In addition to creating and promoting a corporate presence on various social media Web sites, it also makes sense for sales professionals to become familiar with social media, and to use it for the benefit of their business. 

Getting involved in social media can offer value to sales professionals, without requiring hours of time.  In fact, there are a number of benefits to be gained by spending only minutes a week on popular social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Take advantage of these six guidelines for engaging in social media as a sales tool:

1.  Connect with and make better use of your professional network. Sales is a relationship business, and professional social media sites (such as LinkedIn) provide an additional way for account executives to enhance their relationships with clients and prospects alike. 

Social media offers you another platform – beyond more traditional email and telephone conversations – for connecting with key contacts that you wish to reach out to and engage with further.  Not only will you learn more about them, but they can gain a better understanding of your expertise, your thought leadership and the value you have to offer.  Social media is also a useful way to obtain referrals and recommendations from your contacts, helping you grow your network.  

2.  Learn more about your prospects and clients. Social media also offers an excellent way to gather intelligence from your contacts.  Pay close attention to the professional profiles of your clients and prospects, looking for anything that can make you more successful in conversations with them. 

The intelligence that can be gleaned from a prospect’s or client’s profile can help to identify common ground and enhance the sales conversation.  For example, examine their previous experience – maybe they have worked at another company in the past that is a client of yours.  Or read more about their education, as you may find something you can use as a way to begin a conversation or make a connection.

Also, be mindful of the fact that your professional contacts – prospects, clients, other colleagues – are likely using social media sites to learn more about you and your company as well.  Therefore, it’s important to ensure that you are displaying a complete and professional profile.

3.  Identify decision-makers and other appropriate contacts within a company. Professional social media sites provide a wealth of information on organizations.  First, many people are connected to their colleagues.  By taking a closer look at the profiles of your clients and prospects, you may be able to fill in some of the blanks regarding decision makers within a company.

Company profiles also offer intelligence on key individuals within organizations.  These can help you identify the appropriate contact within a company, especially if your initial contact has left and you are having trouble getting in touch with anyone beyond the receptionist. 

4.  Gain new work-related insight. Groups, message boards and other social media sites are an excellent way to discuss relevant industry topics with likeminded professionals in group settings.  At its core, social media is a conversation, so identify groups that are relevant to your industry and expertise and participating in the discussion.

By joining a group or getting involved in other social media sites, you have the opportunity to learn from other professionals within your industry, contribute to discussions on topics that fit well within your area of expertise, and differentiate yourself and your company as a consultant and a thought leader. 

Consider focusing your efforts on making thoughtful contributions to the most relevant topics – you do not need to respond to every discussion within a group.  Ensure that your comments are adding value and presenting your company in a positive manner.

5.  Remember the basics of social media. While participating in social media can be beneficial to sales professionals, it is important to respect it as a communications platform.  Don’t abuse it as a way to push a sales pitch.   Remember that social media is a two-way conversation, and ensure that your actions are providing value.

6.  Offer guidelines for effective use. Sales and marketing management should consider holding training sessions or developing guidelines on how to effectively use social media as a sales tool.  In addition to providing guidelines on how to create accounts on relevant social media sites, you can offer examples of demonstrated best practices for utilizing social media resources for professional use.  It would also be valuable to emphasize the importance of spending the right balance of time on it, and demonstrating how it can be a powerful tool in the sales process. 

For businesses, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to engage in conversations with their audiences – both customers and prospects.   Take advantage of social media tools to foster positive relationships with your clients and prospects, and to support your overall business goals.

Article by Angela Hribar

In some employment environments, the answer is yes, according to Wharton management professor Adam Grant. Grant has devoted significant chunks of his professional career to examining what motivates workers in settings that range from call centers and mail-order pharmacies to swimming pool lifeguard squads. In all these situations, Grant says, employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don’t; they are vastly more productive, too.

That conclusion may sound touchy-feely, but Grant has documented it in a series of research papers. In one experiment, he studied paid employees at a public university’s call center who were asked to phone potential donors to the school. It can be grim work: Employees don’t get paid much and suffer frequent rejections from people unhappy about getting calls during dinner. Turnover is high and morale is often low. So how do you motivate workers to stay on the phone and bring in the donations?

One relatively easy answer: Introduce them to someone who is aided by those dollars.

In his 2007 study, Grant and a team of researchers — Elizabeth Campbell, Grace Chen, David Lapedis and Keenan Cottone from the University of Michigan — arranged for one group of call center workers to interact with scholarship students who were the recipients of the school’s fundraising largess. It wasn’t a long meeting — just a five-minute session where the workers were able to ask the student about his or her studies. But over the next month, that little chat made a big difference. The call center was able to monitor both the amount of time its employees spent on the phone and the amount of donation dollars they brought in. A month later, callers who had interacted with the scholarship student spent more than two times as many minutes on the phone, and brought in vastly more money: a weekly average of $503.22, up from $185.94.

“Even minimal, brief contact with beneficiaries can enable employees to maintain their motivation,” the researchers write in their paper, titled “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior,” published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Changing careers is exciting and fulfilling, no matter what the economic times, and its a small price to pay to find a rewarding career, reinvent yourself or open that business you’ve always dreamed of.

Making a career change without a personal plan is like making a conscious decision to skydive without a parachute.  Every successful change can take weeks, even months to prepare for but if you don’t have a personal plan in place you could end up adrift or accepting a job that didn’t reflect your goals and intentions.

Here are five key elements that should be included in your personal plan.

1. Your committment to change.  One of the first things that you need to consider is your level of committment.  How committed are you to making a change?  If your not 100 percent sure that you’re ready to make a change, don’t make one.  The best time for a ‘gut check’ is right now.  Explore the Internet.  Take a personality test.  Enroll in a class or get a certificate.  You’ll find the more you invest in your committment to change, the more committed to the cause you’ll become.
2. Asses your professional skills.  Are you a butcher, baker or a candlestick maker?  If these professions no longer appeal to you, find something that excites you even if it means that you have to go back to school and learn a new craft.  Identify what excites you the most and find a career that reflects your new-found passion.
3. Place yourself on a well-travelled path.  Find successful people who are currently associated with the career change you wish to pursue.  Call, write, email, and meet them in person and ask for guidance.  People are generally eager to assist and you’ll eventually find someone who is willing to help and can offer the type of guidance you are seeking.
4. The consequences of change.  How will this new career effect you, your family, and those you love?  Are you ready to travel and to do what it takes to make your new career a success?  Do you have kids in school who may be adversely affected by a change in jobs or potential relocation that goes along with it?  Do you have the support of your husband or wife and are they ready, willing, and able to support you through thick and thin?
5. Get support.  Change is not easy and you will need the support of family and friends who will help you remain positive, move forward, and overcome obstacles.  Keep them in the loop with your career change and thank them for being there when you needed them most.

Dictionary defines etiquette as conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority in social or official life. With this definition as a guiding principle, etiquette is even more important in a networking situation than in others because most who are in the “taking” end do not even realize that their behaviors and even attitudes are making it hard for those at the “giving” end to be gracious about being considerate.

Why?

Etiquettes are the lubrication that makes things move smoothly. Ignoring them can create unnecessary friction and hurt. Practicing the right etiquette will not only get what you want, it will also help you position yourself in a differentiated way in the eyes of those who are at the “giving” end!

Like technology, cookie sales have been part of the organization since its early years. It’s a lucrative tradition: The cookies, including Thin Mints and Samoas, bring in $700 million in sales a year.

But cookie sales slipped about 1% last year, prompting the organization to look for new ways to get its message across to potential cookie buyers.

The result? The Girl Scouts posted a video on YouTube called “What can a cookie do?,” which has attracted about 24,000 hits since it was posted Jan. 19.

“We’re anxious to see how it works because it lets us get our message out in a cost-effective way,” Laurel Richie, chief marketing officer of the Girl Scouts of the USA, says. She also hopes the video will help engender trust among those viewing the ad. “There’s a greater engagement when a video is passed onto you, because it has the implicit endorsement of the person who passes it on,” Richie says.

The video focuses the connection between cookie purchases and how the girls use the funds to help their communities, learn business skills and build self-confidence. Its point: “Every cookie has a mission: to help girls do great things.”

While the video aims to get viewers to understand the philosophy behind cookie sales, it also directs viewers to a website where they can find a place to buy the treats.

Where does Google go from here? Right in our pockets, it appears. The release of the Nexus Phone made a splash, but Google is concentrating on the red meat of advertising and search to really make its mark in 2010, especially on mobile devices.

In 2009, Google saw mobile search increase 5 fold. The advertising that goes along with mobile search is even more specialized for customers. According to Senior Vice President of Project Management for Google, Jonathan Rosenberg.

“The new formats, the targeting tools and the reporting we are giving to advertisers (are) making a difference. Click to call, letting advertisers target specific high-end devices or carriers (we are) seeing improved monetization across mobile.”

This goes along with the trend Google has shown in strengthening its geo-specific local search results and the goal of getting answers to search result question to the user quicker. The feature is especially appealing to marketers as more consumers are using their phones to research the pricing on a possible item before buying.

It is a bit of an irony that some business owners try to project the idea that they are bigger than they really are. As much as we might say bigger is not better, our attitudes and actions will determine whether we really believe that or not.

There is strength in being small once you discover how to harness your energy.

The idea of comparing the size of a business, to the size and power of a boat, provides an excellent analogy. A cruise ship may withstand storms and high waves much better than a small yacht, but it is not very maneuverable. A speedboat can go places a ship could never attempt. It is faster, agile, and can turn quickly to avoid danger.

These comparisons are no surprise. Most people seem to realize these differences, but contemplating them well enough to seize their potential is what separates the weak from the strong. The small athlete, who could easily be crushed by bigger competitors, can still win by dodging them and outrunning them.

For small business owners to adapt the same thinking as big business can easily bring disaster. You have the advantage if you think differently. Business models are changing fast, and a small agile company can adapt more quickly. There are big companies teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Some of them are so steeped in outdated business practices, that they cannot adapt quickly enough to avoid hitting the iceberg.

While big corporations may have an advantage in marketing budget and buying power, small businesses are usually better at having substance. They can respond to their customers and provide more personalized service. They can specialize and prosper in a smaller niche market that would be impractical for a bigger company.

It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, for a big company to operate as efficiently as a small business. With small business, efficiency is not optional. Wasted resources can easily ruin a small business. Because efficiency is so necessary, small businesses tend to be much more productive.

Small businesses can also easily implement methods to increase their efficiency. Advances in areas such as lean manufacturing, modular tooling and work cells, automation, communication, and information technology help level the playing field for small business. With video conferencing and the Internet, collaboration can be accomplished without expensive travel.

In spite of the challenges, the opportunities for small business have never been better.

If you find yourself wishing your business was bigger, that’s great, keep reaching higher. Keep growing and improving. Reach for your fullest potential. Make sure to enjoy the journey though. Your business might always be small according to the unclear definition of whatever small is, but being small can also be your greatest strength.

Source Steve Chittenden

Notable examples of viral marketing are “Ponzi schemes”, “Pyramid schemes” and multi-level marketing (MLM).  Today, they have been replaced by the likes of The Big Word Project, Will it Blend and The Mike O’Meara Show.

At the height of B2C (Business to Consumer) it seemed as if every startup had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hotmail, widely cited as the first example of modern-day viral marketing.

Viral Marketing Defined

According to Wikipedia, viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

Elements of Viral Marketing

A viral message has the ability to be forwarded on the Internet. An effective viral marketing strategy:

• Give away products or services
• Provides for effortless transfer to others
• Scales easily from small to large
• Exploits common motivations and behaviors
• Utilizes existing communication networks
• Takes advantage of others’ resources

YouTube is a great example of viral marketing. Due to a combination of elements (from timelines to inherent humor to the manner in which the clip is distributed), certain video clips on YouTube end up as “Viral Videos.” The name is an allusion to the manner in which diseases spread–these videos, like a new strain of flu virus, start out being shared among a few people. But, also like the same flu virus, as each person who has been exposed to the video continues to pass a link to it along, the videos rack up view counts and end up viral-like phenomena.

Here are 34 ways to use YouTube (and other video hosting services) for business.

Different methods of Viral Marketing

E-mail: One of the easiest and simplest methods is email. It can be in the form of articles or advertisements which are sent to a large number of people based on your mailing list and if it results in forwarding the mail to other friends or known persons then viral marketing occurs.

Web forms: Various forms are available on the web and if your click on them, you are asked to fill in certain details that might include e-mail addresses. You are prompted to send something to your friend and if you willingly pass it to others, it is viral marketing.

Blogs: An effective viral marketing can be done through blogs. The links or information contained on a blog can often be copied to some other blogs and this increases the reach. With numerous blogs published on the Internet, you can expand exponentially.

Forums and Messages: Sending links through different messages or forums can be considered to be another type of viral marketing. A link that is present in a forum or chat room can often lead to greater links to your website than you might even expect.

Bookmarking: Allowing an easy process to your audience so that they can bookmark your website, can lead to expanding your network. If a visitor bookmarks your website, the potential of viral marketing gets enhanced.

The study suggests “The reality of today’s loyalty landscape is that too many rewards, points or perk programs out there are still only as sophisticated as those early trading stamp programs.  They dish discounts and free stuff to repeat buyers and gather about as much insight from the customer as those first shopkeepers exchanging place settings for swollen stamp books.”

So how does your brand’s loyalty program stack up against #1 American Express?

While you ponder that question let’s look at key indicators that customers didn’t like about loyalty programs.

• Too much spam and junk email topped the list of negatives at 44 percent
• Too many conditions and restrictions at 38 percent
• Rewards that lacked real value at 37 percent

Other prevalent complaints included members having a hard time redeeming points or rewards, program membership lacking value, and communications and services not being personalized or target specifically for members.

If you intend to have a successful loyalty program you must understand key customer requirements like “personalization”, “individualization” and “value”.  Today, customers are looking for greater rewards that “earn” their business and while they are open to “perks” what they really want is to be embraced and know by the business they patronize.

The hotel revenue management study involved showing one of eight distinct scenarios to 815 U.S. respondents, and asking whether the hotel was acting fairly in that particular scenario. Taylor, who is a marketing analyst for the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, conducted this study for his senior thesis at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, where Kimes is the Singapore Tourism Board Distinguished Professor in Asian Hospitality Management.

“We know that hotel customers accept the idea that hotel rates will change, but we don’t know when guests will think of those rate changes as being fair,” said Kimes. “We tested three factors that we thought would influence guests’ perceptions of fairness—type of trip, amount of information, and hotel brand class, in this case either five-star or three-star. Of those three factors, only familiarity with the rate rules had a strong effect on perceptions of fairness.”

As a result of this strong indication that guests want to know the rules, Taylor and Kimes suggested that hotel revenue managers focus their efforts on increasing guests’ familiarity with their pricing practices. While this does not necessarily mean publicizing all of a hotel’s rate fences, hotels could post the conditions for a particular rate class on its website, and indicate ways for guests to lock in a particular rate (typically, by booking far in advance). In the current environment, Taylor and Kimes suggest that reservation agents and front-desk clerks can explain differential rates and their associated conditions, thus shifting the guest’s focus away from simply asking for a discount.

I am surprised that hotel guests, many of whom are seasoned business travelers, really care about this sort of pricing practice.  These sorts of revenue management decisions begin with their flight arrangements, transitions to their car rental and then to their guest room rate.  It’s simply a matter of supply and demand.

What prospective guests should really be concerned about, as it relates to fairness, is a booking made through an OTA.  The OTA negotiates a wholesale rate with the hotel, often 25 percent to 50 percent less than published daily rate, and sells the guest room at the hotel’s published rate.  Now that’s “fair”???