How Important is Social Media?

Hey Women Entrepreneurs. If you are not receiving emails from Hub Spot, you need to. They are my personal favorite source for social media up-to-date information. We can’t be experts on everything, so we have to rely on experts on various subjects. Hub Spot is our favorite for social media.

We are experts on face to face marketing with The Heart Link Women’s Network and we are truly excited about how we can help small businesses optimize their presence on the Internet with Trova Business Directories, Trova Small Business Directory and Trova Women Small Business Directory, but social media is a complex beast and we want to provide you with information from many sources to help you keep the business you love in front of your customers. So enjoy the information below.

The fastest-growing private U.S. companies have discovered something that’s taking larger, more traditional companies some time to figure out – social media matters.

Research conducted by the Center for Marketing Research , shows that the Inc. 500 recognizes the critical role social media plays in an online world. One hundred forty-eight companies responded to the late 2009 survey of companies named by Inc. Magazine to their list.

In fact, an incredible 79% of respondents to the nationwide telephone survey indicated social media was very or somewhat important to their business and marketing strategy. Indeed, 43% ranked social media as very important, compared with only 26% two years earlier, a 65% increase.

Clearly, these successful, smaller companies have discovered that leveraging social media tools and technologies plays a valuable role in their business and marketing strategies.

How about your business? Do you consider social media important? What results have you seen from using it?

6 Ways to Brand your Business with Content

Hey Women Entrepreneurs: The following is a guest post by Corry Cummings, owner of Content Customs.

When companies spend thousands of dollars developing a specific brand name or logo, they do so for a reason. This simple personification of the company’s image is often the one shot that businesses have to give their potential customers a quick and simple view into their business practices, goals and services. A company brand builds trust and credibility as well as focuses on specific demographics to drive traffic.

Why should content be any different? In fact, branding your business with content is a way to show your web site visitors that you are the only solution to their problem. If you are in a competitive market saturated with “only solutions,” you need to, at the very least, use content to show your potential customers why you are their very best solution.

What are the distinguishing features of your services? What do you offer that your competitors cannot match? Are you a small business that can treat clients with personality or are you a super-business that prides itself on speed? Nail down the unique aspects of your business and your brand can be created with effective and interesting content.

1. Avoid Hyperbole In Your Business Content Brand

Some hyperbole is fairly obvious when it creeps from casual conversation into web site content. However, hyperbole can also creep into business content without you knowing it. These are broad statements that any company with a solid business plan could use to promote their services. They may not be as obvious as statements like “I could sleep for a century” or “Making this web site will kill me.” However, they can often be just as detrimental. Consider some examples:

We offer quick and easy customer service that is accessible to everyone.

How? This statement is nowhere near specific enough to brand your business with content. Almost every business could make this claim – and many do. Exactly what about your customer service makes you special? Can you post any specific testimonials or statistics about your service?

Our online order form takes mere seconds to fill out.

Consider whether this is a true statement. If you have multiple fields requesting payment information and order confirmation, this statement is probably not true. It may seem like a very small detail; however, honesty and clarity are always better than sales pitches. Tell your potential customers what information they will need before ordering.

2. Discover the Strengths of Your Business and Use Them

Above all, the content on your web site should have a purpose and it should drive home the reasons why potential customers should buy from you. Perform some research and discover what your business does best. More often than not, such research reveals regional strengths. Without knowing it, you might be the only business in the area that sells a specific product. This could set you up to offer same-day delivery to your region. That is a selling point that sets you apart from your competition. Your content should highlight that aspect of your business.

3. Make Your Content Match Your Brand

Take the image that you want to present to the public seriously, no matter what that image may be. When you talk to another person face-to-face, you have a distinct advantage. You can exchange ideas, ask questions, receive feedback and formulate your pitch based on what you know they want. A potential customer can more easily decide whether they trust you or not when they are actually looking you in the eyes.

However, this isn’t quite as easy with content. You must use your content to express yourself to your chosen demographic in a way that they will understand.

Suppose that you are a business that sells surfboards primarily to an 18-24 college student demographic. Beyond taking social media seriously, your content should be designed to grab their attention and convince them that you are their best choice. Try doing the following in this market:

• Use clever and humorous language designed to grab the attention of your audience.
• Avoid listing too many facts and statistics. These will often turn your demographic off.
• Use simple sales pitches to which college students can relate.
• Include personal statements about your experiences with a product.

4. Create Flawless Content

Nothing turns web readers off faster than content saturated with spelling or grammatical errors. Such mistakes show that you did not feel the need to invest much time or money into the face of your business. This can have a detrimental effect on the image of your company’s reliability and credibility. Check and recheck your content for errors and make sure that it stays focused and centered on your main ideas. Follow these steps for error-free and professional content:

Do a pre write. What information will you include in your content? How will you structure your words to be the most effective? What research materials will you use?

Use lists and short paragraphs. Readers will most likely be scanning your content to get the main ideas. Use these ideas as your headers and create content that can be easily summarized.

Check your content for spelling and duplicates. Don’t simply rely on a spell checker. Read your content several times over a period of a few days to catch every error that you can find.

Have someone else read your work. It is best to use a professional editor. However, having a few employees or friends read your work can bring some hidden errors to the surface.

Outsource your content. Sometimes it’s better to admit that you are not a writer and trust a professional writer to handle your content. If you have the funds in your budget and value the image of your company, it is best to make sure that your content brand is written well the first time.

5. Focus on Your Company’s Image

Take into account how you want your visitors to view you as a company as well as how you are currently viewed in the industry. Every piece of content on your web site needs to define who your company is and what you offer that caters to your market’s individual needs. Some key talking points could include:

Character: Who are you? Where do you come from? What are your stances? Be honest and authentic. One wrong move in trying to be something that you are not could destroy your company image.

Personality: Try to highlight the aspects of your business that make you human. Many companies use pictures of their employees to reveal personality. However, it might be a good idea to use content in the same way. Try including personal profiles written in the first person. You can also include quotes from your employees to highlight what they enjoy about working with your company.

Image: Depending on the strength and focus of your content, you might find that consumers begin to associate specific attributes with your business. By focusing on your image, you can quickly delegate your competition into a category that most people would consider bland.

6. Leverage Your Key Content Branding Approaches

Choose some aspects of your business that you can use to create a specific vision of how your company values certain fundamentals of good business. Try choosing from the following when drafting content:

• Product or Service Selection
• Your Business Experience
• Knowledge that You Bring to the Table
• Your Credentials
• Technology that You Use
• Your Resources
• Region From Which You Operate
• Speed of Your Service
• Tools Available to You
• Customer Service Value

Never forget that the words you use to express your company are your portal to a prospective customer’s world. You must show them how you can make their life easier, more profitable, happier and more productive. If you can convey this message in all aspects of your content-driven marketing campaign, you can be successful in convincing your customers of how valuable you are to them. More than anything, treat your content with great care. The value of your content to your consumers can create a brand that people want. However, if your content is produced poorly, it could spiral your business into mediocrity.

Corry Cummings is the owner of Content Customs, which is a professional team of SEO copywriters. For more great information about improving the quality of your web content, visit Corry’s Content Writing Blog. You can also follow Corry on Twitter.

Do you know how to Flickr?

Do You Flickr?

Hey Women Entrepreneurs, most small businesses haven’t figured out how to promote themselves on Flickr. I know I certainly haven’t yet. The good news about this is that means you can get an edge on the competition if you love to shoot and share photos. In a recent post at the Influential Marketing Blog, Rohit Bhargava offers several useful how-to pointers.
Consider the following:

• It all starts with high-quality, non-marketing photography. You don’t have to hire a professional photographer, as you would when shooting images for your website or ads. “Flickr works best when you share more authentic ‘real life’ photos,” he notes. “To take great ones, you may want to upgrade your point and shoot to a real Digital SLR camera with a high quality lens.”
• Then you’ve got to go pro. A free account, he argues, will allow you to upload 200 images—but it’s easy to hit that limit and you’ll have less credibility in the community. “If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing,” he says, “put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account.”
• And quickly approve requests for reuse. “Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media,” he says. The more they use and credit your images, the more exposure your company receives.

The Po!nt: Use Flickr the right way and you’ll gain a competitive advantage on small businesses that do not.

Source: Influential Marketing Blog. Click here for the full post.

Dawn L Billings is an the author of  hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and over 20 books Dawn is an active advocate for children’s issues.  As the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations , Dawn is a great supporter of women in business.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Check out our women networking events and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

The Myth of Social Media Success

Hey Women Entrepreneurs, Have you ever wondered, “ Why do people think I need a Facebook presence, or a Twitter account or LinkedIn account?  I know people who have been doing the crazy social media thing for months – with not much to show for it.”

There is definitely a great deal of chatter and confusion around social media.

There is no question social media really can help you build your business, and increase your income.  We have all witnessed how connections can be formed for joint ventures and collaborative projects, and how customers find businesses through social networking. So we know income can be generated as a direct result of social media. But it doesn’t happen instantly.

Anyone who thinks that Social Media is a Quick-Fix, or immediate marketing magic bullet, needs to clean and reload their gun. Social media isn’t about creating a few accounts on various social media sites and then sitting back to watch the customers you are looking for, race to spend money in your business. Social media isn’t that simplistic.

Social media is an investment in a process that works over time. All marketing is about consistency. Marketing focuses on “marketing touches”. This is how many businesses used to design their marketing campaigns with repetitive commercials. There is no question that the Internet is taking over where commercials are leaving off. Even Pepsi gave up their advertising coveted spot on the Super Bowl, in favor of a new social media campaign.

So how do businesses use social media in more productive systematic ways?

First, businesses not only need to create a myriad of ways to stay front of the people they are looking to do business with, they need to optimize their time and link their social media. Each business needs to find ways that they can get in the middle of the Internet traffic highway inexpensively, but effectively.

One effective way is to make sure their websites are linked and optimized. There are two new online business directories that can help for just pennies a day. Trova Business Directory and Trova Women Business Directory provide their Platinum and Elite members with optimized mini-sites on their directories. When you are looking for business and type in women business directory it is important that you are connected with a small business directory that shows up on the first or second page of a search engine. Trova Business directories are there.

Social media and social networking, like face to face networking, is not only about marketing touches, it is about building relationships, finding ways to give back and developing trust. Customers don’t choose to do business with people they do not trust. Earning trust and building trusting relationships take time.

Social media isn’t a magic bullet, instead think of social media as practice at the firing range. It is in the shooting repetitively that you become an excellent shot.

Social media is a process. It is a tool that only works when you use it consistently and participate.

Social media works because you plant the seeds.  It works because you show up and participate. It works because you take the steps to build relationships and trust.  It works because you optimize your time and your links. It works because even when it looks like nothing is happening, you trust the process and continue building relationships.

Join.  Build relationships.  Link. Establish trust. Contribute your expertise. Trust the process. Your efforts will have you consistently hitting the mark.

Dawn L Billings is an the author of  hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and over 20 books Dawn is an active advocate for children’s issues.  As the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations , Dawn is a great supporter of women in business.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Check out our women networking events and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

The Simple Math of Blog Comments

The Simple Math of Blog Comments

You know that commenting on blogs is a great way to extend your presence online, meet other bloggers, business owners, and potential customers, and ultimately drive more traffic to your own blog and website.

But what makes a good blog comment? How do you go about “joining the conversation,” as multitudes of well-meaning people are constantly haranguing you to do? Is there a science to it? An established theorem of blog commenting best practices?  What’s a business blogger to do?

Let’s take a simple, mathematical approach to commenting on other people’s blogs.

Add

Add something useful, new, or interesting to the conversation. Easier said than done, to be sure. But avoid leaving comments just for the sake of leaving comments, especially those that add nothing to the topic at hand.

Example: While everybody likes to be agreed with, try to go beyond a simple “I agree” in your comments. What exactly do you agree with? Was one of the points made by the blogger more persuasive than the others? Which arguments were less persuasive?

Added benefit: Blog comments offer a great opportunity to show more of your human face to the readers in your space. A personal anecdote goes a long way in contributing something truly unique and valuable to the conversation that only you can add. Share something of yourself, your background, your expertise.

Subtract

Subtract any gratuitous self-promotion from your blog comments. If you have a truly relevant blog post on your own site, then by all means refer to it, but only after summarizing how and why it is relevant to the author’s post. Avoid talking about your own products and services on other people’s blogs.

Example: If you sell accounting software, and the author of another blog writes about a tricky tax question that your software helps answer, try to answer the question in a simple, layman-friendly way and help the readers of this blog understand the issue better.

Added benefit: You’ve just uncovered a blog post that is dying to be written on your own blog. Write in more detail on your own site about how to approach the tricky tax question, and link back to the article that sparked the idea for the post.

Multiply

Multiply the positive effect of your comments by referring (and linking, where appropriate) to the blogs, comments, and contributions of others.  Draw connections and parallels where others have not yet pointed them out. Promote the good work and insights of other commenters, and be specific about what it is you value about their contributions.

Example: If you sell signs and banners, visit the blogs of graphic designers and artists who design for the commercial sector. Talk about what you admire in their designs, and why these principles are important in business signs and marketing.

Added benefit: You might find some bloggers in a related space who might be interested in guest blogging for your site. Adding diverse voices to your blog increases the readability and potential audience for your blog by a surprising amount.

Divide

Divide your attention among blogs in a number of different spaces — not just the one your own blog occupies.  What types of blogs do your customers enjoy, when they are not thinking fondly of you and your products and services?

Seek out a number of different worlds that might be of interest to your customers, your partners, your vendors, your friends. Visit these blogs as frequently as you do those in your own segment (if not more), and contribute thoughtful remarks to these conversations as well. Avoid confining yourself to your own little “echo chamber” by frequenting new and exciting different neighborhoods in the blogosphere.

Example: If you sell pools, and write a blog about pools and hot tubs, find some blogs that discuss outdoor home decorating, home gardening, lawn sports, and other related leisure activities.

Additional benefit: These sites might give you ideas for posts of your own: what kind of furniture do you need when you own a pool? What kind of food might you serve poolside this summer? What are some tips for keeping your skin safe from UV rays during the warmer months?

Add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It all adds up to a great business blog, and to creating a strong and helpful presence in the blogosphere that builds your brand’s reputation, authority, and good will.

Post written by Beth Dunn, a member of the Inbound Marketing Consultant team at HubSpot. Beth also blogs at www.bethdunn.org and An Accomplished Young Lady.
Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5881/The-Simple-Math-of-Blog-Comments.aspx?source=Blog_Email_[The+Simple+Math+of+B]#ixzz0mn9wRH1s

Dawn L Billings is an the author of  hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and over 20 books Dawn is an active advocate for children’s issues.  As the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations , Dawn is a great supporter of women in business.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Check out our women networking events and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

3 Ideas for Creating Quality Link Bait Content

3 Ideas for Creating Quality Link Bait Content

Hey Women Entrepreneurs. You know how we love Hub Spot and their articles. Here is one we would like to share with you because we think you will enjoy the information.

Lots of content savvy marketers will talk endlessly about that the best ways to build links. Many will tell you that the best way to do this is to create excellent, compelling, unique content on a regular basis, optimize and promote it. This method does have one inherent and obvious problem associated with it. Great content still relies on external forces, in the form of 3rd party webmasters, to pick up on your content and link to it.

For some of us, this isn’t the easiest thing to make happen. I mean  come on, let’s be real here – there has to be a better way, right?

To get to the bottom of this, one question we should start with is: what really is a link in most cases? If you think about it in its most basic terms, it’s something that a webmaster (read: a human being) has to actually give you – meaning implementation within their website page. This takes time from that person, and time is something that people simply don’t have enough of.

What if you could actually create content that gave the webmasters of the world serious incentive to link to you?  This type of content creation is referred to as ‘Link Bait’ and it’s increasingly becoming a tactic of content creators across the web. Here are three ideas you can employ to create more link bait.

1. Rank and/or Review some products or services

Companies LOVE getting free publicity, from any channel they can get it from. If you focus your efforts on creating some of this publicity for these companies, you’re likely to get some links back to your site from the companies who you rate well.

I’d advise you to be smart about this though, instead of simply publishing the blog post without any preparation. Let the companies you’re reviewing know what it is that you’re doing.  Create a short survey for them to fill out before you write your post to give them the opportunity to let you know why they should be rated in a positive light. We see examples of this in lots of different applications: ‘Best places to work in Boston’, ‘Colorado’s top 5 ski resorts’, ‘Top 20 beers in America’, etc…

If you become good at this and create numerous articles in this format over time, you can eventually start thinking about even creating a ‘badge’ where you enable webmasters to place your ‘seal of approval’ onto their site, the badge will link back to your site.

2. Say something controversial

Most people are intrigued by controversy, the webmasters or ‘linkorati’ of the world are no different and will link to you if you’ve got something interesting to say. Some of the most interesting things people say around the web are controversial. Take the recent uncovering of the new ‘4G iPhone‘ – something that was very controversial to Apple and the mobile industry, and Gizmodo, the blog that reported the story got lots of exposure and links.

So go ahead and try saying something that you might otherwise not say. Step outside of your comfort zone, you’ll likely find that from an SEO perspective it will help more than it will hurt.

3. Be the first one to break an industry news story

Breaking news is one of those things that is hard to find and report first, but fantastic from an SEO standpoint if you can make it happen.  Here’s my advice: make a news story about something that someone else might report. Publicize something you notice about your industry. Other folks around your industry will more than likely find it interesting and link to it.

Your blog is a news source – blogs are forms of media after all, so go ahead and use it for news.  You may find that it nets you big gains in links in return.

The great thing about creating link bait content is that it’s supported by Google (see this Matt Cutts article).  So go ahead, get creative and have some fun with it! Why not try to set a goal of creating one piece of link bait content per month and see how it goes. Your blog will thank you later.

Photo credit @lalajean_g

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