Small Businesses Can Compete without Borders

I was reading a post over at David Castor’s Business & Culture blog where he was discussing the Long Tail by Chris Anderson. Many of us (small business owners) understand the concept of the Long Tail. It has helped us grow in the early years of running a company. It is now easier than ever to enter into the LT strategy by using the Internet as a marketing medium.

I had another thought while reading David’s post:

It is now more important than ever to realize that competition stretches beyond borders in the “new economy.”

Small businesses across the nation (and the globe) are slowly starting to compete on an International scale. Whether you like it or not, the Internet has created a global market that is becoming faster and stronger than ever. Marketing plans have change. SWOT analysis have grown longer and more intense.

Why is it important to learn how to use the Internet as a marketing tool? There are plenty of reasons. The global economy should be pushing YOU to use the tools to cross borders and gain clientele that you wouldn’t have dreamed of 5-10 years ago.

You can be a lawyer or a accountant and begin gaining clients from all over a specific geographic region (the mid-west). If it is part of your goal structure of your company it is even possible to go GLOBAL.

Think about it…the world is open.

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Interactive Marketers to Increase Online Spending by 50%

Have you ever been thinking about something only to read a blog post that is catered to the same idea? Just happened to me! I was reading a post by Chris Baggot about old media and his thoughts on the problem with the overall business model.

I (like Chris) love old media. There is something about getting a magazine in the mail and thumbing through the articles. Every once in awhile I also pay the money to buy a Wall Street Journal or an Indianapolis Star. Unfortunately times are changing and we are not just focusing on the journalistic side of old media.

Old advertising is slowly seeing a transition as customers start to shift more of their spending to online marketing. According to Forrester Research, interactive marketers are going to increase their online marketing spending by 50%. There are a couple of reasons to look at this stat from a social media and old media perspective.

Old media needs to shift their business model to cater more to the online medium. It is a fact of change. The evolve or die mantra still stands as old advertising starts to see a decrease in the effectiveness of their advertising model.

Chris and I both do not have answers for old media. I will still continue to buy my favorite magazines but my purchase does not prove that the advertising is working. As a business owner it is important to realize the effectiveness of both mediums.

How are you going to shift your spending to cater to the online marketing medium?

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Guest Post: Finding Your Anchor in Social Media

Michael Reynolds is founder of SpinWeb.. SpinWeb is a Web Marketing & Brand Development Agency. Our philosophy is that of taking a holistic approach to caring for our clients and their Internet and Brand strategies.

Social media makes it very easy to post and distribute information. This can sometimes lead to information overload as we struggle to keep up. For this reason, it’s important to find your anchor.

Your anchor is your general “theme” or focal point as a company when generating activity on social networks. Your anchor is that part of your business that you can talk about over and over and always find new ways to create buzz and new people to talk to.

An anchor can be a product. If you create great products or a great product line, post information on creative ways to use your product or tips on getting the most from it. Events also make great anchors. If you represent an event-centric organization, like an association or networking group, social media is a great way to distribute your events on a regular basis. Sites like Facebook and Smaller Indiana even let you accept RSVPs online.

Without an anchor, your social media activity can be a little fragmented and lack mojo. Find that theme, product, service, or area of expertise that you are passionate about as a company and tell the world about it in a way that benefits your constituents.

What’s your anchor?

Twitter Replaces Offline Networking

(disclaimer: this rant stems off a post by Mike Sanson at ConverStations)

I hope I never find a blog post written towards a social media site replacing face-to-face networking. It is extremely important for all business owners to realize social media marketing is not meant to replace your traditional strategies… just transform them.

I have told people now and again… If you ever come to me and say you stopped all traditional marketing and started a Facebook page… I will smack you in the face with my mind. I am not really that physical of a person and pretty tame.

Sites like Twitter are meant to strengthen your network and add a second touch point to the people geographically close to your business. They were never meant to replace face-to-face networking, ever. Go ahead and test it out.

Invite a Twitter friend to coffee or lunch. You will find that the working relationship has progressed a little farther because of the use of social media. You will learn a lot about a person online before you ever meet them.

It just adds to the fun!

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Myspace Dominates in Business

I have met my fair share of Myspace haters the past few years. Admittingly I have become a hater. I really do despise the overall design and the “trashy” brand name Myspace has developed… I do. Now, just because I hate using the tool doesn’t mean I don’t respect their business prowess.

Mashable recently had a post talking about the new Citiforward Myspace Credit Card, which is a great business tool for Myspace to increase their $600M revenue posting from 2008. Whether or not you agree with the concept of credit cards or offering a social-networking card is not the reason for this post. The simple fact is that Myspace is owning the rest of social networking sites in terms of revenue.

The question still stands: Will Myspace be able to hang on to the business model they have created? Will Facebook actually figure out how to monetize 130M users? Will Twitter ever make money (Good luck)?

I can give the people over at Myspace my respect…because in terms of business…they own the market.

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Guest Post: Social Media, For Folks of My Vintage!

Today’s guest post is by Linda Fitzgerald. What is She working on?

Growing an online community for ‘chronologically maturing’ women traveling through the 2nd half of the journey. Developing and launching the face to face companion neighborhood networks known as “AFFILIATED WOMEN INTERNATIONAL.

Kyle laughs when I use that phrase! It refers to those of us who grew up in the shadow of the “greatest generation”. Those who are supposed to sit on the porch & do nothing!

But social media is not just for the young. It’s become a phenomenon valuable for all ages. Ask folks who work in geriatrics about using social media as a means to keep the brains of elder persons alive and well. Not to mention the health benefits of staying connected to others in order to reduce a sense of isolation that leads to early death.

Those of us who are not yet confined to anything except our computers find social media an excellent tool for developing online relationships that are as strong as many we’ve had for years and meet face to face with on a continual basis. Ask me! I can tell you that the friends I’ve made online via a number of social networking sites, including our own, are priceless.

Did it take me longer to learn to use the tools? You bet, but the practice of not using books (Face book for Dummies or some such material) to enhance the learning process made it all the more exciting when “I did it!” And it kept my brain cells from atrophying. The process of trying to figure out different forms of social media, i.e. Twitter, can be exceedingly frustrating. But once we’ve got it down – the process is absolutely fantastic.

The one thing I enjoy the most is the ‘youth’ of those with whom I now connect and build relationships. Many are young enough to be a grandchild! I never think of it and they are kind enough to never remind me. That in itself is healthy and emotionally satisfying.

I recommend to my ‘vintage’ friends that they dust off the system and at least make a Face book page. For no other reason than to reconnect with friends from high school or college. A few weeks ago I had that pleasure. Got a Face book message from a woman I knew from my young adult days who had been a close friend of my brother. I recognized her immediately and we’ve now reconnected. It was the highlight of an otherwise mundane day.

Have a ‘vintage’ friend or family member you want to keep mentally alert and emotionally healthy? Get them engaged in social networking. Don’t take an “I don’t have time” for an answer.

And certainly don’t take “I’m too old” as an excuse. I’m a perfect example that “old dogs can learn new tricks”. At least social media “tricks”!

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Yes. My Voice Matters.

I was reading through my weekly intake of Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer and came across a post with a reference from the Cluetrain Manifesto. First off, I love the book. I read it when it came out a couple of years ago and still keep it around my desk. In his post, Jason makes reference to Cluetrain point fingers at the marketing industry asking them, “Where is the consideration of the people?”

From Cluetrain:
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

I agree with Jason when he says that the Cluetrain Manifesto basically introduced the concept of social media to Corporate America. It is also extremely important for small business owners to understand the concept of listening and starting conversations.

Social Media has a wide array of people. Some people need your product or service.. other people would rather not listen to your hard sell speech about blah. blah. blah. It is about the conversation.. the personality.. and the person on the other end, not you.

I would encourage you to read Jason’s post because it has some awesome points for all matter of people using social media as a strategy for growth. I want to focus on the concept of using a human voice while in the depths of social media. Whether you are using Twitter, Facebook, or Plaxo (etc) it is important to listen first and speak second.

How long is it going to take us to learn that the CONSUMER is now in control of the conversation? It is no longer about quantity. It is no longer about how many direct mail pieces you can send out or how many banner ads you can buy.

It is about the them not about you. Use Twitter and Facebook as a tool to speak as you would your best-friend at a barbeque (okay bad example but you get the drift). We are all in the same rat-race here. Trying to help each other succeed in the cut throat world of small business marketing.

Talk about what YOU do not the industry or the sale of the day. How do you help people? How do you creat relationships with your clients? That is what people what to hear. They are to be inspired.

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Punch Inactive Users in the Face!

I love Twitter.

It makes life a little more interesting every day that you use it. There is one problem that I have been presented with over the course of the past few days. Inactive users.

Inactive users really upset me and when I say upset.. I am meaning… more along the lines of “wrong order at a restaurant” upset. I just don’t understand the point of spending time to add multiple people and then NOT using the tool every again. But that is their prerogative. (Thank you Ms. Spears)

I had a URL come across my Twitter Feed today to Twitoria. This is the first thing I read when I clicked through:

How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

FINALLY… (unless I missed another one) a tool that allows you to delete people that are inactive on Twitter, something that really cleans up the mess of inactive users. I

I started using the tool and it has extremely easy functionality… it is pretty straight forward. While I was un-following the fifth or sixth person I realized… Why does this matter?

They don’t tweet.. They don’t flood my stream with stupid magpie tweets or worthless hard-sell links.. So why does it matter if I delete them or not?

I haven’t answered that question but it you are wanting to delete the number of people you are following.. Twitoria is a great tool to do that.

Now.. can somebody please create an application that allows me to auto un-follow Twitter idiots?

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All Shapes and Sizes

Guest post by Social Media Consultant Colin Clark

I spend the majority of my day every day thinking up creative ways for businesses to use social media tools to improve their bottom line.  The one thing that I’ve found is that if I put together social media action plans for 10 different companies, all 10 would be very different, even if they were in similar industries.

The reason for this is that it’s extremely important to look at all aspects of your business before delving into social media, because once you do you’re baring your soul to anyone who you interact with online.  Since every business is composed of different types people, every strategy must be optimized to ensure those people will be successful in communicating with people online

So many consultants are saying ‘You must blog’ or ‘You must have a presence on Facebook‘.  It may or may not be the case.  The only ‘must’ is that you ‘must’ use good judgment and good marketing fundamentals to put together a strategy that’s going to be successful.

Ignore Digg. Quality is First.

Image via CrunchBase

Here is an example of information spreading on the web via Twitter and Blogging. One of my twitter and friendfeed buddies, Zee, fed a post on Twitter that was in turn sent to me by re-tweet from Roger Byrne (@styletime on Twitter). The post is called 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog by Neil Patel. If you have been using the Internet, blogging, or reading you have probably run across Neil Patel’s name on a blog or two. He knows how to create relationships and engage people online.

One of the things that I found interesting on his blog post was the point he made about not writing for Digg. I have heard from multiple bloggers that it is important to hit Digg because you drive a ton of traffic to your site.

“On the other hand Quick Sprout hasn’t got on Digg more than once and I have a very strong core user base. This is the main reason Quick Sprout has tons of reader interaction compared to other blogs.”

Neil took the opposite approach when building readership to his blog. He decided to focus solely on the people hitting his blog through links and other avenues other than the ungodly amount of traffic from Digg. I think that is extremely important.

I have been pushing myself to care more about the daily reader than the hundreds of hits I get from outside sources. It is always cool to open your Google Analytics and see an increase in traffic but how qualified is that traffic? The important relationships to forge are the people that are constantly contributing to your content and vice/versa.

Thanks to Neil for helping me get back on track and focus on the quality of my blog. Thanks to Roger and Zee for constantly feeding me information that helps all of us along this wonderful process.

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