Social media can be a scary prospect for small businesses; unlike traditional marketing methods, it puts part of the message in the hands of the customers. But while it’s easy to be concerned that the message will go the wrong way, the benefits can outweigh the risks if you use the available services wisely.

The most obvious benefits are increased customer loyalty and engagement. Less obvious but just as important: Your business will gain exposure not through your own advertisements, but through folks who’ve already been patrons. We’re more likely to trust a Facebook  update or Yelp  review from a friend than from the business itself.

We spoke with small business owners and social media managers around the world who have successfully used social media to increase business performance, and we asked them for their stories and their tips. Here’s what we learned.

It’s About Relationships, Not Pitches

The most common advice we received from businesses successfully using social media: Use it to engage your customers in a conversation, not just sell your services. Ideally, social media helps any business become the corner barbershop or bookstore where the owner knows each regular’s name and preferences.

Reid Travis is the social media manager at quick-serve Mexican restaurant chain Panchero’s, which while not exactly a small business, is decidedly the little guy when stacked up to the larger, multi-national fast-food chains against which it competes. “We’re not focused on marketing to our followers, fans and readers,” he says. “Our primary goal is to connect with them.” He says engagement and transparent communication are important assets.

“I feel like companies that practice one-way conversation (the talking-only kind) are pretty much missing the entire point of social media … The best advice I can give from my adventures in the social realm is to listen more than you talk and don’t be scared to let go of the reigns. You’re definitely not going to be able to control the entire message out there; be okay with that.”

Blatz Market & Liquor’s Joe Woelfle employs a similar strategy. He says: “Social media has been pivotal in growing my business. A good portion of my tweets are conversational just to stay in front of my followers as much as possible. However I also use it to gauge interest about new products, run specials, and get the word out about events.”

Woelfle says his January 2010 was up 25% over the same month in 2009 after his first year of social media use. His chief slice of advice? “I would tell other SMB’s to be themselves but be sure to actively engage your followers.”

Social Media Exposure: Better Than Ads and Cheaper, Too

Businesses use social media to gain exposure for their products, services and brands. The alternative is traditional advertising, but social media is uniquely valuable to small businesses for two reasons. First, it’s cheaper. But it also ensures that people are hearing about your business from a source they trust more than an advertisement: friends and family.

Jim Glaub’s Art Meets Commerce does Internet and social media marketing for Broadway and off-Broadway shows with limited marketing budgets. Word of mouth is already essential to these productions’ successes — social media is an extension of that.

Glaub says, “People leave the show and jump onto Twitter to tell their friends how much they liked the show. It’s been especially helpful when people with large followings tweet about it, increasing our followers and exposing the show to people that may not have heard of it.”

He also reports that celebrities will attend the shows and tweet about them, providing even more exposure. Having an active Twitter presence encourages these theater fans to spread the word and encourage their own followers to start tracking the show.

For small business owners, it is important to remember that some people will tweet about you or review you on Yelp whether you have a presence there or not, and what they say might not be positive. You need to be on the ground, ready to deal constructively with any negative exposure. As stated previously, you should be participating in and guiding a two-way conversation.

Alan Lewis, director of special projects at Natural Grocers, has some advice on that front:

“Setting up an effective monitoring system and a couple of accounts on HootSuite () will really help you understand perceptions and misconceptions about your organization or service, and give you a chance to respond conversationally — and with links or facts. What’s more, those people often become your best, newly educated advocates — they appreciate your accessibility and openness to answering their questions.”

Engaging the Local Community

Julee Mertz puts her passion for swing dancing and her business education to work running a vintage dance studio in Chicago called Big City Swing. She and her staff use Facebook and Yelp to attract students and people just looking for a good time to dances, classes and performances.

The staff primarily uses Facebook for its event features. They host a monthly dance and create a Facebook event well in advance. When someone RSVPs to an event, his or her attendance is by default shared with all of his or her friends. That gets the word out. Mertz says:

“We really enjoy the event invitation function. It’s a great way to keep our monthly dance on people’s weekend agenda. We can now project the attendance and plan accordingly based on the number of folks who’ve accepted the invite. It represents a fraction of the actual attendance, but we’re starting to see a helpful, predictable pattern.”

The studio doesn’t use Yelp to organize events — though it could. Rather, the staff uses it as a source of positive recommendations from other customers. “We love and slightly fear Yelp,” Mertz admits. “We pay attention to everything in our reviews. We reinforce with our staff the aspects of our business our clients enjoy and immediately work on issues they report need improvement.”

She believes that the risk of a poor review is outweighed by the power of a positive one. “We post client testimonials that our students e-mail us, but I believe Yelp adds credibility to reviews,” she says. The studio’s website hosts a badge widget boasting of the studio’s 20 five-star reviews. Visitors who click the badge are taken to Yelp where they can read those reviews hosted by a more convincing third-party.

Yelp has become a necessity for local businesses, so be sure to check out our list of tips for small businesses just getting started with the service.

Going the Extra Mile

The above tips cover just the basics. Some businesses go even further to reach the influential, tech-savvy crowd who spend their lives immersed in social media.

Arizona restaurant Liberty Market actually tweets regular customers asking them how the food was, for example. That’s the variety of attention folks expect to get from a small, mom and pop business. It’s a pleasant surprise that this culture can be amplified in an era of greater connection, not mitigated.

Some businesses will be able to clearly see online sales go up in proportion to Twitter followers. Some won’t. Sometimes it can be less about the monthly figures and more about creating a culture that customers will revisit and talk about with their friends. That’s harder to measure, but it’s long-established wisdom for small businesses trying to compete in a market controlled by big corporate chains.

Using social media, you can offer something to your customers that larger businesses can’t. Liberty Market’s Joe Johnston sums it up:

“People ask me if we have ‘made money’ with Twitter. Absolutely yes. But not how most business think. We have solidified loyalty and have our name out there, front of mind. Because of that, many social media meetups use our place. Patience! One has to believe that increased loyalty and awareness are a key to business growth.”

Gist helps you build stronger professional relationships by bringing together information from across the web for all your contacts and their companies giving you the right information at the right moment to get a first meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection. Gist does all the work for you, assembling a dynamic collection of all your contacts and their companies from your email inbox, your social networks, or even your CRM system automatically building and updating their profiles as new content is published – by them or about them.

By Alyse Hart

If you’re a parent you use stories to bond and put your kids to sleep. If you are a seller you use stories to stand out and make your point. Stories are powerful and work well in selling. Listen to radio commercials. I heard a Nordstrom’s shoe sale commercial that sounded more like I was eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends. One raved about the great selection of sale shoes and urged her friend to come down and meet her at the store. And who doesn’t know the Airborne cold product story?  The 2^nd grade teacher created a product because she was sick of catching cold. These stories make us listen. They aren’t pitchy.

"Good plans shape good decisions."
--Lester R. Bittel

Barbara Wayman

Planning is an amazing habit.   It's hard to accomplish things when we aren't exactly sure what we're doing or what success is going to look like.  We are all much faster and efficient at doing tasks when we've set aside some time at the outset to think about the exact outcome we want. 

Even if you've never worked with a marketing or PR plan, or even if you've never seen one, the same principle applies.  Taking some time at the outset to decide what your business goals will be this year and how marketing can help you achieve them can be a very wise investment in your success.

In fact, after over 15 years of doing marketing work I'd say the number one mistake I see business people making with their marketing is failing to have a plan of any kind.  I see people putting attention on their sales, on their team, on their facilities and on their customers, but not envisioning their marketing as an engine that drives it all.  As a result they constantly make important decisions on the fly.  This can be a huge time waster because as you have probably experienced, business owners receive a lot of unsolicited phone calls and emails related to marketing and advertising. 

If you have no plan and an advertising representative calls you with an opportunity, you have no way to judge whether this opportunity will serve your business.  Then tomorrow another rep calls with a different opportunity.  Which one should you choose?  The absence of a plan can create a lot of busy work and distraction in your day when really, if you were to sit down and write up even a basic description of your target customer, you'd be easily able to hold that up to the demographics of each opportunity and see right away if it is a fit for you.  

That's why I always recommend my clients start with a strategic plan.  It will save you time, money and effort as well as get you to your goal more seamlessly and more enjoyably.

Barbara Wayman, president of BlueTree Media, LLC, publishes The Stand Out Newsletter, an award-winning  ezine for people who want to know how to leverage the power of marketing and public relations. Get your free subscription today at www.bluetreemedia.com/ezine.html

©2010 Barbara Wayman, BlueTree Media, LLC.

Grace Smith orginally published on Mashable

The importance of having an attractive website that converts visitors into buyers and helps cleverly promote your small business is essential in these fiercely competitive times.

Your website has to capture a visitor's attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.

With this in mind, here are five current design trends that most small businesses can utilize to great effect.

1. Minimalism

While this web design style has been popular for some time, it's worth revisiting as no small business owner wants to turn visitors away with a cluttered, overbearing and hard to navigate website.

Minimalist design effectively strips away the excess and helps the user concentrate squarely on the content. If a page has too many elements, the user will easily become confused about where to focus on, with many elements vying for attention.

With page weight now affecting your Google search engine position, it's the perfect time to reassess how streamlined your design is.

There are several principles and steps you can follow to create a more minimalist design:

1.  Go through your site and prune any unnecessary widgets or elements which aren't serving a real purpose.

2.  Make good use of whitespace, which is the space between different elements of a design. Used well, it will allow for easier scanning of your site and help frame the elements on each page.

3.  With fewer elements, choosing the right color palette or accent color is critical. As color has great significance and meaning, it's best to test how certain colors interact with each other.

4.  Browse your site through the eyes of your visitors, evaluating if there is too much information, confusing or off-putting elements, or sufficient calls to action. Answering these types of questions truthfully will help you prioritize the essential elements.

A minimalist design doesn't have to be bland and boring; it can easily be modern, fresh, sophisticated, elegant or refined, based solely on the details within the design.

2. Unique Photography

Two men shaking hands, a group of people in suits sharing a joke, the call center girl: these are all tired, clichéd images that litter thousands of business websites. These types of images fail to convey either information on the company or a sense of the site's character, and are essentially meaningless.

Using custom photography or artwork whenever possible is recommended, though for small business owners, both time and budget are limited and stock photos are a relatively cheap and accessible resource.

So when choosing stock imagery, it's best to keep in mind these four tips:

1.  Research your competitors and industry and take note of the images used. You can then find a unique way to represent your product or service.

2.  Avoid being too literal in your choice of imagery as abstract compositions often give a more dramatic and memorable effect.

3.  Don't always opt for the cheaper low-res image, as pixelated imagery devalues your overall design and looks unprofessional.

4.  Veer away from the bland and predictable and let the images 'break out of the box'.

Imaginative imagery will reinforce your brand message and add greater character to your website. So, when you must use stock imagery, do so with great care and take the time to find the right piece that will convey the true personality of your service or product.

3. Bold Typography

Web design at its core is about communication, and typography is a vital component of that. Great web typography helps bring order to information and creates a coherent, visually satisfying experience that engages the reader without their knowing.

A recent trend is the use of big, bold typography which helps to create contrast between other text while grabbing a user's attention. Oversized text can help create hierarchy and ensure users understand your message loud and clear.

In order to utilize typography to create a bold statement, keep in mind the following tips:

1.  Determine the single most important message you want to emphasize, as too many messages can lead to choice paralysis. Understand the qualities of the message you are trying to convey, and then look for typefaces that embody those qualities.

2.  Choose a typeface that will match the character of your work. For instance, if your company embodies the feel of an Old Style font, you should consider Bembo, Garamond and Sabon. It will also greatly depend on what you want to convey with the type, because legibility is as important as the character of the type.

3.  Give the typography the prominent position it deserves by surrounding it with a generous amount of whitespace. This will add emphasis and create even more focus on the typography.

4.  Test out some of the various font replacement options such as Typekit or Typotheque. These allow you to license fonts to embed within your site, and help you to experiment with beautiful typography.

Typography is an art and the decisions you make are subjective; however, carefully selecting a typeface can make a huge difference to the quality of your design.

4. Clear Calls to Action

As a small business owner you want your visitors to complete a certain task when they land on your page. It could be to download, sign up or checkout, but these calls to action are one of the most important (and overlooked) elements in a small business website.

You want to grab your visitor's attention and move him or her to take action. Crafting a clear, concise call to action is essential.

Here are four tips to keep in mind when designing a call-to-action button or advertisement:

1.  Language: Keep the wording short and snappy (always start with a verb), but also explain the value behind the action the user is taking. In some instances it also helps to create a sense of urgency using words such as 'now', 'hurry' and 'offer ends,' with 'free' being the number one incentive.

2.  Positioning: Ideally, calls to action should be above the fold, and be placed on every page of the site in a consistent position. For instance, Squarespace (shown above), not only has a large call-to-action button at the top of the page, but also has a slightly smaller button in the footer of every page.

3.  Color: The color should make the call stand out from the rest of the design. Brighter, more contrasting colors usually work best for smaller buttons. For larger buttons, you may want to choose a less prominent color (but one that still stands out from your background), so as to balance out its size.

4.  Size: The call-to-action button should be the largest button on any given page. You want it to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the rest of the design

It's vital you test different combinations of call-to-action buttons and see how each affects your conversion rates (see A/B Testing below). It's also best to make sure they fit within your overall design.

5. A/B Testing

With competition growing fiercer online, it's important for small businesses to have a website that converts visitors to buyers and creates a competitive edge. That's why it is important to continually measure and improve site performance, usability and conversions.

One of the foremost ways of optimizing your web design is via A/B testing (sometimes referred to as split testing). An A/B test examines the effectiveness of one landing page over another. The two versions are randomly shown to site visitors to see which generates the best results. You then evaluate the performance of each and use the best version.

Various elements can be tested, including, layouts, copy, graphics, fonts, headlines, offers, icons, colors and more. Here are a few tips for A/B testing:

1.  Clearly define your goal before beginning any test. For example, if you wanted to increase sign-ups, you might want to test the following: type of fields in the form, length of the form, and display of privacy policy.

2.  Start with elements that will have the biggest impact for minimum effort. For instance, you could tweak the copy on your checkout button to see if conversions can be improved.

3.  Don't use A/B testing in isolation as this alone won't give you a well-rounded picture of your users. Instead, use other feedback tools, such as Feedback Army or User Testing, in conjunction with A/B testing to get in-depth analysis of user behavior.

A/B testing won't make a bad design great, but it will prove an effective aid in optimizing your current design's usability and conversions until you decide to overhaul your website design completely.

These are just five web design trends that small businesses can take part in to enhance their websites.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In order to positively impact the bottom line through social media, small business owners should look beyond the sales pitch. Today’s savvy business owner maintains a social media presence among other online activities, in order to further brand affinity through their own online endeavors.

Sites like Aardvark, Quora and LinkedIn cater to the business professional seeking out knowledge or educational resources. They are also great for demonstrating expertise in particular areas of interest. By being an active contributor in these communities, you can help make your name — and your company by association — synonymous with a particular field, category or topic.

There’s a also a nice side effect of using these sites that extends beyond building up business acumen on the web. As a business owner, joining newer social sites will help to further introduce you to the influential inner circle of social media early adopters. Making digital connections with this crowd in the professional realm will have long-term business advantages.

Aardvark

Aardvarka startup recently acquired by Google lives by the philosophy that an answer to any of your burning questions is likely just a few degrees of separation away.

The service lets users submit questions and then algorithmically works to find the best possible people in a user’s extended network to answer that question. The algorithm factors in friend relationships and self-selected topics of expertise to scour friends of friends to get the original inquirer a response with a quick turn-around time. It’s also platform-independent, so users can ask and tackle questions regardless of whether they’re in front of the computer or on the road.

Using Aardvark to enhance your own reputation is fairly simple. You’ll want to visit the Profile section of the site to define the topics that you’d like to answer questions about. The more topics you add, the better Aardvark will get at suggesting additional topics that you might be able to answer questions about. Don’t make the mistake of overextending yourself — just pick the topics that you know well and that pertain to your industry or professional niche.

If you make an active effort to answer questions in a timely fashion, you’ll soon develop a reputation as the go-to person for a particular subject matter. Plus, for every question you answer, you’re potentially exposing your business to future advocates.

Quora

Quora is an incredibly trendy startup right now. The site was co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo’s high profile has attracted the tech elite to join and use the site in droves. This creates for an atmosphere where smart people ask questions and receive educated answers from high profile people.

The purpose of the site is fairly straightforward and obvious — it’s a question-and-answer site where anyone can ask a question on any topic, and anyone can answer the questions that interest them. As a Quora user, you can follow people and topics. If there’s a topic you think deserves its place on the site, you can create it.

The site does a remarkable job at surfacing questions that pertain to your interests, as well as surfacing the best answers to questions by crowd-sourcing votes from users. The site also supports endorsements, so friends can endorse you as a subject matter expert for topics.

Using Quora for establishing your own credibility on certain topics is as simple as diving into the site, following the topics in your area of expertise, following people you know or respect on a professional level, and then answering as many questions — with thoughtful answers — as possible.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn  is no longer a small emerging startup like the other two services mentioned on this list, so it will be harder to distinguish yourself among a large user-base. But, LinkedIn is a formidable site with a massive user-base all focused on professional betterment, and that makes it an ideal place for business-focused discussion that other users will appreciate and seek out.

Use the Answers section to demonstrate knowledge in your areas of expertise by asking and answering questions in the categories that pertain to your business. LinkedIn takes an expert-focused approach to highlighting super user activity. It’s likely a super human feat to rank in the top five experts, but shooting for a few “Best Answers” per week is a reasonable goal that will go a long way towards helping you establish your business acumen.

Small business owners should also consider creating or participating in one of the many active on-site groups. These discussion-driven dynamic entities offer another avenue for conversing with like-minded professional users.

 By Ian Rhodes | Published  Today on DuctTape Marketing  | Search Engine Optimization , PPC Advertising , Local Search |

Originally publishes on Mashable Business written by IGLOO, a leader in helping organizations improve business processes, increase employee productivity and enhance stakeholder engagement inside and outside the organization using social technologies.

Brand management in the current era means not just keeping an ever-present eye on the social web, but also engaging in meaningful ways with brand advocates and detractors. Professionals in the field have come to accept social media as crucial to their jobs, but most know that managing a company’s brand on the web is so much more than setting up shop on social sites like Twitter ( )and Facebook ( ).

Here we’ll give you an inside look at the strategies of avant garde industry leaders who’ve spent years figuring out how to move beyond social media hype and implement practical management practices into their daily work routines.

Brad Nelson, Jeremy Thum, Joel Price, Joel Frey and Bowen Payson are all marketers behind big brand names. They’ve done the dirty work. Their lessons and words of wisdom range from finding ways to unify digital assets to knowing your niche, and each tip should be heeded by those looking to follow in their footsteps.

1. Let Someone Else Say It

Starbucks is at the forefront of mastering the social web. The company is one of the most popular brands on Facebook, is adept at social media to drive foot traffic to stores, is a beta tester for Twitter’s Promoted Tweets platform and was the first big brand to offer a nationwide Foursquare special.

Product Manager Brad Nelson is often the genius behind the company’s online and social media initiatives, he’s also the primary person behind the brand’s very popular Twitter account. Much of his day-to-day responsibilities involve online brand management, and as such he’s learned that sometimes the best way to say something on the social web is to, “have someone else say it.”

Nelson advises other brands to take the same course of action. “If you can find a tweet, photo or blog post that says what you’re trying to say then use that instead of writing it yourself. It does a couple of great things. Your readers will see it as an external validator, so they’ll be more likely to respond than they would if it was a billboard on the side of the road. It also makes the original author happy. Everyone wants to see their content get exposure.”

In fact, Nelson says that he tries to “find things to retweet every day.”

Recently the coffee retailer started a Treat Receipt promotion; customers that purchase coffee during the day can return after 2 p.m. for a $2 grande cold beverage. Of course, Twitter is proving to be a great medium to promote the campaign, and Nelson is employing his own strategy by retweeting tweets like this one from @jaredbtaylor: “This whole go to @Starbucks before 2 pm and get a $2 grande drink after 2 thing is pretty sweet.”

2. Unify Digital Properties

Any online or social media brand manager has more than a single audience to worry about. There’s the company website, corporate blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page, YouTube ( ) channel, Foursquare ( ) presence and so on and so forth. Staying competitive in today’s social media landscape means setting up shop where your fans are.

While the go-where-the-people-are strategy is an effective way to reach more brand fans, it’s also the quickest way to dilute the brand as a whole. That’s why as the Director of Interactive Marketing for the Chicago Bulls, Jeremy Thum says that the company is now focused on unification and tying together each of the disparate online identities.

The Chicago Bulls Interactive Marketing Department has been busy redesigning Bulls.com, launching the made-for-web BullsTV and working on social-media driven live fan chat sessions during this past season’s regular and post season games. The team has so many online initiatives that unification — providing “a consistent fan experience” — has become a must when tackling online brand management.

Part of the unification process has been to build BullsConnect — a custom commenting platform with Facebook integration — to create a singular login and commenting experience across their online properties. In the future, they’ll be incentivizing fan activity with a Chicago Bulls points-based loyalty system to draw attention to this unification initiative. Moving forward the team will also work to bring a “Lite” version of BullsTV to their Facebook Page, as well as use it to spruce up their “dormant YouTube channel.”

When it comes to the bigger picture, unification is just one part of the process. Thum says that, “during the last 12 months, we have been focusing on building or re-building our fundamental digital marketing components, unifying them and creating unique opportunities to engage with fans on our web presence.”

3. Leave Your Ego Behind

Social media is very much an ego-driven space. The most successful social media platforms use ego and game mechanics to drive engagement, and both people and brands are often measured in fans and followers. Success is often attributed to retweets, likes, shares and various other influence metrics.

With so much of what happens on these sites fueled by this type of behavior, brands need to be careful when it comes to the employees they trust to represent them online. Social media staffers need to leave their egos behind, says Joel Frey, Travelocity’s senior public relations manager.

Frey is one of the sophisticated minds at Travelocity helping the company engage in social media travel chatter with creative initiatives on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Chatroulette. The company’s day-to-day online brand management strategy is fairly straightforward and involves an aggressive use of popular Twitter and social media application, TweetDeck ( ).

Frey and team are quick to chime in and involve customer service reps when anyone voices a problem or concern. But, Frey cautions against team members acting too rash or letting their ego get the best of them. He also warns against taking a sarcastic tone when speaking with customers online. Both tips seem obvious but are fast-forgotten when reacting with “gut instinct” in the real-time world of social media.

Frey’s policy is to, “treat my interactions with customers on social media as I would with any media interview: I get to the point, I tell the truth and I recognize that a customer’s time is valuable and that it’s important to help them get their issue resolved as fast as possible.”

To avoid any hint of attitude in your tone, Frey also recommends having, “someone proofread your work before you post, especially if there’s any risk that the content might be deemed offensive.”

And as an alternative strategy, Frey has no qualms about sending out Roaming Gnome statues. It’s a “once in a while” gesture the company employs to make a random, “I wish I had a Roaming Gnome of my own” Twitterer’s or Facebook user’s day.

4. Know Your Niche

Like Starbucks, Virgin America is one of a select group of brands testing Twitter’s Promoted Tweets advertising platform. Shortly after the platform first launched in March, the company made a bold decision to announce its expansion to Toronto, Canada entirely through Twitter, using Promoted Tweets to help spread the word.

Clearly, Virgin America felt confident enough in their online brand management skills to pinpoint Twitter as the right medium for their big announcement. Online Marketing Manager Bowen Payson attributes this confidence to the company’s ability to understand their online customer base well enough to reach them in the right ways.

Payson advises other companies to keep it simple and find just the right niche. “There is often the temptation to over-complicate, so keeping things fresh and brand-forward is important, but you also have to keep it clear and targeted to the customers you want.”

Payson dates Virgin America’s niche-focused strategy back to their Boston launch in 2009. Instead of going for a large, broad media push, the airline opted to stay small and focused with their media plan.

“We worked with the likes of Gothamist (Bostonist, SFist, and LAist), going.com, Flavorpill, Boston Phoenix, and Curbed to reach an audience of influencers … It was so successful that we applied this same approach for the Fort Lauderdale and Toronto launches while adapting to those unique markets.”

At the end of the day, Payson says the key to success is “understanding how guests respond differently in niche marketing efforts than other broader efforts. So it is not only about smarter targeting and ad placement, but also about brand and demographic alignment.”

5. Don’t Wallow or Gloat

Social media is exploding in the world of sports. Athletes and teams are savvy to social mediums that inspire fan-reaction, and fans are finding that their voices are amplified with the help of Twitter, Facebook and their online friends.

Sports ( ) fans are an enthusiastic bunch to say the least, and this enthusiasm tends to swell when a team or player is either doing remarkably well or dreadfully underperforming. No one knows this more than the social media manager for a professional sports team. As the San Diego Chargers’ Manager of Internet Services, Joel Price regularly faces emotional outbursts of both love and hate from Chargers fans.

“In sports, you win, you’re beloved. You lose, you can’t do anything right,” says Price.

Price admits that often times the social media team is tasked with trying to bear the weight of a win or loss and “carry everything on their shoulders,” an overwhelming endeavor to say the least. To counteract that pressure, Price advises others to, “Realize you’re the conduit to the organization or company. Some issues can’t be resolved by you, accept it.”

In his own work, Price finds it “delusional” to use social media as way to try and convince fans of success following a tough loss. Price and team hope to inspire Chargers fans to take the “get ‘em next week” attitude by leading through example.

“Emotions run very high in the sports business and nasty things will be said. You might not be able to change everything that people would like, but by at least paying attention, you’ll gain respect for the brand you manage.”

The same strategy should be applied to moments of greatness according to Price. “When you win those big games don’t gloat. Leave that for the fans.”

10 Keys to an Effective Introduction By Cindy Earl

It's often called your "elevator speech, 60-second commercial, or business introduction.

" Explaining who you are and what you do in a way that will generate interest and get prospects asking questions is one of the most effective methods of relationship marketing. However, it is often the most overlooked aspects of marketing your business.

Clearly articulating what you do so that the prospect gets it immediately is challenging and takes time to prepare. Before you attend your next networking event, make sure you prepare by incorporating the following tips in to your introduction.

1. Determine who and what your audience wants or needs first. You should understand the needs or "pain points" of your prospect before making an introduction. Potential customers don't really care about you or your business. They just want to know how you can help them. People want quick, painless, easy solutions to their problems, needs and desires. Make that connection for them and you are in business!

2. Incorporate the prospect's name in one-on-one introductions. You want to show your prospect that you paid attention to their name and that it matters to you. Remember, the sweetest sound to anyone is the sound of their own name.

3. Establish alert eyes and enthusiasm. All of your focus and attention is on the prospect no matter how many people are in the room or standing by.

4. Establish "You and I appeal." Within the introduction your prospect should hear something that clearly indicates what you offer could be a benefit to her. Engage your prospect by "giving".

5. Create a reason for someone to share the news about you and what you offer. You want others to view you as a priority contact, not only for themselves but for others.

6. Be flexible! One size does not fit all! Adapt your language to the individual you are speaking to or circumstance you are in.

7. Look for opportunities to open doors for others! Successful people make things happen for others. They provide access to people and resources.

8. Have clarity and focus. Make sure that others are able to track with your conversation. Your words, body language, and tone of voice must be clear, concise and in sync.

9. Go for the gut and aim for emotion. Most purchasing decisions are emotionally based. Create a vivid mental picture for your prospect and how their pain is relieved by your solution.

10. Practice, practice, practice. It's ok to write your introduction down and practice on different audiences. You should have several introductions prepared to use in any situation.

Happy networking and just remember, everyone is a little bit nervous at networking events. Focus on the person, listening attentively and giving contacts and resources freely. You will be seen as a connector and prospects will seek you out.

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips

Ross Kimbarovsky is the co-founder of crowdSPRING, a community of 43,000+ graphic designers that helps small businesses from around the world with graphic design needs. You can follow Ross on Twitter @rosskimbarovsky and @crowdSPRING.

Capacity – especially to plan and execute effective marketing strategies – is a big challenge for every small business. In this post, I’ll offer 10 suggestions for how small businesses can supercharge their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, I will discuss a basic strategy – for those who simply want to get their toes wet, as well as an advanced strategy – for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. These tips are based on my experience leveraging social media marketing for my company, crowdSPRING.

I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

1. Facebook

Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you should get started right away.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should as soon as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you should also consider securing your company’s username. Be aware, however, that if you reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page (more on those in the Advanced Strategy), so you may want to create a Page before registering your company’s name. Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames, which you can read here.

You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook.

Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account – which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read the FAQ here), however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a “fan” — expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook.

2. Twitter

Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. BusinessWeek’s recent profile of 20 ways businesses use Twitter might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business. You can also check out Mashable’s Twitter Guide.

Next, you should spend 15-30 minutes on Twitter’s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on the service. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as “gift basket,” “gifts,” “gift basket business,” etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they’re on Twitter and if they are, how they’re using it. And don’t forget to search for your small business name – your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that’s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you’ll leverage Twitter for your business.

Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck , Seesmic, and Tweetie . Desktop clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics. For example, I use Twitterfall to identify helpful graphic design and industrial design resources to share with the crowdSPRING community.

3. Company Blog

Although there’s more attention focused today on social networks than on company blogs, blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog – if you don’t already have a custom domain for your business. If you’re comfortable enough to set up your own blog, that’s generally the best way to proceed – although this requires a bit more technical knowledge (many hosting providers offer a 1 step easy setup for blogs that will automatically install WordPress for you). You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com (it’s easier to do, but you don’t have full control over everything that you would on your own site).

One easy alternative is to set up a simple blog at Posterous  – a place to post stories, photos, videos, MP3s, and files. There are pluses and minuses to all of these options – you should take some time to compare them and do what makes sense for your business. I caution you only about spreading yourself too thin.

Advanced Strategy: Now that you’ve decided to start or improve your small business blog, how do you build an audience for it? It all starts with great content. Decide on a focus for your blog, and write awesome content that people will enjoy. For example, some months ago at my company, we decided that we wanted to write more about small business issues, so we’ve been writing original posts focusing on issues affecting small businesses. Think about your expertise and more importantly, think about the things that you’re interested in writing about. A blog requires a long term investment of time (and resources), and you don’t want to be stuck writing about things that bore you.

You’ll also want to consider how you can make it easier for your readers to help promote your content. For example, install helpful plug-ins, such as a TweetMeme  button, which makes it easy for people to retweet your posts on Twitter. Don’t be afraid to experiment with plugins to add to the functionality of your blog, but keep it simple. You want to keep the blog focused, and easy for your readers to use.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn  is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries.

Basic Strategy: Once again, you’ll want to at least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You might also look up your customers and connect with them.

Advanced Strategy: LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.

Another strategy involves the many subject matter groups on LinkedIn. Find some groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations. Answer questions when you can, and help to establish yourself as knowledgeable about specific topics related to your business. There are many small business and general marketing groups that will be very useful resources for you, and if there isn’t a group that interests you, consider starting one.

5. Participate On Other Blogs

It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable. Remember that it takes time to build a reputation and establish your credibility, and you can’t always expect everyone to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go out and build your own credibility and reputation.

Basic Strategy: Identify 2-3 blogs in your industry, or those that focus on small business, and get into the habit of regularly reading the content and participating in the discussions. Whenever you can, try to add value by sharing a personal story about what has/has not worked for you. Get to know the writers – they’ll be valuable contacts for you. One strategy for identifying good blogs is to use Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas. For example, for blogs focused on crafts, you might follow this page on Alltop. If you want to participate in blogs focusing on small business issues, you might start at Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Small Business blogs.

Advanced Strategy: Once you’ve spent some time on other blogs and have participated in discussions, you’ll find that you’ve built a level of credibility and trust, based on your participation. You should consider reaching out to the blog owners and asking whether they’d allow you to guest post an article on their blog (kind of like this post). This is a nice way for you to get in front of a bigger audience, and many blog owners will invite guests to post from time to time. Agree on a topic in advance and provide a draft of your post sufficiently in advance of the publication date to give them an opportunity to review.

Alternatively, ask if they would consider guest posting on your blog. Since you’re looking to attract more readers (and more potential customers), either option works well for that purpose. Don’t worry so much about going after the A-list blogs right away. There are many excellent blogs and it might take a bit of time to build your reputation to such a level that you’ll have opportunities to post in the top blogs. That doesn’t mean you should wait, though – make opportunities for yourself and offer to guest write whenever you can find a new audience. I recommend you read How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse.

6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies

Yelp  publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare  is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to “check in” by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter.

Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you have a restaurant or a retail store, for example, you’ll want to get to know Yelp pretty well. You can set up a business account on Yelp (no cost), which will let you answer questions about your business, track how many Yelp users view your business page, add information about your business, and announce special promotions. Similarly, you’ll want to sign up with Foursquare to take advantage of local advertising opportunities. Using Foursquare, you’ll be able to push promotions to potential customers who’re in the vicinity of your business.

You should also consider other local strategies. For example, you can add your business to Google Maps, or update your listing to include additional details. You can do the same on Bing.

Advanced Strategy: If you believe that your business can truly benefit from a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, or similar networks, you’ll want to do more than just register accounts with those services. For example, Yelp allows you to include a website URL for your business. Nearly all sites will let you upload photos to your profile, and photos will make your profile more trustworthy.

You can also proactively use Yelp and other similar services to promote your business. Ask your customers, friends and family who have used your services for a review on Yelp. You can encourage reviews by running promotions or discounts – offering free appetizers, for example, to a customer who will write a review about their meal at your restaurant (or to one who already wrote a review), or a small discount to a customer who hires you for carpentry work and mentions that they found you through Yelp.

Similarly, you can find ways to promote your business using Foursquare and similar networks. If you have a TV display in your store connected to a computer, you can display the people who are checking in. You can offer specials or discounts to the person who visits your location the most (this is similar to frequent buyer cards that many businesses have used for years).

Don’t forget to also consider how you can improve your use of other basic local strategies. For example, many small business websites are optimized for specific keywords or subject areas, but are rarely optimized for local searches. If you have a gift basket business, you’ll want to be sure that users searching for gift baskets in your geographic area will find you.

7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company

Whether or not you are a party to the conversations, people will talk about your company. How do you monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions?

Basic Strategy: There are five simple steps you can take today to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.

First, set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts are free email updates from Google  search results about any topic you’re interested in tracking. For example, I track, among other alerts, the names of our competitors, the name of our company, and certain other terms I believe are important to my business. Anytime Google adds something to its index that mentions my company or the other terms I’m tracking, I receive an immediate email notification with a link to that item. Alerts can be set up for web, blog, news, video, or groups searches.

Second, review the results in your web analytics data. At my company, we use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.

Third, search Facebook. In August, Facebook rolled out a real-time search engine (the search box is on the top right of any Facebook page). One effective way to take advantage of Facebook search is to search for your company’s name to see who is talking about your company and what they’re saying. In several months, you’ll be able to search Facebook updates directly from Bing , which will be integrating Facebook public updates into Bing’s search results.

Fourth, search Twitter. You currently can search Twitter for real-time results (if you’re not logged in, just go to Twitter’s homepage). One easy way to monitor conversations about your company is to search for your company’s name. You can also currently do this on Bing, which is indexing Twitter updates. Very soon, you’ll also be able to search Twitter updates (and other social media content) via Google’s Social Search (Social Search was rolled out to Google Labs recently, as an experimental product). You can also use Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic to save searches and monitor in real-time whenever someone uses a specific word or phrase in a tweet.

Finally, take advantage of services that will, similar to Google Alerts, push data to you. I use and like BackType, which is a real-time search engine that indexes online conversations in thousands of blogs and social networks. I use BackType primarily to keep up with conversations in blogs. Every day, I receive emails from BackType with links to comments that include the keywords I’m monitoring. Without these alerts, I would be unable to monitor so many blogs, and my ability to respond to posts about my company would be very limited.

Advanced Strategy: If you’re having trouble keeping track of your various search strategies, you should consolidate your efforts and leverage one of the many applications that will help you monitor the social web. I have not personally used these services, but they appear to be held in high esteem by knowledgeable people who have. For example, truVOICE provides keyword monitoring of the social web with an emphasis on blogs and forums, while Radian6 pulls in a lot of information from the social web, analyzes it, and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand. A good resource to learn about paid social media monitoring tools is Mashable’s post Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.

In addition to monitoring, you’ll need to decide how, when, and where you’ll engage in conversations. It’ll be very difficult for you to engage in conversations everywhere, so you should spend some time learning the various networks and deciding where you should focus your efforts. Looking at your website analytics data — if you own an online business — will help a great deal because it’ll help you to better understand where your traffic is coming from. If much of your traffic originates from Twitter and Facebook, for example, you’ll want to spend more time on those services.

8. Multimedia

Multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities.

Basic Strategy: YouTube has been constantly evolving and adding features that make it an attractive social site for small businesses. Although you don’t have to produce videos to participate on YouTube, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re already posting videos to your blog, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience, and embed the video content in your blog posts. YouTube has also been adding more comprehensive activity updates for its users and has made pretty powerful analytics tools available so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your video content.

Similarly, you could start a Flickr  account for your business and post photos of your customers or your products (or both). Flickr offers a place where people can share photos with others, but also has discussion groups, many focused on local markets, that offer additional opportunities for you to market your business. You can also consider setting up your own Internet radio talk show using BlogTalkRadio, which is another way to use multimedia to speak directly to your customers. Get creative with it — own a restaurant? Start a call-in show for people to ask cooking questions. Are you a piano teacher? Perhaps you could start a show to talk about classical music.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies using multimedia are complicated and typically benefit from using experienced consultants. One effective way to leverage video, for example, is to create content that has the potential to become viral. While I don’t believe you can set out to make a viral video (an incredible amount of luck is typically involved), there are a number of things you can typically do to build awareness about your small business using viral video (these strategies are beyond the scope of this post). Once you’ve created good content, you’ll want to distribute it using as many social networks as you can.

When you consider how you can leverage social networks, think about whether each network provides an audience or a technology solution (or both). For example, YouTube provides both a huge audience and a solution for uploading video files. Flickr can also provide both an audience and a technology solution, but not for every business. While your customers might not be on Flickr, you can still use Flickr as a place to store and tag your photos, and then distribute those photos to other social networks where you prefer to invest more time and effort.

9. Maintain Brand Consistency

We’ve discussed only a small handful of social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others, and new ones spring up every day. That means that your customers will have many different ways to find you. But they won’t find you if your brand is scattered across social networks using different usernames and profiles. Let’s review some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across social networks.

Basic Strategy: Usernames and user profiles are already showing up in search results. Do a search for your company’s name on Google right now — if you also have a Twitter account with the same name, odds are pretty good that the Twitter account will appear very high in the search results. This means that having a consistent username across the various social networks is very important. At a minimum, if you haven’t registered your company name on the major networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you should do that today. For many small businesses, their user accounts on social networks will be the highest ranked pages in search results.

You should also evaluate your email and web presence strategies. For example, are you using a Gmail email address when you can very easily be using a custom email address with your company name as your domain? Compare: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it — which looks more professional? Similarly, are you hosting your blog at WordPress.com instead of on your own custom domain? Little details can make a difference.

Advanced Strategy: Things get a bit more complicated when you consider that there are many different social networks, and it’s tough to predict which of them will become popular and which will fail. Use a service such as namechk or KnowEm to see whether your username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it’s not, to see which username could be registered across all social networks.

Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn’t enough by itself. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand speaks with a common “voice” across the social networks. This may be easier said than done. Social networks differ in significant ways from one another and present unique challenges for interacting with customers and potential customers on those networks.

Speaking with a common “voice” doesn’t mean that only one person should execute your company’s social media marketing strategy, but it does mean that everyone who speaks on behalf of your company in social media reflects your brand in a consistent way. I recommend you read Shel Israel’s recently published book “Twitterville,” for excellent tips and stories focusing on how large and small businesses can develop a consistent voice in social media.

10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools

One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should do several things today to cross-market across the various social networks you’re most likely already using. Here are three suggestions:

First, connect your Twitter account to Facebook so that your tweets will appear in your public updates on Facebook. This will let you leverage your time on Twitter to also update your Facebook fans.

Second, connect your LinkedIn profile to your WordPress blog. LinkedIn allows you to publish, in your profile, synopses of the most recent blog posts on your blog. This application will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.

Third, integrate Twitter tools into your blog. I like and use the TweetMeme retweet button on my blogs to make it easier for users to tweet about the blog posts. I also use the ShareThis tool to enable readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies require careful planning/execution and appropriate tools. In nearly all cases, your goal is to maximize the value of your content. For example, if you’re posting videos on YouTube or Vimeo you can blog about those videos on your company’s blog. Then, you can tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which I assume is integrated with your Facebook account). This way, you’ve taken one piece of content and found a way to leverage it across multiple social networks.

You’ll also want to consider ways that you can optimize the distribution to multiple social networks at the same time. Leverage tools to help you do this. For example, Ping.fm lets you update multiple social networks all in one go. Keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your business and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

Conclusion

Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. I hope that the strategies I’ve outlined above provide a starting point for you to explore how you can leverage social media marketing for your small business.

And if you have additional resources to share or other helpful advice that’s worked for your small business (or thoughts about things to avoid), please take a minute and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.