Google+ is quickly becoming a marketing asset for businesses of all kinds.  The issue is that many businesses set up pages on Google+ when it first launched in summer 2011, or when it became available through Google Apps in November, but haven’t done much else on the social network since.  If this sounds like you, then you’ll want to keep reading.  Because Google+ can be a powerful marketing tool for your business.

So how can you make Google+ a marketing asset?

It’s actually quite simple.  Although it’s a newcomer to the social media scene, Google+ is one of the premier social networks for businesses because of its communication and promotion tools.  And the ease of tracking your progress on Google+ doesn’t hurt either.

The idea behind social media is to share, and Google+ makes that easy for businesses with pages.  In addition to making communicating simple, the stream, circles, and hangouts are three Google+ features that also allow for collaboration.  With the stream, your business can share information in any format (i.e. text, photo, video) to keep customers in the loop and share news on a regular basis.  You can choose to share information publicly so anyone can see it, or with certain circles, so only a select audience has access.  Circles allow you to place people in specific groups, which is especially useful to businesses looking to send out targeted messages through social media.  For example, you can group customers into circles based on membership, previous purchases, geographic location, and much more.  By sharing information with a specific circle, your business can share more targeted messages on social media and provide customers with a more personal touch, as you can send people information that is only specifically relevant to them.  The personal touch that comes with a targeted message only increases when you partake in a hangout.  A hangout is a multi-person video chat that also allows for screen-sharing, making both communicating and collaborating with others effortless.  When you host a hangout, you can speak or work with anyone in real-time, regardless of how far apart you may actually be.  The stream, circles, and hangouts have been around from the start and played a huge role in building Google+.  Now, with the new redesign in place, businesses have even more communication tools at their disposal including chat list and an explore page.

While communication is a key part of any social media marketing strategy, sharing information on a social network is only useful if you’re promoting your business’ page.  This need for promotion, and the relevant tools available for Google+ users are yet another reason why the social network is an asset for businesses.  When it comes to promoting your business’ page on Google+, one of the first steps to take is to add a Google+ badge or icon to your website.  The badge allows visitors to add your Google+ page to their circles without leaving your website, while the icon takes visitors directly to your Google+ page.  But what’s great about Google+ is that you’re not the only one doing promotion – your customers can help, as well.  People can give your business a +1 to show others that they are happy with your work, like what they see, and would recommend you.  Simply receiving +1s is useful for promoting your business, but to get the most out of these customer recommendations you should link all the +1s you receive for your website, your Google+ page, and any advertisements.  When you link your +1s, people who come across your business as a Google search result will be able to see how many people have given you a +1 and who has given them.  This visualization of what people think of your work can only help, as a +1 is a recommendation for your business.

If you’ve worked hard communicating and promoting your business’ presence online, it helps to know what you’re doing well and where you can improve.  This is why Google made it easy to track your progress on its social network through ripples and analytics.  With ripples, you can easily track the information you posted on your Google+ page.  Ripples will show you who shared what information with whom.  This tool not only allows you to see what information (what topics and what format) people are paying the most attention to and sharing the most often, but also which people are taking the most active role in promoting your content.  With this knowledge, you can share more of the content that people like and share more information with the people who are going to pass it along to others.  You can also use analytics to manage your +1s and view the activity on your Google+ page.

Overall, Google+ can be a major marketing asset in your social media tool belt when you properly take advantage of its premier communication, promotion, and tracking tools.

About the Author: Sharon Shapiro works for Cloud Sherpas.  Cloud Sherpas is a leading cloud service provider and was named the “Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year.”  A Google Apps Reseller in Atlanta, GA, Cloud Sherpas has regional offices in locations including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin and Sydney, and has more Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists than any other partner in the world.

Salesforce.com is one of a small number of vendors who offer a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) product for businesses of all sizes. The major differences in vendors and their products are in the implementation and features available to the customer.

Being a cloud-based product, Salesforce.com hosts the CRM software so you don’t have to. This means a reduced impact on your IT staff since there are no additional in-house computing resources needed. There is no need to purchase additional hardware to run the product. This is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product so all of the applications reside in the cloud and not on your in-house systems. The only local need is to create procedures to backup salesforce data in case you need to restore all or part of your system quickly.

Access to Salesforce.com is through a web browser. Any device that can use a browser can be used to get to and work with your CRM data. In-house systems limit access from local equipment or through complicated network schemes. Some cloud-based systems limit access only through a browser. Salesforce.com may be accessed through smartphones, tablets and numerous other mobile products allowing your sales and field service people to make better use of their time.

One advantage of a company that has been around as long as Salesforce.com is the number of people that have created helpful applications that allow you to integrated other functions into your CRM system. For instance, if you have a preferred email product that you want to continue to use, it likely can be integrated with Salesforce.com limiting the amount of new tools that your staff must learn.

Other third-party applications can use your Salesforce contact list to send newsletters or support marketing campaigns. Some CRM systems require you to extract that information before you use it, creating an extra step in your marketing program activities.

Developing unique applications within the Salesforce product can be as simple as defining new fields and layouts without requiring any programming knowledge. Extending other CRM systems can often require a full-scale software development project to make it happen. Being able to easily customize your CRM system is a big benefit to businesses with few technical resources.

Salesforce.com has many of the features that mature client server products have evolved over the years. Call center management, marketing automation, customer service support and tracking, partner marketing, salesforce automation, and business analytics and reporting are some of the capabilities in this system.

What makes the salesforce.com pricing model unique is that you only need to pay for the features you really need. There are several “editions” available, each containing a set of the overall features in the system. This means you can start gaining the benefit of some of the CRM capabilities quickly in your organization and add more as the company expands.

Other pricing options include a free trial and deep discounts for non-profit organizations.

Another sign of the Salesforce maturity is the ease of deployment in an organization. Taking the input of their customers, Salesforce.com has evolved the process into a much more intuitive one reducing the impact on your staff and getting you up and running on a CRM system quickly.

Customer Relationship Management systems can be very complicated. The ease of deployment combined with the free trial and flexible pricing model of Salesforce allows any business to dive into the CRM world and see how they can use it to grow and manage their company or organization.

About the Author: 

Greg Rublev is a dedicated web products geek, blogger and the founder of LeanWagon, a startup helping dieters eat healthy and lose weight.

The most successful salespeople don’t follow guidelines strictly by the book; you must be able to think “outside the box” and be innovative in your techniques.

Top producers constantly seek unique ways to run their business. It may involve implementing new operational or marketing techniques to set them apart from the competition. Offering discounted pricing, developing a professional athlete niche and introducing a special $1 million giveaway promotion were a few of the different approaches we took to generate recognition of Gold Star. When Gold Star held a company-wide managers’ meeting, we decided to host a giant tailgate party at a University of Michigan football game. This was more than a welcome gathering for our employees; we wanted to reach a larger audience—many of the 115,000 spectators who were at the newly remodeled stadium that day. We had a giant Gold Star banner and posters made, showcasing our 800-201-LOAN number and our reputation as one of the area’s best places to work. We knew that a huge audience of potential customers and employees would see the display. It was well worth our time and investment, as we substantially increased our visibility and had a great time doing so.

Thinking outside the box doesn’t necessarily require an excessive budget. When I started as a salesman, I developed an emerging market (immigrant) niche that no one else was exploring at the time. Find your own niche. Research the demographics of your area. Look at the trends of where the population has been and how experts believe it will evolve. If you see that the 65+ population is on the rise, offer programs appealing to that group.

I also placed an emphasis on providing Realtors with referrals before ever asking them for leads, another seemingly basic strategy that my competitors had not adopted. You can start your own celebrity niche on a local scale, by doing business with radio and television station personalities and other well-known people.

Overall, you need to take a more creative approach to your usual routine. Evaluate what you have done in the past and what the competition is doing, then make sure you continually test a few new strategies. If you do this, you are on track to become a successful salesperson.

Daniel Milstein is the bestselling author of ABC of Sales. For more information, visit: http://amzn.to/ABCARTICLES.

Nothing captures the essence of an object better than photography. This is especially true for retailers and e-commerce websites. Since the customer cannot smell, touch or feel the product, photography and sight play a crucial role in the art of sales. Luckily with the resources available today, you do not need to spend precious marketing dollars on professional photography. By learning the areas below, you can take amazing product photographs by yourself and a simple camera.

Lighting

When you have a choice, always opt for natural light and take photos outdoors if possible. Early morning and afternoon lighting works the best. Avoid the noon-hour sun, as that tends to be the brightest and harshest, and can wash out your photos. If the weather is not cooperating and you need to take photos, place your products near a window and capture whatever natural light you can get. And don’t worry if you don’t have a backyard or outdoor space. Consider using a public park as your photo ground.

Equipment

You do not need an elaborate Cannon or Nikon camera to take great shots (of course, those cameras can’t hurt either). With the right supplementary equipment, any digital camera can capture images. Don’t forget your iPhone or iPad as Apple tools take great photographs.

Smashing Magazine recommends using a tripod to ensure your photos are sharp and professional, especially if you do not have a fancy camera and complimentary lenses. Tripods are especially helpful in preventing blurry photos from even the slightest natural hand shaking. And even if your camera and tripod are heavy, always tape or weigh down the legs to the floor.

Shooting

Now that your lighting is set and you have the right equipment, get ready for the fun part. It is important to take several photos and from many different angles. Photojojo offers great suggestions for staging your photos and the shots you want to capture.

• If you are creating a tutorial, document every step of the process, even if you don’t think you’ll need the photo at the time you’re shooting. For cooking photo spreads, take a picture of all the ingredients together before you start, and take a few nice shots of the final product. There is a reason cooking and food blogs that illustrate the recipe process with photos are so popular.
• Always photograph items such as clothing and jewelry on a real person (rather than a straight-on shot of the product itself). You want the buyer to picture herself wearing the beautiful necklace or fancy scarf.

Editing

The photo editing process is almost as important as taking the photos. Simple photo editing can help you play up certain product points, change the focus to different areas, enhance colors, and even strip out unintended red eye. Make the colors pop and emphasize brightness. Photoshop is a great tool to use if you are familiar with the software. But even simpler and free web programs, like iPhoto and Picmonkey, work wonders on your photos.

Next time you need professional looking photos, try using the tips above to take your own pictures rather than hiring an expensive photographer. Editing, using the right equipment and getting great light will help you sell more products and assure your images pop off the page.

A Guest post by Sam Peters

As a DIY marketer or entrepreneur, you’ve surely read multitudes about the benefits of marketing through social media websites.  Chances are similarly high that you’ve entertained advice about blogging for your business and brand as well.  It’s in considering the particular avenues and strategies associated with these marketing platforms, however, that the real difference between great success and mediocrity looms.

In the entrepreneurial spirit of things, it’s a common sentiment shared by many of us do-it-yourselfers to want our own original platforms in the electronic domain, and in particular, to own a unique and relevant domain name from which to launch our brand or blog.  However, the reality of the incredibly widespread use of the internet dictates that this is often not a possibility.  Sure, there are tons of available domain names out there still, but the chances of one of them fitting perfectly with your brand’s sleek conceptual image is slim.

It’s for reasons like this, as well as others, that guest blogging can be a hugely important tool in generating new leads and giving new audiences a taste of your brand.  Here we focus on 3 of these reasons for your marketing strategy consideration.

- Easy Self-Promotion: Guest blogging offers a great way to promote yourself and your business from various already-popular sites.  Perhaps the biggest advantage of this is the ability to use sites that often have a great domain name and a high SEO ranking as launching points for your brand or website.  Companies like www.1800vending.com have great, entrepreneurial idea-specific domain names that immediately generate hits just by virtue of their domain.

And while this specific domain doesn’t happen to be a blog, the number of similarly relevant domain names taken by blogs with viable guest posting options is huge: blogs just like the one you find yourself on now as a matter of fact.

- Unique Audiences: Nearly as extensive as the number of blogs out there (over 170 million), is the number of different topics covered by these sites.  The benefit of guest posting on a wide array of blogs, and thus to a hugely diverse audience, as opposed to blogging solely on your own individual, single-topic site, should be fairly obvious: a much greater and diverse exposure.

Instead of writing about one topic, try guest blogging about a number of different brand-relatable subjects that can draw various potential clients and customers in from all over the blogosphere.  Consumers appreciate a company that shows great diversity and versatility.

- Less Restriction: Guest blogging or posting also carries with it a greater amount of freedom than solely blogging for your own site.  As a guest blogger, you not only have the option to use various and diverse blogs as platforms for your business as discussed in the previous point; you also have a similar amount of personal freedom in terms of when/how often you post.  Maintaining a successful blog brings with it a good amount of time dedicated to posting regularly and often to keep readers interested and regularly following your blog.

As a business owner and DIY marketer, the unfortunate reality is that we often don’t have the time necessary to maintain such habits.  Guest blogging then, offers a unique solution to that problem, by affording us great avenues for generating more viewers, and the freedom to post when and where we want without worrying about losing expectant, regular followers.

While being an entrepreneur and a general DIY kind of guy or girl can at times be quite challenging, there are some great solutions out there to meet these many challenges we all face.  Among others, guest blogging is one of the best avenues used in a successful and diverse personal marketing campaign, and should be strongly considered as a part of your strategy for success.

There are a lot of things you can do to attract more customers. You can invest in heavy branding campaigns. You can advertise heavily to get your brand name out there. There are a thousand ways to attract more customers but there is only one sure fire way you can keep them long term and that is through great, not just good, customer service.

Have you heard of the quote “Go for the food, stay for the service”? Now substitute your product or service for the word ‘food’ and that is how your customers should feel when they patronize your business.

As said above, there are thousands of ways to attract customers, but to be successful; you have to work on making them repeat customers. And by making their experience with your business a pleasant one, you can become the favored brand of your customers when it comes to your product or service. And who knows? They can even tell their friends about how great your company is. Word of mouth is still a powerful marketing tool.

With that said, here are some tips you can use to take your first step towards great customer service e:

Understand your customers

Who is your market? Try to find out what they like or dislike. You can start by doing a little survey that you can ask your current customers to answer either personally or by email. Though not everyone will answer, the ones who do can give you a good idea about who they are and what they think of your service.

You can also go to public review sites like Yelp, CitySearch, and Angie’s List to see what consumers are saying about your business. Just prepare yourself. Some people give nasty comments just because they have the protection of anonymity. Discern which comments to chalk up as constructive criticism and which to ignore.

Make it easy for the customers to reach you

The first step to great customer service is making your business accessible to your customers. A good way to do that is to invest in a toll free number and an advanced PBX system to manage customer calls. There are a number of VoIP service providers like RingCentral where you can get the toll free number and the phone system together.

Provide soft skills training

There is an art to providing customer service and that lies in your employee’s soft skills. Soft skills refer to personal attributes that enhance a person’s ability to interact as opposed to hard skills which refer to specific skills that help someone accomplish a task.

Provide soft skills training to help employees interact with other employees. Some points to emphasize are knowing when to empathize, when to be assertive and how to negotiate without offending.

Create customer service policies

Last, create definitive policies that will outline what can and cannot be done when interacting with customers and the consequences they can incur if they break those policies.

Customer service is a company effort. The culture of customer service starts with you as the owner serving as the example for the whole company to follow.

Sandi Will has been a Blogger and web enthusiast for almost 2 years as well as a fulltime English teacher to high school seniors for 4 years.

Attracting new customers is in the details — like your after-hours voice mail message.

I just called one of my clients BEFORE business hours.  I knew the engineer was in, but the main phone lines were closed – so I got this after hours message.

“The office is currently closed.  Please leave your name and a message.”  

This was recorded by a sort of stern sounding man and I have to say that I was a but put-off.  I know this sounds ridiculous, it’s just an out of office voice mail for a manufacturing company, but quite frankly, they didn’t sound as “friendly” as they SAID they were or as they SAID their customers knew them as.  In fact – I wouldn’t say that this is a magnetic out of office message at all.

What’s the purpose of an out of office or after-hours message?

The intent of an after hours message is to not have your customer listen to ringing that no one answers — there’s something strange and scary about that.  So, an after-hours message is a great solution.

If the customer is calling you — it means that they want something.  They either have a task item on their list that they’ve chosen to resolve while your office is closed or they have a question.  Once you put yourself into that context, you can appreciate how important it is to give them a great experience and make sure that they have an effective way to accomplish what they’ve set out to do.

This means that your out of office message  needs to do the following:

1. Answer in a friendly voice.
2. Tell them who is answering the phone and what their role is in the company “Hi, this is Jane Doe and I’m the customer service rep for ABC company”
3. Tell them WHY they’ve reached voice-mail “Our main phone lines aren’t open right now” – People are calling from all kinds of time zones – so there’s nothing wrong with not having your phone lines open.
4. If they know the extension and can enter it — tell them so.
5. Chances are, there are a couple of people who should get this call.  Designate them and provide their extensions in the message so that the person can ACCOMPLISH what they set out to do.  ”Try extension 123 to reach John Doe, he may be in the office right now or you can leave him a message and he’ll return your call within 8 hours. or you can send him an email with your request or question at john@abcinc.com and he will respond that way.

This isn’t rocket science and it’s a small, but VERY important detail.  You may not realize it, but it’s little things like this that create a wonderful impression on your prospects and customers.  Remember that VERY few people take the time to think about who their ideal customers and prospects are and what’s important to them.

In a world where setting yourself apart is getting harder by the minute, recording an engaging after-hours message will not only grab your ideal prospect or customer into your pipeline, it will build your brand and reputation as an organization who “gets” their customers.

Sample Out of Office Message to Adapt for Your Organization

Thank you for calling (YOUR COMPANY NAME). This is (NAME) and I handle (AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY)  for the (COMPANY OR DEPARTMENT OR GROUP).  Our main phone lines aren’t open right now, but you might find some of our team members hard at work anyway.  Try extension (NUMBER)  for (NAME) or extension (NUMBER)  for (NAME).  If they don’t answer, please leave a detailed message and they will get back to you within the next business day.  You can also send (NAME) an email at (EMAIL ADDRESS).

If this is an emergency, please call (ENTER EMERGENCY CONTACT INSTRUCTIONS) Otherwise, please leave a detailed, confidential message after the tone and I will return your call as soon as I am available. Thank you. 

By the way – please check out our web site at www.yourwebsite.com for more information.

You can easily adapt this message to your organization.  And, while you’re at it — HAVE FUN with it.  Here are some ways that you can customize your messages to make them fun:

• If you are going to be at a trade show or event — leave that in the message.  Give them the name of the show, the location and your BOOTH number.
• Are you launching a new product or service?  Tell your customers about it.  Give them the name and web site page of your latest product or service to check out.
• What’s the latest problem that you’ve solved for a customer — that other customers might have — give us an update in the message and tell us what to do if we have the same problem.
• Do you have a tag line or something that you’re known for — insert that into the message so that your prospects and customers hear it again and again.

Businesses need not shut shop when the economy is not in a good shape. Recession in the economy as and the reduction in spending capacity of people invariably affect the revenues of business organizations. Incorporating changes in the way a business functions can help cut costs to retain profitability and to create avenues for better growth. Expenditure associated with each process can be given a look-in to make it more cost efficient. In fact, the kind of avenues that are available over the web make it easier for you to take up cost-cutting measures without choking your business or affecting productivity. Here are the seven ways through which you can go about the task.

1. Use low budget marketing

Internet lets you promote a product for free and rewards you with results that do bring in sales. All that you need is creativity and the ability to capitalize on the strengths of each medium. Get traffic for your website through a high rank in search engine result pages owing to your search engine optimization initiatives.

2. Request existing clients for referrals

Your regular customers are the ones who have faith in your product or service. These people are likely to recommend your products to others in case you ask for the favor. Encourage them to recommend your products and to give you the contact details of those who may be interested.

3. Encourage employees to work from home

You need not lay off employees in order to cut costs. Use the virtual communication resources to communicate and collaborate while the employees carry on with the routine tasks from home.

4. Leverage the power of social media

Use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social networks to market your products. Ask for your regular customers to give your sales initiatives a push on social media. Interact and build brand loyalty while giving potential clients a sense of reliability and accessibility.

5. Renegotiate with suppliers

Try to get a better deal from your suppliers in the changing economic scenario. If not the price, make an attempt to get better payment terms. This can prove helpful in maintaining the cash flow in business.

6. Introduce a new product line

Do not provide discounts on your existing products to attract more customers as this may dilute the brand equity of the products. Instead, launch a low-priced line of products to give customers an affordable alternative.

7. Make customer service a priority

This is indeed your best bet against losing customers in the times of slow economic growth. Customers are ready to pay a premium for good services and resist the urge to opt for another product or service as long as the services are good.

Businesses need to survive the tough times to be able to thrive in the times amicable to growth. It is important for organizations to adopt a winning strategy by incorporating changes as per the prevailing business environment. Processes can be streamlined to bring in efficiency. Businesses that are already leveraging the power of efficiency in processes have other options at their disposal. It is always possible to weather the tough times if the organization handles it properly.

About the author: Brianne Walter is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets like the Samsung E2222 .  These days she is busy in writing an article on Chevrolet Captiva.