Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Better Blogging

The most common problem associated with blogging is finding the time to do it or being disciplined enough to post information on a regular basis. Another common issue is having good content or interesting ideas to blog about.

To help get you on the path to making timely, interesting posts, try this:

Create a Google Alert for keywords that relate to the topics you blog about. Check the Alerts to link to what other bloggers are saying on these topics and then post your own commentary. Now you have your next blog topic too!

Transfers your comments to your own blog, add more details to develop it further and voila- you've easily created your next blog post!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Many Small Businesses Not Engaged in Social Media

According to a new Citibank/GfK Roper survey, most small businesses are not using social networking tools to market their products and services.

According to the survey of 552 small business executives across the United States,37 percent of small businesses have not used a Web site for marketing or expanding their business and 84 percent have not used ecommerce to sell their products or services. Additionally, 62 percent aren’t using basic email for marketing their business.

So what's holding these small businesses back? Are they frightened or overwhelmed at the thought of taking on social media and don't now where to start? It looks like age may be a factor. According to the survey, 27 percent of those business owners under age 45 had used Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in the past year, compared to 16percent over age 45.

There's a huge opportunity for small businesses to impact their sales through some straight forward tools. If you haven't jumped on the social media bandwagon, start by sending marketing email messages to promote a particular service, discount or holiday promotion. Next, secure your online presence by creating a simple Web site- your prospects and customers expect it. While it may seem daunting at first to tackle Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, there are Web sites and tool that help you integrate all your social media to save time. No budget? No problem- most social media tools are free or very cheap.

Don't lose out on the marketing and communications power that online social media tools can offer your business.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Social Media Integration

Ever wonder how people find the time to manage their Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and other social media site postings and still keep their day jobs? If you're one of the many who finds social media a bit overwhelming, you're not alone!

Here's the key to success when it comes to effectively managing your social media sites: using tools that allow you to link or integrate these sites seamlessly. Functionality varies but in short these tools let you post your status once and all of your social networking sites can be updated. Check out the tools offered by HootSuite, Brizzly, helltxt or Tweetdeck.

As an example, HootSuite is a Web-based tool (no software downloads) that lets you manage all of your social media networks, including WordPress blogs, from one easy-to-use interface. It allows you to schedule updates for any or all of your social networks and then use their analytics to track how many people have clicked on your links. One of the best features of HootSuite is the ability to schedule future Tweets and status updates. So on Monday, you can plan out and schedule all of your Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn posts for the week or even the month!

Cross-post your content and increase your social media efficiency and productivity.