How Create and Manage an Effective (and Free) Blog for your Small Business using WordPress, Blogger,Tumblr, etc.

Creating a company blog can take a lot of time and resources, which can be in short supply for small businesses. So you may wonder, is the effort is worth the return?

It seems the current trend in digital marketing is focused mostly on social media networks, but a blog for your small business can provide some real benefits unmatched anywhere else. Here are some of the top reasons to start a company blog.

Why Blog?

  • Be a Market Leader – Thoughtful blogs give the impression that your company is aware of,  and acting on the latest trends in your market space.
  • SEO, Search Engine Optimization – As you build up posts, they are all being indexed by search engines. This gets your company and your keywords listed higher in search results.
  • Speak to your Customers - You know your customers. What topics do they care about? Blogs can engage customers in discussions and help create relationships and community. Blogs are also a great way to get feedback from customers.
  • When it Hits the Fan – Things go wrong. Blogs are an excellent way of getting the facts out ahead of the disinformation.
  • Stand Out – Are your competitors blogging? A company blog can be your unique voice and help you stand out from the crowd.

How to get started:

At ZockEye Media, we’re all about keeping costs low, so let’s take a look at some great free blog hosting services. You can get a free account at all the sites listed below, although they will usually have premium features at a small monthly cost.

WordPress.com is highly recommended and probably the best known blogging  service on the web. You can select from several well-designed templates, and posting is a breeze. There are some limits, regarding java-script use, number of templates and widgets available. You can transition to WordPress.org software which doesn’t have such limitations, but then you’ll have to find (and pay for) web hosting.

Blogger owned by Google and gives you plenty of options to create a great looking blog. There are many templates available. Since it’s Google, you can easily sign up for AdSense and your blog is submitted  to the Google blog directory. It’s a great choice if you already use Google services.

Tumblr – may be a great choice for your business, especially if you don’t like to do a lot of writing. Tumblr is in the middle of the blogging spectrum between micro-blogging sites like Twitter and full-on blog sites like WordPress. Tumblr lets you quickly distribute your thoughts, links, audio, video, and pictures in a format that looks great not matter what the size.

Posterous – a basic blog at Posterous is  a great place to post stories, photos, videos, audio and other files. The best thing about Posterous is ease of posting. You can send a full post via email from anywhere and it will end up on your blog. Posterous also has an auto-post feature, which will automatically update several social media sites like Twitter and Facebook when you create a new post.

Xanga – is a good choice for most bloggers and has social networking aspects. It offers support for  audio, video and image uploads. It also has good customization options. However, its user is mostly personal blogs, not business blogs.

There are Pros and Cons to all these services, so review them carefully to see how they fit with your business goals and writing style.

Promoting your site

Once you’ve decided to start your company, how do you find readers? The best way to start is to create good, informative content. Make sure the content is tied to your business goals and focused on an area that you are interested in. Enthusiasm is contagious, but so is boredom.

One of the most important things you can do to promote your site is to get a custom domain name. There is usually a small annual fee for this. Domain Registration will cost you about $15-$30 per year. Most domain registration services have an option of hiding domain details. You should choose this to avoid spammers.

Having a blog address of “www.mycompany.com” is much more professional than “mycompany.bloghost.com“. These sites can usually do this for you, or you can go to godaddy.com and get one.

Another way to drive traffic to your blog is to use Blog Indexing Sites. Create  accounts at Technorati and Blogcatalog and claim your blog there. Someone will review your blog’s content and it should be approved in a few days. They have policies against overly commercial content, so make you’re writing about your industry and not doing a hard-sell. While you’re there, check out Technorati’s Small Business Channel blogs list.

Look for Widgets or Plugins to promote your blog,  Bookmarking & Review Sites can help. See if you can add buttons for Stumbleupon, Digg and Reddit at the end of your post. Also be sure to get accounts at those sites and submit your posts yourself.

Connections to other Social Networking sites will help your company blog. Check out TweetMeme. It is a button for your blog that makes it easy for readers to retweet your posts on Twitter.

Managing your Blog

Writing a company blog is ongoing process, that requires setting up some regular work habits such as:

Setting aside time – Select a fixed time of the day or day of the week to work on your company blog. It’s easy to get caught up in other things and let your blog go stale.

Finding Topics and Resources – Whenever you come across a topic that might be interesting to your readers, create a draft post on your platform. Just enter some bullet points or URLs in the text. Later you can develop them into full posts or delete them. A good tool for this, is a Firefox browser plug-in, ScribeFire.

Getting your Rhythm Going  – Determine your writing style. Establish a standard format for your blogs including images and video. Develop an approximate length, usually 500-1500 words.

Scheduling Blog Releases – Most blogging sites let you schedule post releases. So determine a release schedule that fits for you, and have two or three scheduled. This gives you a buffer so you won’t have so much pressure to get a new one out.

Summary

Creating and managing a company blog is usually not the daunting task many people dread. In fact, it can take less time than authoring an email. Once you determine your style and set a schedule, it gets even easier.

You should also keep in mind that your goal is not to get the widest and largest number of readers, but to reach qualified, interested customers. Just a few of those can make a company blog well worth the effort.

If you already have a company blog, please add a comment below about how it’s working out.

10 Easy Steps to Boost Facebook Fan Page SEO for your Small Business

Your customers will be looking for you on Facebook, so it’s vital that they can easily find you. Facebook itself is so popular that Facebook Fan Pages have become a secondary web presence for many small businesses. But, like your Website and Blog, they need care and nurturing.

If don’t yet have a fan page for your small business, take a look at one of my previous posts:  How to Use Facebook for Marketing your Small Business

You probably already know that SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and has to do with your site ranking when people search on your keywords.

Keywords are actually the first thing you should think about when it comes to SEO. When you people are searching for your products, services, and events, what do they Google? These are your keywords.  You need to emphasize them on your fan page. Google Adwords has a great tool for finding  keywords.

Here are some steps to help you get found:

Fan Page Step #1

Get a Vanity URL – The first step to marketing your Facebook fan page for your small business is having a simple URL you can refer customers to. When you first create a fan page, the address is something like this:

“www.facebook.com/pages/the-long-name-you-chose/numeric-id”

and what you want is this:

“www.facebook.com/mycompanyname”

Sounds easy enough, but but you will quickly discover a roadblock thrown up by Facebook. You must have at least 25 fans to create your fan page username. This may pose a bit of problem, since it’s more difficult to get fans if you don’t already have a username you can market.

Fan Page Step #2

How to get your first 25 Fans -There are a few methods to get up and running with a few fans.

Your Existing Contacts – Fans are created when someone likes your page. If you have a good size social network or email database, simply ask some of your associates to visit and like your page. First, you ‘ll need to make a note of your page URL If you know a little HTML, you can generate a like button that you can add to your website or put in an email.

Run a Facebook Ad – You can run a short Facebook campaign. On your page wall on the right, you’ll see a button that says “Get More Fans”.  There will be a cost, but you can set your own budget and if your target is 25 fans it shouldn’t be much. The advantage of this method is that these will be quality fans that are sincerely interested in your business.

Use Twiends – This service can get you the 25 fans in just a few minutes. Go to Twiends and register your twitter account and facebook fan page. You will get 15 Seeds. Seeds are points you barter with. When you like someone’s page or follow them in twitter, they give you seeds. When they like your page, you give them seeds. When you complete your profile, Twiends gives you another 40 seeds. This should be enough to get you 25 fans. Be sure to turn off paying seeds for twitter and focus on your Facebook page.

The downside to Twiends, is these are not good quality fans. They probably won’t be your customers, but will give you the numbers you need to get a facebook fan page username.

Fan Page Step #3

Select the Best Name for your Page – Up until now, it didn’t really matter what you named your page because your didn’t yet have a username. Now you have to decide. The best bet is to simply name it after your company. Some will try using popular search terms as a username. Don’t do this, it will only make your page seem suspicious and illegitimate. Also, Facebook will likely remove any usernames that are trademarked.

Once you’ve decided on a name and  have the 25 fans, go here:

http://www.facebook.com/username/

If you haven’t created a username for your regular Facebook page, do so now. You can then create usernames for your fan pages. Don’t get them confused as you can’t change them later.

Again, match your username to your fan page name and your organization’s name.

Fan Page Step #4

Fully Compete “About” Box – The About box ranks highest on the page for search engine indexing. This is the premium real estate for your keywords. Try to make complete sentences rather than just a list of keywords.

You can get to the “About” box by looking at the profile picture on the left. Under the picture, you see “About” text with an “edit” next to it, or you may see “Write something about [YourPage]”. There is a limit of 250 characters.

Fan Page Step #5

Fully complete the “Info” box, it’s also rated fairly high on search engine indexes.It’s on the left of your fan page just under the “Wall” menu item. Make sure you completely fill out all fields, including your location. Make it readable, but insert your keywords where you can.

Also get the Extended Info App. This will let you create your own fields, so you can add more detail, like product numbers, your areas of expertise, testimonials, etc. These will also be indexed by search engines.

Fan Page Step #6

Try to use keyword rich status updates. Everything on your wall is indexed. Also, don’t use link shortener in updates, especially when linking to your own site. This may hide keywords from search engines.

Fan Page Step #7

Don’t forget Multimedia Descriptions – One of the most often overlooked SEO opportunities, is uploading photos and events. Facebook lets you include descriptions of each one. So be sure to use your keywords in the descriptions, as they are indexed as well.

Fan Page Step #8

In your website or blog, link back to your Facebook page. Backlinks will help your SEO. Also when you you do this, use your keywords as link anchor text. In other words, rather than: Click Here , do it like this: Click Here for MyCoolProduct.

Fan Page Step #9

You’ll often be  asked for your website information. When you register at a new site, leaving comments on other sites, entering profile information, even when you attend conferences and meetings. It’s important to get your Facebook username distributed as much as possible so, occasionally, use your Facebook fan page URL instead of your website.

Fan Page Step #10

Consider using the iwipa (HTML + iframe + FBML = iwipa) app for Facebook pages. This will make your Facebook landing page look more like a web site. You can add HTML, videos, more pages, and forms. It looks professional and all of it will indexed, helping your SEO.

It does require a bit of HTML knowledge, but easily handled by whoever did your website.

If you want to see what this looks like visit the ZockEye Media Facebook fan page.

Summary

Designing and Developing your Facebook Fan Page for your Small Business requires constant planning, monitoring and vision. Effective SEO strategies can improve your fan base by expanding the reach of  your message.

If you have experience or questions about the tools mentioned above that you’d like to share, please leave a comment below.

Using Multimedia Social Network Sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Cinch to Promote your Small Business

Many Small Businesses consider multimedia (sound, photos and video) too difficult to do themselves and perhaps too expensive if outsourced. But the truth is, there are several social media resources you can use to promote your business. Sometimes words are not enough to get your message across.

As a small business,  there are several reasons you may to use multimedia to promote your business, including:

  • Entertainment – If you have music or other entertainment at your site, show it off.
  • Product Demos – It should be simple, no zooming, etc.
  • Product Reviews – There may be positive reviews already out there you can use.
  • Instruction/Training – How to assemble your product, use your site, etc.
  • Introduce your Staff – Especially those that are customer-facing.
  • Interviews – This is great at customer events, also get customer testimonials
  • Video Tour of your Business – This can give customers a sense of what your business is about before they visit.
  • Podcasts – Tell behind the scenes stories, describe upcoming product features and benefits.

Video

YouTube is a great resource for small business. You don’t even have to produce video yourself. If there’s an existing one out there that gets your message across, you can embed it in your website or blog. Likewise if you’re already producing video for your site, you should put on YouTube to expand your audience.

YouTube Action Items:

  • Start by creating a custom background for  your  channel.
  • Include your company profile in the channel comments setting.
  • Use auto-captioning in your videos for the hearing impaired and foreign speakers. It’s an easy process using  voice-recognition.
  • Quickly remove any negative comments
  • Engage with the YouTube community, treat it as a Social Network rather than Video Storage. Subscribe to others, comment on their content.
  • Cross-Promote your YouTube video in your site, blog, email, mobile text, any relevant web presence where  you can add a link.

Another Video-based social network you should check out is Vimeo.  Similar to YouTube in many ways, but smaller. It tends to have better quality playback, and perhaps more focused content. You can assign your video to a group,  like “Social Media” and invite friends from your existing Gmail or Yahoo contacts. A great alternative to YouTube.

Photos

Consider starting a Flickr account, posting photos of your company’s events, customers, and products. Flickr allows you to share your images with groups, which can be a geographic region or topic. Posting to groups gets you the most exposure.

Flickr Marketing Tips:

  • As mentioned above, find and joint appropriate groups.  Also search for your location.
  • Use your company name as your screen name. You can also enter Tags and Descriptions with every photo so use them to list your business and products. But don’t use them to hard sell.
  • Use best quality photos, remember you’re using these for customers, so blurry or non-relevant photos won’t work.
  • Engage with community by commenting on other photos, add favorite photos, and participate in discussions.
  • Link from your site to Flickr Photostream – This may get existing Flickr users to add you to their contact list. Also cross-linking generally helps your SEO.

Audio

One of the best sites to share audio in a Social Network is Cinch. There are many cases where your marketing message works better with sound. You can leverage music and effects, pass on reviews from real customers, and speak directly to your customers.

Cinch makes it easy to create and share audio content like podcasts.

You can record your content right from their site and once you give them a phone number you can call it in. They will also search your Facebook and Twitter contacts for followers. You can also use it as a teaser to promote content on your website or blog.  Check out what others have done there and see if it can work for your business.

Summary

Once you have created (or hired someone to create) your multimedia marketing content, you’ll want to distribute it to as many social media networks as possible. You also want to use it for business pitches and email communications.

If you’ve used any of these tools to promote your business, please comment below on how it’s worked.

Easy Tools to Link your Small Business Social Media Profiles. Sync Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and More!

An effective means of leveraging Social Media Networks is by combining them to reach different marketing segments. In a Small Business, this often means means frequently updating your company’s activities on several sites.  Fortunately, there are several solutions than can make life easier.

I’ve got some suggestions for those who post to either just the major sites or to several social media sites including blogs.

Most business post updates to the big three of Social Media, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. All of these have tools to send your updates to the others automatically. It’s important to first assess which one you use the most. That’s important because you don’t want to use one tool that send auto-updates from Facebook to Twitter and another one that auto-updates Twitter to Facebook. That would result in some endless game of Tweet-Pong.

Posting Primarily from Twitter:

If you primarily post from Twitter, and want to auto post to your Facebook Fan page and your LinkedIn Page, you need to make these changes:

From your Facebook page use the Selective Twitter App. If you want tweets to go to Facebook, end the tweet with the tag #fb. Alternatively, you can install the Kipdola App.

If you want your Tweets to auto-post to LinkedIn, go to your LinkedIn page, then go to the top menu, select “more”, “get more applications” and select “Tweets” or click here:

Add your Twitter account to LinkedIn

Under the app settings, you can have all Tweets sent to LinkedIn as updates or selected ones that have the #in tag at the end.

So now you should be able to send tweets automatically to Facebook and LinkedIn.

Posting Primarily from Facebook:

If you prefer to post from Facebook, use the Twitter application in Facebook. It will prompt you to select a fan page from which to send updates as tweets.

Once you have to Facebook to Twitter connection, you setup LinkedIn to receive Tweets.  Add your Twitter account to LinkedIn as above. Decide if you want them to be selective or not. If so, you have remember to add the #in tag in your original FaceBook update.

Posting Primarily from Linkedin:

On LinkedIn,  Add your Twitter account to LinkedIn as above. On the home page you’ll see a Twitter checkmark. If checked updates go to Twitter.

Then setup the Selective Twitter App or the Kipdola App in Facebook. If you want tweets to go to Facebook, end the tweet with the tag #fb in your original LinkedIn update.

Try this cool feature that Twitter added to LilnkedIn. It lists all your contact in LinkedIn that have Twitter accounts and lets you easily follow them. You can also create a Twitter List of your LinkedIn contacts.

Even More Sweet, Sweet Linkage

Suppose you what to go beyond these three, and blast a message to several social networks and blogs at once. There are a few great tools for that too.

Posterous is a site that lets you update many social networking sites through email. Just send an email to “post@posterous.com”. The subject is the title of your post and in the body you can add either just a link or an entire HTML formatted blog post.

Just look for the auto-post options when you configure your Posterous site.

Then take a look at Ping.fm. What I like about this site is you can use an RSS feed as input and then blast to most of the major social sites. Most Websites and Blogs have RSS feeds, your post updates and news can be automatically sent out. You can also post from the site itself.

Lastly, visit Hootsuite. Hootsuite will let you post to multiple sites including Ping.fm. Using these these sites together means you can get your message out to even more networks. Hootsuite supports scheduled updates and some nice social media site analytics.

Summary

It’s important to be careful about how you combine these services to avoid multiple posts or cross-posts.

Not all social networks will be a good match for your small business, so don’t feel you have to post to all of them. Find out which mix of sites works best for your business and take advantage of these tools to engage with your customers.

If you have used any of these services to connect your business profiles, please comment below about your experience.

How to Manage Website Comments and Discussion about your Small Business

People sure love to give their opinions. This being the case, your small business will end up as a topic of conversation in an article, review, blog or comment. So, it’s only in your best interest to be aware of these mentions and try to direct the discussion.

Firstly, you have to know when your company or products are being mentioned. Secondly,  analyze the article or blog’s content and decide whether or not to respond.  And lastly, develop a strategy for what you want to accomplish with your response.

#1 Monitor

Create Some Alerts – You should be aware anytime your brand, company name or product is a topic of discussion. Go to  Google Alerts and setup an alert. You’ll receive periodic emails and/or mobile texts with summaries and links anytime your keywords are found in web, blog, news, video or discussions. It’s also a great way to keep tabs on your competition and marketplace. I would recommend getting an alert based on Google News daily and regular Google weekly, but it really depends on your situation.

Another great tool for social media monitoring that sends alerts is Backtype. It is probably the most popular way to monitor social networks. It is an index of online discussions across blogs, websites and social networks and a great way to find out your company’s online reputation.

You should also set up email alerts at Social Mention. This will  search for keywords across an expanse of the Social Media space and update you regularly Their tagline is “Like Google Alerts but for social media.”

Yacktrack will search specifically on blog comments, which makes it a valuable tool for monitoring.

I like to do regular searches on  Twitter for keywords. Click on “Save this search” from the results page, so you can reuse them. Facebook also now has a realtime search engine. It’s on the right of your Facebook page.

#2 Analyze

Once you know what people are saying about your company,  you have to make a decision on whether or not you should comment or reply to comments from others.

Your first consideration is the potential effect of the comments on your customers. Are the readers of the site your customers? How popular is is the site and what impact will those comments have?

It not be the best use of your time to engage and respond to all comments, so you need to determine who the key players are in your market and focus your attention there.

A great tool which can help with this is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that gives you a lot of statistics about your website. The most important one for our purposes is Referring Sites. This will tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site. These are the ones you should visit to evaluate comments about your company. For example, if most of your traffic is coming from Twitter, you’ll want to spend your efforts there.

Note that Analytics doesn’t currently support sites on WordPress.com, but WordPress.com has it’s own statistics section with similar information.

#3 How to Respond

Remember that you don’t have to reply to every mention of your company. It would be unproductive if you did. But, if you decide to reply, you should follow some of these commonsense guidelines:

Positive Posts

  • Keep the momentum going, more comments mean the original article will get more attention.
  • Adding additional relevant information (link to articles at your site)
  • Point out highlights and areas of agreement with the original post
  • Engage personally with the writer and other commenters (call them by name)
  • Ask questions and solicit options
  • Thank them for insights

Negative Posts

  • Use negative comments as an opportunity to set the record straight
  • Take the high road, don’t get emotional or be condescending
  • Provide links to your site or others with positive comments
  • Be a leader, and don’t give in to misinformation
  • Guide the conversation

Summary

It’s important to manage the online reputation of your company, brand and products. My experience with the alerting tools mentioned above has been good and they will help you get a handle on things. Your company reputation is community-driven, based on human engagement and interaction. You can build a strong online profile by being part of the conversation.

I’m always looking to hear about your experiences with Digital Marketing.  If you are aware of any other good tools or techniques for monitoring and commenting, please share them below.

How to get started with Google Adwords for your Small Business

If you’re a small business, you’ve probably heard about, are considering, or are currently using Google AdWords to bring in customers.

AdWords can be a great way to reach customers in a highly targeted, local campaign that drives traffic to your site. It can also be a huge waste of time and money, if done without planning and customer research.

What is It?

AdWords is Google’s main source of revenue. Google offers PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising.

When a user does a search, depending on the search words and their location, up to 12 small ads, or “sponsored links”  will appear along with the search results. They are usually on the right of the screen, but can sometimes be on top. Ads also appear in the Google Display Network which includes other websites, news pages, and blogs that partner with Google.

The CTR, or Click-Thru-Rate for the first ad in the list is about 8%, meaning 8% of those seeing the ad, will click on it. As you go down the list of ads, the CTR rate drops, the 2nd is 5%, the third is 2.5%, etc. It’s also called a Conversion Rate.

So what determines the ad ranking on the page? Two Factors, advertisers select search words, or keywords and make PPC Bids, usually something less than $1, on those words. They higher your bid, they higher your chance of being #1. The second factor is a “quality score” which is based on historical CTRs, account history and other things. The actual formula for the “quality score” is a bit of a mystery and known only to Google. The combination of these two factor will determine the ad’s position.

What’s the Benefit?

Go Local – One of the great things about this kind of advertising is that you can adjust settings so your ads to appear only within a particular city, region, or country. So you can target people within a 20 mile radius, nationwide, or globally.

Live within your Means – It’s all under your control, you set the bid rate on PPCs and a daily total maximum. Also, you only pay when your ad is clicked on.

Get Reports – Google gives you lots of detail in reports. The top three are: Placement Performance, Impression Share, and URL Performance. You can read how to use them here.

How about an Example – OK, Let’s say you have a Music Store that offers lessons and you have a website that let’s people sign up for classes. But no one goes to your site. You could set up a short Adwords campaign, where you pay $5 a day for key words like music lesson, guitar lesson, etc. which would draw potential students to your site and sign up for courses.

Getting Started

You can create a Google Adwords account here.

Don’t let the admin interface throw you off. One of the most common complaints about Adwords is that the administration page is too complex. Google has loaded it with tons of features and it can be daunting for new users. They even offer certification for advanced users. But if you just focus on the key elements, it’s not that bad.

The other thing you should be aware of is there is not a lot of  help available from real Google people if you have issues. There is however plenty of online help.

Once you have an account, the process is fairly straightforward. You enter a daily budget, write your amazing, attention-getting copy (Usually a title, two lines of description, and your web address). Then select your keywords.

Be careful when choosing your keywords.They should be specific words that match the theme of your landing page. Include variations, like plurals, alternate spellings, slang terms, and model numbers. Try Google’s keyword tool to to help with this.

Bidding Strategy

Check your keyword competition – You can do that with a quick search. The last ad on the right will usually have the minimum bid. If there isn’t one, you can get the first position with a minimum bid. Take a look at how they write their copy,  check out their landing pages. Monitor changes in their ads. Ads that run a long usually mean they are successful.

Test Bid Rates – Since you can easily change bids, you should try different rates. Do a quick test with higher rates to see how it changes your results. You can then come up with an optimum strategy.

Best Position – It may not always pay to be first. If you want your ad to be primarily delivered to partner sites, you may want to be ranked lower on the first page.

Consider your Budget – Once you get an idea of the conversion rate (CTR) you’re getting with different bids, you’ll be in a better position to set your daily budget. Stay within your means, but don’t bid too low or your effort will be wasted on a small percentage of search results.

Quick Tips

  • Start small in a local area and expand if you see results.
  • Try to use keywords your competition has overlooked. This will allow you to bid lower with the same results.
  • Stick to your budget – It’s easy to go overboard too early.
  • Constantly review and adjust – the great thing about Adwords is that you can easily make changes on the fly.

Summary

It’s important to constantly monitor your Adwords campaigns, especially if you have rapidly changing inventory, as you will have to frequently change your keywords.You may even want to consider outsourcing your campaigns if it takes too much of your time.

Google Adwords may or may not be effective for your business, but because the low cost of entry, it’s well worth consideration.

Suggested Readings and Resources:

If you’ve had some experience using Adwords, please leave a comment below about how it’s affected your business.

Mobile Marketing: How to Use Text Messaging for Small Business

Mobile Marketing with Text Messages or SMS has increased by leaps and bounds over the last few years as  a new channel for small businesses to reach their customers.

Almost everyone has a cell phone capable sending and receiving texts, right? Sounds like a great way to communicate with your customers. It is, but it is also quite  important that they want to read your messages.

The reason SMS campaign are not considered spam is that text messaging as a marketing tool is policed by the Carriers themselves, violators are simply blacklisted from the network . The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), has established guidelines and best practices for mobile marketing.

What are the Benefits?

Some of the unique advantages of mobile marketing:

Timing is Everything – Since messages are sent instantaneously (and can be scheduled), they can  be used strategically. Hours before a new software release, Valentine’s Day promotions, when concert tickets are on sale. You get the idea.

An Arm and a Leg? — Low Cost.  SMS campaigns are far cheaper than direct mail. It’s more compatible to email than regular mail.

They will Read It — One of the SMS requirements is having customers opt-in to your message list. The difference, with a text campaign, you are required by carriers and the MMA to obtain customer permission via double opt-in before you can send messages. This may seem like a burden to the marketer, but it is in fact a benefit. Recipients who opt-in want to receive your message and this greatly increases the effectiveness.  Unlike email, 90% of SMS Marketing Messages are actually read by the recipient.

SMS campaigns will generally be Push-Pull or CRM Strategies:

  • Push – This is comparable to email marketing. You have a database full of customers and promotional information is sent to them.
  • Pull – This is a promotional campaign where other media is persuade a customer to send a text. A radio spot or other collateral will offer some prize to those that text in with a keyword, at the same time opting-in. Note, that in this case the interested customer initiates the SMS relationship.
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – These types of campaigns offer information to customers that promotes brand loyalty by enhancing the value of the service or product. The customer can send a text request and gets back, say the last three songs played on your favorite station or when an automatic payment was made.

How Does it Work?

Customers opt-in by sending a message to a short-code, usually a 5 digit number and a keyword you set up with a SMS messaging provider. Customers must also have the ability to Opt-out, usually by replying with STOP to your text.

So in order to communicate you have to get them to opt-in first. Here are some common ways of doing that:

  • Printed Material – Use your short code and keyword in print ads, brochures and other printed material.
  • Word of Mouth – At public events, be sure to ask people to opt-in to your list.
  • Web – Provide opt-in information on your website, social media site and blog.
  • Email – If you do email marketing, include information about your text service and sign-up details
  • Direct Mail – Any direct mailing you do with customers including invoicing should have opt-in instructions for your text messaging service.

Getting Started

Having a dedicated short code is quite expensive and not effective for small business. This means you will need to use a self-serve SMS Marketing site that provides shared short codes. You select a plan for a monthly fee.  Here are a few:

  • TextMarks (41411) – They’ve been around for a awhile and are quite popular with small businesses. They also have an API to SMS-enable web applications.
  • Mozes – Focused on the music and sports industries. Also a social networking site.
  • Sumotext – Full service platform, SMS alerts, innovative mobile giving programs via short codes.
  • txtsignal – If you anticipate have a small list of recipients, they are quite reasonable.
  • BLI Messaging – Full service provider, with optional services like email marketing and fax broadcasting.

Most of these have free trials, so take advantage.

Creating your Campaign

Once you have a list of recipient waiting to hear what you have to say, what next?

SMS Campaigns can be used by virtually any business or organization.  Think about your Business targets and from your customer’s point of view. Less can be more. Too many messages and customers will opt-out. It is also important to consider the precise timing advantage you have with this channel.  Here are some ideas:

  • Sending limited time special offers
  • Coupons
  • Alerts – change of venue or cancellation
  • Reminders and invitations
  • Last minute information – rate changes, travel delays, balance notifications

Use SMS Marketing to expand awareness of existing promotions, introduce new products and services, and driving sales of existing ones.

So to wrap things up, SMS Text Messaging can be a very effective  item in your Digital Marketing toolbox. Cost of entry is low, ROI could be large. Why not give it a try?

How to Use Facebook for Marketing your Small Business

If you’re a small business or organization and not using Facebook, you really need to sign up right now to take advantage of the huge marketing potential you’ve been missing. Maybe you’re on Facebook, but don’t use it professionally. You can’t ignore 500 million users! Many of your existing customers already log in daily and if they “like” your business all their friends will know about it.

facebook

Last week one of my friends “liked” their local Dental Office, instantly a notice displayed on my page. I clicked on the link, found out where it was, their hours, photos, a map and comments by their customers. I would never have known about them, but for that simple “like”.

It really is an inexpensive marketing opportunity you shouldn’t pass up. Here are a few tips:

  • Check out the Competition – The first thing you should do is take a look at your competitor’s pages. Look them up in the “search” box at the top of Facebook. How often do they post updates? What do they post about? How many fans or friends do they have? A quick analysis of how they’re using Facebook will greatly help to set up your page.
  • Account Name – Don’t use your company name as a personal account, because then you won’t be able to use it as Business Account or a Business Fan Page.
  • Types of Accounts – You have a few options.  A basic Business Account will provide a simple presence, but there are some restrictions on these accounts. One person can’t have both a personal account and a business account. I recommend a Business Fan Page, where customers can become a “fan” which then shows up on their page and their friends pages resulting in the type of experience I mentioned above with the Dental Office. Want one? Go here.
  • Customize your Fan Page – Start by uploading a profile picture. Don’t use the owner’s photo unless you’re selling cars or real estate, a company logo is much more professional. Provide some background of the company and your products and services along with location and contact information.
  • Facebook Only Offers – Consider discounts, special offers and contests only for your Facebook fans.
  • Promote Community Interaction – Ask your fans questions. How do they use your products and services? Question them about your company’s events. Give your customers a reason to communicate.
  • Cross-Promote – If you have a company web page, make sure to insert a Facebook badge that links to your fan page. If you have twitter feed, place a link in your Facebook page and occasionally mention your fan page in your tweets.
  • Local Ads – Once you establish a solid presence on Facebook, you may want to take advantage of Facebook ads. Facebook has two types of ads, a Facebook Ad and a Social Ads. Customers can be targeted by age, education, location, etc. You can read about how they work here.

So, go ahead and get started. Facebook is really great and low-cost way to create a community that is interested in your business and develop long-lasting customer relationships.

Push-Pull Strategy: What’s the Difference?

Who is being pushed and who is being pulled? It can be a little disconcerting when you hear marketers referring to “Push Strategy” or “Pull Strategy.”  What does that mean, exactly? It can vary. What they are really talking about is the market  relationship. Who drives demand for a product or service and who is the target of the marketing?

Technology Push-Pull

Push Campaign

A “Push Strategy” is a promotional strategy that is direct and  using sales people, advertising, or direct marketing. With a push strategy, the seller tries to directly create consumer demand for a transaction.  A simple example is email campaigns that notify customers of promotions. This is usually less expensive than a pull strategy, but the weakness of the push method is that customers may not be interested in the product and resources could easily be wasted.

 

Pull Campaign

Alternatively,  a “Pull Strategy” tries to create consumer demand through indirect means, such as brand and loyalty promotion. The idea is that consumers will be aware of the product and ask their retailers for it. An good example is in the music industry. Previously, demand was a push model.  LPs and CDs were sold through retail stores, with direct advertising and record label were responsible for creating consumer demand. Now with streaming, social media and the dominance of digital music, control has shifted to the consumer and artists and now a “pull strategy” is needed.

So, in either case, marketers try to increase consumer demand, by:

  • Pushing, and informing customers about features and benefits to create new market demand, or
  • Pulling, shaping and steering existing customer demand to your brand.

Supply Chain – A Slightly Different Meaning

An alternate meaning for “Push” is in multi-channel distribution. In that case,  “Push” means marketing to the next level of the supply chain. The Manufacturer markets to the Wholesaler who in turn markets to the consumer.  “Pull” is when the Manufacturer markets directly to the customer in order to pull sales through the supply chain via the Wholesaler.

Mobile Marketing – What another meaning?

OK, one more. In mobile text campaigns, “Push” and “Pull” refer to who sends the first text message to the marketer’s short code. In a “Push” campaign, Sellers usually have a database that customers have opted in to, and send them periodic texts offering discounts, informing them of product releases, etc. A “Pull” campaign relies on other media or word of mouth to get customers to text in first. For example, a radio station has a contest that requires texting in or a billboard suggests a keyword to text.