Does Social Media Work for Small Biz?

"More than three-quarters of US small-business executives surveyed did not find social networks helpful for generating leads or expanding their business."

This chart from a recent study shows that social media are not helping small businesses very much at this point. Only 3% of respondents said that they found social media to be very helpful. The article makes the observation that limited manpower seems to be a root cause of small businesses not making b better use of these new tools. To me, that also implies a certain lack of familiarity as well. The question this raises in my mind is, "Could social media be more helpful to small businesses, and how could the problems with using it effectively be overcome?"

My other reading on this subject suggests that certain kinds of businesses have more opportunity to benefit from social media than others. It seems that businesses targeting a younger demographic can do more with the medium because that is where the largest user audience comes from. The trick seems to be to offer something on the social medium that attracts the attention of the audience and encourages them to forward the information about the offer to their network of friends. What you are attempting to do is to generate the "viral effect" that the medium makes available to you.

I would certainly be interested in hearing from anyone who has used social media to good purpose in their business. After all, some 3% of respondents have said they are getting good results. What is it that they are doing that works for them, and how can the rest of us learn something from that?

Companies that Spend on Search Are Frustrated

"To improve results, the study recommended the use of dynamic landing pages, so that “users who click through find content, images, messages and offers that are customized and highly relevant to them.”"

This report always focuses on advertising (click on the title to see the report), which is not really what we do in our clinic, but the information about searcher behavior and marketers experience seems relevant just the same. What this report says is that marketers are not getting the results that they want from their efforts because searchers are not landing on pages that address their interests immediately and directly.

Remember that our approach to marketing on the web bypasses this problem completely. We always emphasize optimizing your pages to attract traffic on specific phrases that are relevant. Our goal is to have a searcher land directly on the page on the web site that is most relevant to the search. That is exactly what the recommendation in this article amounts to, and where we have been all along!

It is always rewarding to see our approach to Internet Marketing validated by these kinds of reports. The approach is sound, and that is why our participants report so much success for their web sites as a result of attending our marketing clinic and applying what they learn to their businesses.

Synergy of Search and Social Media

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search."

This research refers to paid search activity, but it seems fair to assume that organic search activity would be influenced in the same way. The point to take away from this article is that your marketing efforts through different approaches support and enhance one another. It is not a good idea to conduct all your marketing efforts through a single vehicle. The success that you have in each approach reinforces the success that you have in other approaches.

To put it another way, look at all the tools that you have available to promote your site and make use of several of them simultaneously rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Your web site itself, is the core around which your other marketing revolves. This core effort is then supplemented and strengthened by your activities with blogging, newsletters, article publication, press releases, social media sites, reciprocal links, and, yes, even paid Internet ads! Plan to use several of these tools in concert based on your personal and business characteristics and capacities to support different approaches.

While our focus here is on Internet tools, don't overlook the importance of what you do in more traditional marketing through your use of business cards, letterhead, brochures, promotional gifts, and networking, which also reinforce your online marketing efforts. A well managed mixture of approaches could be more effective for your business than a single-minded focus on one strategy alone!

How to Build Links Fast: 101 Tips & Strategies

"Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings."

The authors of this article have provided a very useful list of ways to get links for your web site, and illustrated it by starting with a tip that really works! This blog post proves that it works!

Reviewing this list is definitely worth your time. You won't find every item useful for your own business, but there are plenty of things that can be very helpful to you, and work in your specific environment. Within the 101 items on the list are about 30 bad ideas pointing out bad practices, so be sure that you note the point in the list where it switches from things-to-do to things-to-NOT-do!

You do need to go through the list to get the details, but I will summarize some of the key ideas here.

• Become an authority and create lists. There are a number of specifics listed in this general concept, but the basic idea is to put something on your site that is worth linking to. Observe that I am proving this concept by blogging about this list and linking you to it!
• Use PPC judiciously. This is the most interesting idea I have come across giving a reason to use PPC ("Pay Per Click")! The idea is that, after you have created a "link magnet" (see the first point!), you promote that page by purchasing some keyword phrases that will get traffic directly to that information. If it works for you, you will get a lot of leverage for the money spent on PPC.
• Use news and syndication. We talk about this technique all the time in our search engine marketing clinic. The list provides several specific ideas that you can use in pursuing this approach. Basically, you are planting links all around the web with this approach.
• Directories, social media, etc. Many directories can be really helpful to you, and all social media are becoming much more important and useful.
• Join local organizations that provide links. Many professional associations include a link to your site on the membership lists. Look into these in your business field and consider local chambers of commerce, networking groups, etc., etc., etc.....

There are many more concepts in the list, but this should be enough to give you the idea. Near the bottom of the list, the authors switch to telling you things to avoid. Many  of these just have to be tongue in cheek to fill out their total of 101 ideas, but many of them are practices that used to work or techniques that people actively use today, but that can get you in trouble if you get caught at it. These are worth your time to review, but make sure you have mentally switched gears to put a big "X" through each of these points as you absorb them!

Addendum: I posted this article on 10/3, and set up a PPC campaign to send traffic to it. On 10/17, when I checked my traffic, this page had ten times the pageviews of the next highest page on my blog! I have to believe this works!!