So how can we break out of this rut? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Review your old content – sometimes looking back at what you’ve written or posted in the past can spark a new idea. Perhaps you could offer a new take on a topic that you’ve written about previously. Maybe your stance on an issue has changed, or you have studied something more in-depth and can offer an expert opinion this time.
2. Consult a friend, family member, or colleague – I find that as with a lot of things in life, bouncing ideas off of another person can absolutely spark my creativity. Even if they don’t give you exact topics to post or blog about, they may be able to get you thinking. I often tell my boyfriend what I’m considering writing about, and get ideas from him about what he would like to hear more about when it comes to that topic. He and I work in completely different fields, so it’s nice to get an outsider’s perspective, and it also almost always helps me to move forward with whatever I’m working on.
3. Get out in the world around you – take some time to listen to what’s going on in your world. I guess I am saying that you ought to eavesdrop a little, as silly as it sounds. But when you go out to lunch or to the grocery store, hear what others are talking about. Often, they may have ideas that you can capitalize on. As a bonus, you may find that topics that you hear people talking about will also resonate with your readers.
4. Use multi-media – if you are tired of writing the same blog posts again and again, or asking questions on Facebook, think about adding another dimension to your content. Consider recording a video blog. Post a photo series. Record yourself talking about your company and make it into a podcast. Record a video on Vine. There are so many opportunities to easily make content interactive.

Coming up with new content can sometimes be challenging, but in order to keep your website, blog, or social media pages fresh and inviting new consumers, it’s critical to try to come up with new material.

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Your LinkedIn profile is a bit more in-depth than other social media networks that you might participate in. While on Facebook, you might scrape the surface when it comes to your employment history and education, LinkedIn delves much further into your professional background. The site offers space for you to write a summary about yourself and your experience and interests. It also showcases your job skills, community service work, and continuing education.

LinkedIn is becoming a requirement when it comes to employment. Some companies have even shifted their hiring focus to the site. There are also many ways to be interactive on LinkedIn. You can join LinkedIn groups that are related to your profession. You can share articles with colleagues or on your page. You can endorse the skills of others, or write recommendations for people that you have worked with, and they can do the same for you.

LinkedIn has also recently added a new feature. You are now able to add photos and other multi-media content to your profile page. This is a great addition to a well-rounded page. The goal of using LinkedIn is to make yourself look attractive (so to speak) in the professional world. Adding photos can be a great way to do this. Photos of yourself in a professional situation or volunteering can show your personality to potential employers or connections. The same goes for posting content that is related to hobbies. Many employers would prefer a well-rounded employee who enjoys activities outside of work, as well. Posting photos and multi-media content is a good way to add to your appeal.

As always, it’s important to keep your LinkedIn page professional. While it may seem silly to address professionalism when it comes to a network that is based on your work and accomplishments, you would be surprised with what people include on their pages! Just be careful to only add content and media that is relevant to the content that you have posted on your LinkedIn page.  If you’re not sure if the content you’re adding to your page is okay or not, read the 12 most wrong things to do on LinkedIn and make sure you’re not doing any of them.

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Forming your Marketing Research Plan

Before you can begin to sift through your various social media platforms for information, you must first form a research plan. With the sheer amount of information that is constantly streaming across many of the most popular social media services, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, having a plan will help to keep your research focused and allow you to organize and act on the information that you obtain.

Common research plan steps include:

1. Set Your Goals: One of the keys to successful marketing research is focus. By determining exactly what you wish to obtain from your research, you can track your progress and returns easily. Be as specific as possible when setting goals for optimal results.

2. Choose Your Research Sources: Social media platforms vary in appearance, audience, tone and other factors. Choosing a platform that aligns with your goals can help to speed up the process and improve the quality of your findings. For example, B2B businesses might consider LinkedIn or Twitter as these platforms offer access to a wide range of other businesses and professionals.

3. Conduct Your Research: With goals and a target platform in mind, it is time to start researching. There is a wide variety of ways to conduct marketing research using social media. Popular methods and tips for optimizing your existing efforts will be discussed in a moment.

4. Analyze Your Results and Start Again: With the rapid pace of many social media platforms, you can accurately track trends, opinions and topics as they change. Depending on your market, these changes could occur daily or slowly occur over the course of months. Because of this, market research through social media is often an on-going process.

Using Social Media to Track Trends

One of the easiest forms of market research to conduct using social media is trends tracking and analysis. Most major platforms offer multiple ways to search recent posts for key terms or trends. An example of this is Twitter's hashtag searches. By choosing terms related to your questions or market, you gain instant access to a near-constant stream of information.

Observe or Engage for Varied Responses

One of the major benefits of social media research is that you can choose your level of involvement. Passive collection and observation offer outstanding ways to obtain information without having to worry about how your brand or business might influence the speaker's opinion. On the opposite side, active engagement with others on social media can lead to insightful findings and expose a side of your market that you might not see normally. By mixing both methods, you can create a well-rounded set of data for analysis.

Build a Network of Competitors

The public nature of social media has changed business accessibility forever. While this offers a number of marketing benefits, you can also use it to your advantage for research purposes. Locate and follow your competitors' social media feeds for a first-hand look at their marketing methods, brand, strategies and products or services. This can help you to find additional ways to strengthen your brand or reveal new opportunities for your business.

Using Social Media to Improve Communications

Terms such as value, quality and innovation are different from business to business. Likewise, your customer base is likely to have a differing definition from your business as well. Social media offers an accessible, easy to use way to learn about what your customers or clients think of products and services, as well as revealing their common complaints, issues or concerns. By creating a customer-centric approach to your marketing through social media research, you can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Tools to Help Your Social Media Research

• TweetDeck: This free program from Twitter offers a consolidated interface from which to conduct research on both Twitter and Facebook. It allows for hashtag tracking, user searches and real-time notifications.

• Hashtracking: As a premium service, Hashtracking provides comprehensive analytics and trends on up to 40 Twitter hashtags for a flat monthly fee. It includes numerous reports and sharing options to help manage your data.

• Tweriod: Social media research is all about finding your audience and compiling information. If your business has an existing Twitter account, Tweriod will let you know the times when your followers are most active for increased research productivity.

Social media is becoming a popular market research tool quickly due to its low cost and ease of use. These tips and tricks will help you to harness the power of social media for your marketing benefit.

Ray Nelson is a marketing writer who specializes in writing about marketing geared towards women among other topics like market research and social media marketing.  

While browsing the web recently for news and how I could translate stories I read into blog topics, I found an article titled Social Media Marketing: Get Out Now, You’re Doomed to Fail. I was surprised to read this, because in my experience, many companies have had success with social media marketing; plus, it’s virtually free. Since the headline captured my attention, I went on to read the article. To my surprise, it wasn’t really about getting out of social media marketing, it was about how to be successful at it. Perfect!

Social media marketing tactics boast hundreds of success stories when it comes to businesses. Social media marketing can put previously unknown businesses on the map. However, launching a successful marketing campaign takes thought and planning. If you don’t put thought or a plan of action in place, your business could be committing a social media mistake.  This article says that if you don’t take the time to learn more about what you are doing when it comes to social media marketing, you may as well just give up.

I would encourage any small business owner or employee to take this advice with a grain of salt. It’s so important to take full advantage of social media marketing. It’s one of the cheapest, most far-reaching types of marketing that is available to business owners right now. With hundreds of millions of users all over the world, I think that if you don’t invest your time in social media, it’s going to wind up being detrimental to your business.

Here are some things to consider when it comes to social media marketing –

• Take the time to check out the social media pages and campaigns of your competitors. This will help you to be better prepared to attract customers to your pages.
• Consider time, budget, and resources.  Before joining social media networks as a business, make sure that you know how much time and what resources you will be able to dedicate to updates and marketing.
• Consider your strengths and weaknesses. Make sure that you don’t try to over-reach when it comes to social media. Pick the networks that you are the most interested in and will be able to dedicate resources to. It’s better to have a strong presence on a few networks than a weak presence on many networks.
• Think about how you want to handle your social media strategies. In order to thrive in the social media sphere, you need a successful social media strategy.  Are you planning to hire an outside person or firm to update your pages? Delegate an in-house person to manage them? It’s important to choose a specific strategy, or risk forgetting to update.
• Develop marketing campaigns that are specifically tailored for social media. Don’t just try to fit your current marketing plans into a social media platform – social media sites deserve campaigns that are designed just for them.

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The modern equivalent is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, software designed to connect customer interactions such as email, phone calls and contracts with appointments, fulfillment and other deliverables across your entire company.  CRM solutions promise faster customer service for less money, better customer retention and, ultimately, more customer loyalty and increased sales.

CRM systems are being adopted worldwide at a rapid pace. IDC reports that the CRM software industry grew to 18 billion in worldwide revenue in 2012. Meanwhile, Gartner anticipates a 500 percent rise in mobile CRM by 2014.

Today, there are a plethora of CRM systems available to businesses of all sizes and industries. Large companies will look to enterprise level solutions such as Oracle or Salesforce.  Small companies will benefit from solutions like Insightly that are specifically designed to meet the budget, resource constraints and feature needs of small businesses.

In the age of Internet everywhere and billions of connected devices, many small businesses will look to cloud-based (online) CRM’s. Why? Because such solutions provide anytime, anywhere access and do not require you to purchase and maintain expensive hardware or have a full-time IT person to keep the system up to date.

So what should you expect from a CRM?

1. It should serve as a centralized collection and storage system, so you can share sales, marketing and customer service data and track customer interactions throughout your organization. That means everyone on your team has access to the latest information about each customer – when the last appointment took place, what was covered, what that customer is interested in, etc. That allows you to personalize relationships with customers, regardless of which employee deals directly with them at any given time. The last thing customers want is to sit on hold on the phone, or be transferred from person to person to get the answer they need.
    
2. Many CRM systems also contain project management and administrative features, such as the ability to create tasks and milestones for projects, and receive email reminders for upcoming activity. These features are incredibly useful for making sure that you are meeting client expectations and obligations and delivering on time.
    
3. You can pull reports based on the data you feed the system. Find out which products are profitable, and which are garnering customer complaints. Who are your most profitable customers and what are they buying? Internally, you can find out how long it takes sales reps to return customer contacts. Look at your pipeline, with an eye to potential profits. How many deals are in the pipeline? Which deals are moving forward, and which have vanished?

   You can also track the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives, including your website, direct mail and email campaigns.  Your CRM solution should eliminate any bottlenecks and capture useful data to track campaign effectiveness and make intelligent marketing investment decisions.
    

4. By using a CRM system effectively, you can expect faster turnaround time for closing a sale. In addition, as different company departments are able to share data, employees can efficiently work as a team, as opposed to working individually or in isolated groups.

So expect your CRM system to help you understand your customers better, serve them more effectively and design new strategies that will increase customer loyalty, along with sales. Study after study shows that a positive experience is key to customer retention and ultimately to your bottom line.  http://returnonbehavior.com/2010/10/50-facts-about-customer-experience-for-2011/

What makes a good CRM? The definition of a good CRM depends on the needs and objectives of your company. Every CRM tool is different, so some of what you can expect depends on the system you choose. But before you sign on the dotted line here are a few key things to keep in mind:

1. Affordability. Consider the total cost of ownership, not just licensing or subscription fees. Do you plan on using an on-premise solution or a cloud solution? There are significant differences in the amount of time and money you need to invest between these two options. Do you need to spend time and money on training? Does the vendor provide free support? Does mobile access or additional storage cost extra? Do you need your CRM to integrate with other systems already in use? How much will that cost? If your company grows how much will any additional licenses cost?
    
2. Value. Many CRM providers offer tiered plans based on group size to help you decide what package may be right for you. But using group size as your only deciding factor may lead you to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Look at the features and functionality in a higher tier than you would normally choose. Ask yourself if these things save time, money or help generate sales?  If the answer is yes then the value received may more than offset the added cost of the higher tier.
    
3. Features. Talk to the people who will be using the system before you start shopping. Make sure you know how your current business processes are working. Find out what’s missing, and what staff members would like a CRM system to do. Do you need help desk automation, sales forecasting, order processing and tracking, and advanced analytics? Increasingly important features include mobile phone access and integration with social media. Ultimately, you’ll have to decide which features are critical to your company’s success.
    
4. Ease-of-Use. Your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service people should not be terrified of using the software. It has to be user-friendly. Otherwise, your team will stubbornly resist using it, and your CRM will never live up to its promised value. Take advantage of free trials that are an excellent way to help you evaluate how easy the software is to use. 

In summary, a CRM system leverages technology to efficiently identify and capture qualified leads, convert them into customers, and cultivate loyal relationships that keep customers in the fold for years to come. Choose the right system, and you can expect to accomplish those goals faster and better than in the past.

The addition of social media to our everyday landscape has been both a positive and a negative influence. Social media has made it incredibly easy for news to spread. It seems as though people are more educated as to what is going on in the world around them, because it is no longer necessary to check the news. More than likely, someone on your Facebook feed has posted a story, or you have seen a tweet about what’s going on. This ease of spreading information has gave birth to a new type of marketing, real-time marketing. At the same time, many people feel as though their privacy has been compromised. It is very easy to find out nearly any kind of information about any person online, and this is in large part due to the presence of social media.

One positive aspect that has personally made me feel as though social media has helped people draw closer together is the amazing ability for grassroots campaigns to be successful. While of course incredibly tragic, last week’s attack at the Boston Marathon is an example of this. People posted all over social media with requests for help, blood donations, and places for displaced runners to stay. The response was astonishing. Blood banks and hospitals had to turn away people looking to donate blood because they were full to capacity. It’s just amazing.

The overwhelming use of social media can have downsides as well, as with anything that grows in popularity so quickly. Sometimes, news spreads too quickly and facts are distorted. Again, in the case of the Boston Marathon, rumors regarding what exactly happened circulated for days, whether they were correct or not. Gruesome photos of people who were injured were posted all over the Web without permission from the victims or their families. Imagine finding out that a friend or relative was hurt by seeing their photo on the Internet or in a new story, before you hear it directly.

​But there is no denying the power of social media. It will only continue to grow, if people keep up the level of interest that they currently have. I would encourage anyone who uses social media on a regular basis to be a savvy user. Don’t share sensitive information. Do take the time to pass along things that you find interesting or you are passionate about.

A recent article was published by Texas A&M Engineer Research Magazine and presents some numbers for different social media networks:

• Facebook and Twitter combined have over 1 billion users.
• Pinterest grew from 400k users to 18.7 million users in less than a year.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine, preceded only by Google.

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“Listening” via social media is an interesting concept. Since social media is a real-time medium for interaction, quick responses are necessary in order to make your followers/customers feel like you are hearing what they have to say. Many companies use canned responses (much like that oh-so-annoying automated phone system) to reply to customer inquiries. It’s so important for your customers to feel like a real person is on the other end of the computer and is taking their question, complaint, or suggestion seriously.

For small businesses, it’s particularly important to engage with your customers in a social media setting. While someone might accept a pre-formatted response from a big company, likely figuring that they are too big and busy to answer personally, a small business gives a personal feel. This should reflect in your social media interactions.

Here are some ways that you can demonstrate to your followers that you are hearing what they have to say:

Respond Quickly – ideally, you would respond to customer inquiries/feedback on your social media pages within 2 hours, at the most. Not only does this keep your customers happy, it also keeps negativity at bay. If a customer posts a negative comment or experience, the faster you can get to it and put out the fire, the better. Also, businesses should be prepared to respond to crisis situations.  Situations like that can explode very quickly, and if you aren’t paying attention, it can have a negative impact on your business.

Ask Questions – instead of just waiting for your followers to pose questions to you, take the opportunity to ask them questions. Even something as simple as “what’s your favorite product?” can help you gauge the level of interest in different products that you offer, as well as get people interacting with your page.

Value Opinions – when a follower posts a suggestion on your Facebook wall, or Tweets you something that they would like to see your company offer, take the time to give the suggestion serious consideration. If customers see that when they suggest something, that actual changes are sometimes made, they are more likely to feel like they are being heard, and that their opinion is valuable.

Ask for Feedback – ask your customers to post their most recent purchases (of goods or services) and how they liked it, how they used it, etc. This is a somewhat sneaky way to gather information about what products or services are the most popular with your customers, and if you’re giving your customers what they want.  It also makes them feel like you care about what their buying experience was like.

Using social media can be immensely helpful to a business. Just make sure that you are keeping your customers involved, so that they feel like they are being heard.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

All of us in the business world get stuck sometimes. Running a small business and being innovative in everyday workings of that business can sometimes be draining. We are not always on our game when it comes to being creative. Lack of inspiration can happen in any business. Writers get writer’s block (it’s a real thing, trust me!), those businesspeople in sales hit a wall and can’t get new clients, everyone has a hard time occasionally.

So what should you do when you can’t get inspired to do new things for your business? You can always dig a little deeper within yourself to find it, but there are many places that you might not think to turn to for inspiration that can really be helpful. Here are some ideas of places to look and people to talk to in order to get inspired:

• Your friends and family – friends and family members, particularly those that are not involved personally with your business, can be a great source of inspiration. Because they are not constantly thinking about your business the way that you probably are, they can offer a fresh perspective. Presenting your problem to a neutral third party is a great way to get new ideas so you can build a better business.
• Co-workers or employees – it’s a good idea to get into the habit of asking your employees and co-workers for input, particularly when you are feeling stuck on what to do next. Often your employees will have ideas on how to improve on current processes, or even thoughts on new products or services that you can offer.
• YouTube – watching videos that relate to your business or industry can give you some ideas about where to take your business. For example, if you are in the marketing business, check out some videos of marketing campaigns that others have done. While you obviously won’t want to plagiarize their ideas, the work of others can help you to be more creative and think critically about your business. A quick YouTube search also turned up hundreds of motivational speakers who post videos on the site. While it may seem cheesy, sometimes someone encouraging you to do well will open up your brain for new ideas.
• Other social media sites – consider asking your personal network for ideas for your business. Most people have social media friends or followers from all aspects of life. Talking to those who may be in a very different situation than you can offer you a new perspective. I have friends and followers on social media sites that are friends or acquaintances from high school, college, jobs, and online forums. They represent a huge cross-section of economic and geographic statuses. It’s always amazing when someone posts a question on Facebook and gets 10 very different answers from 10 very different people. It’s the beauty of social media, and you can use it to help your business.

Inspiration is sometimes hard to come by. But there are many avenues that you can explore in order to get new ideas for your business. It’s important to keep it fresh in the business world, or you risk losing customers.

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One of the most recent happenings that was discussed heavily on social media is the NASCAR Nationwide race and the awful crash that happened at the end of the race. During the last lap of the Nationwide 300 at the Daytona Speedway on February 23rd, a wreck happened on the track and large pieces of debris from the cars affected flew into the stands and injured at least 30 people, some critically. NASCAR is being criticized by many people for not formulating a proper response to what was a very touchy situation. Several articles were written about the incident, including this article from socialmediatoday.com that discusses what NASCAR’s response (or non-response) via social media.

Photo source: Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Several race fans caught the wreck on their own video cameras or phones. A video of the crash that was taken from the stands was almost immediately uploaded to YouTube. NASCAR responded quickly, asking YouTube to remove the video. NASCAR was also criticized for not so much as acknowledging the accident on any of it’s social media pages. In fact, the only thing that the organization posted in the hours following the crash was promoting the Daytona 500 that was happening the next day. The YouTube video has since been restored, but it’s too late for NASCAR to correct their response.

Other companies can certainly take a lesson from the negative attention that NASCAR has garnered from this incident. Here are some tips on how companies can properly manage their crisis communication via email:

Apologize, apologize, apologize. You know the old saying, “the customer is always right?” well, this adage is fitting for crisis response as well. For a company to manage themselves effectively during trying times, they should nearly always shoulder the blame, even if they didn’t do anything to cause the problem (as is the case with the NASCAR accident). Fans want to hear that the company not only acknowledges that there is an issue, but that they are sorry that it happened.

Respond to inquiries from followers. Instead of ignoring questions or posting things that are unrelated, companies are wise to respond to questions or comments from followers. Even a short and simple response such as “we are looking into the matter further” or “we are deeply disappointed that this happened” are better than no response at all.

Be proactive. Companies should train their social media staff to respond quickly to a crisis. Instead of taking hours or even days to post an official statement about what happened, staffers should be trained to come up with a response quickly and get it issued right away. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but people should know that the company is aware of the situation and working as quickly as possible to correct it. Companies should also avoid posting unrelated statuses or Tweeting about other events, etc., until a response has been issued; it can seem disingenuous and like you are ignoring what happened.

A new year is a great time to re-think your internet marketing strategy, including social media strategy. The same goes for crisis management. If your company doesn’t have a plan in place, now is a great time to think ahead.

Creating Community With Nestivity
Enter Nestivity. Nestivity is the first and only community engagement software for Twitter. It promises to provide an anchor for your conversations on Twitter, so that you can encourage your network to participate, manage conversations effectively, and broaden your reach to the wider Twitter-sphere.

With Nestivity, you can create meaningful relationships with your followers through conversations. Any of your tweets can become the focal-point for an engaging discussion, and people can participate by adding their own comments.

How Does Nestivity Work?

Within the Nestivity dashboard, you can ask questions, post ideas and share experiences for your followers to interact with, or encourage them to start the conversation themselves by posting their own questions, ideas and experiences.

Each new conversation appears on your Nestivity dashboard as well as Twitter, so you can tap into the wider Twitter ecosystem while keeping your engagement tightly focused on one topic at a time. And these conversations can all be managed right from your dashboard, which means you can have dozens of different conversations on-the-go at once without missing a beat.

Rather than seeing a conversation fizzle out after one or two tweets, or engaging only one or two of your followers at a time, you can use Nestivity to make Twitter what it truly can be: a place for community, for engagement and for genuine relationships.

Join Me And Be Part Of My New Community
I’m proud to announce that I and Robert Scoble are the one of the first and only Nestivity Alpha testers at #SXSW2013.

Beginning immediately, I’m turning my Twitter “newsfeed” into an online community. Join my #SXSW panel “The secret dangers of online influencer marketing” in the San Jacinto Ballroom at the Four Seasons on March 10th at 12:30PM, and/or join me online to discuss the ideas raised during the panel discussion.  We won’t pull any punches as we debate the usefulness of tools like Klout and Kred to assess who can best motivate action and effect behavior change, so you can expect a lively discussion.

You’re also welcome to share your thoughts on the latest breaking technology news, and talk about any other topics you’d like to raise during SXSW.By its nature, Twitter is powerful yet transitory. Nestivity offers context to our conversations and will keep the discussion available and easily findable, before and well-after the panel takes place.

So let’s talk about how we measure influence on social media, and where we’ve gone wrong. Let’s shift the focus from tools that clutter our toolbox and instead, let’s talk about what social media is really all about: community.