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Why Use Social Media?

socialkevindooleySocial media seems like just a buzzword to many business people.  Why should you consider using social media for your business?

  • Your customers are probably already using social media.
  • Lower costs for market research.
  • Lower risk for new products.
  • Deeper insight into customer wants.
  • Tap available collective wisdom.
  • Reduce customer dissatisfaction.
  • Decrease marketing costs.
  • Increase purchasing information to customers.
  • Increase brand loyalty.
  • Increase customer engagement with your company and brand.
  • Reduce customer support costs.

Are you using social media for your business?  What business reasons do you have?

(photo by kevindooley @ FlickrCC)

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Using Facebook to Promote Your Business

facebookMany of us have heard of Facebook and many of us use it to connect with family and friends.  But, have you ever considered using Facebook to promote your business?

Facebook is now both the largest and fastest growing social network.  With people spending a great deal of time there during their personal time, there is also an increased opportunity to connect with both customers and business contacts.

The biggest concern I have heard from clients/readers is not letting business contacts see all the silly stuff you do with your family and friends.  Facebook makes it possible to create different networks of contacts each with different levels of access to your profile.  This allows you to create a business network that doesn’t have access to your poke war with your college buddies.

Ok, so how do you tap into this network of potential?  One way is through traditional advertising – ads on the side of the page.  Facebook contextual targets their ads, so there is a bit of a higher chance they’ll be clicked on.  But, as with all advertising, people tend to ignore ads.

If you start thinking a bit more about your customers, you could create a page that highlights your business and automatically imports content from various sources – your website, blog, twitter, etc.  The idea here is to provide valuable content for your customers and a means for them to interact with your company (via a discussion).  This page could then be promoted through ads on the network.

Also available are groups. You could create one for your customers so they could interact with each other as well as you.  These work best if there’s a bit of momentum, so try enlisting some of your customers and business contacts to help you out.  You’ll need to lead discussions to get things started – and don’t treat this like a spam list or it’ll have a very negative effect.

Do you use Facebook for business?  If so, how?

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Using RSS to Monitor your Name and Brand

monitordocklandsboyThere is a lot of information being published on the web every minute.  Some of it may be about you, your company or your products.  It is important to keep track of what’s being said about your business so that you can both respond effectively and learn from what your customers are saying.

Hopefully you know what RSS is.  You may not be aware that you’re using it – if you subscribe to a website or blog and then read their posts in iGoogle, Google Reader or Bloglines, etc., you are using RSS.  RSS can be a very easy way to monitor what is being said about your company.  By using various search services that provide RSS feeds for their results, you can monitor what is said about your company, products, etc. right from your RSS reader.

Here’s a few places to start :

  1. Google Blogsearch: Type in your company name.  On the bottom of the left column click on the RSS link to subscribe to this feed.  Now you’ll be able to monitor whenever a blog mentions your company name.  Add separate searches for brand and product names.  Having one for your name isn’t a bad idea either.
  2. Twitter Search:  Enter your company name.  On the upper right click on “Feed for this query”.  Repeat for product names, etc.
  3. Technorati: Again search for your company name, etc.  In the upper right of the search results there is a small Subscribe link with a RSS icon.

There are many different places to monitor what is said on the Internet.  If you have other favorites, please share them in the comments below.

(photo by Docklandsboy @ Flickr CC)

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