Twitter allows company owners to share short “tweets” or posts a maximum of 140 characters each to give quick, live updates to “followers” on the Twitter service. A few days ago, the Wallstreet Journal published an interesting article on how Twitter has become a life saver for many business owners in a crisis. One company used the service to update customers when their website went down because of a hacker. Another study from Warrillow, a consulting firm, says that small businesses are also using the service to search for deals and promotions online. In fact, according to the company, they use the service a whopping 7 times more than other social networks.

It’s interesting to learn the many ways that businesses are using services such as Twitter to their advantage. How about your business? Are you using it as well? Let us know!

Related articles:

• One in Five Tweets Are Free Brand Advertising (mashable.com)
• Facebook Adds Twitterlike Tagging Feature (myventurepad.com)
• 7 Times As Many SMBs Use Twitter To Find Deals (smallbizresource.com)

This list is divided into five categories:

1. Social-Media or Social-Bookmarking Sites, which allow users to share their favorite websites or track and vote upon various online articles and resources.
2. Professional networking sites, which allow networking among organizations and individuals for business purposes.
3. Niche sites, which target a specific community of users in a particular industry, profession, or with specific shared interests.
4. General social media sites, which have business applications such as the popular Twitter service.
5. Job sites, which are geared towards recruitment and talent management.

Head out to InsideCRM.com to find out more.

Related articles:

• Social Networking And Your Business (smtusa.com)
• Social Networking and Technical Communicators | On the Write Road (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• B2B Social Media: Got Your Toe Wet, Now It’s Time to Swim (socialmediatoday.com)

This is a clear indicator that the Internet has become an important source for many businesses to generate and manage their business. Potential business can come anywhere – from their website, queries in search engines, online ads, and lately even social networking sites. According to the study, for businesses that track lead sources, the percentage that does so using the Internet has increased from 22 percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2009.

Although the Internet can often be a scary for many SMB’s and their prospects place with threats such as spam, malware, phising, and more, this study reveals that it is still a source of tremendous value for those who know how to use it effectively.

Related Information:

• If you’re a Microsoft Partner you can access my 5W50 Webinar “Building Your Online Marketing Engine” If you’d like a copy of the presentation don’t hesitate to drop me an email and request it
• Online Media Ad/Promo Use Eclipses Traditional Among SMBs

Entrepreneur magazine columnist Gail Goodman

Goodman points out several arguments in support of her case. Among them: email is still valuable for relationship-building and meaningful interaction and dialogue with customers. Also, social networking has its place as a complementary channel to the marketing mix, and research from MarketingSherpa seems to bear this out. Another is that young people continue to use email despite their fascination with social networking sites.

If you rely on Internet, email, or direct marketing in your business, then be sure to continue using email as well.

Related articles:

• Report: Social Networks Growing while Other Social Media Sites …
• Why Do People Use Online Social Networks : Internet Marketing …

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• More notes from “Social Media Marketing”
• Social Media Marketing Industry Report
• The 4 Customer Types of Social Media
• The Five Myths of Social Media
• Using social media to network

There are an astronomical number of variables that are involved in any business success, certainly, but there are also some truisms that seem to apply always and everywhere. The primary ingredient in success, of course, is not genius, creativity, a college education or a lot of working capital. The key is persistence, pure and simple.

• Read more at SB Informer…

Building a brand has everything to do with capturing the hearts and minds of consumers. Building a brand is much more than just promoting an image. A brand incorporates and conveys the values and traits that a company wants associated with their product or service. It sounds like building a brand is a simple task, but the marketers must do more than just create a brand image. The magnitude of branding encompasses all aspects of a product. With this in mind, we’ve put together a guide for marketers on the journey of brand building…

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As a busy small business owner, you may not have had time to learn much about social networks. Or, you may think that social networking is just a way that teenagers “meet” other teenagers through the internet using applications like FaceBook or MySpace. However, many small businesses have found that social networks are a great way to get new customers and retain existing ones. According to Forrester Research (November 2008), membership levels in the leading social network sites are as follows:

• Bebo: 40 million
• Facebook: 120 million
• LinkedIn: 30 million experienced professionals representing 150 industries
• MySpace: 110 million
• Reunion: 32 million
• Second Life: 16 million
• Twitter: 5.57 million

What is social networking?

Social networking web sites allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, and to meet people with similar interests. The largest social networking sites have millions of members. Common to most social networking sites is the viral nature of building contact or friend lists and sharing with them. It is an exponential process. Mary knows ten people who each know ten more people – and soon there is a network of hundreds of people communicating with one another about what is happening in their lives.

When new members join a social networking site, they provide profile information about themselves and their interests. They also have the option to join groups that have similar interests within the social networking space. For example, on MySpace there are 34 group categories, each with tens of thousands of separate groups. Many individual groups have over 10,000 members. People in the groups and forums provide information to one another about their experiences and thoughts. For a small business, the utility of social networks comes from these groups with similar interests. Here is a sample comment about a local dentist I found on a recent forum post:
“Awesome Orthodontist (name withheld)! He’s got a great staff and they all have a great sense of humor … I live downtown Dallas and it’s worth the drive”.
This type of unsolicited endorsement, read by potentially thousands of people, is worth much more than a paid ad. Social network members will trust words from people just like them more than they will believe slick advertising or yellow page listings.

Social networking success story

This recent news story illustrates the power of social networking: “Electoral triumph built on a Web revolution”. As Barak Obama considered running for President of the United States, he had a meeting with Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook. Obama wondered if social networking could help him. “It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Andreessen recalled. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible, but we see a lot of that out here and then something clicks. He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.” The rest, as they say, is history.

How your small business can take advantage of the power of social networking

• Tune in to what is being said about you on social networking sites.
• If someone asks a question that is within your expertise – help them.
• Track online comments about your organization or your products. If there is misinformation, provide corrections.
• Register with LinkedIn – this is a site specifically committed to linking businesses and professionals.
• Join in. Add your own comments to the blogs or upload short videos. Who is more qualified than you are to talk about your company?

Small business owners are very busy people, and monitoring and interacting with social networks may seem like another task on your already full plate. This is where your IT consultant can help. By setting up monitoring and tracking alerts on your system, you can optimize the time you spend on these important activities. Your IT consultant may also suggest software services that help you assess the return on your investment.

What is Web 2.0?

In the good old days (about four years ago), the web was comprised of sites published by companies that described their services and products – it was often nothing more than advertising. The web was flat and the information flow was one way.

Web 2.0, on the other hand, favors quality information content and supports interaction. To appreciate Web 2.0’s advances, it is helpful to understand why people use the internet. As well stated by Janice Redish in her book on writing web content that works, “People come to the internet to answer a question or get help completing a task. They want information that is easy to find and understand, is accurate, up to date, and credible.” Web 2.0 is all about content that provides real information.

Because many people now have access to broadband which supports fast downloads of data, Web 2.0 encourages expanding content types to include audio and video presentations. Finally, Web 2.0 takes advantage of links and tags. Links are websites referenced in your writing that add related content to the topic. Clicking on the link takes your visitor to the referenced site. Tags are metadata, which is data about, well, data. According to Master Media News, “A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip, etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.”

How Web 2.0 can help your small business

Web 2.0 can level the playing field between you and your larger competitors – those with bigger budgets. Remember: web searchers do not care if you are a large, well-established company or a small business just getting started. They simply want information and help. If you do that well, you will be perceived as credible, and you may win over a new customer.

Your website embraces Web 2.0 by offering meaningful articles about your products, the technology behind them, and by helping buyers make an informed purchase decision. This is not selling; rather, you are educating and helping. When implementing the Web 2.0 philosophy, your site provides links to other sites that may help a customer or potential customer, even if that means mentioning a competitor. You are solving the searchers’ challenges by doing some of the search work for them. You can also encourage your visitors to add comments or suggest additional links.

A powerful way to use Web 2.0 strategies is to post short, how-to videos about your products. For many people, pictures are more believable and provide better training than words. Think of the questions customers ask you, and offer video answers with the credibility of an expert.

If this all seems to be beyond your capability, ask your IT consultants to help. Your IT consultant can add interactive services to your site and help create video and audio files, as well as suggest low-cost methods to increase the quality and quantity of information on your site.