In today’s economy I certainly see the reasoning behind wanting to substitute a Facebook Page for a website:  almost everyone knows how to create a Facebook Page, not many know how to develop and create a website, so from a cost perspective it “can be done by me”.  While I agree that a business just starting out may not have the capital to throw into the development of website, I would also say that a website should be at the top of the list for anyone who wants to have their business taken seriously and is looking to bring in new clientele.

Facebook and other social media sites should be used primarily to engage existing customers and help maintain and create a greater bond with those customers.  But how much can a Facebook page really say about your business?  You can put out a lot of information:  daily specials, pictures from a recent event, even a little about your company.  The problem lies in the amount or lack of information that can be given.  Other than a small blurb about your company, all information is given one post at a time.  This means the average consumer will have trouble “finding” the exact information they are looking for.  Research says on average you have 7 seconds to grab someone’s attention when they land on your web page, remember a Facebook page is still ultimately a web page.

There is also the question of how someone is going to find your page.  Yes, Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines index Facebook Pages, but with so little information, ranking highly on these sites would be difficult at best.  Search engines also look at “Back Links”, the amount of other web pages linking to your web page to determine rankings.  How many people or companies do you think will link to your Facebook Page, outside of Facebook? 

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a wonderful way to enhance and promote your business.  But don’t confuse that promotion with having an actual location online where current and prospective customers can find out more about your company.

I believe in testing these things out, so I did a Google search on “Restaurant in Blairsville GA”.  My results were unfortunately as I had expected.  The only non-franchise or chain restaurant in Blairsville, GA having an active website in the first seven pages was The Hole in the Wall restaurant.  The rest of the links were restaurant review websites and the like. 

Murphy, NC did a bit better when I searched “Restaurant in Murphy NC” with Brother’s Restaurant, The Chophouse, ShoeBooties Café, Gaston’s Fusion, and Doyle’s Cedar Hill Restaurant all making the first page.  However after that, there were only two restaurants in the next 4 pages.

Most important in all of this, not once did a Facebook Page show up in either search, through all of those pages!

So don’t just rely on a Facebook Page,  you need a website as well!

It’s important to become involved in social media both for exposure and to interact with your customers.  Twitter and Facebook have many businesses, big and small, that use that media to provide customer service, product education and to forge a more personal link with their clients. 

When you interact with people on social media sites you can get immediate feedback on your products, the way you do business and even your employees.  Since social media is fast becoming a daily part of our lives, maintaining an online presence can be a very cost effective way to put your business out there where people can see it. 

The secret to a successful social media presence is to put your product aside and interact with people.  They already know you own a business and they can familiarize themselves with your product through your website.  What your website can’t do is put a human face and personality forward.  In this impersonal world, people are more apt to do business with someone they know than a stranger.  When you interact with the public through Facebook, Twitter or other sites you become human and accessible.

Social media also allows you to speak directly to your customers.  Many large companies are now parking their customer service departments on Facebook and Twitter for good reason; people are increasingly impatient with long waits and time consuming attempts to get hold of someone to help them.  Being available on social media lets them contact someone immediately—instant gratification!

Social media will also allow you to answer questions about your product, educate people on how to use it or keep them advised of new uses and developments in the field.  Some very successful entrepreneurs use social media sites to talk less about their product and concentrate on helping the people know the company and its people.  For instance, you can twitter about a cause you care about and link to a relevant website.  The people who support that cause will give you their business because they feel a kinship with you. 

You’ll also be able to find out what people think of your business and your product or service.  People will often post a message on the internet when they would not call on the telephone or write a letter or email.  Knowing how the public views your business will clue you in on what you’re doing right, things you should change and what you should do more of. 

Twitter can be used to advertise your brand to a world-wide audience.  Not only that but your twitter username will appear in search engines and gain you even more exposure.  Sites like Yelp let you create a local listing for your business so people can find you.  Local social networks like this are great for business.  And businesses in North Georgia and Western North Carolina are no different.  Businesses in these areas from Murphy, NC to Cartersville, GA , Blairsville, GA, Gainesville, GA, and everywhere in-between should be taking advantage of these social media outlets.  There are companies that can help you with your social media in North Georgia and Western North Carolina.  Find one you like and have them help you with your social media campaign.

One way to contribute to your city or town is to help its youngest citizens, the children.  There are all kinds of ways to do this, but a sport is the most obvious.  By paying for a team’s uniforms, your name will be emblazoned on the front or back of the shirt for everyone to see.  The appreciative parents will think of your business when they need your product instead of a competitor’s.  You can also contribute by buying sign space on the playing field, providing trophies or equipment for the team. 

Festivals are another good way to become involved with your community.  Everyone enjoys a good time and street fairs and festivals bring people out like nothing else.  You can set up a booth to present your product line, give away free samples or sponsor a drawing to give the winning entry a prize.  You can also help pay for entertainment and earn your business a prominent display on the stage or other venue. 

There is a very good program in nearly every community that involves cleaning up a section of highway on a regular basis.  You’ve probably noticed the signs along the road stating a certain business or group of people are responsible for keeping that section free of debris.  Thousands of people a day see those signs and if even one percent of them patronize your business, it’s well worth the couple of hours every few weeks to honor your obligation!

Charities are also a good way to support your community.  You’ll be helping those who need it, earning publicity for your business and earning a nice tax write-off, too.  Choose a charity that you truly care about like disadvantaged children, disease research and treatment or the welfare of animals.  Attend events sponsored by your charity and display their signage in your place of business.  Let people know that you sponsor that charity.

You local school is another place to get involved.  Most schools have holiday functions like a “Scare-fest” at Halloween.  You can help by manning a game booth, dressing up as a monster for the funhouse or providing food and prizes.  Believe me, it’s a real blast to work in a booth and watch the children having fun winning prizes and candy!  If that doesn’t appeal to you, there are other school activities you can sponsor.  You can help pay for field trips, offer to give a talk on your specialty and even contribute some of your product if appropriate.  Aside from the publicity, you’ll be making a positive difference in the lives of young people.

Getting involved in your community is great for your business but it’s also very personally satisfying.  Here is a list of North Georgia Festivals.

In 2006 people were asking “What the heck is a Twitter?!”  It was such an unusual idea that internet surfers flocked to the site in droves to try to figure out what this latest novelty was.  Now that the dust has settled and Twitter appears to be here to stay, it looks like a social network with a lot of potential, helping companies who do social media marketing and website design.

You might wonder how in the world you can say anything meaningful with just 140 characters.  That’s only about as long as this paragraph, including punctuation!

You’ll find that you can say a lot in just a couple of short sentences.  One advantage of “tweeting” is that you have to really think about what you are saying.  The old truism “less is more” really applies here!  By choosing your words carefully you can cram a lot of information into that 140 characters!  Tweeting actually helps you develop verbal organizational skills and encourages vocabulary diversity.  Plus, it doesn’t take a lot of time to bring yourself up to date on a person you are following.

Twitter has become a force to be reckoned with when it comes to current events, too, especially since you can set it to send you tweets on a smartphone.  It proved invaluable in the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008; rescue workers and others were getting the word out about hospitals that needed blood donations and passing along news to relative abroad.  It helped ease fears during the California fires of 2007 as relatives in other states could keep up with the fire’s progress and know their family was safe-or not.  With 100 million users at last count, you know there’s a LOT of information there if you know where to look for it!

Even our president uses Twitter as a way to keep in touch with his millions of followers.  You can keep up with congressional activity by following the politician of your choice and know what’s happening on a bill you are following before conventional media gets hold of it.

Are you looking for a job?  Use Twitter to help your search!  Let’s face it, the job market is dismal and we can use all the help we can get.  By using the 160 characters allowed for your bio, you can post a brief synopsis of your qualifications.  Tweeting about your job search progress will help employers see what kinds of positions you’re looking for.  Why would an employer be looking in Twitter for a prospective employee?  Simply because they can see the quality of your language skills, the clarity of your thinking and how dedicated you are to getting a position.

Tweeting can be entertaining, informing, fun and profitable!

Having a small town business can be a dicey proposition—people live in small towns because they want a more personalized experience but they might not want to be bosom buddies.  The right degree of familiarity is important when dealing with your clients; you want them to feel valued but not smothered and certainly not obligated through friendship to buy products they don’t need or want.

Another challenge you have to overcome is the general population’s assumption that because you are a small town business, your prices will not be competitive because you don’t have the resources to buy in bulk.  With “club warehouse” stores springing up all across the country, that assumption is no longer true.  Plus, you can purchase a lot of your merchandise over the internet to save on transportation expenses and time.

A presence on the internet is a must if you want to keep your sales numbers up.  Just because you’re in a small town doesn’t mean you have to ignore the rest of the world.  Get a website and keep it fresh and current, adding content at least once weekly.  You don’t have to pitch a new product every time or even talk about your business.  Most people are sentimental about small towns and love to hear about characters and experiences connected with them.  If you can entertain your “audience” they will return to the site frequently, establishing a relationship that will most likely turn into sales.

You can also use the internet to keep in touch with all your customers whether they are local or located in other states or countries.  An internet newsletter is a great way to do this.  There are several business that publish newsletters sent to my inbox but very few that I continue to receive on a regular basis.  Those that I do keep are filled with new developments about the products lines and entertaining trivia and suggestions.  For instance, I love good coffee and enjoy getting a newsletter from a Cuban coffee company I order from occasionally.  They tell stories about Cuban traditions, insert small blurbs about fashions in their country, include recipes of the cuisine and a lot of other interesting facts and tales.  It’s truly a delight to read and when I see my coffee supply dwindling, I think of that company first and foremost!

You see, a small town business will only remain as small as your imagination so get busy and be creative!

Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you have to act small.  You need a big presence in order to get enough business to succeed and that means advertising.  Don’t groan and think about your small budget!  If people don’t know you’re there you’re not going to be there for long.  Use your blog or website to draw attention to your business and give people a reason to keep reading.

Think about the websites and blogs that you have bookmarked, the ones you really enjoy reading.  They probably make you laugh or teach you something interesting.  Can you say the same of yours?  Fresh content every few days is important and it wouldn’t hurt to offer a coupon code every so often.  Forget printable coupons—these days people rarely want to waste expensive ink.

Offer a newsletter with helpful information.  Say you have a nursery with an online presence…you can offer a newsletter with gardening tips, coupon codes for discounts on products you sell, jokes and stories about your own gardening adventures or even ask readers to contribute their own to share.  When people think of their garden, they’ll think of your business!

Visibility is your best tool.  Use it, feed it, grow it and be original about it.  Your business will thrive on it.

Facebook has decided to throw down the gauntlet to location based Social Networking sites like Foursquare and Gowalla.  Foursquare and Gowalla have been at the top of the location based sites, but that is about to change.

Facebook has announced they will be integrating location based services into their current system.  While they have not given an exact date, the consensus it is they will roll it out any day now.

Facebook will be leveraging its 400 million plus users, and should take a large market share from Foursquare and Gowalla.

The question becomes is Facebook on its way to becoming a monopoly?  They already stand as the most used site for Social Media Marketing.  Foursquare had been making a nice push, but this may be a serious blow to them, although they still have some nice pieces and a more established location based community.

Facebook has made major changes in the last year to get more dollars from their empire.  One of the biggest steps was putting pay per click ads, much like Google on the site, I am sure many of you have seen them on your pages.  Now tying in location based services will allow them to be even more pointed with their advertising.  If you’re in The Home Depot and put such on your Facebook page, look for ads for nail guns, drills, paint, etc…  They will be able to do this with all companies.

From a company standpoint it will be a great way to target customers who are specifically looking for and in the mood to buy your product.

From a consumer standpoint, privacy issues and overkill, may become issues.  Facebook needs to be very careful not to turn your page into a Sunday sales page.

Overall it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds over the next year.

As always, I look forward to your questions and comments.

Many of you are familiar with how social media marketing works.  You set up accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, maybe set up a blog, and begin to interact with individuals to create trust and relationships through posts and conversations.

One statement I hear all the time, is “Social media is only good when you have individual clients but not for business to business”.

Those who make that statement could not be more wrong or less informed of the power of Social Media.

Yes social media is you reaching out to individuals, but those individuals work for, manage, and sometimes own companies that you may be interested in doing business with.  They use the same social networking tools as everyone else.  This is where you can begin to manage your business relationship.

Always remember, you never know who is following your Social Media Marketing Campaign, maybe it’s Jim down the street, or it could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

What about your existing clients that you spent so much time and money to get?  How can you use social media to enhance that relationship?

Simple!  Have your clients employees, or at the very least your client contact, sign up on your social networking sites and inform them of your blog (and yes if  you are going to be taken seriously in the Web 2.0 age you are going to have to have a blog).

Now that your existing clients are following your posts you can sprinkle in information about how you are taking advantage of new technologies to help existing clients.

Maybe you provide staffing for companies in Atlanta, and you have existing clients.  Do they know you had 35 engineers come off of a project in the exact area of technology they use?

How do you post such a thing?  How do you do it without coming off as an awful salesperson?

Again Simple!  Go to your Facebook or Twitter account and post something like:  “Good luck to the 35 Microsoft Engineers who just finished a project for us and did a great job.  If anyone knows where they might find new projects please let us know”.

That is not over the top or pushy.  There is a good chance if you have been maintaining your virtual relationship with your client, they might just respond and say, “Hey we are looking for someone!”

Let us not forget the importance of following our clients and their Social Media Campaigns.  Maybe this existing client is launching a new IT support department and has been talking about it on their social networking sites.

Now think how quickly you could possibly move those 35 Microsoft engineers into new positions.

Companies using social media will always let you know the direction they are heading, if you pay attention to their posts consistently, you can become an insider and have insider information without having to make those awkward sales calls where you come off as uninformed.

That is Social Media as a Virtual Account Manager!

I look forward to your questions and comments.

Social Media Marketing is not spam marketing, although it seems many today have taken the all out blitz approach.  10 posts a day in forum or another stating you have the best product or how great your company is.

The purpose of a social media campaign is to engage in a conversation with your customers, befriend them, teach them, and give them knowledge in your particular niche.  You want to become a trusted friend and advisor to the community you are building.

A great example of this is a colleague of mine, Erika Rich AKA WebErika, she uses her blog to inform her community of changes in technology and social media.  She does not send out 15 Facebook posts a day about how she is a great social media marketer, nor does she tweet it, or broadcast in that manner in any other fashion.  She simply informs her community and engages in a conversation with them.  She gives them the information they need to be successful with their social media.

As people read more and more of her “free” information time and time again, they build a trust with her, and then they put two and two together and contact her about their Social Media needs.  They go to her because she was confident enough to give them information, because she IS the expert, so when it comes time to beef up the Social Media campaign they contact her.  This is how social media works.

The quickest way to get unfanned or these days unliked is to spam people with the same boring sales pitch about your company time and time again.  It is of utter importance to share meaningful information with your community, and answer any questions or concerns they may have.
That’s right, concerns.  Believe it or not, as much as it would be great, not everyone has had a great experience with your particular company.  What better way to find out, provide feedback, and fix the issue, than to have an open “two way” communication with your community.

That is the objective of Social Media Marketing as simply as I can put it.  Once you have the objective in sight, it should be much simpler to implement the proper campaign and meet that objective.

As always I look forward to your comments and questions.

Let’s face it Superman, could at best save one person at a time, and light fades over time, but Social Media can reach millions all at once, and depending on the speed of your connection can get close to the 186,000 miles per second.  With Social Media your content stays in the cloud forever for the world to see.

Just two days I posted about tweet chats, well today I have been rewarded.  This morning I was informed of a tweet chat, #80sfriday.  Simple enough I clicked this link, and I am being fed, good commercial free 80’s music all day long.  Log in to tweetchat.com and put 80sfriday in the window at the top to follow or join in the conversation.

As a follow up to the same tweet chat from this past Wednesday, #smallbizchat, a colleague, Vicky Ryder, has been asked and will do a tweet chat this Monday on Healthy eating, #vickycooks.  Vicky has been hosting and updating a blog for Healthy Low Carb Foodies for about 4 years.  The exposure from the upcoming tweet chat could possibly double the number of visitors to her blog, in just one day.  Now that is powerful.

That is the Speed of Social.

Whether it is using a tweet chat, a Facebook post, a tweet, a Linkedin message, Foursquare, or a blog post, once you put it out there, it’s as fast as any other form of media, and reaches millions and millions more.

My own twitter account, SirWebby, has increased by over 100 followers just since the last tweet chat.

I know I stand up and scream the praises of Social Media Marketing as loud and often as I can, but if you are going to increase and remain in business you must embrace Social Media Marketing.  If you don’t you are doing so at your own peril.

So I wish everyone the best of Friday’s I just heard Guns n’ Roses kick off from the tweet chat, time to Rock Out!