Creating Social Buzz for Businesses
Claim your business listing on Google-it’s FREE!
Google Places will help your local business get found.
You can also:
Watch the video below to learn more…
Like this post? Share the love and post to your social sites or leave a comment below.
Respectfully,
These videos will show you how to enhance your personal and business email interactions. Your email signatures can be easily customized, include instant message & social profiles, automatically share your blog posts, favorite quotes, news, bookmarks and more. You can even create personal and business ones depending on who you are emailing.
This first video tutorial will take you through the steps to create a custom “handwritten” signature using My Live Signature ‘s creation wizard which is a FREE service. You will incorporate this signature into the next video.
The end result will look something like this:
(If you want to create a realistic signature from a scanned image, the cost is $9.95. If you want to create an animated signature, the cost is $19.95. Click Here to learn more about these paid services.)
This next video will show you how to create even more of a customized signature through Wise Stamp. You will learn how to add a thumbnail photo or business logo, clickable social media icons, IM accounts, and even incorporate a blog feed with your latest post visible and clickable.
Your custom “handwritten” signature you created in the first video will be incorporated in this video.
I hope you found this information useful, if you did, please share this post with your social media sites and/or comment below.
If you don’t want to miss out on any of my future video tutorials, then subscribe to our blog and you will receive a notification to your inbox when we have created new content.
Best Regards,
I think we would all agree that as business owners we want to protect our positive image and brand. However, one negative comment online can seriously affect your reputation. Especially if it is a highly trafficked website that is favored by the search engines.
Reputation management is the process of monitoring a brand, company, person or service. Once a red flag has been found via various methods of monitoring, the next step is to evaluate the risk of the negative response, and lastly to act based on your evaluation. Basically it’s a mix of marketing and customer service.
The goal is to avoid any damage as monitoring your reputation allows you to immediately attempt to intercede and try to defray some if not most of the damage.
Interestingly enough, when there is a customer complaint, companies agree that it could possibly even put you in a better light. You will essentially be portraying yourself as a responsive, caring and kind person who is apologetic and will do what it takes to makes things right.
For example, you have a customer who visited your store and was angry about the cashier who treated her rudely. If you had a chance to approach her and let her know that you will be talking to your employee as you do not advocate that kind of customer service, and for all your troubles, here is a 20% coupon good towards your next purchase. Not only would your customer feel better , but you are publicly putting yourself out there as someone who cares about your customers and will stand by them to make it right.
According to the statistics, 4 out of 5 people state that they have received advice via social media regarding what product or service to purchase. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertisement. So what does this mean for your business. They are talking about you beyond your control and you need to be monitoring the conversation. Period.
I recently googled a friend of mine’s name the first thing I saw was a comment someone left on some obscure forum complaining about him and what he allegedly had done. The incrimination was terrible. But my friend had no idea, and he had a great defense but no one heard his side because he didn’t even know it existed.
It’s happening, and unfortunately a reputation that took decades to build could be destroyed by a single event. Yet if you had been monitoring your reputation, it all could have been prevented.
Your competition is another valid reason. They may be more social media savvy than you and if so, they could be very stealthfully compromising your reputation.
For example, a friend of your competitor may write a bad review of your business on Yelp, just because. However, once you address the situation, odds are they won’t have the ammunition to back up their complaints and even when they do, you want to be there to be the nice guy who comes to their rescue.
So with everyone turning to social media and taking the advice of their peers, it is imperative for business owners to reign in on their reputation. It is actually not even an option any longer, it is a necessity. Once the damage is done, it can take years to repair.
Bee Social can help as we have many resources to track your business name, owner name, product names, service names, etc. We stay on top of the latest and greatest reputation management systems and tools and use them to defend your good name.
Our Killer Bee package has the most robust reputation management services which will cover unlimited keywords, and our Queen Bee has some great basic reputation management tools that we use on up to 3 keywords. We do offer an a la carte service which is the same robust reputation management service offered in the Killer Bee package. Learn more here: Social Media Management Packages and Reputation Management Service.
If you are a business using reputation management, what has been your experience with it?
If you found this post helpful, please comment below or share with your social networks.
To Your Social Success,
Why should your business have a fan page?
Well, first off Facebook is the 2nd most trafficked website in the world according to Alexa and Compete. Facebook has 500 million active users, 150 million of those active users are currently using Facebook via mobile devices and the average American spends 7 hours per week on Facebook according to a recent Neilson report.
That combined with poor ROI on traditional marketing methods is reason enough to consider having a Facebook business fan page.
The advantages of engaging with existing fans and new fans is something that can be easily accomplished on a Facebook fan page, when done right.
Here are 9 examples of business fan pages who have nailed the Facebook fan page concept effectively. They are engaging with their audience and bringing in new business because of it.
1. ChickfilA
Starts off as the menu as their landing page with clickable images and text to their actual website. If you are a brick and mortar business it’s a good idea to have a store locator widget, like ChikfilA does here.
2. Russ Robinson Photography
There is a clear call to action the minute non-fans land on the page, plus the owner has added in a 10% coupon incentive for liking the page. He also has a “Share Us!” tab which easily allows for the user to invite their friends to like your page as well. Also notice the Foursquare tab Place Widget. It shows an actual map and address to his studio. Russ also spotlights his work and creates promotions based on fan feedback.
The feature I think is great on this site is the tab called “Guy’s Guide To Flowers”. Through Facebook insights you are able to get demographics on visitors to the page, obviously more men were visiting the site and 1- 800 – Flowers had a great idea providing this male specific how-to tab. They also do a great job of encouraging fans to comment, give their thoughts, ideas and feedback. If you are an eCommerce store you can integrate that into your fan page as they did here in their Facebook shoplet via Alvenda.
4. Kampgrounds of America (KOA)
Again, a great call to action landing page is visible to all non-fans of the site. You only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention, you want them to click that like button before they leave and may never find you again. KOA also have an Involver Facebook app that shares all their other location-based fan pages. This fan page also offers a YouTube tab with fan videos of family camping trips. Also they incorporate fan camping photos at area KOA Campgrounds.
5. Intel
Great use of promotions and contest that engage fans and keep them coming back. The Facebook Wildfire app is a great for running contests. Intel will sometimes interview their employees and have them explain the quality of the products they create.
Great landing tab for non-fans promoting their birthday subs. They have their other social sites prevalent and share button obvious at the top. Anything you can do to make it easy for someone to share and connect will dramatically increase their chances of doing just that. They do a good job of engaging fans in the Notes tab where they ask their fans opinions and include exclusive offers.
7. Ritz-Carlton
The landing tab for non-fans immerses them into their various amazing resorts and services by using beautiful photography. Another way of engaging their fans is by sharing interesting location-based resort factoids creating stories.
8. Teavana
The non-fan landing tab has the like button visible and obvious as well as the great benefits of their products which in itself will help to immediately engage the user. There are obvious links to their other social sites. They also add some social proof by displaying photos of famous people that like their page. A great way to engage their fans is by a Tea of The Week tab along with a What’s In Your Cup tab where fans send in their photos and can win a contest.
Hopefully you have gained some great insight and tips on how to create or spruce up your Facebook fan page. Bee Social has Facebook fan page customization services that can help bring out the best in your business and engage your fans. You can learn more on our Services tab.
Just remember these pointers when you create your Facebook fan page:
What are some fan pages that you have found to be particularly engaging? What apps or widgets did they have that made it work better?
If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks and/or comment below.
To Your Social Success,
So you’ve cultivated a relationship on social media with new and existing customers, or even made new friends and they are intrigued by your business.
Hopefully your business has a blog which would be the next logical step to send them to learn more about your business and it’s industry. (Learn 16 Compelling Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Blog). Once they’ve landed on your blog, it’s time to capture your follower’s contact information to further build on the relationship and give this more dedicated following personal attention.
This is done via an opt-in or web form on your website or blog. They will be agreeing to receive emails from you via an email autoresponder system. You now have a captive interested audience receiving automated newsletters and broadcast messages via their email inbox. Perfect opportunity to continue to build and solidify your relationship and create long-lasting returning customers.
Email marketing is a great asset to your company. It creates another consistent touch point with your customers and admirers. You want to always stay fresh on their mind, but at the same time provide value. It will also help to get customers to come back to your website as well as keep them up to date on new products and special offers, coupons or events in a very cost-effective way.
So what can an autoresponder system do for your business?
Autoresponder Messages-this is a series of emails that are pre-written and scheduled to be sent out at certain intervals to all new subscribers.
So for example, if you are a realtor, you could give out a series of 10 informational emails (spaced out every week or every other week) on your best insider’s secrets to home buying and home selling. These emails could consist of an interview with a home inspector, a before and after demonstration with a home stager, a blog post on getting your ready home before you put it on the market, etc.
I call it the bait that keeps your subscriber subscribed. It should be 100% pure value and very little business product or service promotion. You want them to be blown away with the value you are giving for free.
Newsletter Messages-this is the monthly, semi-monthly or quarterly email that shares your latest specials and offers, new products or services, seasonal information pertaining to your business or industry and other valuable information.
For example: a snow plowing/lawn maintenance business could have a September newsletter reminding their customers about autumn lawn fertilization by offering them a coupon for this service or on fertilizer, along with why autumn lawn fertilization is important. They could also include their new fall/winter hours and snow plowing rates. Including photos of your business or employees with a short bio could add another personal touch.
Custom Web Forms and Email Templates-a good email autoresponder system will provide you with multiple templates to customize and brand the look of your emails and web forms.
Performance Tracking and Subscriber Segmenting-another advantage of a quality email marketing software is that it will provide analytics to track what your subscribers are clicking on which you can then use this information to send more relevant messages to certain segments of your subscriber list. This will help you know what’s working and what’s not working so you can keep your content relevant to what your subscribers are most interested in.
I use and love Aweber. It is a very popular email marketing service with a very impressive email deliverability rate, plus they have step-by-step video tutorials and easy to follow metrics. If you want to learn more or trial it for one month for only $1.00, just click here——> Aweber Email Marketing Software.
Here are some recent blog posts from Aweber:
If you are interested in Bee Social helping you with your email marketing management, visit our Email Marketing Management services page.
If you found value in this post please share the love and kindly comment below or share with your social sites above.
To Your Social Success,
This is the final installment of Twitter Tools for Business Building.
To view Part 1, go here: Social Oomph
To view Part 2, go here: HootSuite, TwitPic & bit.ly
Tweet Beep, Twellow, Twollo, Twitter Tab and Revisit will be discussed. As new innovative Twitter tools become available, I will mention them here in my blog. The 5 mentioned in this post are very useful and will help you engage with a more targeted audience which will drive more traffic to your website and more importantly, 3 of the tools discussed will help you monitor and manage your online business reputation.
Tweet Beep allows you to manage your online Twitter reputation. Alerts will be emailed to you whenever someone tweets about your business, your name, or your domain. You select the alert criteria and what to watch for. This is great for monitoring what is being said about your brand, your business, it’s products and services.
Tweet Beep can get you more traffic to your website. Determine your targeted keywords and enter them into Tweet Beep. Tweet Beep will then send you emails whenever someone mentions your subject matter or keywords in a tweet. What you would do next is follow these people (usually they will automatically follow you back) and give them updates about the subject matter and share information with those followers.
There is a Premium account; at $20/month you get 200 alerts, a 15 minute alert option, and no advertisements.
Twollo is very similar to Tweet Beep. It also allows you to manage your online reputation by tracking what people are saying about you or your website or products. Twollo also allows you to gain targeted followers. When you create an account, you will be allowed to submit keywords and Twollo will then automatically locate and follow people who share your interests. Many of these people will then follow you. There is a monthly cost that starts out at $5.99/month for 5 keywords, but you can trial it for free for 4 days.
Twellow is a Twitter directory that categorizes users according to interest/topic and some list users from most followers to least. Within your account can set up a personal profile where you will be able to show your recent tweets, share links to your websites and create an extended bio. Most profile pages are indexed by Google, so this is also an added bonus of Twellow.
Twellow and Twollo, besides their cute little names, are good places to listen to the issues and questions in your industry, where you can also have a chance to provide appropriate answers. These websites can be one of the first places you hear about new developments in your industry, as well as allow you a chance to build valuable business relationships.
Twitter Tab is an application within Facebook that lets you include your Twitter updates as a Tab within your Facebook Profile and Facebook Pages.
There is a VIP option which allows you to customize the appearance of your twitter page on Facebook, including a background image, and choosing background color, text color, hover color or border color. You can also use your default Twitter background which is what I did. The cost for VIP is $10 for 3 years.
Revisit lets you create a really cool, animated Twitter wall. Basically it collects tweets related to a topic of your interest and will then display them along a time line. The tweets that have received the most popularity will be displayed larger and near the center. It is constantly changing (not static). Click on the this demo for an animated visualization of Revisit in action.
On a lighter note, I wanted to wrap up this 3 part series on Twitter tools by sharing a super funny video about Twitter users. Fortunately, if you are primarily using Twitter as a business-building tool, you don’t fit the mold depicted in this video. But I am sure a fair amount of people will identify with the message 
Please share the love if you enjoyed this post or kindly leave a comment below.
Best Regards,
Social Media Manager
Owner of Bee Social, LLC
This is Part 2 of Twitter Tools for Business Building.
To see Part 1, go here: Social Oomph.
To see Part 3, go here: Tweet Beep, Twollo, Twellow, Twitter Tab, Revisit
The best way to implement Twitter for lead generation is to first build a reputation as a trusted source of information or being seen as a thought leader for your industry-while simultaneously building relationships, remaining personal and approachable.
Pushing out one-way marketing messages about your business isn’t going to work, people won’t listen. You must ask questions, be personal, and engage others naturally within the community.
Once you are the source of value and have earned their trust, you can then offer information about your business services and products. Your followers now trust that whatever you recommend is going to be beneficial to them. However, this type of business self-promotion should be done sparingly.
Also, a good technique is to do a series of tweets leading up to your offer or product. Intrigue them, ask them questions and peak their interest for a few days before you tweet about your service or product. (See Social Oomph post about scheduling your tweets).
Always, always remember the philosophy WIIFM (What’s In It For Me-your customer’s favorite radio station). You need to address what’s-in-it for your customer-the benefits of your products or the great discounts you’re offering, or sharing value-based content and useful general knowledge to your audience. If not, they will quickly tune you out altogether.
OK, on to some more third party Twitter tools that you will find useful.
Hootsuite is a social media dashboard. It is now making strides and becoming more popular than TweetDeck.
It allows the user to monitor keywords, manage multiple Twitter profiles, schedule tweets, and measure their success.
The nice thing with Hootsuite is that you can manage not only multiple Twitter accounts, but also multiple social accounts. The different social accounts beyond Twitter are:
It also has an easy to follow custom interface with social streams, tabs and columns.
You can track your success in real-time with click-through statistics and easy report exporting.
Hootsuite has a built -in reputation management pane called Mentions. This a great place to track mentions of your brand, your industry and your keyword searches.
Currently the iPhone and Android have apps for Hootsuite, so you can manage your accounts on the go.
TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to Twitter.
If you have a Twitter account, you already have a TwitPic account automatically.
Comments to photographs are sent as a reply tweet.
Twitpic URLs are already short, making it unnecessary to use URL shortening.
You upload your picture via your phone, an iPhone app, or through a Web interface — and TwitPic posts a link to the picture to your Twitter account. So when you tweet it, it shows up as a shortened URL with your message. When users click the link they will be taken to your TwitPic profile to view it.
Bit.ly is a URL shortner that can post directly to Twitter.
If you share a lot of links on Twitter, bit.ly makes it a fast process by letting you shorten the URL and post to Twitter within the same screen.
You can post to multiple Twitter accounts using one bit.ly account.
Bit.ly lets you attach a brief code to the shortened URL, which then allows you to track how many people click on the link. You can also see more detailed information about those users, such as the country where they’re located and the time of day they clicked.
If you found this information useful, please share the love on your social media sites or kindly leave a comment below.
Respectfully,
Social Media Manager
owner, Bee Social, LLC
This is Part 1 of a 3 Part series called Twitter Tools for Business Building.
To view Part 2, go here: HootSuite, Twitpic, bit.ly
To view Part 3, go here: TweetBeep, Twellow, Twollo, Twitter Tab & Revisit
Twitter is an extremely effective tool for free marketing and lead generation for your business. This is the first part of my 3 part series in which I will be writing about various third-party Twitter Tools which will help maximize exposure to your blog and/or your business. Whether you are a novice or veteran Twitter-er, you will find your favorite tool and easily be able to implement it into your marketing efforts.
So on to Strategy #1….
Social Oomph (formerly tweetlater)-This is an incredible way to save time and boost your Twitter productivity by scheduling your tweets.
Some of the features I especially like and that are included in the FREE version of this service are:
There is also a Professional version for the more advanced users of Twitter and who want to take this free marketing strategy even further.
This Pro version includes managing features of all your social accounts including a Facebook and ping.fm integration module, as well as your blog. Another very nice feature of Pro is that you are able to find quality friends to follow by using keywords and further organize and filter these friends. You can discover which of your friends is that special “power follower” that has the most clout. It also has SPAM control, ability to manage several accounts and many other features.
The Pro version has a monthly fee of $29.97. However, there is also a 7-day free trial of the Pro version if you wanted to test drive it.
One other nice thing about Social Oomph is that they have an affiliate program that you can become a part of even if you sign up for the free account.
So I looked up the definition of ‘oomph’, and it is actually a real word meaning ‘spirited vigor’ or ‘sex appeal’. So I thought it would be appropriate to say, “Get out there and get your Social Oomph on!”
Click Here To Boost Your Productivity On Twitter!
If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog in the web form box on the upper right to ensure you receive my next blog post and any new Twitter tool reviews.
If you liked this post, share the love and post to your social sites or kindly leave a comment below.
Respectfully,
Social Media Manager
Owner of Bee Social, LLC
The statistics are in and they are staggering. Each year social media use is increasing in business as traditional marketing and advertising continue to dwindle and deliver less than favorable ROI results.
Watch the video below to learn why every business should be leveraging the FREE marketing platforms of social media.
Also discussed is the role of a Social Media Manager and how they can be leveraged to take on the daunting and time-consuming tasks of social media management for you.
16 Compelling Reasons Your Business Needs A Social Presence:
1. Get an Edge Over your Competition/Monitor Their Activity
2. Generate Leads/Customers
3. Customer Retention
4. Customer Satisfaction/Support
5. Increase Targeted Traffic to Your Blog, Website, or Event
6. Broadcast Promotional Offers/ Digital Coupons, New Products or Services, Awards/Recognitions
7. Engage Deeper With Your Customers or Prospects
8. Research/ Monitor Trends on What Your Customers & Prospects Want or Need, Figure out Their Purchase-Drivers?
9. Monitor What is Being Said About Your Business, Brands, Products or Services.
10. Increased Exposure & Awareness To Your Business & Into the Minds of Your Customers, Patrons & Prospects.
11. Increased SEO (i.e. Get Found By The Search Engines-Google and Bing) By:
*Social Media Providing Backlinks to Your Website
*Google and Bing Now Index Facebook & Twitter Updates & Are Included In Search Results
*YouTube- Videos Can Be Tagged With Keywords Related To Your Business That Can Be Indexed & Appear In Search Results
12. Build Trust and Credibility-Get To Know, Like & Trust Your Customers & Patrons & They Will Become Loyal Customers Who Will Gladly Recommend & Promote Your Business To Others
13. Reduces Your Overall Marketing Expenses (Social Media is Free)
14. Helps You Educate & Promote Your Products/Services Which Will Make Closing Business & Making the Sale That Much Easier
15. Results In New Business Partnerships
16. Look Like You “Get It”, Become the Savvy Business Your Customers Expect You To Be. Stand Out From The Crowd Of Businesses Who Aren’t Utilizing Social Media…Yet.
Best Regards,
Social Media Manager & owner of Bee-Social Biz, LLC
Bee Social's mission is to take the burden and overwhelm off the shoulders of business owners and … [Read More...]
