Fortunately, the methods and practice of social networking is not much different that what you have done for years, just a in a different forum!

Social Networking is a form of Internet Marketing, and should be a part of your overall business marketing strategy. The concept is simple… Turn Strangers into Friends, then turn those new Friends, into Advocates of Your Business!

Turning Strangers into Friends

Have you heard of social networks like Facebook, FourSquare, Classmates, or Ning? These are great places to get started in your search for local friends for your business! If I were starting from scratch, I would start with one of the easier sites to use, Facebook.

The easiest way to understand these social meeting places, is that they are just like trade shows, conferences or any other meeting place where you have the opportunity to meet new people and showcase your business.

Tips for Finding Business Friends on Facebook

• Make sure you have a “fan” page for your business
• Connect your fan page to your website and vice-versa
• Suggest existing friends “like” your business page
• If your competitors are on Facebook, look for mutual friends
• Search facebook for “local” groups or other “local” fan pages, and join them!
• Contribute to local discussions when helpful.
• Befriend all local media, weather forecasters, newspapers, etc

The best advice anyone can take away from social marketing, is that you need to understand nothing will change overnight!

Building a core group of local friends will take time and by spending just a few hours each week, before you know it you will have hundreds or thousands of targeted, local, and engaged friends in your social network!

Converting New Friends into Advocates of your Business

After you begin building your social friend network, it’s very important that you don’t alienate them into thinking its all about you! If you try to drive special offers, coupons or discounts in their face every day, they will not be a friend for long!

Tips for Effectively Engaging Your New Friends

• Make your reason for contact about THEM, not you
• Engage in interesting discussion every chance you get
• Don’t create special offers, just to create special offers!
• Give back 90% of what you want in return

Most Importantly – Any time you share a success with a social friend, ask them to share their experience with others in their own network of friends!

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Just imagine if your phone rang right now and you overheard an employee telling the stranger on the other end of the line how much they hated their job because the management was horrible!

In today’s age of the web, they are telling more than just one person, they are putting your business and every comment they make about it, out there for all to see, and you probably don’t even know it!

Don’t forget – every time your company name or website appears on the web today, it is part of your permanent record! Managing your reputation and the way your employees represent your business, is key to success for years to come!

Generic Social Media Policy Template

Print it out

These guidelines apply to (Company Name) employees or contractors who create or contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of Social Media. Whether you log into Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, MySpace or Facebook pages, or comment on online media stories — these guidelines are for you.

While all (Company Name) employees are welcome to participate in Social Media, we expect everyone who participates in online commentary to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These rules might sound strict and contain a bit of legal-sounding jargon but please keep in mind that our overall goal is simple: to participate online in a respectful, relevant way that protects our reputation and of course follows the letter and spirit of the law.

1. Be transparent and state that you work at (Company Name). Your honesty will be noted in the Social Media environment. If you are writing about (Company Name) or a competitor, use your real name, identify that you work for (Company Name), and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in what you are discussing, be the first to say so.

2. Never represent yourself or (Company Name) in a false or misleading way. All statements must be true and not misleading; all claims must be substantiated.

3. Post meaningful, respectful comments — in other words, please, no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive.

4. Use common sense and common courtesy: for example, it’s best to ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to (Company Name). Make sure your efforts to be transparent don’t violate (Company Name)’s privacy, confidentiality, and legal guidelines for external commercial speech.

5. Stick to your area of expertise and do feel free to provide unique, individual perspectives on non-confidential activities at (Company Name).

6. When disagreeing with others’ opinions, keep it appropriate and polite. If you find yourself in a situation online that looks as if it’s becoming antagonistic, do not get overly defensive and do not disengage from the conversation abruptly: feel free to ask the PR Director for advice and/or to disengage from the dialogue in a polite manner that reflects well on (Company Name).

7. If you want to write about the competition, make sure you behave diplomatically, have the facts straight and that you have the appropriate permissions.

8. Please never comment on anything related to legal matters, litigation, or any parties (Company Name) may be in litigation with.

9. Never participate in Social Media when the topic being discussed may be considered a crisis situation. Even anonymous comments may be traced back to your or (Company Name)’s IP address. Refer all Social Media activity around crisis topics to PR and/or Legal Affairs Director.

10. Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and (Company Name)’s confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully.

Google has a long memory.

Related posts:

1. How to Manage Your Online Reputation

When I asked them how they knew if it was working or not, they told me…

“People say they found us online”

If this sounds like your Paid Search plan, visit the Search Marketing page and complete the short questionnaire to the right. I can save you money and increase the effectiveness of your paid campaigns today!

What is PPC?

For those unaware, Adwords is PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, paid search engine marketing. The premise is simple enough – you pay Google to have your website show up in the sponsored links section of the search and/or content network, when visitors search for specific words you choose to be seen for. The CPC, Cost-Per-Click you pay depends on several factors, one of which being the amount you are willing to pay for each visitor, another being the competitive nature of the phrases you chose.

PPC Best Practices

If you take advantage of any type of PPC or Banner advertising, there are a few things you should to be doing. If you don’t take these simple steps, you will have no real way to measure the effectiveness of your ad money! You might as well be throwing it away.

• Always Have a Plan, or Conversion Goal, for every Ad Campaign!
• If you Have More than 1 Goal – Use Separate Campaigns!
• Never Send Paid Traffic to a Page without a Clear Call to Action for the Visitor!
• Never Send Paid Traffic to your Website Home Page!
• Always Setup or Optimize a Specific Landing Page for Each of your Campaigns!
• Always Split Test Landing Pages to Determine Which Convert Best!
• Narrow Each Ad Group to Only a Few Target Phrases

Finally, and the most important aspect of ANY paid campaign, Track your Visitors to the N’th Degree!

If you fail to address any of the steps above, you are simply wasting your advertising money, and shooting in the dark with your ad campaigns!

Let Me Help You Succeed

When the company above told me they knew their plan was working because Customer said they found them on the web, I started asking more questions.

• How do you know they didn’t find you in organic search?
• How do you know another website didn’t send them?
• Do you know exactly which website sent them?
• Which campaign triggered the call?
• Which keywords triggered the action?
• Which site page did they land on?
• Which site page caused them them to take action?
• Are you using specific website forms on specific pages?

In the end, the company was paying $150/day and averaging $3.15 cents per click, for something they had no clue was working! Imagine if they knew that “This Specific Keyword” sending visitors to “This Specific Page” resulted in a phone call or form submission 75% of the time.

Visit the Search Marketing page, and get started toward successful campaigns today!

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The idea of running a local business without having some type of personalized web presence, means you are leaving hundreds, or thousands of prospective customers on the table for others to choose from!

What Can a Website Do for A Small Business?

Before you consider having your own domain or website, it helps to understand what it can do for you. Today, even a basic website is as important as the telephone. In 5 years, it will be as important as having a business name!

• Your website serves as your voice and sales pitch to unseen prospects!
• A website gives you another way of gathering leads!
• A website provides another way of communicating with customers!
• Your website gives you somewhere to showcase your best work!
• Your website can replace costly yellow page ads, which are rarely used any more!
• A website gives you a place to recognize great Employees!
• Your website provides a way to seek out new Employees!
• Your website provides a world-wide, 24/7 billboard to your business!
• If you sell products, your website opens a whole new world of buyers!
• So many more reasons…

Do Any Competitors Have Websites?

Since you are reading this on the Internet, I want to direct you to Google.com search engine. In the search box, type in a phrase you would normally classify your business as, add your city to the end, and press search.

Ex: “electrician charlotte nc“, “auto repair charlotte nc”

If you see even one listing on that page – your competition is meeting the needs of the web public, well before your phone will ring. The Internet has taken the place of the phone book, for all but the older segment of society.

The Good News is that it’s never too late to get started! Visit our website design services page and learn more about how I can help you get your small business website online today!

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Since the web is quickly becoming a social advocate network, you must pay close attention to your online reputation, or suffer the consequence of ignoring it!

How To Monitor Your Online Reputation

The easiest way to monitor all online activity that refers to your company has gotten much easier in the past few years. As long as you take advantage of free tools provided by the search engine company, Google, you can sign up to receive “Google Alerts“, and get notified anytime your company, website, or just about anything you can think of is mentioned on the web.

1. Go to Google Alerts
2. Complete the 4-Step Alert box
3. Sit back and await notifications!

It really is that simple to monitor what others are saying about your business! In the case of my own business, I used the search terms “MeckWebs”, “Meck Webs”, and “meckwebs.com”.

How to Deal with Negative Comments

Knowing your business received a negative comment or review is something you should not take lightly at all! Pro or Con, it is now part of your permanent online reputation, and you should address it as seriously as you would if the person walked into your main office and filed a complaint!

Remember the old adage: “The Happy Customer Tells 10 People – The Unhappy Customer Tells Everyone!”

In the case of Internet comments and reviews, the unhappy customers will tell everyone in your city or state as well, and can ruin a good reputation quickly!

How to Make Sure you Stay Ahead

The easiest way you can overcome any negative comments about your business, is to make sure you have a flood of positive comments to drown it out!

Depending on who you listen to, some say that communicating with your customers should be the #1 Priority of your business! Any type of communication, whether it is thank you cards, special offers, follow-up calls AFTER the sale or service, any contact is far better than none!

• Do you Ask Every Customer about their Recent Experience with Your Business?
• Are you Asking How your Staff Performed?
• Are you Thanking Them for Choosing You?
• Do you Point All Customers to Your Website?
• Are You Getting Email Addresses?
• Are You Asking for Referrals?

Since you are doing everything else to succeed, why not add one more question… “If I send you a link, would you mind writing a review of your experience with our business?”

9 out of 10 times… your customers will happily respond!

Do You Need Help with Your Online Reputation?

I am more than happy to help your company build a positive online reputation as part of your overall Social Marketing Strategy to Succeed Online. Contact me and get started today!

Related posts:

1. Does Your Company Have a Social Policy?