One of the best parts about WordPress is that everything you need is normally already built in.  There is a comment management system built into WordPress, you simply need to know which plug-ins to install in order to create your Comment Management System.  Some of the better plugins for your comment management are: Akismet, which fights the spam spoken of earlier; CommentLuv, which will add a link from each commenter back to their most recent blog posting; Threaded Comments, which allows replies to be made to each comment in a threaded fashion that makes it easy to follow the conversation.

Another option is to use Disqus (pronounced Discuss) Comments.  This is not only a comment management system, and it not only helps block spam commenting, but this has many community building features, as well.  For instance, commenters can log in via various different social media accounts and comment on blogs of their choice in real time, offering threaded commenting, as well.  Disqus even allows for the commenter to leave a video comment instead of the average written comment if they so desire.

Another final option you have for managing the comments in your WordPress blog is called Intense Debate.  This comment management system offers threaded commenting, email notifications of new comments and replies, as well as the option to reply to comments via your email.  Much the same as Disqus, users that are registered have the opportunity to create a profile and create a reputation for themselves based on the commenting that they do.  Intense Debate also filters spam comments, allows you to moderate comments, and even offers you the ability to blacklist certain commenters if you feel the need.  This option is also in connection with social media sites, so you can sign in with your Facebook or Twitter account if you like.

What Comment Management System is right for you and your blog?  It actually will depend a lot on your persona needs.  For instance, what features are most important to you, and how many comments do you obtain on a daily basis?  Visit other blogs that use each different type of system and take some notes about which you like and do not like, not only as the blogger but also as the commenter.

You have set up your business’ WordPress blog, and you are gaining a large reader fanbase.  These readers love the fact that WordPress is interactive, and when the like, love, or disagree with something that you have to say, these readers will leave comments below your blog.  These comments can help to bring your blog to life.  As time goes on, however, you may notice that it is difficult to respond to every comment, manage the comments, and try to eliminate the spam.  (Yep, it doesn’t just go to your inbox anymore.)  However, there are great options for managing your comments in WordPress and for making the comments more interactive.

One of the best parts about WordPress is that everything you need is normally already built in.  There is a comment management system built into WordPress, you simply need to know which plug-ins to install in order to create your Comment Management System.  Some of the better plugins for your comment management are: Akismet, which fights the spam spoken of earlier; CommentLuv, which will add a link from each commenter back to their most recent blog posting; Threaded Comments, which allows replies to be made to each comment in a threaded fashion that makes it easy to follow the conversation.

Another option is to use Disqus (pronounced Discuss) Comments.  This is not only a comment management system, and it not only helps block spam commenting, but this has many community building features, as well.  For instance, commenters can log in via various different social media accounts and comment on blogs of their choice in real time, offering threaded commenting, as well.  Disqus even allows for the commenter to leave a video comment instead of the average written comment if they so desire.

Another final option you have for managing the comments in your WordPress blog is called Intense Debate.  This comment management system offers threaded commenting, email notifications of new comments and replies, as well as the option to reply to comments via your email.  Much the same as Disqus, users that are registered have the opportunity to create a profile and create a reputation for themselves based on the commenting that they do.  Intense Debate also filters spam comments, allows you to moderate comments, and even offers you the ability to blacklist certain commenters if you feel the need.  This option is also in connection with social media sites, so you can sign in with your Facebook or Twitter account if you like.
What Comment Management System is right for you and your blog?  It actually will depend a lot on your persona needs.  For instance, what features are most important to you, and how many comments do you obtain on a daily basis?  Visit other blogs that use each different type of system and take some notes about which you like and do not like, not only as the blogger but also as the commenter.

Manage Flitter (http://manageflitter.com)

Manage Flitter is the ultimate way to manage those accounts you follow that don’t follow you back on Twitter.

Twitter limits you to following only 5% more people than those that follow you at any point in time, so if you want to grow the number of people you’re engaged with, you’ll want to be able to remove those that you aren’t reaching at some point.

Manage Flitter’s free offering lets you track all your followers and determines those that aren’t following you back – these Twitter users can’t see your Tweets and are possibly a wasted opportunity for your Twitter efforts. You can use Manage Flitter, to work out how many of these users are inactive (they don’t use Twitter much or at all), how many are quiet (they rarely use Twitter) and which are active but don’t interact with you (it’s possible you might want to use a little extra effort to reach out to these people before you unfollow them).

There are also premium services which expand your understanding of the people you follow, but the basic version is always free and for many first time users it has enough functionality to improve your engagement rapidly.

Hoot Suite (http://www.hootsuite.com)

Hoot Suite is a Twitter marketer’s dream, it allows you to schedule Tweets either on an individual basis (on a free account) or on a bulk upload basis (on a monthly subscription basis).

This is very important because regular Tweeting has been shown to have a much better impact on audiences, but it’s very time consuming (a full-time job even) to do this on a per message basis, every time you want to say something.

Hoot Suite lets you work out the key messages you want to convey and then diarize them to be Tweeted when they’re most appropriate to do so.

Don’t forget that at a minimum it’s a good idea to have a useful link in every fifth Tweet, Twitter’s a social network so make sure you’re providing useful info for your readers and not just promoting your business.

Tweet Deck (http://tweetdeck.com)

Tweet Deck is both an online and offline service (if you download and install the software) that enables you to better track the Tweets you send and receive. Twitter itself offers a fairly limited view of Tweets with little customization for searches and filters.

If you use Tweet Deck it draws in all your messages and enables you to sort them for particular keywords and phrases, as well as giving you the option to view multiple feed streams at the same time.

So if you want to make sure you respond to #complaint or #welldone! as quickly as possible it’s a great way to bring out those results and make sure you never miss an opportunity to demonstrate your value to your customers.

Challenges, Mistakes and Overcoming Language Barriers

Storytelling for target market penetration is what social media video is actually all about. Showing how something is done for example is visual; we are visual beings, so storytelling in the form of teaching is enhanced when done in video. With the teaching or showing ‘how to’ comes persuasion – therefore any marketing drive appears natural, and with this ‘natural’ approach, video works in any language.

Language complicates text, and many social media sites operate in a primary language – for example Orkut which is massively popular in Brazil. However one social video can be used to tell it all – internationally in living color. So by default, this makes market penetration international too. However participation is also key, so language is a barrier, but is not insurmountable. With text marketing only, there may be no international participation at all.

The only real challenges on the international stage for social media video are bandwidth and technology, but both are advancing fast. They are finding their way into many more homes and small businesses. Tagging may also be a problem where language barriers are concerned, but again this will resolve itself over time.

Video in social media marketing is becoming less about marketing and more about ‘social’, so should contain specific elements which the target market relates to; if its sex and relationships or whatever, make sure this is used. Participation and collaboration are key; and in the same way as a blog is often miss-used, this can occur with video. If the operative word is ‘social’ then a one way push is not going to work, same as making a blog a talking platform just doesn’t work.

Participation still has the same meaning as it has always had, so marketers should not lose sight of this in their eagerness to penetrate a market. The more attention given to the social elements such as comments and replies, are what also draws the attention of viewers, and must be part of the video platform being used. Again language may be a barrier internationally, but at least visuals still do much of the work, and are certainly better than nothing.

Non-participative video creation is one of the biggest mistakes made in online marketing today – most don’t go viral, and if they do it’s a happy accident. What makes a video marketing message useful is the fact that we like to share. So, storytelling really works, but, being able to contribute, add, question, change and reply, encourages viewers to recasting and share a video together with their own comments. In other words – they like to get their own point across in relationship to the video.

It is this participation with the combination of a core message which makes social media so valuable to marketers. Negating the role that the participant plays is a massive mistake for marketers, and will doubtful achieve much very worthwhile target market penetration. Social channels sometimes forget about this, which is a bit of a paradox really, because that makes them anti-social channels, doesn’t it?!

While harping on about the social aspect of participation with video, may appear to you by now as though we are flogging a dead horse. It really cannot be stressed enough. For social media to go viral, it really does have to be ‘social’. While appearing on a static platform may be useful, it is much more useful for marketers if the video is posted to social networks where the material can be shared.

In terms of business video, producing good material has become a case of entertain or die, or at least die trying. Some businesses do however, get very lucky indeed.

Have you seen the viral video of the cyclist in the cross-country bike race in South Africa? He was hit by a buck – and we don’t mean a dollar bill – this was a massive Reedbok who hit him in the head, baled him off his bike and literally smashed in his helmet. The boy was fortunately not hurt, it made fabulous content for the manufacturer of his helmet, and the fact that Jeep was his sponsor. Jeep was emblazoned all over his cycling shirt, and the caption in the pres was suitably – “the buck stops here!” How much more perfect could it be?

Regardless of the fact that this incident was incredibly lucky event for the cyclist, the Reedbok who charged off – we think – unharmed, and the lads’ sponsors; the fact that he was being filmed by a team-mate while he cycled, shows that they were opportunistically seeking out social media video material. No-one could have envisaged just how lucky they would get in every way, because what they actually captured on film was guaranteed viral video content.

Not every business looking to make social media video gets this kind of opportunity, and it would be very hard to fake. Hell it would be hard to even conceptualize. There is a one-in – we don’t know how many million – chances of something like this taking place. So, as far as entertain or die trying is concerned; you should be getting the picture by now?!

People are picky about what they watch and they want to be entertained, even from business they are keen to support regardless of whether this is B2B, or B2C marketing.

If a video sucks, people just won’t watch it, it’s as simple as that, and they certainly won’t be caught dead sharing it for fear of being labeled, “that deadbeat in the office who always sends out crap video!” Your employees won’t watch them, not even if ordered to, and a target audience certainly won’t watch videos that suck. They would rather spend hours searching for and watching 10 second clips that entertain them.

Bearing this in mind, it is better to spend time and money finding out what social media video entertains a target audience and creating this to suit the purpose. Get a professional if necessary, because art, practice and skill is required; but it is also simple enough to research a few ‘don’t do’s’ and create the content you need.

You might have one or two people you know – or even employees who have a knack with a video camera. Because of the depth that this medium reaches today, video hobbyists and wannabe film-makers are becoming ten-a-penny, although starring cyclists and Reedbok are few and far between. For day-to-day material avant-garde talent will do, while you allow the professionals to sweat the big stuff.

In as much as goals are being reached and measurables or return on investment are being established in the B2C content sharing space, businesses are now keen to raise an awareness of their products and services in the B2B space. However, unlike social media B2C viral video strategies where just about anything goes, businesses are approaching the potential for B2B promotion with just a little more caution. There is a slightly differently perceived gap with regards to going about this process.

Although businesses are made up of people, and it is people who watch and share videos, as well as read blogs and so on, a business (made up of people) does things differently. This indicates that a shift in focus is required, as far as viral strategy and production is concerned. Videos need to be seeded correctly to the right viewers and the same B2C creative does not cut the mustard completely. As the word ‘strategy’ suggests, there should be a B2B plan. This plan should or could consist of at least:

• Establishing goals and objectives
• Creative attitude
• Viral marketing tactics – sharing in the B2B space
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Target market dissemination
• Whatever else is believed to be important

The idea is that a scenario should still be created whereby videos are shared and they go from paid views to earned. When establishing goal objectives, end results may be better product awareness or more sales; objectives are generally short-term plans used to achieve goals.

Creative attitude should bear the end buyer in mind, so, what kind of content will inspire them? As with any marketing approach, a solution to a problem is generally successful. Humor is used to a great extent and with fabulous success in the B2C sphere, so, fun or funny may also be used, although we are looking for material which will also inspire sharing. Videos which relate to people and the problems they face, are acceptable to the wider population, and this includes businesses too. They should also be able to share these comfortably within and without the workplace, without any fear of embarrassment.

In terms of the marketing approach, this involves target audience, so, tangential and direct authorities need to be targeted; again this should swing toward the business end user. By the same token, Twitter, linkedIn, Facebook and other social group sharing is still considered to be par for the course.

SEO falls in line with video content, it addresses a problem or problems, possibly in a light-hearted way and researching what terms they will be likely used, is obviously good creative policy. Sub-titles, closed captions, searchable text, descriptions and tags, offer an SEO solution.

At the end of the day, when we get to target market dissemination – sharing is sharing – just like with B2C dissemination. In respect of viral strategies for B2B, the approach is very similar, the only difference being a more delineated focus which concentrates the effort. But it always pays to remember that despite the differently perceived gap in perceptions, business, are also people.

Reward Your Fans

Your Facebook Fans are your brand ambassadors, they’ve “liked” your page because they’re passionate about the things you do. So reward them for it, give them access to advance notifications on products or run fan only events in the real world which show appreciation for their caring.

Have a competition

Everybody likes to be a winner, and one of the best ways for your Facebook page to become a viral winner is to run a competition. This isn’t as straight forward as it is on your own website, and you’ll need to use a third part application to manage it – Wildfire, Shortstack, Easypromos, etc. and make sure you understand the Facebook rules for competitions: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

Make your competition interesting and engaging and a way for fans to interact with your brand, for example if you run a business selling soft toys – why not have a photo contest for fans to show your toys in the most unusual locations or scenarios?

Tell a Sponsored Story

Facebook allows users all sorts of controls to block information from their day to day feeds, which means that some of your fans will block your content because they don’t find it compelling every day. This will happen to even the best Facebook marketers, but Facebook sponsored stories allow you to pay for access to feeds in your locality or for users with specific interests.

These stories can’t be blocked and if your content is interesting and engaging enough, you may win back fans and gain new ones.

Friday Fun

Facebook’s own research shows that Facebook users are happiest on Fridays. And when people are happy they want to socialize.

Why not hold an event like Twitter’s #followfriday? Give your fans some space to share what they enjoy and to promote themselves on Fridays. And by offering them a specific time to do so, you’ll cut down on them confusing your message the rest of the time.

Get Metric

Because Facebook marketing is so much fun when it’s done right, it’s easy to forget that it’s a business tool. You really need to understand your visitors and in order to do so you need to set up a brand dashboard, that measures engagement, unique visitors, new fans, fan attrition (when fans leave) and so on. Otherwise how will you know if your marketing spend on Facebook is bringing the best value? It will also give you a great clue as to what activities most energize your fans.

Redefine Your Brand as a Social Network

Social networking on sites like Facebook offers you the opportunity to interact with your customers like never before, you can get quick feedback on new ideas, products and designs and work out what really makes your core audience tick. The best marketers use Facebook and similar tools to drive business not just maintain relationships with their existing clients.

First, you will need to login to your account with your credentials.  Once you are in your Dashboard, follow the following steps to add an image, or even a featured image, into your WordPress post.

Step 1)From your Dashboard, look at the left hand column and notice where it says Posts.  Click on Add New.

The WordPress post editor looks as simple to operate in as it truly is.  It is simply an open white area or box, and it has some small icons (tools) above it.  When you are ready to add your picture or other image, proceed to step two.

Step 2)Now, move your cursor inside the text box and hover it where you wish to place the image.  Click on the space where you wish for your image to be placed.

Step 3) Then, move your cursor to the top of the text box to where you see the words Upload/Insert.  You will now click on the small icon just to the right of those words.  Just to be sure, if you hover over this small icon, it will say Add Image or Add Picture.

Step 4) Now you will click on that icon.  A new pop-up window will open and it will say “Add media files from your computer.”

Step 5) Click on Select Files.  Browse to the file that contains your image and click Open.  It may take a few moments, but then your image will appear as a thumbnail.  If it does not appear, then your file may not be in the correct format.  You will have to choose another image.  If so, repeat this step.  If you image has uploaded successfully, then move to step 6.

Step 6)You will be given the option to name your image in the Title field.  You can also leave this blank, if you wish.

Step 7) You will be given the option to link to another page, such as another WordPress page, or an outside web address.  This is where it says Link URL.  If you do not want to link to any other pages, simply click “none,” but if you do, follow the prompts to link your image to another page.

Step 8) Next, click and set the Alignment and the Size that you want your image to be.

Step 9) Finally, you may click on either Insert into Post or Insert into Page, and the pop-up window will automatically close.

Now, your uploaded image will appear in the post that you are creating.  If you do not like its placement, you may place your cursor over the image and perform a “click and drag” to get it where you want it.  To do this simply place the cursor over the image, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the image to where you would like it to be.  Now you have your first post with an image!

Step 1

After logging into your WordPress account, you will be presented with your WordPress Dashboard.  Along the left hand side of your dashboard, you will notice many tabs that you can click on, such as Dashboard, Upgrades, and Posts.  Left click on Posts.

Step 2

This will open up a screen that will show you all of the posts that you have created so far.  Go over the list until you find the post that is in need of editing.  When you have found it, hover over the post and you will see choices appear.  These choices include: Edit, Quick Edit, Trash, and View.  Left click on Edit.  This will open up the page that allows you to edit your post.  It is very much the same as when you first posted the post.

Step 3

Edit your post as needed.

Step 4

Remember to click on Update or Publish in the upper right hand corner of the page.

You have now edited your post!

Step 1) To add a new Page to your WordPress site, such as an About Us page, look at the left hand side of your Dashboard.

Step 2) Down towards the bottom, you will see a menu tab called Pages, that when you hover over, it shows a down arrow on the right hand side of the tab.  Left click on the Pages tab and the Pages menu will open.  Scroll down to Add New and left click again.  Your Dashboard screen will now display the Pages screen.

Step 3) At the top of the Pages screen where it says Pages, there is a small button that says Add New.  Left click on the Add New button to create a new page.

Step 4) From here, the guidelines are much the same as when you add a new Post.  You will give your new page a title, and fill in the body with your information.  When you have finished with your page, click on the Publish button in the upper right hand corner.

You now have successfully added a new Page to your WordPress blog!

Adding Media

It is not difficult to add any type of media to your WordPress blog site.  For audio purposes, it is easy to add mp3s, midi, and .wav music or other audio files to your site from the files saved on your computer.  The following will guide you on how to set this up.

Step 1)

Login to your WordPress Dashboard using your credentials. Open the post that you would like to add your audio to.  Next to Upload/Insert, you will see a musical note; click on that.  This opens the Add Audio window.

Step 2)

Depending on where your music files are, you will have several choices as to from where you can upload.  The most obvious choice will be to upload from your computer, as this is the box that will open.  Click on Browse and locate the file that you would like to add to your post.  Go ahead and upload the file, add a title for it, and click on Insert.  If your audio file is from the internet, click on From URL.  You will have to add the URL of the site that has the audio file.  Again, title the file and click on Insert.  If you have already uploaded your media file at another time, then it will already be in your Media Library, so simply go there and click on Insert.  Upon clicking Insert, it will be added to your post.

Managing Media

From within your Dashboard, you have an easy way of maintaining your images, video, and audio files from within your Media Library.  You can find this by clicking on the Media Tab on the left hand side of your Dashboard.  In this section, there are two selections, Library, and Add New.  If you need to upload a new file from your computer to your library, then you will click on Add New.  Whenever you have a need for a media file it will then already be in your Library, and you can simply click on it via the Properties box.

Adding Categories

First, you will want to login to your WordPress site using your credentials that you used when you set up your WordPress blog.  Once you are in your Dashboard, follow the steps below to set up and implement Categories.

Step 1)

On the right hand side of your Dashboard, at the top, you will see your Publish box.  Just directly underneath that is the Categories box.  If you have never used or set up categories, there will be one category within that box called Uncategorized with a small tick box next to it.  If you have never set up categories, all of your posts will automatically default to Uncategorized.

Step 2)

If you would like, go ahead and write a short new post.  Depending on your site, it can be about anything.  This is just to get you started on writing your first categorized post.

Step 3)

Once you are finished with your post, go to the Categories box.  Click on the link at the bottom of the box that says Add New Category.

Step 4)

A text box will open.  Name your new category.  Underneath that text box will be another text box that says Parent Category.  Leave that field as is, and click on the Add New Category button.

Step 5)

That new category will appear in your categories list now with a check mark in the tick box.  If you are finished with your post, you may now click Publish, and your new post will be posted within this new category you have just set up.  You have now created your first category!

You can continue with steps 3 and 4 until you have set up as many categories as you need.  Once you are finished, you can then click on the Posts tab on the left hand side of your Dashboard.

Managing Categories

A page will open up detailing all of your current posts.  You can now open each post and categorize it as you wish, following these steps:

Step 1)

When you open each post, it will look exactly as it did when you were first writing it.

Step 2)

With your post open, go to the Categories box and place a check mark next to the Category in which you want this post to be displayed.  Then click on Publish, and your post will now be categorized in the Category in which you have chosen.

Keep following steps 1 and 2 for all of the posts you wish to now categorize.

Step 1) Login to your WordPress account and Dashboard.

Step 2) From the Appearance tab on the left side of your Dashboard, select Menus and it will open the menu editor.

Step 3) enter a new name for the new menu within the Menu Name box.  Click on the Create Menu button.

From within this area, you can now customize your menu to look the way you wish.

What Does it Do?

This plugin will automatically create pages with the URLs that were just updated; it will include any recent changes, and will give priority to any links that you have published.  Each and every time you create a new Post, Page, or even just edit your existing posts and pages, it will send notifications to major search engines.  You can also opt to include the robot.txt file that communicates the whereabouts of your site’s pages to the search engines.  Best of all, it is totally customizable.  You are even able to import or include pages that are off of the actual WordPress site.

Why Should You Use It?

If you don’t already, you will learn that the number one rule of SEO is that your pages and posts are indexed by the search engines as quickly as possible.  If this does not occur, people will not be able to find you on the internet.

Almost immediately after installing this plugin, you will be able to see the benefits.  It will drive more traffic to your blog and your visibility will have increased exponentially.

Blogging is one of the best free methods of branding you, your products, or your services.  When you learn how to effectively blog, you will greatly enhance your business and your ability to earn income online.

The easiest way to add a contact form to your WordPress blog is via the use of the plugin called Contact Form 7.

To begin, you will need to log in to your WordPress Dashboard.  Once you are there, you can click on the Plugins tab that is on the upper left hand side of your screen.  Then, click on the Add New button.  It will prompt you to enter a search term and you will enter Contact Form 7.  Now, click on Search Plugins.  A list of available plugins will appear, from which you will choose Contact Form 7.  Under Contact Form 7, click on the Install Now button.  It will convey another prompt, asking if you are sure of the installation, and you will click OK.  After the form has finished installing, you will need to click on the Activate Now link in order for the form to become active on your blog.  Now your Contact Form 7 is installed and activated.

Now, you need to add your contact form to a page on your blog.  The best way to do this is to add it as a separate page, usually with the title Contact Us.  You can also choose to use the About Us page, which is automatically installed when you set up your WordPress blog.  The way in which to do this will be explained below.

From your Dashboard, you will now see on the left hand side, a tab will now be there called Contact.  Click on this new tab to go to the page where you control your contact form settings.

Contact Form 1 has already been established for you.  You will see that tags and email addresses have already been inputted for you.  If you are happy with the tags and addresses that it has input, you will simply copy the text or change the text to read how you would like.  After you have successfully copied the information, you will then click on the Pages tab.

When you arrive at the Edit Pages screen, you will see the pages that you have currently installed.  From here, you can create a new page to put your contact form on, or you can use the About Us page that comes preinstalled.  For this example, we will use the About Us page.  Simply hover over that page name until you see choices that include Edit.  Then you will click on the edit button.  Edit the text there to suit your style of blog, then paste the information that you copied from the contact form into the page.  Now click on update to make your changes official.  Up at the top of the page you will see a link to View Page.  Now you have officially created your contact form for your blog, and your readers and potential clients will now be able to contact you.

There is nothing worse than a boring business video, posing in viral social media garb!

Video is the perfect vehicle for communicating movement and emotion. It’s a human thing – we are mammals, and when things move we pay attention. If you think business marketing is all about presentations, pie-charts and projections, stick to what you know best – preferably in the board-room (spot the pun?); let the professionals handle any entertaining viral social media requirements. They are wired that way, you are not!

The audience must come first, so the concept encapsulates this. Show them a good time and by default they will love you – simply because they love your video, not because they think your pie-charts are stunningly erudite. There is only so much charm that can be squeezed out of a chart.

“Viral” is not business concept for social media video. It indicates a response from a target or other audience. In other words, people get so excited about what they are seeing, they just can’t help themselves but to share it. When a video is dubbed “viral” this means it is a hit, but no-one can guarantee that a hit can be achieved. Savvy, artistry, marketing, vision, skill; can all be used, and video may still not go viral, because a huge amount of luck is required. So a business marketing video strategy cannot be based on achieving viral popularity. This is unrealistic.

The average time spent looking at a web site is 15 seconds; a 10 minute long marketing video, is going to be too long, you want your audience to want more. 2 – 3 minutes, even less is more than enough. In the viral social media scheme of things, 3 minutes is a very long time, especially when watching something that is less than great. If you manage to get Quentin Tarantino to direct, and Uma Thurman to star while modeling AussieBum, things could be different in terms of time. Just keep it short to keep your target audience entertained.

When we said at the beginning of this piece that video is the perfect tool for communicating emotion, we meant it. One of the most entertaining emotions is of course humor. Animals are another very emotive subject, so use animals together with humor and what have you got? Viral social media on steroids – this combination is positively visceral.

Why businesses shy away from making humorous videos is anybody’s guess? Remember this has to be done well, and music done well, works too. When a video actually doesn’t work, music can often pull it together. People are willing to kill to re-experience humor and music, and as businesses should be trying to entertain or die trying, viral social media could be your chance for a marriage made in heaven – your target audience’s drug of choice.

Don’t expect any audience to sit through bad shooting or bad shots, if it looks bad on the camera screen it will look bad on every screen. There was only one Blair Witch project, or was there two? Bad photography – full stop – will kill the video.

Also don’t forget to add a good metaphor and do this in a full sentence. ‘Our employees’ and shot of the staff is not a metaphor. ‘Our employees bend over backward to get your package to you’ is a caption, particularly if employees are filmed bending over backwards while playing pass-the-parcel – this is a visual and text metaphor for…well…bending over backwards of course.

Marketing professionals today are seeing more and more social content coming at us from even more sources. By sources we are referring to channels such as popular business and social networks. Examples of these are well known to us all – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube – these are only the famous few.

This increase in content places massive demands on business as the pace becomes faster than ever; there is only one opening left to business in circumstances such as these – if you can beat ‘em, then join ‘em. This sees mainstream industry just as anxious to be ‘social’, and participate on this level.

Let’s unpack this a little further; as business are expected to engage with conversations which pop up around what they do, they have to cut through a great deal of noise to reach their target market. So, there is ever increasing competition to attract attention. This means the bar has been raised to dictate what will catch the attention of their audience. They have to give them what they want, and the audience wants video. What was once dismissed as a form of online entertainment that had nothing to do with serious advertising – for example YouTube videos- is now being seen by business as a serious marketing tool.

With advancements in technology, audience participation and familiarity, the social video platform has become a marketing platform for business. The channel integrates easily with all other business properties – by this we mean websites and blogs – and is also fully integrated across all social network brands. Online video is no longer purely a YouTube domain; it is an easily integrated social technology which a growing percentage of internet users have come to expect.

Customers now think it strange if a business does not have video content appearing on their websites. Social media marketing in the form of video for business also needs to be specifically ‘social’ video; but why? The differentiators is that social video content is defined by continual interaction. That is between the video content and the people or consumers who watch. This has a persuasive action, which either benefits the business – or not.

Video is therefore considered to be ‘naturally’ social; whereas a purely informative website together with its target audience offers an interaction, but is not actually fostering a social interaction. Let’s look at this a little more deeply.

Many websites today feature ‘social’ functions such as comments sections, forums, support communities or all of these features combined. This is an example of a similar interaction, with valuable marketing potential, but it still won’t have the same impact as social video. The fact that two or more people curate information or data and then purposefully share the data, is what makes it interactive or ‘social’ if you prefer, and video has a tendency to do this naturally.

The technology is more readily available and easier than ever before to use, so there is no viable excuse for any business not to use social media marketing to engage their audience, and get their business engagement on steroids. It is very important to remember here that humans are ‘visual’ beings.

When someone online goes in order to Google as well as types within a string associated with keywords, Google utilizes a formula to find out which web site best suits that customer’s needs. Whilst this formulation remains not known, years associated with research including learning from mistakes has provided us the means with which to begin to remain competitive with other internet search engine optimized websites.

The WordPress plugin “All in One SEO Pack” makes SEO easy as well as immediate. To begin with, the All-in-one SEO Pack functions automatically improve your titles on pages for search engines like Google, whether it goes to the main page of the blog, or simply one post. This marketing pulls related information as well as uses this for key word searches, effectively leading appropriate traffic for your site.

The All-in-one SEO pack also offers the capacity to automatically produce META tags for the webpage for utilization in search engines. It will never duplicate articles as observed on a few WordPress weblogs or web sites.

This WordPress plugin may be used successfully through beginners as well as advanced customers alike. For newbies, all you need to do is install and it also works correct out-of-the-box. The thing you need for is the primary website name, tag line and also the main keywords within the option’s web page.

For superior users, nevertheless, there is the opportunity to fine-tune your own SEO choices. You may override or even select some other text to make use of in your SEO. You may also manually change the navigational links on the blog.

The WordPress plugin All-in-one SEO Pack is formulated to enjoy backward compatibility with many other WordPress plugins including Greatest Tag Soldier in Auto Meta.

Using the All-in-one SEO Pack will provide you with the capability to select the actual keyword or even words you need to be related to your website. Linking these types of keywords together with your blog name, article titles, and some other tags on the page will certainly direct lots of traffic from search engines like Google directly for your WordPress web site, with small to absolutely no effort from you.

Just install as well as go, and revel in your brand new, higher traffic on the search engine optimized website.

It is important to remember that YouTube drives traffic for longer than Twitter or Facebook for example. So, it matters where you share content, as much as what the content is, and how the video is made.

Viewers love watching video content, the more comic, cute or bazaar, the better! The best thing about this is that viral marketing happens, virtually on its own accord. The better a video is and the more laughs a person gets out of it; the more they share it. So, the video takes on a life of its own, trailing your marketing campaign behind, like a virtual Halley’s Comet tail – only to pop up again every 75 or 76 years – when it will start up your marketing campaign again without you even knowing. The half-life of a really good video is about the same as a hefty hunk of nuclear-grade Plutonium, or at least it should be.

As it matters where this content is shared; YouTube is the best. Although, trends in popularity do sometimes change, it is best to stick with what we know best. There is very little reinventing of the wheel happening with internet marketing. Innovation might be king, but the invention has all been done for the time being, so, best do what everyone else does, especially if it works.

If you are a numbers person, and many people are – the numbers tell us that for links shared on YouTube – the half-life is approximately 7.4 hours. It does not seem like a very long time does it – but why do they call it a half life? Because it is not actually 7.4 hours when all is taken into consideration, but we won’t get into that now, as it is another topic of conversation. To compare this number with Facebook and Twitter, they have a link half-life of something like 3 hours.

Therefore the obvious assumption is; that if a link is shared on YouTube it holds the attention of the audience, for more than twice as long. That is more than double the public interest level, and that in itself is HUGE!

In terms of our actionable advice to you, this means, when you are sharing video with the aim to achieve viral marketing – share your links on YouTube. Remember on the internet when it comes to marketing, if it isn’t broken we don’t fix it. We copy what everyone else does when it works. We don’t advocate that you don’t share your links on Facebook and Twitter – you should. But we are definite about the fact that links should be shared on YouTube.

Links should appear in annotation on the video itself, if can’t do this get someone who can to help you and pay them to do it. Links should also appear in the video description, and all individual links should be shared with social networking media more than once.

In other words, when clicks have reached their life-cycle peak, they should be shared again. Not necessarily in YouTube, but definitely on Facebook and Twitter, as there is another very important marketing concept – or rule if you like – your material should always appear ‘above the fold’. Links on both Facebook and Twitter, soon move down the page, and disappear below the fold. It’s then also safe to assume that your reader may not see the link the first time. Even though this is a virtual fold, the fold still counts. However on You Tube, the links are always right there.

The overall assumption, based on this overwhelming evidence is – that all businesses with an online presence should be exploring/experimenting the use of social video for their viral marketing campaigns.

Contrary to popular belief, ‘viral’ in this context is not associated with a negative meaning. It didn’t take online marketers long to realize the core value which viral video can offer to any business with an online presence. Viral video marketing can often be managed for free, and this is in complete opposition to the tenets of traditional marketing, especially in the ‘filmed’ genre. However, and this is a very big however; professionally made videos are becoming extremely popular and used as business marketing tools. And let’s face facts – the better the quality, humor, human interest story, or whatever the plot and starring players – the more successful or more ‘viral’ a video will, or should be.

There is also the fact to consider, that certain social networking sites are proving to be more successful for viral video marketing campaigns, than others. Recent data made available regarding Twitter and video, tells us that Twitter is fast becoming one of the most powerful ways to receive and distribute video referrals. Referrals from Twitter are considered to be more valuable than those received from Google; which we already believe to be the best search engine available. Online marketers in the ‘viral video’ category, should seriously have a presence on Twitter. There is certainly no reason why they should not.

Recent times have seen massive news happening with regards to video on Twitter. First of all, the updated Twitter website, allows tweets and other feeds to support embedded video. YouTube, Twitvid, Ustream, Vimeo, Brightcove and Justin.TV are all supported, or going to be supported on the new site, as are photos from Twitpic and Flickr. Anyone who uses video for business marketing or communication is going to benefit big time from rollout of the new Twitter site.

Together with this announcement, Brightcove and Tubemogul have released some rather interesting video advertising analytics in an excellent ‘joint’ quarterly report. You might like to check this out. It is in this report that we find; “Twitter is now the 2nd fastest growing discovery source of video views, growing at rate of 38.7% per month!” This rate of phenomenal growth is only behind Facebook, and way ahead of every search engine online. For brands this trend is even more pronounced, with Twitter referrals for video streams growing by 55% per month!

What is also interesting to note is the fact that the ‘actual’ percentage of referrals for video streams is the highest in Google, however, what is different in terms of Twitter referrals, is that they beat out engagement levels in all search engines including Google. Again – only Facebook is ahead in terms of engagement levels. For video to go viral, it requires an engaged audience. According to this report, the magic formula is – “Twitter-Referred Video = More Engaged Audiences”. An engaged audience generally also means pre-qualified customers. Interestingly Twitter also holds the top-spot currently for audience engagement with music videos. From this we could surmise that any Twitter viral video campaign is meaningful in a marketing context, and contains intrinsic core value for any business.

Just enter new testimonials within the” Add new” screen. You are able to either display consumer images from Gravatar. com or upload your personal image. Uploaded images tend to be automatically resized to meet your needs.

A new testimonials page is going to be automatically created for the very first time user, or you may also create your personal page and paste the next code to screen your testimonials, after that you can view all your testimonials within a screen that is pretty much like how you handle WordPress comments, and decide to Edit or Remove testimonials. In order to demonstrate testimonials in a specific page just use the code [show_testimonials].

While web video production and ensuring that it is great is massively important, marketers have to dig deeper than that. Creating a great video which commands social video success is the aim of the game, but is not enough if left to its own devices. There is so much video being uploaded every minute on YouTube alone, that if ‘upload/publish’ is the last step in the plan, then we contend that the plan is doomed to failure. If the video does happen to succeed, then, it will have been an exceptionally lucky success.

There are best practices for marketing and distribution, and starting with items of a general nature – the #1 best practice should be a ‘Marketing Plan’. We know this goes without saying, but sometimes people don’t listen and the obvious needs to be reiterated. Don’t wait until post production and launch to get a marketing plan in place. Key decisions on both distribution and marketing can also be determined by content. For example, deciding to upload to Vimeo is a good start for a web video production with artistic content.

A press release is essential; include this in your marketing plan. You might be surprised by how many press releases are actually read, and new videos viewed on the basis of these. Virtually any interested party who reads a press release, if it’s good, will also watch the video. Do you know why they watch the video? Because they don’t want to miss out on a single opportunity to share a brand new video online! This is the whole point of going to the extent of the web video production exercise in the first place.

Make the press release most readily available to readers, writers and viewers who feel the same way in which the content is directed. What we mean is people who appreciate great content. These people need to be identified in…you got it…the marketing plan.

As well as people who view and share, you want all the right people to write about it. There is nothing better than free publicity. Identify who these people might be. Even local media – newspapers, TV and radio count; but reach out and let them know. Even one story in a local knock-and-drop paper, can get social video action kick-started. Remember you need good matches for the intended audience.

Identify gatekeepers; these are the websites which drive video for your style or industry. We mentioned a name earlier – remember – Vimeo? You are seeking to identify large websites with huge amounts of readers. News websites such as the Huffington Post, and link-sharers such as Reddit! While it is not a simple task to get a video featured on one of these sites, with the right video content creator you might. In any case, there is certainly no harm in trying, what have you got to lose, it5 costs nothing to ask? Write this into your marketing plan. It also pays to remember, that the better the content is, the more easily it rises above stumbling blocks.

Diving deep into social video marketing, means having the right marketing plan in place before you even begin. Nothing happens without hard work and best practices are…dare we say it…proven to be the best!

Managing Pages in WordPress

On the left hand side of your Dashboard, you will see all of the tabs that you can select from to do your work within WordPress.  Down towards the bottom of the left hand side of your Dashboard, you will find the Pages tab.  When you click on Pages, the Pages screen will open, detailing all of your current pages.  If you have done nothing with your Pages tab so far, then most likely this will only show an About page or no pages at all.

To create a new page, up at the top of the Pages screen where it says Pages, you will see just to the right of that a button that says Add New.  You can click on this to add a new page.  Follow the same procedure as you would when writing a new Post, and then click on the Publish button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Now, to manage your current pages, simply hover over the name of the page you need to work on, and a list of choices will appear, such as Edit or Trash.  Choose what you need to do, such as Edit, then complete your work, and click Publish or Update in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Editing Pages in WordPress

Editing Pages is much the same as when you edit a Post from within WordPress.  When you are ready to edit a page, go to the left hand side of your Dashboard and click on Pages.  Your Pages screen will open.  From here, you will see all of the Pages you currently have on your WordPress site.  If you need to edit one or all of your Pages, simply hover over the page which needs to be updated or edited, and click Edit.

A screen will open up that looks very much like a new Post screen.  Simply write up your Page the same way you would write up a new Post, or edit an existing Post, then click on either Update or Publish in the upper right hand corner.

You now have the tools to update, manage, edit, and publish your new Pages in WordPress.

Even if you have a richly designed blog with the best of the best of content, if your site never references any other sites, such as other blogs, funny sites, search engines, etc., it will be a dead end as far as links are concerned.  If there are sites that you frequently visit, it is a good idea to allow your following to also take a look at those other sites.  You can use the WordPress Links tab to do so.

You can organize your links by category, create internal references concerning your relationship with your chosen links, automatically associate different links with certain images, and even rate your links.

From the Dashboard, you can get to the Links screen by clicking on the Links tab which is on the left hand side of your Dashboard.

Once there, the Links screen will allow you to select the links you wish to edit or delete.  You can select multiple links to edit or delete.  There are various searching and filtering options that will allow you to locate the links that you wish to delete or edit.

If you have no links, or you simply wish to create a new one, you can click on the Add New Link button and follow the prompts.You are most likely familiar by now with creating, editing, and deleting Posts.  Links, just like Posts, can also be categorized.  However, your Link categories, unlike your Post categories, have no relationship to each other; in other words, there is no hierarchy.  When you create Link categories, each category name has to be unique and of itself.  New Link categories can also be added when you are adding or editing your Links.

Having a proportionate amount of links on your site can greatly help your readership increase exponentially.  Be sure to link to sites that are comparable with your own, or that have some type of connection to you or your readers.

Search Engine Optimization is the name of the game when getting the most from your website, after all if you aren’t at the top of the Google rankings – you’ll be losing out business. But how do you get there? And more importantly what should you do to stay there? In part it it’s all about onsite SEO.

Here are some tips to get the best from your onsite SEO

Write to be read

It’s become easy for lazy marketers to spend months creating heaps of keyword optimized content that says absolutely nothing in a hundred different ways. This may get you to the top of Google, but it won’t persuade anyone to actually read what you’ve written. First and foremost write for your audience, a little less keyword stuffing and more content will mean that visitors stick around to appreciate your insights – rather than switching straight off.

Know your keywords

Do you know the difference between long-tail and short-tail keywords? If not, you should – because the competition for short-tail (quick phrases) keywords is fierce and it may take a long, long time (if ever) for you to make an impact on something like “builder’s merchants”. You shouldn’t face such an uphill struggle if you make your keywords long-tail and thus more relevant to your business “builder’s merchants in Des Moines” for example. You can research keywords using the Google Adwords tool – specifically designed for that purpose.

Use your keywords in the right places

It’s not enough just to have some keywords and use them occasionally – you have to use them in the right way; in your actual text they should appear in your title, in the first paragraph of your copy and at a density of around 1-3% to achieve maximum onsite SEO benefit throughout the rest of the article. But that’s not all, your keywords also need to appear in your meta data – which the users can’t see but the search engines can.

Use images and in the right way

The Internet offers a wonderful medium for visuals, and you should (in keeping with our first point, about writing for readers) keep your articles interesting by including photos and images wherever they add value. Better still there’s an extra HTML tag for images, known as alt text (its purpose is to show text when the user puts their mouse cursor over the picture) the benefit to your onsite SEO strategy is that search engines love it – and it’s OK to keyword stuff like crazy in this space, because it won’t annoy your readers. Images offer you this neat onsite SEO technique.

And then link your content together

One of things search engines look for is how easy it is to find your content within your own website, make links between each new piece of content you create and something that’s been posted before. Better still – make these links using your keywords as anchor text, and you can get twice the Google love for the same effort.

Don’t forget onsite SEO in your marketing efforts, it’s important, relatively easy to do and creates benefits with search engines that you might otherwise have to pay for (in real money) in other online marketing activities.

With cash flow being the key to business success particularly for the small business it’s timely to check out some of the features that Freshbook’s offers you:

Invoices

• Automated Billing – charge client credit cards automatically on set cycles
• Multiple online payment vendor support – you’re not restricted to PayPal
• Full secure backups of all data
• Multiple currency support – invoice your clients anywhere in any currency
• Trigger invoices based on set criteria (time spend on a project or expenses, etc.) – the system even allows you to send them by post if necessary

Time Tracking

• Track time spent on a project by each team member
• Get real time updates and project reports
• You can share this information with clients online, without sharing other data too
• Use the “minibooks” application to track this from your mobile phone

Expenses and Estimates

• Create and send estimates to clients
• Track expenses and if you like share them with clients so they can monitor the project’s progress

Reporting

• Track staff for their profitability and contributions
• Analyze customers and projects to see which are most profitable

Contractor Management

• Bring contractors on board and enable real time tracking of progress and contribution to the project
• Receive and manage contractor invoices

Branding

• Design simple easy to use branded templates for all your project communication

Add Ons

• Support from multiple developers for handy plugins that increase functionality

Support

• Round the clock helpdesk support
• Blog offering advice and ways to extend the usefulness of the service

All of these features are great, but the big question is – does Freshbooks do what it says on the tin, in a way that is useful for your business?

Yes, it does and at affordable prices ranging from a free account, which offers basic services and the facility to support up to three clients through to the fully featured option with unlimited client support and a second user license at only $40 a month.

There are many competitors to Freshbooks, and to be fair when it comes to straight invoicing solutions many of them do equally as good as job. But where Freshbooks excels is its ability to integrate with multiple platforms and offer mobility solutions that are second to none. Examples include; time-tracking across Android, Blackberry and iPhone interfaces. It provides links to small business accounting sites like Xero and Outright. You can even import leads from Setser and TypePad.

And there are the reporting options, which are abundant, ensure that you can view your data in a number of ways from classic accounting reports (like profit and loss) through to individual but similar data entities across different projects for sensible comparison testing.

Freshbooks is a great value way to make the most of your invoicing while managing your projects at a sensible price.

The first step is that you will need to login to your WordPress Administration Dashboard with the credentials that you used when you set up your site.  It will ask for your username and your password.  Once completed, your Dashboard will open.

Along the top of the page you will see different tabs.  Feel free to explore so that you get a good feel for how the dashboard in WordPress operates.  WordPress is one of the easiest content management systems available. The Dashboard is extremely user-friendly.

When you open your dashboard, you will see that you already have a post called Hello World!  You will have the option to edit, delete, or leave as-is this post.  What you want to do right now is write your own very first blog post to introduce yourself, your brand, products, or services.  What you will do now is look at the left hand side of the page of the Dashboard.  You will see that there are many tabs to choose from, which can seem overwhelming at first; but, you will find that everything has some form of guidance for you so that you can ensure that your posts and your site looks as you intended.

Along the left you will see tabs labeled Dashboard (where you are right now), Updates, Posts, Media, Links, and so on.  Where it says Posts, left click and it will open up the posts menu below the word Posts. Your screen will change and along the top of the page it will say Add New Post.  Below that is the space for a title, and below that, the space for the body of your post.

Go ahead and create a title in the Title area, then write your post in the space below that.  You will see that the space for the body of your post has an editor much like that in Microsoft Word, where you can bold your text, add hyperlinks, and so on.  There are also the choices just above the editor to add or upload other materials into your post, such as photos, videos, or other media.

Once you have completed your post, added your extras, and confirmed that it is the way that you want it to appear, you will then need to look at the upper right hand corner of your screen.  There is a small square that says Publish.  Within this square it details the status of your post.  If you are satisfied with your post, click on the Publish button at the bottom of this square.  If you want to see how your post will look publicly before you actually publish to the web, you can click on the Preview button.  When you are satisfied with your posts appearance and you have proofed for any spelling or grammatical errors, click on the Publish button.  Your screen will change periodically, and then up at the top of the page it will tell you that your post has been published successfully, and there will be a link to View Post.  Click that link and you will be taken to your very first published post on your new WordPress site. Congratulations!

So what does Pinterest do?

It allows users to essentially set up online scrapbooks in a magazine format – if you see an image or an article online you like, you “pin” it and then arrange it on your page so that viewers can learn more about your topic. It’s easy to set up and quick to maintain.

Who’s using Pinterest?

Here’s the key – at the moment the main users of Pinterest are based in the United States and they’re predominantly 24-35 year old, tech savvy, and women.  This means that if your business demographic looks like this – you have to start using Pinterest for your social media marketing, now.

So what do I need to know to make the most of Pinterest?

Firstly spend some time looking at the site, get to understand which pages and themes you like and relate to your business – and pay attention to those items that other users like too, after all it’s a social network and not just a space for you, if others like things and you feature similar ideas – it’s pretty certain they’ll like your offering too.

Then we’ve got five great tips to make the way you promote yourself on Pinterest more successful:

1. Make your Pinterest board a miniature magazine for your clients. If you sell physical products then create photos of those products and share them, and then share other images you find online that relate to those products. If you sell services, create boards that work with those services too. (Think “inspirational quotes” or “organizational tips”).
2. Get creative in the way you share company news, look at other brands and how they do this and then emulate the ones you like the most. But remember to keep your brand identity a key part of the way you present your news.
3. Integrate Pinterest into your other web offerings, talk to your developers and get the “Pin it” tag added to cool images and information on your blog and website, after all it pays to encourage others to share easily when it comes to promoting your brand.
4. Get connected with your Pinterest “Posse” – it’s a social network you need to use similar strategies to your Facebook and Twitter marketing to get people actively engaging with your brand and because Pinterest is new, there are genuine opportunities to get truly creative and go “viral” the holy grail of Internet marketers
5. Pay attention to Pins – you should be looking at the marketing data you collect from Pinterest, if there are certain subjects that don’t form a part of your product line today but your customers are showing clear interest in, then maybe it’s time to consider adding them to your real world offering

Pinterest may be permanent or it may be temporary, it’s too early in the product life cycle to tell but while it’s hugely popular savvy marketers will want to make the most of an opportunity to target a very valuable American demographic.

So how does Google Docs compare to Microsoft Office, and is it worth the effort to change over?

Word Processing

The interface for Google Docs word processing offering is simple and easy to use, and you never have to worry about losing data as the document auto saves every single time you make a change – without the noticeable slowdown you get with Microsoft Office.

There are some drawbacks in that Word documents may not open correctly in Google Docs and you might have to spend some time re-adjusting the format. But if you haven’t established total dependency on Microsoft or your documents are mainly simple without any of the complex bells and whistles that Word can offer – it should be too hard to move over, without missing much. And to be fair, Google’s collaboration tools aren’t bad either. In particular real time sharing and editing between multiple users is a piece of cake – something that Office struggles with.

Spreadsheets

While not as strong as Excel in some areas, particularly when it comes to scripting – though Google’s offering has some great pre-written scripts and is improving every day, it’s still pretty good.

There’s an emphasis on sharing that’s absent in the Microsoft range and Google Docs brings you an alerts and e-mail facility, which can let you know as soon as a team member updates so much as a single cell of any sheet you’re working on.

Presentations

This is still a weak link in comparison to PowerPoint, in that many of the “bells and whistles” like animations are missing from the Google Docs equivalent. Having said that – it does shine in terms of adding video (from YouTube in particular) and photos where you can utilize Google Image Search as an additional powerful library of images to choose from.

It’s up to you decide whether you can afford to let all the animations features of Microsoft’s PowerPoint slide when it comes to presentations.

Overall

One of the areas that Google Docs really suffers is that you must have an Internet connection in order for it to work. No connectivity means no productivity and while there are rumors that this will change in the future, at the moment it’s an inconvenience that in some places will be very hard to overcome.

The standalone version of Microsoft Office, just edges out Google Docs for functionality but at a hefty price tag and the gap is getting narrower with more regular updates for the latter than the former.

Microsoft’s own online offering is much more basic than Google’s and offers much less functionality than the desktop variant, so if you’re pursuing a cloud based alternative to computer based installs Google wins hands down.

The future is looking bright for Google Docs as more companies move to laptops and small devices and away from desktops – there’s far more data security in cloud based applications, than there is on device specific applications. For now, it’s your choice but Google Docs is certainly in the right ballpark now.

When you are in your dashboard, at the top left of the page, underneath where it says Dashboard, you will see the tab to click on for Updates.  The number to the right of the Updates link tells you how many relevant updates there are that could be of use to you, or that are important for your site’s performance.

When you click on the Updates tab, a page will open indicating the updates for WordPress itself, and the updates available for any of the plugins you may have installed.

Underneath where it says WordPress Updates, it will tell you the current version of WordPress that you are running.  It will give you the option of updating if you need to, re-installing if you want to, or doing simply nothing.  If you are satisfied with your current version, simply do nothing.

Below this area, there is the section called Plugins.  You will see all of the plugins that you currently have installed that there may be updates for.  Should you wish to update any or all of your plugins, you will click the box next to the plugin or plugins you wish to update.  Once you have done so, then you click on the Update Plugins button and it will automatically update those plugins that you have selected.

<include theme updates>

Using WordPress is one of the easiest methods there are of creating your own website.  Also, WordPress is  one of the best sites as far as search engine rankings go, as well.  The algorithms of the various search engines pick up on the user-friendly code of WordPress sites and automatically ranks them higher than most other sites that have had professional SEO work completed.

Marketing through Twitter involves a different skill set from traditional activities, as a social platform it lets your audience communicate with you like never before. Better still Twitter marketing lets your market engage with your brand.

It’s important that when you define your Twitter Business Marketing strategy that you keep this in mind, so let’s have a look at some case studies of the companies that have made a real success story from their Twitter campaigns.

Jeep

Jeep’s campaign was pretty complicated; their Twitter feed offered their audience clues that would lead them to other Twitter profiles to find new clues. The user had to follow the campaign through 36 different profiles to be able to win a car. It worked though, big fans of the brand enjoyed the challenge and the thought of a great prize meant that they felt they’d earned their chance to win.

Orange

Orange are a mobile phone service provider in the UK, they ran a Twitter Hashtag (a hashtag is where each tweet contains a word or phrase that starts with a hash – e.g. in this case it was #singingtweetograms) campaign. In this case their users could make an interesting tweet and if it was picked out by Orange – they had professional singers record the message and then they tweeted it back to the sender.

Levis

Levis ran a completely different type of competition; they tweeted out hints to the location of two people in a city. Once users found them, they had to ask them to take off their trousers which won them a new pair of jeans.

Canada Loves the US

The Canadian tourist board didn’t just stay online when they wanted to win over American visitors to the country. They asked Canadians to Tweet about the fun they were having in the country, and then they took the best Tweets and displayed them on interactive billboards in the US.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods have over 1.3 million followers on Twitter! That’s 1.3 million customers they interact with on a regular basis, and that’s over 150 Twitter accounts too. The company wanted their customers to talk to them about their questions and needs, and started with a general account – when they realized that people wanted specialist advice they created those channels too. So there’s a Cheese Twitter channel for folk who really like Cheese, and a Wine Twitter channel for those who want something to go with it.

The secret to a great Twitter campaign is simple, it has to capture the imagination of your followers, enable them to interact in a positive way with your brand and most of all your Twitter campaign needs to reflect your brand values – in Jeep’s case this was creativity and problem solving, for Orange it’s communication, for Levis it’s fun, and for Canada it was the people who live there and in the example of Whole Foods it was specialization to differentiate.

Before you start

Remember that online – content is king. If you haven’t spent some time working on your own site, so that it offers visitors a unique experience each time they interact with your business – you’d be well advised to make sure it does before engaging in any marketing activity for it.

It doesn’t matter how many hits you get, if each new visitor takes one look at your website and then clicks off to find something more interesting, more appealing and more connected to their needs.

And Keep it Simple

Make sure your site is easy to navigate, and easy to use. And test it out on people before you put it into the live environment, if you want to sell online then you have to work online. Get feedback and when the feedback’s good – act on it.

What is Guerilla marketing?

In its simplest form Guerilla marketing is about getting your website known in as many places online as possible.  It works by delivering those results through as many means as possible, including using unconventional tactics to achieve your goals. In real terms it means that small businesses can compete with big businesses by ensuring they use every possible tactic for others to help market them.

Here are five great ways to start your guerilla marketing campaign:

1. Share links with other websites – but stop and think before you start spamming your customers and the rest of the world.  Link sharing creates Google love, but only if it’s relevant. Think about where and what your customers want to see online, and then share with those places – quality is better than quantity and if you can combine both, you’re on your way.
2. Ask your customer to help you out – incorporating a “tell a friend” style button can be a great way to win over new customers, particularly if you incorporate point 3 as a reward strategy for doing so
3. Give something away – not only does everyone like free stuff, but if you can give away something cool that links to your business, you benefit and the customer benefits. From in-depth reports, to quirky video clips or baseball caps and t-shirts there’s always something you can do to brighten someone’s day. If you can afford to do it before they buy, so much the better – what better way to establish trust and confidence in your business?
4. Create Buzz about your business – leverage key influencers in your market place, talk to prominent bloggers and offer them exclusive insights into your business, work your Facebook and social networking presences to offer interesting competitions, etc.
5. Use every available space for marketing – such as e-mail signatures, offer a promotional opportunity with every e-mail automatically by setting up your signature to give a little extra, it’s no effort and every time you send a mail, you send an extra marketing message

Incentivize People to Become a Fan

People like free stuff and surprises, and if you offer your visitors something that they can get only from your Facebook page – it will bring in potential customers better than if all you offer is a view of your page.

There’s a “reveal tab” that lets you hide your content, until someone likes your page – so why not offer a discount coupon, a free trial or even some secret information for people who are willing to “like” you?

Don’t ramble, stay focused

Your Facebook page is an extension of your business, not a collection of general trivia (well – not unless your business is writing pub quizzes). Every time you post your content should be related to your brand or your industry. This can feel a little limiting at first, but treat it as a fun challenge and get creative.

• Find something in the news and work out a way to connect it to your brand
• Get on Youtube or Flickr and find video or images loosely connected to your industry, humorous posts work really well
• Engage you audience – ask them to post queries about things that relate to events or times of the year, for example
• On really dry idea days – post updates that draw together really successful past posts on a similar theme

Ask easy questions

Research shows that if you ask your audience questions, they’ll get involved with your brand. This is true only if those questions are the right questions.

People are busy, and they can’t spend all day writing essays for you, but they’ll be only too happy to answer a question that asks for a one word answer.

Questions like; “What would be your ideal new flavor for one of our delicious ice creams?” or “What band would you most like to see play in our new theatre?”

A picture is worth a thousand words

It might be a cliché, but it’s definitely true. On Twitter people are all about the links, but on Facebook they want to see things. Always put images with your posts for maximum visual impact and edit those images so they grab the viewer’s attention (you may love your new shoes, but your audience probably doesn’t care – unless you sell shows).

Have a party!

Well not literally, but when you have something to celebrate – share it with your fans. The anniversary of a store, or an employee’s birthday can be great ways to get your community interested in your brand.

Basically if it’s an occasion you’d share in conversation with your friends, it’s perfect for your Facebook fan page.

Flickr is the world’s biggest photo sharing site, and you can reap the rewards of working with one of the more niche social media players and to help you get started we’ve got some tips for you.

• Use your website address for your screen name – there’s no simpler way to get your brand associated with every image you post, whenever someone views one of your photos they’ll see your url (just drop the www. from in front of the address to create an acceptable screen name)
• Tell the world about your business through your profile – don’t make this a huge sales pitch, social networks are about interaction and trust so they can connect with your brand, and they’re not about badgering people to buy from you at every opportunity. But do tell people clearly what you do and what you’re about in your profile.
• Take some quality photos of your business, your people and your products and upload them. Flickr users put an emphasis on quality, and so should you – Flickr is all about photography, so use the best images at the highest resolution, and try and make them interesting – they’re not a product catalogue, more a showcase of your interests.
• Write good descriptions of your images – this should be about the photo itself and not a pitch for business, once again it’s all about forming connections (once you have those – the business should take care of itself).
• Use the tags function – you can add tags to an image, and if you like here you can add your website address again and relevant keywords/phrases as well as location information if you sell most to your local market. Just don’t overdo the tags; they’re not supposed to be an essay.
• Link your website to your Flickr images – this makes sense, it offers your customers a chance to see more of your work and it creates back links to your Flickr profile, and search engines like backlinks.
• Actively contribute to the Flickr community – the more you search for related images in Flickr and share your views and opinions (in a constructive way) the more others will want to get involved with your work. Relationships are a two way street, and this is true for all social media.

Flickr is a great opportunity for you to promote your small business online, and if you need more convincing – then it’s worth remembering that Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. all like Flickr and their image search likes to retrieve images from Flickr. It’s one more avenue to reach and most importantly engage with potential customers and that’s always a good thing.

Step 1) Your first step will be to choose the theme you plan to use.  WordPress comes with a few default themes, but you can also find many free themes and paid themes available for download.  You can search from within WordPress, or you can perform a Google search that will allow you to find dozens of great themes.

Step 2) The next step is learning how to install the theme you use.  If you find a theme from within WordPress, all you must do is click on the Install button; however, if you download the theme from the internet, you will save this file somewhere on your computer.  You will then, from within your Dashboard, navigate to the Themes section on the left hand side of the screen.  Then you will click on Add New.  A dialog box will open, and from here you will browse your computer for the theme file that you downloaded. *<Appearance->Themes->Install Themes-> Upload->Choose File> Click on the correct theme and click open. <Click install now> WordPress automatically installs this theme for you and puts it in the correct location.

Step 3) Now when you go to the Themes portion of your Dashboard, the new theme you have just installed will be one of the choices you can use to update your current theme.  So, go to your Themes tab and click Activate next to the new theme you have just installed.  Upon doing so, your site’s theme will be automatically updated.

As you can see, it is not all that difficult to change themes from within WordPress, and now that you know how, you can change your theme as often as you like.

The developers of WordPress understand the dilemma that most bloggers face, and they have come up with solutions for these dilemmas.  One example of this is the introduction of the WordPress widget.  This collection of widgets allows users to customize their sites without having to know a single thing about programming code.  All you need to do upon finding the widgets that you need is to drag a needed widget and drop it in the sidebar where you need it.  For instance, if you need a widget for your posts, you would drag it and drop it in the Posts section of your dashboard.  The following information will further explain exactly how this is done.

From your Dashboard, you will find your sidebar, usually on the left hand side of your screen, that is made up of each of the sections of your site, such as Posts, Pages, Categories, and so on.  Each of these sections of your WordPress site are composed of widgets.  Widgets are plugins that each have different functions.  These functions aid you in putting content on your blog or site easily, without having to understand the coding process.  Because each widget has its own function, it is best to learn about the more common widgets before proceeding with adding any to your site.

How to Manage WordPress Widgets

After you have logged in, and you are at your Dashboard, find the Appearance tab located on the left hand side of your screen, then follow the steps below.

Step 1) click the Appearance tab.  On the Appearance screen that will open, it will show you the theme you are currently using, in addition to many other themes that you can also choose from.  From your current theme, notice how it is built, or in other words, what widgets are a part of it.  Some themes do not have a block for widgets.  You want to be sure that you are using a theme that will allow for the use of widgets.  This way you can build your site exactly as you would have it.  Widgets are crucial for your site’s functionality.

Step 2) click on the Widget menu button.  The Widgets interface should then open, and it will display the various widgets that are available.  Each widget has its own function, and you can choose any widgets for your site; it simply depends on what your specific site needs.  When you have found the widget you need, drag it and drop it on the menu item for which you need it.

Once you have placed your widgets where you want them, they should function accordingly.  By following these simple instructions, you will find that WordPress is not so complicated, after all.

The plugins that you will definitely need are Akismet, All-in-One SEO pack, and Google XML sitemap.  There are others that can greatly help your site, as well, such as the Contact Form, Ping Optimizer, Adsense, and many more.  What becomes the question is how do you install these plugins?  The following information will make the installation of your needed and chosen plugins much more easily accomplished.

You will begin by logging into your WordPress account and signing in to your Dashboard.  On the upper left hand side of your screen, you will see the Plugins tab.  When you click on the Plugins tab, all of your current plugins will be visible.  You can now click on the Add New button and a new screen will pop up including a search box for you to search for the plugins that you will want to add.

When you know exactly which plugin you need, it is much easier to search, as you can type that into the search field and WordPress will find each plugin for you.  It will also give you additional choices, so you may be able to find plugins that you did not even know about.  When you find the plugin that you are wanting to install, click on the Install button on the right hand side of the page.  Once you click install, WordPress automatically installs the plugin for you.  You will then be given the option to activate the Plugin or return to the install page.  Do not forget that installing a plugin is not the same as activating the plugin, so be sure to activate all plugins that you want to have active on your site.

Not only do these plugins do so much for your site, but the best part is that you can do all of this yourself without having coding experience.  You can have a professional looking website that you have created all on your own.

By spending some time on Twitter, looking at what works for other users and playing around with different types of Tweet you can perfect your technique.  Once you have got the idea you can use Twitter to spark conversation about your brand or campaign, monitor what other people are saying about your business and to inform people when there are offers or promotions taking place.

There are a range of things to avoid if you want to take advantage of Twitter as an advertising tool.  Paradoxically the most important thing is not to appear to be selling anything!  Most social media users are turned off by obvious or overt selling.  You also need to make sure your grammar and punctuation is correct.  With so few characters available you have to use what you have to greatest effect so don’t spoil the effect with unnecessary errors.

To get your Tweet to the top of the column you can always buy your way there through Twitter’s ‘not quite advertising’ way to keep your message in front of your target audience. Promoted Products offer a range of options including Promoted Tweets where your tweet will be reposted at the top of the user‘s timeline, Promoted Trends put your Tweet at the top of trending topics column and Promoted Accounts gets you to the top of a list of who to follow.  But it will not matter what you’ve paid to get your Tweet to the top if the content has no impact.  So remember to make it fun, keep it short and create some buzz!

The way we communicate may be changing all the time and the geographical reach of our business enterprises knows little bounds, but the essentials of business have not changed.  Unless you have a product that people want to buy, at a price they are willing to pay for it, available to purchase somewhere accessible to them and promoted so they can find out about it then you have the building blocks for any type of business.

Products can be actual manufactured items or services but whatever your product it needs to have a potential customer.

Place is all about making sure your product is accessible to your customer base.  This seems easier in the internet age where people can order items and services at the click of a mouse but for the business owner it is essential to be available in the right place for your customer and to keep the costs for shipping your products or services in proportion with the product’s cost.

Pricing should always be calculated from your fixed and variable costs.  Once you have a break even point established you can decide on a pricing strategy but you need to know exactly what to charge in order to make a profit.  As part of your decision about pricing strategy take a look at your competitors prices and do some research regarding what potential customers might be willing to pay.  If you have a range of products there may be opportunities to balance your profits across the business allowing you to discount some products from time to time.

Promotion has to be in scale with the profits you make.  You can spend endlessly on promotion so you should have a marketing strategy, stick to your promotion budget and make your promotional activities work hard for you.  There are a wealth of promotional opportunities as a result of new methods of communication but try not to be swept along by the “next big thing” in advertising.  Instead take a structured approach and use your resources wisely.  There are many opportunities for free promotion but you may need to free up some of your time to capitalize on them.

Marketing has become a complex, multifaceted, multimillion dollar industry so it is not a surprise that a simple concept like the 4 Ps still holds value for small businesses trying to make an impact, and a profit, in an increasingly competitive business world.

To prevent a disproportionate level of resource becoming focused on Facebook it is important to have a wider e-marketing strategy that has considered and incorporated as necessary other e-marketing methods.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and ‘Pay per click’ are important, as are Google adwords, Promoted Tweets and viral promotional campaigns.  These elements work best in combination, often referencing one another and linking into a wider marketing strategy.  Also remember there is no point spending valuable resources on a Facebook campaign if the basic elements of  product, price, and place have not been sufficiently considered.  A full marketing plan which considers all promotional opportunities should be in place and the value of other, non-digital promotional tools in the marketing mix should not be underestimated.

Facebook is great to use for signposting, reputation building and has many benefits not least the cost and analysis options.  When you consider costs you should include the time it takes to prepare content, interact with the Facebook community and always review the actual translation of interest in a Facebook campaign to sales generated.  Never forget the bottom line, no matter how much enjoyment you get from your digital marketing exploits.  The figures must back up the investment so it is essential to review the success of Facebook campaigns in terms of sales and income, not just clicks and traffic.  By regularly checking your approach to e-marketing and making adjustments in your campaigns as necessary you can get the most from an easy, cost effective marketing option without it dominating your time for little reward.

Wide geographic reach

The internet enables every business, no matter how small, to have a global reach.  Take care not to get too swept away – clients in Asia may seem glamorous but remember the postage costs!

Low cost

Advertising through Google Adwords and Facebook Ads is a low cost method of reaching a wide audience.  A Facebook page for your business provides a venue for customer dialogue without the need for webpages to be built and hosted.  E-mail campaigns with offers and news keep you business on your customer’s radar.  Just make sure you have the time to respond to the interest your campaigns generate.

Analysis

You can also take advantage of the intelligence gathered on your customers and who, where and when they interact with your campaigns.  The analysis, available from internet based adverts, is incredibly useful for reviewing marketing campaigns and planning future ones.  It can also help you find new customers by targeting potential groups shown by the analysis to have an interest in your products.

Measure results

The best way to check the effectiveness of a campaign is through the statistics for how much interaction it has generated and how that has translated into sales.

Personalized and targeted

You can tailor your messages, offers and focus a campaign on the customers most likely to respond.  You can refine it even further to provide a personalized offer to customers based on their previous purchases, interest groups and demographics.

Accessible

An e-marketing campaign makes it accessible and easy for the customer, they do not even have to leave the couch!  In just a few clicks an advert or email can direct them to your site and to making a purchase.

Listening

The best way to build good relationships with your customers is by listening to them.  If you provide the forum to tell you what they think of your service and products, then listen to their views, you can tailor your product offer, customer services and product placement to get ahead of your competitors.

FeaturedContent Gallery is a WordPress plugin through iePlexus which produces a good automatic spinning picture gallery of the articles or even webpages that you can utilize anyplace in your concept.

Totally easy to customize, the actual Featured Content Gallery through iePlexus is extremely simple to incorporate. Decide to automate the actual plugin and just put in a customized area in order to every article or even web page you need to screen and also the gallery will certainly display the actual picture, a good auto-generated thumbnail within the top carousel, and also the name as well as very first couple of outlines associated with page/post textual content. Superior choices permit additional changes associated with customized thumbnail pictures, textual content, and gallery designs.

Using well timed Tweets aimed at targeted social media users can build your business reputation and help you reach a wider audience.  Use the comment, or sequence of comments to tweak people’s curiosity enough to click on  the link.  If users enjoy your comments and find them funny or stimulating they will remember your username and avatar so that the next post attracts their interest or they become a follower.  If you use an URL shortener to make your web address Tweetable then ensure it will re-Tweet properly, Bit.ly is considered a good option.  Keep Tweets short and worth sharing and use hashtags related to your comment.  If someone re-Tweets you keep the momentum by reTweeting them back.

Once you have some interest in your posted comments you can build the image and profile of your brand.  The next step is to convert that interest into traffic to your website and ultimately conversion to sales.  By using feedback on your brand and products from Twitter you can work out the elements of your campaign which have attracted people’s attention.  Use this to refine your campaigns and get the most from the time you put into your Tweeting.

Remember anything you send out is promotional including emails, letters, tweets, product packaging even the side of your van!  One of the biggest promotional tools at your disposal is yourself.  Attend business breakfasts, go to industry networking events and plug away to whoever will listen about how great your product or business is.  Offer a freebie with your business details on and always have business cards to hand then the next time the person you were chatting to needs a product like yours it is easy for them to find your contact details.

You can also write about your business or product and capitalize on a wealth of free marketing opportunities.  By using keywords which relate to your product for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you can create extra traffic to your web pages and find new customers.  By blogging, writing for ezines and creating interesting content for your website that will be picked up by search engines you can access a wider internet based market.  For customers who are not part of the internet community send out press releases to the local press, they are often keen for content, especially if they don’t have to write it themselves!

If you are finding it tough to go it alone then work with a supplier or complementary product.  More promotional opportunities are good for them too and sometimes two heads are better than one.  So if you find yourself lacking inspiration or feel shy about self-promoting, find someone else to work with who can help you with ideas, share the costs and get twice the result for the effort.

Listen

Genuinely listen to the feedback you receive on Facebook. Don’t simply use your Facebook page to make announcements or show products but genuinely interact with the people commenting and liking your profile.  If you want people to keep viewing your page you need to give them a reason to return so make it interesting for them and let them see you are interested in their comments and feedback.  By using the interactive nature of Facebook in the correct way you can make your customers feel part of an exclusive community related to your product.  You can also find out more about your customers to improve your market share and customer satisfaction.

Research

Use your Facebook page to get feedback which can help you refine your Facebook marketing approach and also target your company and products more effectively to your customers.   You could pay a marketing company a great deal of money to carry out research for you.  However by using your Facebook site you can get direct feedback on your products and marketing campaigns.  You can also use the range of tools provided by Facebook to analyse the statistics of the people visiting your page and which postings generate the most engagement.

Make changes

Update your page regularly to adapt to current trends and keep the page interesting for return viewers.  With regular review of the different strategies you try on your Facebook page you should be able to identify what types of post increase activity on the page and ensures the page is buzzing with interest.  Engagement through the page needs to be continual and requires time to be invested in responding and monitoring the comments and content.

Keep it stimulating

Facebook is an informal marketing environment so you should make sure posts, links and pictures are stimulating and fun.  By using humour and being aware of topics trending for the demographic you are targeting you can keep the buzz around your page and ensure customers have an incentive to keep looking and contributing on your page.  It is important not to rely on too much automated posting as your community will quickly notice if you lose the “human touch”.

Good campaign content

To get the most out of the resources you put into e-marketing it has to be an engaging campaign.  It doesn’t need to be flashy or expensive but the content has to be stimulating.  You do not want customers to treat your campaign emails as SPAM or become annoyed by their content or frequency.  Customers who enjoy the content and offers contained in an email campaign will become more engaged in the business and are more likely to follow links to your website and offers.

Use the statistics and analysis

By using the intelligence you can gather on your customer base from the statistics and analysis offered through services like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads you will be able to identify trends and target groups.  This will enable your business to build customer profiles which assist with plans to deliver what they want and also to identify potential new customers.

Personalization

Making your customers feel special by personalizing your emails, offers and campaigns to their particular interests and purchasing history is more possible than ever thanks to e-marketing.  The instant nature of e-communication and the building of internet communities to engage through e-marketing allows a new level of  response and targeting.  You can demonstrate a high level of customer care through swift responses to issues raised and dialogue with clients.  There are also opportunities to tap into a wider internet community through the interests and groups enjoyed by your existing customers.  You can even tailor your products to the trends you see emerging through comments and email dialogue.

Up at the top, you will see the name of your WordPress site.  Underneath which you will see any announcements that pertain to you; for instance, if there are any upgrades available, you will see these here.

The Dashboard is split into two halves.  On the left half will be your posts that you have created thus far, any comments you may have received to your posts, an incoming links to your posts, and finally, an outline of your recent posts.  Below that will be links to read others’ posts and it is called the What’s Hot section.

The right half of your Dashboard, at the top, will have a place for you to create what is called a Quick Post; in other words, instead of navigating the Dashboard to the New Post section, you can simply post directly from your Dashboard.  This section is incredibly useful if you have no links that you need to contain within the post, such as if you are simply giving your readers a quick update.

Below that, there is a section called Recent Drafts.  If you have any posts that you have started and have not finished and published, they will be here in this portion.

Underneath that will be a section called Stats.  This will show you how many visitors have come to your site and on which days.  It will show you what posts are most popular with your visitors, as well as your Top Searches, and what posts have been most active.  Now, all of this information is simply the beginning.  Don’t feel overwhelmed, as the rest of the information will be easy enough to learn with some practice.

Along the very left hand side of your Dashboard will be all the tools you need to create your site in the image in which you wish to have it.  These tools will prove invaluable when creating your site, and here each one will be explained.

Along the left, you will see such sections as Dashboard (where you are right now), Upgrades, Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Comments, Feedbacks, Polls, Ratings, Appearance, Polls, Users, Tools, and Settings.  As you are a new user, here I will simply explain Posts and Appearance, as these are the first two tools that you need to create your site the way you wish.   Depending on your own choice of which is most important, you can choose to change the Appearance first, or you can write your first Post.  This part is up to you.  I will begin with Posts.

Under the Posts tab, there are four subtabs; the most important of these for a WordPress newbie are Add New and Categories.  When you click on Add New, a page will open up that looks very much like the Quick Post portion of the actual Dashboard; only from here you are able to upload pictures, add links, and do much more than you can with simply the Quick Post.  Up in the right hand corner, you will see options to save your post as a draft or to publish it to the web when you are finished.  Once you are finished, you click on Publish.  Another page will open with a link at the top that says View Post.  You can then view your post as it looks on the web.

From the Categories tab, you are able to create categories in which you will be able to place new posts.  This makes it simpler for people to find exactly what they may be looking for when they come to your site.

The next, or first, depending on your point of view, item on the agenda is the Appearance tab.  From here, you can choose to edit your theme, add widgets, or change the background.  All of these important topics will be explored in more depth in subsequent articles in this series.

To be of help when there is a problem you need to have a dialogue with your customer.  It is essential they can easily communicate with you and that you listen and respond in a timely manner.  The methods you choose for facilitating that communication therefore must go both ways.  Digital, interactive services available through the internet and social media today can make this process much easier.  Twitter is one such service which is transforming the way companies deal with customer service, making it more personal, accessible and responsive than ever.

So why should your business use Twitter for customer support?

Low cost  - Twitter is free and it takes very little time to register.

Save time - Use your working hours more effectively as the time between Tweets can be used to do research or deal with other customers.

Track and review - You can track all mentions of your products and business on Twitter and respond to any problems or negative comments.  When you respond you will have a record of all the interaction between your business and the customer to enable you to review the complaint handling.

Tweet beep - This is a service which picks up mentions of your brand.  If your business or customer service is being discussed on Twitter your brand will be picked up and you can monitor the conversation.

To get the best from Twitter as a customer service tool you must use it effectively.  You need to make people aware that you use it, deal with Tweets swiftly, provide a good quality of response and always be honest.  Be aware that poor customer service can be magnified very rapidly with the speed of social media.  Remember Twitter is just a tool at the end of the day and should be part of a wider mix of customer contact options.  Not everyone has entered the world of tweeting so remember to have other methods for supporting customers available.  By taking this approach you will build trust in your brand and business and win loyal customers who use the Twitter community to spread the word about your good service.

Relationship management, is not just about making the most of it when customer service goes well.  It is about doing things in the right way when something goes wrong.  You can build a great reputation by dealing swiftly and effectively with problems.  There are many tales of woe from customers left hanging on a support telephone line for hours waiting to be connected to someone.  Customers find it frustrating to only deal with an answering service and then have to call repeatedly to have a problem dealt with.  With the speed of communication today and the way people interact digitally it is important that your business is not targeted for poor service in an email or Facebook campaign.

To prevent problems and get the best from your reputation building efforts it is essential to have a dialogue with your customers.  Listen to what they enjoy about your service and products then find ways to enhance that.  Ask them about what they do not enjoy and find ways to improve then take this feedback and act on it.  A happy customer will come back time and again to do business with you and will tell their friends.  But an unhappy customer can inform an entire digital community in just one Tweet or email causing huge damage to your business reputation.

Easy

Make it easy to interact.  Make it easy to click from Facebook page to website to purchase.  If relevant, show videos of your products so people find it easy to understand what they do and how to use them.

Fresh Content

If you want people to keep viewing your page you need to give them a reason to return so make the posts and comments relevant, stimulating, interesting and post around 2 or 3 times per day. Keep the content lively and engaging by referring to wider topics than just the products on offer.  Postings should be relevant but stimulate a conversation on related topics so you can keep the engagement with your page at a high level.  Offers may stimulate purchases but try not to annoy the community with too many, there is a balance required.

Like and Share

Optimize the use of these tools.  Use “like” on ads and web pages to generate traffic on your Facebook site.  Through “Share” you can capitalize on the wider Facebook community which may have an interest in your products or the topics generating interest on your pages.

Link

Regular signposts should be provided on your Facebook page directing customers to web pages, blogs, Tweets and your wider promotional campaign.  Link to other sites and groups too.  This may generate some reciprocal linking plus your site will register more activity.  Use “notes” to link to blog where more detail can be found on your brand, business and related topics.

Listen

Genuinely listen to the feedback you receive on Facebook.  Don’t simply use your Facebook page to make announcements or show products but genuinely interact with the people commenting and liking your content.

Personalize

Facebook is a friendly environment and by making comments and by taking part in discussions it shows you are aware of your customers and your relationship with them is more than superficial.  This builds the kind of customer loyalty and reputation for attention to detail and personal service that enables businesses to get ahead of their competitors.

Review

Use the analysis tools.  Measure what works and stimulates interest on the page.  Check which elements of the page are leading customers to actually making a purchase.  If you get something wrong apologize, make it right and work out how to prevent it happening again.

All good marketing strategies should have a set of SMART objectives and e-marketing is no exception.  You should have an idea of what your goal is in order to most effectively take advantage of the many potential benefits from e-marketing.  The strategy should consider the cost and time commitment required for any e-marketing campaigns you wish to include in your wider marketing mix.  This is very important as e-marketing builds a much more intimate relationship with your customers and if you don’t have time allocated to tending to those relationships you may find your customers “fall out of love” with you very quickly.

The main advantage for small business is the cost.  When you work with a small budget where little expenditure is available for marketing, the low cost of email based marketing or creating a Facebook page is a very attractive.  A great deal can be done yourself without the need for costly services from other providers.  The advantage of having a strategy is that you can consider the overall costs, including time and man power for running, responding to and reviewing en e-marketing campaign.

You can also consider the best mix of digital media for your product and your specific business requirements. Websites, email campaigns, sms campaigns and social media all offer different opportunities for engagement with both your existing customers and potential new customers.  Get the mix of media right, and ensure you have the resources to support your campaign, and your reputation will grow within the digital communities you target.  If you get it wrong you can be sure the digital community will spot that too.

The speed of response makes e-marketing ideal for small businesses but it can also be their downfall if something goes wrong.  Planning is the key to avoiding the pitfalls such as a Facebook page with no community and no interaction or an email campaign which recipients file in their spam bin immediately.  Plus don’t forget that as part of a wider marketing strategy digital marketing campaigns still need to apply basics of product, price, placement and promotion.  So before you race into using e-marketing take some time, think and plan your approach, write a strategy (it doesn’t need to be long or complicated) and ensure the image you promote with your digital campaigns is one you can be proud of.