Running a business? 7 must-have social-media tools

Whether your company is new, just starting to turn a profit or already successful, as an entrepreneur you should be constantly evaluating the tools that will help get your business to the next level. 

What social-media tools make the most sense for you? It depends on your company size, your industry, and your social-media goals. It also depends on what type of social networking you enjoy and see yourself continuing to use.

7 critical social-media tools to consider for your business:

1. Facebook – With major corporations previewing sales on their Facebook fan pages, this 500-million-plus user site isn’t just for tweens and college students anymore. Its fastest-growing demographic is people over age 35. To add fans and generate excitement, consider promoting special offers or holding exclusive contests.
   
   
2. YouTube – Most likely you’ve been on YouTube and chuckled at a video or two, but have you thought about how it could help your business? Perhaps your products can benefit from dynamically creative video overviews? Your marketing strategy can include a viral video strategy that gets you wide exposure at a relatively low cost.
   
   
3. LinkedIn – This is the place where professionals power network. Answer questions for the site’s nearly 80 million users or ask them, scope out who’s viewing your business’ profile, update your status with your needs and successes.
   
   
4. Twitter – Twitter is the social network to watch. With almost 200 million users and growing at a phenomenal rate – up 343% year-over-year as of September 2009, Nielsen reports. New features such as lists and retweet tracking are helping users form new connections. A new interface includes a dynamic right panel featuring videos and images – no need to open a new window to view.
   
   
5.  Basecamp – A robust and cost-effective Web-based project management and collaboration tool. Basecamp features to-do lists, milestones for important due-dates, file sharing, blog-style messaging, wiki-style writeboards, time tracking, and integration with the first-rate group chat product Campfire. Basic plans for small businesses begin at $24 a month.
   
   
6. Foursquare – The Foursquare secret? Good, old-fashioned discount coupons, delivered in a new and engaging way. Via Foursquare (or other location-based apps) you can offer instant discounts – just like the ones many businesses place in direct mailings – to customers who are not only interested in your business, but who are physically near your business. And, at least to start, you can try the service at no charge.
   
   
7. Your blog and local/specialized forums – If you can write well and have the time, blogging can be a powerful (and free!) way to raise awareness about what your business does. The content updates also help your site’s search rankings. Reach a wider audience with guest posts on popular industry forums. If your business is local, neighborhood forums may be a good option.

Ask for feedback

Not only should you have comments enabled on your website, but you should also ask your friends, families and allies for personal feedback on your work. And most important of all, after you have finished your project – ask the client what she thinks. The benefit is twofold: 1) you get a chance to improve and 2) the client feels valued. Getting someone else’s opinion – positive or negative – will help you to become even more successful.

Always carry a notebook around with you

No matter what the vehicle – PDA, iPad, legal pad – remember to take notes. You may come up with valuable ideas when you are commuting, exercising, waiting in lines, etc. Don’t think that you will just remember it. Writing it down helps you react to and start formulating plans around ideas.

Take the time you need

This is so important and it can’t be mentioned enough. Same as with the tip about learning to say no. Once you have said yes to a project, make sure you take the time needed to do the best work. Handing over a project that is not up to your client’s expectations will leave you with a client who won’t be back AND a negative reputation. Your clients are your best references and no one wants a partner who overpromises and under delivers.

How To Build An Online Brand

The new challenge faced by new and established companies : getting people to trust your online presence enough to click. 

Branding is so important in any business on or offline

1. Message deliver must be clear
2. Will create business credibility
3. It can create a connection between the product and the clientele
4. Buyer motivate


Surely, there are other ways to become successful in any business endeavor, but there is nothing more certain than having a recognizable, appealing and unique brand that customers/buyers and clients can easily associate themselves with.  For more information on branding go to http://www.jabstudio.com 

Take the time you need!

This is so important, it can’t be mentioned enough. Same as with the tip about learning to say no. Once you have said yes to a project you need to make sure that you take the time needed to do the best you can do. Handing over a project that is half done will not only give you a client who won’t come back, but it can give you a bad reputation. Your clients are your best references to show in the future and no one want a freelancer who leaves the work half-finished.

Craft a marketing/business plan

This should be the first thing you do. Even if you have all the details in your head, putting them on paper will help communicate your goals internally and externally. Not only will the plan compel you to think through challenges before they occur, but it will also be a lot easier for you to obtain help from potential business partners or investors when you have a solid business plan to show them. 

Fan page = Today’s website

The forever-changing Internet landscape has gone social. The sooner you start testing the Web waters, the better position your business will be in. Your best bet is to dip your toe in with a Facebook fan page as soon as possible.

What 's a fan page? It’s a special profile that publically promotes a brand, a product, an artist, a Web site, an organization.

Why does my business need one? Your competitors already have fan pages and are able to reach more than 400 million users! On any given day, 50% of these active users log in to Facebook AND overwhelmingly prefer the social media site to using the overall Web. Once you’ve engaged all these current and potential customers, you can also reach their friends, business colleagues, etc.

What are the benefits? On Facebook, your business is searchable by all users. Outside of Facebook, search engines improve your listing results by scan social sites. Better yet, larger search engines pull real-time search results from Facebook status updates and other real-time content.  There are even studies showing that, overall, Facebook users are more loyal, drive more business and bring in new customers than general Web users.

What are you waiting for? Jump into social media with a fan page!

You need to make your content “STICKY”

There are a couple of points that hold true when trying to keep peoples attention and grow a healthy follower base on your social platforms leading to more online business. Most importantly, you have to post regularly; your businesses opinions and strategies that have value to potential clients which will lead people to your site. Once there, make sure you have powerful content to hold the viewers attention adding call-to-action links that allow people to follow you. Secondly, becoming an expert in your field by commenting on every relevant blog, forum and tweet, solid content, not spam will build credibility and keep you on potential new clients’ radars. Building a follower base of people looking for exactly what you have to offer will be the end result.

Tweet + Comment + Blog = Followers

The next step in social media!?

A platform, based on interests and “personal relevancy” instead of popularity would seem to be the direction most users looking to get more out of their social media accounts, would and should move in. What do you think is missing?

17 Ways You Can Use Twitter

1. Personal Branding

2. Get Feedback

3. Hire People

4. Direct traffic

5. Read News

6. Make New Friends

7. Network for benefits

8. Use it as a ToDo list

9. Business Management

10. Notify Your Customers

11. Take Notes

12. Event Updates

13. Find Prospects

14. Provide Live coverage

15. Time Management and Analysis

16. Set Up Meetings

17. Acquire Votes

If you are interested in reading more details on each one of these points Full Article By Dosh Dosh

Is there really a best time to tweet?

The best time to reach all of your followers is when they are online, obviously. But, that’s easier said than done, since Twitter is global and you are dealing with multiple time zones. So, when you tweet, assume that some of your followers may be asleep, others at work and others may have simply placed themselves on a self imposed Twitter time out.

So, let’s say you tweet at 9am, you will most likely only reach a percentage of your followers. To reach more people try this method, post your most important tweets three times, six to ten hours apart. This will greatly improve your chances on reaching all of your followers. 

Use Google to convert Web Traffic into New Clients

Understanding how visitors use your site can make the difference in having a successful online business.

1. Use Google Analytics to monitor bounce rate, which informs you of how many visitors click away from your site before navigating to the other pages

Why is this important? This number will tell you how effective your content on your landing pages are at pulling visitors deeper into your site. With this information in hand, you can update your keywords throughout your site, making sure visitors find what they’re looking for.

2. With the information gathered using Google Analytics, you  use Google’s Website Optimizer, which allows split testing of newly modified pages.

What does this mean? Using Optimizer’s settings you can direct a certain amount of users to the old page and a similar amount to the new page, then use Google Analytics to compare the results.

Getting familiar with and using Google’s free tools, can allow you a considerable portion of SEO implementation, which before was only available to the experts. 

Make your fanpages go more viral

One of the features of Facebook that users, looking to promote their pages, need to be made aware of is status tagging, which lets you reference your friends, Events, Favorite Pages and Groups within each of your updates. This is something twitter users are all to familiar with and you facebookers need to catch up.

How
Status tagging an update or any other post to your pages is relatively easy. In the publisher, you simply use the “@” sign and type your friend, event, favorite Page or Group’s name. After selecting the item that you want to tag and clicking on the event, person, or page that you want to tag, the object will automatically become hyperlinked within your status update. Again, this process is old school to Twitter users, many Facebook users still have yet to figure out how to take advantage of this feature.

Why
So why would you want to get into tagging? In the case of friends and Pages, it’s a form of acknowledgement, encourages interaction and may bring to the attention of others. However, in the case of events, it will raise awareness, promote and draw attention to others something you’ll be attending in the future or recently attended.

Always carry a notebook

Whether you go old school with a normal notebook, or high tech with your iPhone or any other digital form of “notebook” you should carry it with you, all of the time, and remember to take notes. It’s one of the simplest things you can do to become more productive. This is for many reasons, the biggest being, thoughts rarely happen at times that are convenient you may come up with valuable ideas when you are on the bus, on the plane or basically anywhere else.  Another reason, you never know when you may unexpectedly run into a potential client or an existing one. Many times have I had amazing ideas or run into a potential or existing client, not had a notebook and tried to remember it all in my head, only to forget the whole or parts of the ideas and misplace who is, wants to be or was a client and what they needed. You get the idea. Don’t underestimate just how much more simple you can make your life by simply jotting down your thoughts as they occur.

Surpass the Joneses

What does every business – large and small – need today to complete? The answer is social media; getting your information out there as soon as possible, whether it is your services, products or completed projects. New vehicles to get that information out are constantly created/upgraded. Let’s focus on Twitter and why you need to add it to your business plan immediately:
1. You can communicate and network with potential clients in real time via Twitter.

2. Twitter has an awesome application-programming interface and they continue to add new tools daily that may benefit you.

3. Twitter is mobile, so you can reach out from anywhere to your followers wherever they are.

4. Twitter keeps you up to date on news you need and want – no other service can compete with real-time tweets!

5. You can ask questions get answers instantaneously with the ability to track your conversations at a later time if needed.