Blogging for Business Success, reprint by Cape Cod Video Search

5 Tips to Blog Content Success


Lorrie Thomas , Web Marketing Therapy , Santa Barbara, CA - Sep 28, 2010



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posting high quality content via blogging helps organizations reap multiple marketing benefits including: boosting credibility, increasing search visibility and streamlining customer service. Blogs employ powerful content management systems (CMS) to publish information and deliver results.



However, blogs are a great idea only if they are executed brilliantly. One of the biggest roadblocks is the failure to create content. Here are 5 simple tips that will help you answer nagging questions, such as: What should I write about? How do I find time to write? What content is best for my blog?

Blog Success Tip #1. Recycle Assets You Already Have

Recycling is not only good for the planet, but it boosts blog success too. You can use previously created material by re-purposing it on your blog. Here are some examples:



•A press release can live on your press page and also be re-purposed into a short blog post that links to the full press release.

•Educational content that is snail-mailed to customers can be recycled into compelling blog posts.

•Newsletters boast great e-mail content can be posted to your blog as multiple posts.

•Common customer service questions that you answer all the time can be answered in your blog as a way to create more service-centric content. It will also save time replying to customer inquiries. Just sending a link to a blog post. People can read blog FAQs and self-serve; they may not need to contact you at all.

•Articles you may have written for other sites can be blogged about, with links to that content. You better believe that I will mention on my blog that I have this article appearing in Web Marketing Today.

Just because a piece of content is in one place -- like a press release, video on YouTube or Vimeo, e-mail, article, etc. -- doesn't mean that your desired reader may see it. Recycle it in the blog to give it more shelf life, to serve customers who can gain from your words, and to increase content search engines can index you on. Leverage what you already have created to keep the blog alive and fresh.



Blog Success Tip #2. Use Free Tools Like Google Alerts to Get Instant Content Ideas

Blogs are a brilliant marriage of fact and perspective. A successful blog writer becomes a "web gemologist." Look for great resources, then share them. Write about current events and simply add your point of view.



To get ideas for content gems, use a tool such as Google Alerts. They send you e-mails with links to articles with subjects you select. When there's an interesting and relevant link, blog about it and share why you think you readers should read it.

Ask yourself who your ideal customers are and what content would help, educate, or entertain them. Then, when you sign up for Google Alerts, use the phrases that would interest them. For example The phrase web marketing news (without quotes around the three words) can deliver anything with those three phrases in it, such as "spider web makes marketing news." If you want to get specific feeds about the subject, put quotes around "web marketing news" so your Google Alerts are targeted to the exact phrase you're looking for.



Blog Success Tip #3. Create Weekly Rituals to Keep the Momentum Moving

Here's a great tip! Creating weekly rituals will help weave content creation into your marketing lifestyle, increase successful content creation, and give your readers something consistent to look forward to. For example, you can post a "Friday Funny" every Friday. It can be a funny quote, video, link, image, whatever. The weekly ritual trains your brain to think ahead and gives you a focus to help refine all the things you could write about into something you are committed to write about.



Blog Success Tip #4. Tap the Power of User Generated Content

User generated content can help create connections and increase content that works. Create a template with interview questions (a simple word document will do) and feature interesting people on your blog. To interview other bloggers or professionals, simply email the interviewee a short questionnaire that they fill out for you. All you need to do is know how to ask for the interview, then copy and paste.



Inviting guest writers is also a great way to gain great content. Be sure to educate your guest bloggers about who your target readers are and what is the overall theme of your blog. User generated content takes the stress of having the total content creation responsibility on your shoulders. It adds marketing power, since your guest bloggers and interviewees will share their post on your blog to their community. Thus user generated content will both build the blog and increase traffic to your blog -- not a bad way to multi-task.



Blog Success Tip #5. Create Content that Is "Bigger" than Your Organization

Many bloggers get marketing myopia and only write about their company or a particular subject. Successful blogs have content that is interesting and useful to the reader, not just coworkers at your company. Pick a blog theme that is bigger than your organization so you can collaborate more with other content creators who share like-minded views -- and customer bases -- and to attract your readers who fit the profile of your ideal customers.



For example, an Austin, TX vacation rental company can blog about its new properties, news, events, and provide location videos. But why not take things one step further. Bloggers for the Austin vacation rental company may get Google alerts about "Austin travel" or "Austin events" to get content ideas to help give readers "facts" about Austin travel, a subject bigger than vacation rentals alone. Serving readers with larger scale content, that still supports the products or services you provide, is a surefire way to write in a way that works.



Sharing web gems from an expert perspective helps support and attract Internet users who are interested in traveling to the area. At the same time, it serves as a credibility and potential sellability tool. Blogs that provide helpful, educational content, boost credibility, search visibility, and will attract qualified leads for sales, as well.

Reprinted by Cape Cod Video Search: "please leave your comments and links hers and click the follow buton to be alerted to future postings", Mickey.

Mickey Lacasse Cape Cod Video Search

                                    508-317-1806

http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

Blogs are tools that serve and support current and prospective customers. Through your valuable content, you can connect, collaborate, and converse with customers. Your blog "serves to sell."

Facebook Updates have an effect on rankings and search, REPRINT

REPRINT by Mickey Lacasse, Cape Cod Video Search
                                         508-317-1806


                                                 http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

Facebook announced a few Platform updates, including updates to the Live Stream Plugin, "liked" articles appearing in search results, and improvements to real-time updates.



The second one is in line with a feature the company was testing that we mentioned recently. "Consistent with how we treat other Open Graph object types, we’ve introduced the ability to see articles shared by your friends in the search typeahead," says Facebook's Namita Gupta. "For instance, if your friend clicks 'Like' on an article at a news site, the article will appear in your News Feed and can now also surface in the search typeahead."



Is Facebook becoming more of a factor in search? Share your thoughts.



The results, as AllFacebook described upon finding the feature being tested, showed content based on the number of likes and the number of friends who liked the particular object. "The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn't accessible via Facebook's open graph search results," AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill had said. "Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook’s search box, however I’d assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook's search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul."

Either way, there is clearly a direct connection between likes and search now. It's essentially Facebook's version of PageRank.



Search Marketing Implications



The most important thing to keep in mind here is something that has always been true about doing well in search: create good content. If you create compelling content, people will like it and if they use Facebook, they will "like" it. Considering Facebook has over half a billion users, that has pretty big implications.



Facebook has one major thing going for it that search engines don't - the ability to make content go viral. The more people "like" a piece of content, the more people will share it with others, and the more potential "likes" it can get. The more "likes" it gets, the more it will be exposed through Facebook search.



I can tell you that "likes" are a lot easier to get than links. If for no other reason, it is just much easier to hit a button to "like" a piece of content than it is to reference it in a blog post - and the majority of people probably aren't bloggers. This has huge potential as long as people continue to use Facebook, and those people actually use the Facebook search box.



The biggest obstacle here as far as Facebook-based search marketing, is that people generally don't think of Facebook as a place to search for content. However, the more relevant content they see in those times they do use the search box, the more likely they are to use that search box more in the future. Facebook has already been growing in terms of search market share. This is going to be a very important thing to keep an eye on.



If you haven't spent much time on a Facebook strategy, now's probably a good time to start thinking a little harder about it. Don't have a blog? You may want to reconsider.



Things get even more interesting when you consider Facebook Places as part of the equation, as well as examples of "liking" physical objects (products). Facebook has big plans for Facebook Credits, which could conceivably become a PayPal-like option used for online purchases all over the web. How attractive do you think it will be for consumers to simply have to log-in via Facebook to make a purchase rather than complete some long form with their credit card info every time they want to make a purchase? How critical will a Facebook strategy be at that point?



Remember, Facebook also just released that Page discovery tool, which should prove great for Page "likes".



As far as the other updates...









"We recently began supporting real-time updates for page updates and the following object property types: relationship status, significant other, timezone and locale," adds Gupta. "To support developers building with users' location data, we've also introduced the ability to subscribe to check-ins. Like all objects available via subscriptions, developers can only retrieve updates to check-in data after a user has the granted permission."



Facebook is rolling out the Live Stream plugin for all new and existing apps, as a way "to be more consistent with users’ expectations and other social plugins." All posts can now be seen in real-time by other people viewing the Live Stream. Facebook is also adding the option for users not to share their comments on Facebook. In addition, it now supports multiple Live Streams on one site by specifying a URL, which will link status updates to their respective pages.

Reprinted by Cape Cod Video Search
                          508-317-1806
http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

REPRINT The Changing Face of Social Media Marketing

REPRINT BY

Cape Cod Video Search
508-317-1806

http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

Thursday, September 23, 2010



Facebook May Have an Edge Over Google in Mobile, Despite Android



The Facebook/Google competition is getting more and more interesting. Last week, we talked about Google's social plans and what "Google Me" will actually be. Basically, what it comes down to is that it will not be a new social network, but rather a "social layer" added to existing Google products.



I made the case that "Google Me" is probably already bigger than Facebook, based on Google's existing products, and that if the company gets the social integration right, it could be a huge for capturing social media attention. Within that article, I made the point that Google has advantages like a browser and two operating systems (Chrome OS and Android).



Who has the competitive edge in social: Google or Facebook?
 what you think  http://capecodvideosearch.blogspot.com/

While I still think these are advantages in some ways, after reading what Mark Zuckerberg had to say about the company's mobile strategy, I'm not sure just how big of an advantage these operating systems are after all, with regards to Google competing with Facebook for social attention. Essentially, Facebook's plan is to be on every device, and build deeper integration into as many devices as possible by working with manufacturers and carriers. Here are some highlight quotes from Zuckerberg from his interview with TechCrunch:



"Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything. Basically we're trying to make it so that every app everywhere can be social whether it's on the web, or mobile, or other devices. So inherently our whole approach has to be a breadth-first approach rather than a depth-first one."



"Our role is to be a platform for making all of these apps more social, and it’s kind of an extension of what we see happening on the web, with the exception of mobile, which I think will be even more important than the web in a few years – maybe even sooner. "



"The web is only at one and a half billion people whereas everyone is going to have a phone and all the phones are going to be smartphones. So our strategy is that we want to go wherever people are building apps so we can make all of those apps social if they want that."






"We can do a single sign-on if we do a good integration with a phone, rather than just doing something where you go to an app and it’s automatically social or having to sign into each app individually. Those are the two options on the web. Why not for mobile? Just make it so that you log into your phone once, and then everything that you do on your phone is social."



Zuckerberg also implies that neither a browser nor an operating system are part of Facebook's strategy. In terms of mobile, why should they be, if they can get "deeper integration" in every existing device - in those operating systems? Facebook is already getting deep integration on Android phones through things like contact sync.



Of course Google can try a similar strategy of getting deeper integration on more devices with its various products, beyond Android (it's done pretty well with that in terms of search already), but it might have a harder time than Facebook when it comes to offerings from companies like Apple and Microsoft. In fact, Google's own Android will likely help Facebook with its strategy, thanks to its "openness".

If Facebook can dominate mobile in the same way its dominating the web - terms of of simply having a presence everywhere - it is going to be hard to contend with for social. While Google does have Android and can always do any kind of Google integration it wants to with that (as well as with Chrome and Chrome OS), manufacturers and carriers utilizing Android may still feel it necessary to include that deep Facebook integration, whether Google likes it or not.



One other potentially huge factor in this whole thing is Facebook Credits. According to a New York Times article, citing information from Inside Network, the market for Facebook Credits is expected to reach $835 million this year, and it's really just getting started. As the article points out, Credits could one day extend beyond just apps on Facebook itself, just as Facebook has extended itself across the web. You can sign into many sites with your Facebook account. Why not pay with it? That's just speculation at this point, but the possibility is very real. This could make payments a lot simpler for users, especially on mobile. It could be huge for e-commerce - another area in which Google may find itself competing with Facebook.

REPRINT BY http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/


Cape Cod Video Search
508-317-1806

Social Media Stratigies Reprint By Cape Cod Video Search

REPRINT BY                              Cape Cod Video Search
                                          508-317-1806

                                                       http://www.capecodvideosearch.com

The Top 7 Facebook and Twitter Strategies That Are Working Right Now




One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a bird's eye view of what's working and what's not when it comes to social media. Every so often I like to give sort of a "state of the union" on Facebook and Twitter best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly growing, changing and evolving.



As you'll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true-they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the considerable future.

However, there may be a few here that you've never considered-or may even be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.



1. Find your peeps.



What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that, the goal is to go where they are hanging out.

There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com.



2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.



One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media because most people are there to build relationships and interact.



There's nothing wrong with letting others know what's going on with you or your business sometimes--just be sure to intersperse your tweets or Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.



3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

This might be a little "controversial" - and don't get me wrong, your business SHOULD have a Page -- but when you have a personal profile, you are able to interact with other people much more easily.



As a business Page, a Page can't go comment on another person's Wall or profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to interact.



4. Cross-post and cross promote.

Once you've decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy, you don't want to keep it to yourself.



There are lots of ways to spread the word, for example: you'll want to advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email signature and use one social media platform to post to another.



5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.



Hootsuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets and status updates and more.

                                     REPRINT BY   Cape Cod Video Search
                                                                       508-317-1806
                                    "please leave your comments and links and I will get right back to you"
                                                       Mickey

6. Get them on the list.



In most cases, people aren't going to buy from you right off of sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from "how can I get this person to buy from me or hire me now?" to "how can I bring this person into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing basis?"



One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.



7. Measure and track your social media results.



Measuring the ROI of social media isn't exactly cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you've spent on social media activities is really making a difference.



Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and followers and website traffic to name a few.



No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.



And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs later on.



Most of the strategies I've mentioned here aren't really "strategies" unless you keep applying them over time-so stick with it to reap those results you've been searching for.

Call for a FREE 1 hr Consultation  508-317-1806
http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

How to Grow your Social Network, Reprint by Cape Cod Vidoe Search

 Cape Cod Video Search                  508-317-1806

http://www.capecodvideosearch.com

How to Grow Your Social Community


Writing by Nick Stamoulis ShareThis



Growing a social community online might sound easy but it does take some time to have a community that will consistently help spread your message and interact with you. You have to have a certain likability surrounding you and strong branding is really a must. Communities are more likely to build and grow if you have a strong brand surrounding your company or yourself.







Here are some ways to build your social community:



1. Contests:



Frequent contests are a great way to really build up your following on the social communities. People really enjoy taking part of a good contest if the prize is worth their while. Pick prizes that will directly appeal to your audience. A year’s worth of software to help them with their business? Or even free tickets to an event or tradeshow surrounding their business. Make sure the contest works for your business model as well.



2. Blog:

Write in a blog every single day and pushing it through your social networks will definitely help you build your following. If you give your audience something to read on a daily basis they will eventually refer to you as an authority or a leading source in your space, as long as you put together well written posts.



3. Personality:



Give your community a personality. A personality is a way that people are attracted to participate with what you have to offer. Ask questions, joke with your community and get people to reciprocate in some sort of way. Give your community a reason to talk and chatter about you online. Don’t worry about how crazy it might sound online because crazy is sometimes good. As long as you are not offensive you will get people inquiring about you or your company.



4. Open Minded:

To build an online community you have to be open minded and willing to try a wide range of efforts to build up your community. Your social community should be approached like a business so it is important to try different marketing efforts to get people’s attention.



There are many ways to build a community online and these just happen to be some of my tips to build a following in the online space. Approach your social community like a big brand and over time you will generate a nice following.


REPRINT BY Mickey Lacasse Cape Cod Video Search
                                                 508-317-1806
"please leave your comments and links and sign up to FOLLOW this blog.
Thanks,"
Mickey

Musty Basement Solution *video* Dealer's Wanted

New Video produced by Mickey Lacasse of http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/
For Frank Zelinski of http://www.mustybasementsolution.com/
Indoor Air Quality testing and remediation company 1-800-696-2223

Generating Traffic to your Social Media Sites

508-317-1806

                                                              Reprint By Mickey Lacasse
                                                                 
Low Cost Social Media Traffic Generators


Writing by Nick Stamoulis


Traffic to a website can often times take a great deal of time depending on what your timeline and expectations are. Everyone wants traffic fast but often times that is easier said than done. Pay per click advertising can be very expensive and search engine optimization is long term, so where do you start?

When approached strategically social media can often times bring in traffic fairly quickly at a relatively low cost compared to things like pay per click advertising. If you have a little extra time on your hands writing some content, connecting with like minds and pushing your message can entice very qualified visitors to come over to your website to see more.



Here are a few ideas on how social media can pull in traffic relatively quickly to your website:

LinkedIn: LinkedIn can be a nice gem for your business if you know and understand how to approach it. Find the groups in your industry and start becoming part of the conversation. Launch a blog on your website and use that content to push through the pages of your specific LinkedIn groups. Start a discussion? The LinkedIn groups allow you to be able to start a discussion where others can chime in and put in their 2 cents.



Twitter: It doesn’t take very long to start following other like minded people on Twitter. Unless you are a big brand or a celebrity people will most likely not start following you for any reason, give them a reason to want to hear from you. Start following them first and over time people will follow you back increasing traffic to your website. Do this every few days if you can and you will slowly start to see a great deal of that Twitter traffic start finding its way back to your website.

Social Bookmarking: I know, this is an ancient (maybe a few years old!) form of spreading your online message but it still works. You don’t have to be a power user on Digg or Stumbleupon to get some good traffic coming in. Stumbleupon often times can sporadically pull in heaping amounts of traffic you just have to take two minutes and drop your link into their website.



Social media is not expensive but does require a little bit of time which should be a bit more appealing than dropping thousands of dollars in pay per click advertising. Take a little time each day and you will quickly see that traffic making its way over to your website.

Please leave your comments and links here and I will be glad to respond!

508-317-1806

http://capecodvideosearch.blogspot.com

Domestic Service Placement *Video*

New Video produced by Mickey Lacasse for http://hawthornedomestics.com
Hawthorne Domestics places Legal, Documented workers in high end homes and estates.
Call Christine Hawthorne at 508-540-0074 or 774-255-0156 for more information in confidence.

Cape Cod Video Search services all of New England with Website Development and Optimization Service.
please leave your comments and links in the comment section of this blog
Thank You
Mickey Lacasse

Social Media and customer Advocacy, Reprint by Cape Cod Video Search

Social media and the era of customer advocacy

by Michael Brito


REPRINT BY
Cape Cod Video Search
508-317-1806

http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

Move over influencers; advocates are more valuable to brands. It's a fact. And I won't try to make the case with research on how consumers want to engage with brands on the social web because we all know that's the case already. I don't have a problem with influencers at all; and have been vocal in the past about some of my own influencers. All I am saying is that customer advocacy bring more life and longer term value for a brand. Here's why:



Influencers can be bought; but may not always deliver



Well, not really. What I am trying to say is that influencers don't really care about your brand. They may have a crush on you or find your product useful; but they are too busy being influencers - tweeting, blogging, and recording webinars to really care. Of course they love getting free trials and new products before they hit the market; and very rarely will they say no when you offer to send them that new shiny object.



But how many times have you seeded a product to an influencer without any result?

Besides, even if they did love you, they'd probably refrain from talking too much about you in fear of community backlash or the fear of a negative perception of being bought even if it's not true. I completely understand that conflict. Most influencers get pitched several times a day and all it does is feed their egos; so the time commitment of reaching out to them won't always reap any positive benefit much less any business value to a brand. I am speaking in general terms here because I do know some really awesome influencers. Point is that influencers are great for generating buzz; not so great for driving purchase decisions. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about, right? Go ahead, attack me.



Don't forget to pay your rent



The minute you stop sending influencers the latest and greatest; or pass on flying them to CES or any other industry event, they will evict your brand in a heartbeat. Then, the already infrequent tweets will completely stop and they may even talk smack behind your back because you poked at their ego. The reality is that with many influencer programs, brands are just renting the conversation; and unfortunately the conversation isn't always authentic. If it was, you wouldn't have to keep sending them products to fuel their conversation.



Don't get me wrong here. Influencer outreach programs do have some validity to a brand's marketing initiatives. They just need to be done smart and strategically and it shouldn't be the core focus. I would say that a brand's first priority should be to focus on its advocates because their love is real.

Advocates love your brand and tell others too



Shot out to Kelly Feller (a previous colleague and friend from Intel) who once said, "if you love your customers, they will love you back and tell others about it".



Here is the great thing about advocates. They love you even if you don't give them the time of day. They are vocal, passionate and are not afraid to give your brand praise (on and off line). And, while they may not have hundreds of Twitter followers or thousands of RSS subscribers, the conversation with them is always authentic. I would also argue that advocates outnumber influencers by a long shot. Can you imagine for a second what the impact would be if you paid just a little attention to your advocates? It's not hard to do at all; and the great thing about it is that they don't label themselves and are very easy to approach. While influencers consider themselves influencers; advocates don't really care. And, that makes your job so much easier.



Tapping into the emotional equity



I have never studied the psychology of a consumer's purchase behavior. But what I am confident about is that there is definitely an emotional connection between a brand and its advocates. It's the reason why I only buy one kind of television. It's not out of habit, convenience or price either because the brand I love is quite expensive. But I have an emotional connection to the brand, Sony. The connection can stem from just about anything a previous brand experience, the value the product brings to someone's life, its swagger or the product simply kicks ass. When a brand actually becomes human and spends time nurturing their advocates; the emotional equity will grow exponentially. And that's a hard bond to break.



Advocates affect the purchase funnel



I am sure we have all seen the traditional purchase funnel at some point in our careers (some call it a sales funnel). Marketers - and people much smarter than I - spend a lot of time and coin trying to figure out what messages resonate with customers; and which channels have the greatest conversion rates. We are talking about millions of dollars in media spend that aims to drive marketing messages in each of the phases. And smart marketers are also creating metrics models for each phase of the purchase funnel to measure the effectiveness of these messages.



The purchase funnel is evolving, especially as we think about advocacy. In this model, customer advocacy is at the center. It's meant to illustrate the power of social media and how advocates aid and influence their micro communities down the purchase funnel through authentic messages (or everyday conversation).



It's circular in nature because as a brand invests and drives customer advocacy; they will, in turn, influence others at various phases of the purchase funnel; thus creating a cycle of influence and advocacy that the brand is facilitating.









How to identify advocates



Identifying advocates is really not that hard to do. If you spend enough time in Facebook, you will begin to see who stands out and interacts the most with the content. There are tools like SocialTALK that are building this capability into their product which will make life much easier. Also, Zuberance is a great tool that can identify advocates already living in your brand's ecosystem. What I love about this is that it empowers advocates to share reviews and content about your product with their social circles. Rowfeeder is an exceptional tool that pulls data directly from Twitter and Facebook, and allows you to easily see who is talking about your brand the most and easily identify those advocates.

Michael Brito is the Vice President of Social Media for Edelman Digital. His experience includes working for major brands in Silicon Valley to include HP, Yahoo! and Intel. He can read his latest commentary on his social media blog or follow him on Twitter.



REPRINT by

Cape Cod Video Search
508-317-1806 call me for your free 1 hr consultation

Please leave your comments and links in the comments section of this posting!

Thanks
ML

C. A. Vincent Builder, *Summer Projects 2010*

New Business video produced by http://www.capecodvideosearch.com

508-317-1806   Call me for a free 1 hr. consultation!
Blogs, videos, FREE businees listings in Local Directories are jus a small part of the Internet Marketing services provided to LOCAL Companies by Cape Cod Video Search!

Word of Mouth to promote your Business

REPRINT
by Cape Cod Video Search
508-317-1806
http://www.capecodvideosearch.com/

3 Ways to Get Word-of-Mouth Marketing Working for Your Business


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Join a business networking group. These local groups bring people together for the specific purpose of learning about each others' businesses and generating referrals for those businesses. Ideally, the strongest relationship networking group should not admit a business that competes with any other business in the group. Once you're part of a group, your colleagues become a powerful (and free!) sales force for your business.





Where can I find a group? The biggest and most established is Business Networking International, with chapters in many U.S. cities. There are also state-based networks like Michigan's Local Business Network. You can even find or start an independent group with local business people. These groups require a substantial time commitment, but the return can be huge. For example, in 2009 one local chapter generated $13.7 million in new business for its members from 2,136 referrals! As a bonus, members benefit from business ideas and insights from an ever-expanding circle of contacts.

2. Promote a local cause. Giving back is a win-win for local businesses: you get the satisfaction of making a difference in your community, while benefiting from the contacts you make in the process. Businesses tend to see the greatest value from identifying themselves with and actively promoting one cause. Still, many others see steady rewards from becoming that "go to" business that can always be counted on to donate to the silent auction, advertise in the high school yearbook, or sponsor a Little League team.





Do's and don'ts. Do let customers know about your cause: mention it to them; post information about your cause on your website; feature it in your marketing materials (e.g., Proud Supporter of Inova Hospital or 10th Year Sponsoring The Bearcat's Little League Team); and display photos in your shop or office (team pictures, photos of you "at work" for the cause, people you've helped, etc.). Do let your fellow volunteers know about your business — but do not actively promote your business. The focus should be on making relationships, not sales.





3. Actively ask for ratings and reviews. Have you just done a great job for a customer? Has someone just complimented your service? Do you have "regulars" who've been with you for years? Ask all these customers to share their experience and rate your business on Local.com! Ratings and reviews are powerful "risk reducers," that show prospects you're a good business. At the same time, they highlight specific differentiators of your business like personal service or a knowledgeable staff.

How to ask. It's easy — just thank customers for their business and say how you'd appreciate it if they'd post a review on Local.com. One boutique owner has seen great results by tucking a small slip of paper in every shopping bag. The paper thanks the customer and mentions how much a "rating and written review of their recent service" would mean to her. Then she provides the Local.com URL where customers can post their review. Most happy customers are flattered to be asked and delighted to give you a great review!





Local Success TIP: Cash in on other businesses' coupons.

The economy may be showing signs of life, but consumers are still eager for ways to save money — and that's why interest in coupons is still booming. Did you know that spreading the word about other businesses' coupons and offers can also bring you profits, too?

Share the savings to create loyal customers and referrals.

Sharing the news of coupons and special offers with complimentary businesses gives customers a great way to develop a hub of their favorite places. Your extra interest in customers builds loyalty and can set your shop apart from others in the same market. Your fellow merchants will also be grateful for all the customers who come in because you mention their special offers or great reviews.

508-317-1806 call me for a free 1 hr consultation

Please leave your comments and links on the comments segment of this posting