and click Edit. On the board’s settings menu, select “Me + Contributors.” You must follow at least one board belonging to a user in order to add him/her as a contributor. Once you’re there, start typing his/her username into the text field. Once potential matches begin to load, click Add when you see the person you want to add as a contributor. Then save your settings.

Build Followers

The best way to build new followers is to become an engaged Pinterest user. That means following other users, pinning content, repining content others share, etc. Each time you follow someone or engage with their update on Pinterest, by default, they’ll receive a notification email letting them know. This is a good way to build up your followers because, if you have good content, they’ll check you out once they see the email and follow you back. It’s also a good way to show others that you’re interested in the community and what other people are sharing.

If you’re looking for potential people to follow OR simply looking to understand what type of content you should be following, try going to http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitehere. This will show you what content on your domain has already been pinned and whose pinning it. You can also do the same for competitor URLs to see who is pinning and sharing their content.

Promoting Your Account

Once your account is set up, you want to do your due diligence and promote it so that your audience knows it exists. This may include adding a Pin It! button to your blog posts so content can be easily shared, syncing your Pinterest account to Twitter and Facebook, encouraging people to subscribe to your Pinterest RSS feed, mentioning your account in company promotions/emails, etc. The more ways you can make Pintest part of your marketing efforts, the bigger the account will grow and the easier it will be to make content spread.

The above tips are designed to help any small business get involved with Pinterest. How are you using the site to market your business? Any lessons you want to share?

From Small Business Trends

Small Business Pinterest Starter Guide

It was announced yesterday that Facebook will be rolling out two new webinar series aimed at the small to mid-sized business community. Both tracks will be held in the virtual Facebook Classroom and will be aimed at business owners with different skillsets.

Weekly Tuesday Webinars: Beginning on Tuesday, May 15 at 9:30 PDT, Facebook will being hosting weekly Tuesday webinars designed to introduce business owners to the Facebook advertising platform. These webinars are intended for newbies who don’t yet have experience using Facebook ads.

Bi-Weekly Wednesday Webinars: Starting Wednesday, May 9 at 9:30am PDT (that’s today!), Facebook will host a bi-weekly Wednesday webinar series designed to educate small to mid-sized businesses and agencies on best practices and new ad products, such as Offers and real-time Page Insights. The schedule and themes for the Wednesday webinar series are listed below:

May 9th, Overview of Facebook’s 4 Steps to Business Success
May 23rd, Step 1: Build your Page
June 7th, Step 2: Connect with fans with Ads
June 20th, Step 3: Engage your fans with quality content
July 5th, Step 4: Influence the friends of your fans

Facebook says that the goal of these webinars is to better arm businesses – those both new to Facebook and more experienced – with the latest tips and product information. These sessions will also take questions from viewers to address specific inquiries businesses may have, so if you’ve been having difficult wrapping your head around any of Facebook offerings, make sure you show up armed with questions.

Good on Facebook for being proactive about educating small business owners on all the different options available to them through the Facebook platform. This announcement comes right on the heels of Facebook Offers being rolled out to Local US Businesses, so it’s important that SMBs feel like Facebook understands their needs and shows how its products can help address them. Whether it’s learning how to use Facebook Offers or still getting acquainted with the powerful targeting options through more traditional Facebook advertising, there’s a great opportunity for small business owners to grow their businesses via Facebook. The more Facebook can step in and help educated its audience, the more everyone – Facebook, SMBs and customers – benefit.

Whether you’re totally unfamiliar with Facebook’s ad platform or you’ve been waiting for the perfect excuse to give it a try, these webinars should serve as a great way to get your feet wet and learn a little bit about the opportunities that await for you on the site.

Will you be tuning in?

From Small Business Trends

Facebook Launches SMB-Focused Webinar Series

From Small Business Trends

6 Ways Small Business Owners Can Use Slideshare

For me, getting more comfortable on Google+ meant settling in, adjusting to site-specific features, and finding different ways to attract my audience. Sure, Google+ may have features similar to other social media sites, but that doesn’t mean they work the same way.

Below are 6 ways I’ve found success using Google+.

1. Grab Readers’ Attention With Formatting

Content may reign supreme on the Web, but the formatting of that content comes in a very close second. After all, if a user can’t process your information because of display or readability problems, it doesn’t matter how great it is. They still can’t read it.

The same rule applies here. On Google+, content passes by at lightning speed with new content constantly pushing down the content that came before. To stand out, you need to format your updates for prime readability and visibility. By doing so you increase your chances that a reader is going to find and want to read your content. As a publisher, it also gives you more control of your content and the message it’s sending to users.

To make your updates pop in a user’s Google+ timeline, use formatting hacks like:

• *text* to bold the selected text.
• _text_ to place that term in italics
• -text- to add strikethough

It may seem trivial, but often the difference between a headline that gets read and one that doesn’t is its ability to be seen.

2. Incorporate +Mentions & #Hashtags

Let’s be honest here, we’re all on Google+ for one reason – to increase our visibility and brand awareness. Lucky for us, Google+ provides two great features to help us successfully do that.

• +Mentions: A +Mention on Google+ is similar to @’ing someone on Twitter or tagging them on Facebook. Its functionality designed to let a person or brand know that you’ve mentioned them in the hope that they’ll share your content with their own audience or engage directly on your page. To tag someone on Google+ and get their attention, simply type +[their name]. As you type, you’ll notice that Google will propagating a list of people for you to select. Just make sure you click the right one.By tagging people and letting them know you’ve featured them or their content, you increase your visibility and get yourself on their radar.
• Hashtags: Hashtags have become an important part of Internet culture almost overnight. From Twitter to television, we’re starting to see them everywhere as they help us follow online conversations. When you insert hashtags into your Google+ status updates, Google will automatically link that hashtag to the search results for that query. By pairing your status updates to high-traffic Google+ queries, this can help your updates attract more attention.
  For example, if you write a post about marketing lessons from American Idol, by using the #americanidol hashtag in your update, it makes your content more findable to people searching for news on that topic.

3. Visuals Work

Want to become a Google+ ninja? Make sharing images an important part of your content marketing strategy. It doesn’t take much perusing around Google+ to notice that this is one social network that places a large emphasis on photos. And it makes sense that they would! As content consumers, we love sharing photos because it’s easy to consume. Be aware of that as you build your Google+ content marketing strategy. Look for opportunities to create unique images to go along with blog posts or the content you’re sharing. Or share photos of others – maybe asking users what their favorite business books are, sharing what your staff is up to today, giving people a sneak peek at your new office space. We love this content.

4. Break Out The Archives

As I mentioned earlier, life moves pretty fast on Google+. Content publishers are constantly updating their timelines and users are logging in at different times to access their stream. For businesses with years of archives or who live to aggregate content, this provides a great opportunity to recycle content they’ve already produced or shared. Have a post from a year ago you think deserves new legs? Share it on Google+. Have an article on your site that you noticed has been getting a lot of search traffic? Share it! Want to use Google+ to share your Best Of posts? Do it! Those of us who have been creating content for years suddenly have a new way to bring life to old posts or images that before were just collecting dust in our content archive.

5. Partake In Targeted Sharing

Perhaps the most awesome thing about Google+ is the ability to share targeted content with segmented Circles you create. You get to define your audience in your own words and then cater content specifically designed for them. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Only more effective.

If you haven’t optimized your Google Circles yet, it has to be Step 1 of creating your Google+ presence. SMBs may want to have Circles such as:

• Customers
• Vendors/Partners
• Local Businesses
• Industry Thought Leaders
• Blog Commenters
• Future Client Wishlist

Once you have your circles, make them public and let people be a part of what you’re building.

6. Start a Real-Time Think-Tank

As a content publisher, I can’t help but think one of the coolest things about Google+ is the ability to have conversations in real-time with my audience. I can post a question, a potential blog topic, or just a random thought to my wall and, in minutes, get dozens of responses. As a business owner, this is very useful. It can be useful to test content ideas before you dedicate time to expanding on them, to see what products/services your audience would be like to see, or serve as a thought leader think-tank space. For me, this is one of Google+’s biggest strengths – real-time conversations without any annoying character limitations.

Above are some of the techniques that have helped me see value in Google+. What have I missed? Have you boarded the Google+ train yet or are you still hanging out at the station?

From Small Business Trends

6 Content Marketing Tips For Google+

The good news is you probably weren’t using PostRank or aware that it even existed. And that’s okay. Because the even better news is that last month Google released new Social reports into Google Analytics to help you hold on to all the metrics you actually cared about. So you’re social data isn’t really going anywhere. In fact, it’s more convenient to access than ever.

If you weren’t familiar with PostRank, it was a great service acquired by Google last June. It allowed content producers to understand their content better by “scoring” it based on the number of comments it received, links, mentions, tweets, and other social media metrics. If you were a small business owner, this kind of social data was invaluable in understanding the types of content your audience was interested in seeing and how users were engaging with it across the Web. But PostRank is no more.

However, site owners and content producers shouldn’t be sad. With Social reports from Google, you’ll still be able to take advantage of valuable social insights. Last month Google announced the release of a new set of Social reports inside Google Analytics. According to Google designed to help SMBs:

• Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
• Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

How will it help you accomplish all this? With the help of five new reports.

1. The Overview Report

The Overview report will allow small business to see what they’re most interested in – the impact social media is (or is not) having on conversions.

With the Overview report, SMBs can easily visualize which social channels are performing the best, which need some work, and where conversions are coming in the process. With this information, business owners can assign a monetary value to the social media and understand ROI.

The Overview report breaks conversions down by Last Interaction and Assisted Social Conversions. In the report above, you’ll notice the dark blue circle shows you when social media was the last interaction between a user and a conversion, while the lighter blue circle shows where someone interacted with your brand via social media but didn’t convert until a later date.

2. Conversions Report

Before we can talk about the Conversions report, we need to have a conversation about Goals. Yes, that’s Goals with a capital G.
Goals in Google Analytics give SMBs the ability to tie actions to objectives and measure them on your site. For example, maybe you’re trying to increase engagement on blog, which you judge by the number of blog comments you receive. One way to measure this would be to keep track of each time your Thanks For Commenting Page is displayed, the page you show each time someone comments on your blog. By creating a Goal around that page, you can measure engagement on your blog. If you’re not currently taking advantage of Goals, I’d recommend reading this post from Google about how to set up Goals in Google Analytics

Now back to the report!

With your Goals identified and set up, the Conversion report allows you to measure how each of your social channels is contributing to your Goal success by giving you a site-specific conversion rate. This will help you identify what kinds of content leads to Goal completion and what your ROI looks like for each social network.

3. Social Sources

The Social Sources report does exactly what you’d expect – it helps you visualize how users behave depending on what social network they’re visiting your site from. With this report, you can see if people who interact with your content on Twitter lead to a desired outcome or if they’re too scatterbrained to make it all the way through. You can also use this report to determine what types of content do the best on which network. For example, maybe your Facebook fans are more likely to convert but your Twitter followers are most likely to share a piece of content. Knowing this can help you build out site specific content strategies that you can use in the future.

4. Social Plugins

If you’ve ever stared at your blog wondering if people even care about the content you’re producing or if you should try something else – this report is exactly what you’re looking for.

The Social Plugins report lets you measure the effectiveness of your content based on how many shares it’s getting via the different social networks and on which networks it is most popular. Again, this is invaluable information while you build out and tweak your content strategy. You may also be surprised to find out that a particular social network is more successful than you thought it was. I know many business owners are discovering this about Pinterest.

Another way to use this report? To help decide which social plugins you want to display on your Web site. Stop making your blog look like NASCAR.

5. Activity Stream

While the other Social reports listed above will show you the level of social activity on your site, this report focused on how people are engaging with your content across the greater social Web. Google will show you the URL for the piece of content shared, how it was shared, where it was shared it, and what a user said about it when they shared it with their community. Being able to easily track engagement off your site is super valuable. Not only does it give you the chance to spot content ripples, but since it also shows you the names and faces of the people sharing your content, it gives you the information you need to track your brand’s influencers. Currently Google is able to track content shared on Google+, as well as a number of hub partners including Blogger, Delicious, Disqus, Livefyre, Reddit, and others.

Social media ROI is the Holy Grail we’re all working toward. By taking advantage of the new Social reports inside Google Analytics, we can all get just a little closer. Google tells us Social reports will be available for all users over the next few weeks under the Standard Reporting Tab. I’d encourage you to take a look.

From Small Business Trends

Goodbye PostRank, Hello Google Social Reports

To help those that may be stuck, below are nine types of tweets to try and incorporate into your Twitter strategy. If you don’t know where to start, start here:

1. Questions: Whether you’re looking for a new social media tool or you want to know if The Three Stooges is worth bringing your family to this weekend, sending out questions to your Twitter followers is a good way to engage them and show them that you value their opinion. Ask questions related to good people to follow, product ideas, blogs to follow or anything else related to your business. This kind of intel not only increases engagement and starts conversations, when used properly it’s an invaluable way to get instant feedback related to your business.

2. Information Sharing: One of the most valuable ways to use Twitter is as a platform for information sharing. This refers to sharing content that is NOT created by you, but that you think your audience can benefit from. Tweet links to interesting articles you read, industry research, studies or anything else you think your audience would enjoy. Sharing and talking about interesting content is a great way to start new conversations and attract new followers. By making yourself the source of their content aggregation, you brand yourself as helpful and worthwhile to their Twitter stream.

3. Solve Other People’s Problems: Spend a few minutes on Twitter and you’ll inevitably find people asking one another for help. One Twitter user wants a recommendation for a Twitter app, another has a question about mobile marketing, another wants to know if Pinterest is really worth all this hype. Find a question you feel confident to answer and then hop into the conversation. Solving other people’s problems is an effective way to brand yourself as an expert, helpful, and the type of person people want to follow. It’s also a great way to form relationships you can use down the road – like for potential guest posting opportunities or partnerships.

4. Opinions: You read that article everyone is tweeting around and you hated it. You thought it represented the absolute worst in your industry. Use Twitter to share your opinion. Or you read that white paper about how your industry is changing and now you’re feeling really inspired. Tell people about it. By using Twitter to share your opinion and give people that unique insight into your head, you give them something to relate and connect to. This is how people get to know one another. Don’t be afraid to let it all hang out every now and then.

5. Link Promotion: Yes, it is absolutely fine for you to use Twitter to tweet links out to your own content or promotions you’re running. If you’re investing time on Twitter, this is something you’ll want to do. Just make sure you’re balancing it out with all the other value you’re providing to your audience. We’ll handle a little self-promotion as long as we’re getting something for our effort.

6. Community Highlighting: One of my favorite ways to use Twitter is to highlight people in the community who are doing or saying cool stuff. Maybe someone left a really insightful comment on your blog post. Or someone in your community just released an eBook you want to share. Or maybe one of your long-time commenters was just accepted to speak at an industry conference. Use your Twitter feed to give them an attaboy and share their accomplishment with your audience. By lifting others up around you, you brand yourself as a great community member and you assert yourself as the type of person people want to know. You, of course, also build goodwill with that person you’re promoting.

7. Conversation: People are talking all around you. They’re talking about marketing their business as much as they’re talking about what they’d like to have for lunch. Get in there and become part of those conversations! By jumping into organic conversations happening on Twitter, you show that you’re part of the larger community and not just interested in yourself and your business. It’s also how you form relationships that you’ll be able to use in the future. Once you go from “stranger” to “friend” in someone’s circle, you open up a whole new door of partnership possibilities.

8. RTing information: Don’t have much to say for yourself right now? Fear not, why not seek out some great content others are sharing and then ReTweet it to your followers? This again reinforces your role as a content aggregator (someone we all need in your Twitter circles) and it can help you get on the radar of that content creator.

9. Slice of Life: What are you thinking about right now? What do you want for dinner? What song just came on that changed your whole day? What movie can you not get enough of? Share it with your Twitter followers. While I wouldn’t make these types of “slice of life” tweets the dominant content you’re sharing, they certainly serve a purpose and help to make your account feel more human.

Above are nine tweet-types that I’d encourage very small business owner to try and work into their strategy. Any that I’ve missed? Which work best for you?

From Small Business Trends

9 Tweet Types For Your Twitter Strategy

Whether you’re in the process right now of trying to build your team or you simply aspire to one day being bigger than yourself, below are some tips to help you grow a smarter SMB team.

1. Assess Your Skills

Knowing the skills you’ll need to hire for means first understanding the skills that you (and possibly your existing team) already bring to the table. For example, maybe you’re great at customer service but you’re terrible at marketing. Or maybe you’re awesome at using social media tools to connect with people, but you can’t keep your books straight for the life of your business. Start creating lists of skills – skills you have, skills you can acquire, and skills you’d need to hire for. Once you know what skillsets you’re looking for, prioritize them to help you identify what is most important to your business.

2. Seek Out Referrals

Once you know what roles you’re looking to hire for, put it out to the universe. Talk to the people in your community and your local network about the types of people you’re looking for. Post the required skills on LinkedIn or Twitter and see if anyone in your network can help. Talk about in in the online groups that you’re part of. I’m always surprised by how easy it is to find the perfect person as soon as you let people know you’re looking for them. The world is smaller than you think.

3. Go Online Talent Shopping

If your local referrer network wasn’t able to come up with a match, it’s time to go online talent shopping yourself. One of my favorite tools for this is LinkedIn’s Advanced Search.

With LinkedIn’s Advanced Search you can hunt for potential employees by experience, industry, salary, job title, current company, previous company, etc. Better yet, you can then narrow it down to employees living within 50 miles of your storefront, helping you focus on the people who could actually come and work for you. Once you have a list of people you’d like to get an introduction to, see who in your network is already connected to these people or what groups/ associations they’re a part of. This is a really great way to get your foot in the door with an applicant who could bring a lot of value to your business.

4. Find Shared Values

But finding a great new team member for your SMB isn’t just about the skills they may have on paper. It’s about finding someone who thinks like you do and who values the same things that you’re trying to instill in your business. Getting that “culture fit” right is invaluable in helping to avoid potential pitfalls later on. If a person doesn’t match what the rest of the company believes, then they’re not a good fit for your business. No matter how impressive their resume may be. Use your gut and look for people who show a history of action, being a team player, and who appears receptive to challenges.

5. Trust them

Once you find that person who compliments your team’s skillset, get out of their way and trust them. Sure, put procedures and policies in place to help make them accountable, but avoid your instinct to hover over them to make sure they’re doing things “your way”. Delegating does not mean hiring Mini-Yous. It means creating a more diverse team. Get comfortable with that.

Even the most-skilled CEOs will eventually need to invest in growing his or her team. You can’t do everything. By carefully and deliberately putting together a team of complimentary skillsets, you help set yourself (and your business) up for success.

From Small Business Trends

How to Grow A Smart SMB Team