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How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business

Advice for small businesses on using social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and how to integrate these tools into the marketing and recruiting efforts of your company.

By J.J. McCorvey | Inc. Magazine

Consider this: It wasn’t until 1997 that the Internet reached 50 million users in the United States. Facebook gained over 100 million users in the U.S. from January 2009 to January 2010, marking a 145 percent growth rate within one year, according to research by digital marketing agency iStrategy Labs. If you’re a business owner that hasn’t embraced social media networking as a major component of your success strategy, it’s due time to hop onboard.

“When you’ve got 300 million people on Facebook, that’s a huge business watering hole,” says Lon Safko, social media expert and co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, of the site’s global reach. “The profile is like an index to your company.”

While Facebook has become the most popular social media site, there are plenty of others for your company to explore. LinkedIn, for example, houses 55 million professionals seeking jobs, employees, or basic business or networking opportunities. MySpace, which allows users to tinker with music, themes, and HTML code, is targeted toward youth and teens. All of these sites have one primary thing in common: the profile.

The user profile is generally what distinguishes social networking sites from other social media platforms. It helps set the stage for building relationships with people who share the same interests, activities, or personal contacts, as opposed to primarily disseminating or digesting information feeds. This also means social networks enable companies to invite audiences to get to know its brand in a way that traditional forms of marketing or advertising can’t.

But what, exactly, are the methods that businesses should use to effectively leverage the burgeoning userbase of these sites as a tool to grow their companies? The following pages will detail what to do – and what not to do – in order to maintain a viable presence in the realm of social networking.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Developing a Social Networking
Strategy

Before opening an account and becoming active, it’s important to consider what each site offers and how you can benefit from their resources. “Take some time and really analyze what your existing social media strategy is,” says Safko. “Figure out which tools are best for your demographic.” Without a fully developed plan for your social networking activity, you could end up meandering throughout the sites and wasting a lot of time.

Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?

2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?

3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you’ll need to narrow your focus.

Got those answered? Good. Now, consider these questions:
1. Which sites do I want to take on? If you have enough staffing power to handle multiple social networking sites, that’s great. If not, it’s important to focus on one or two, or you could spread yourself too thin and fall victim to the “gaping void” perception, where you end up going days without activity. Your followers will notice.

2. Who’s going to manage my page? Would your social networking activity fall under a current employee’s responsibilities, or do you need to bring on new talent? If you ever find yourself without the staffing resources to manage your page, don’t stick your head in the sand, says Safko. “Find some interns,” he advises. “In most cases, they’ll do it for free.”

3. Who has access to my page? What type of trust level do you have established at your company? Will all of your employees have access to the social network account, or a select few? Take the time to assess the skills and character of those who can log into your page, or you may run into unsavory situations down the road – especially when dealing with former workers.

4. Who’s going to be the personality of my page? Does your company already have a public representative that usually handles speeches, press, etc.? It may be beneficial to rein in that person as the voice of your social networking site. “People buy from other people, not from other companies,” says Safko. “In order to solidify trust, pick someone to represent your brand.”

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Choosing Your Site

After you’ve answered those questions, you can choose which social networking site, or sites, would best fulfill the requirements of your strategy. Though many of the sites are similar in nature, they can all be categorized by the different purposes they serve. These are the basic types of social networking sites:

“Free for all” social sites: Some sites that fall under this category are Facebook, MySpace, Ning, and Friendster. Each of these sites primarily serve as a nexus of friends and associates who want to socialize. Ning, for example, has become popular for connecting classmates and helping to set up reunions. The profiles are usually personable, inviting, and can be customized with add-ons and apps.

Professional sites: Examples of these include LinkedIn, FastPitch, and Plaxo. The professional site can be utilized as an online professional contact database, or “rolodex,” but it’s also where people go to update employment information about themselves.

3. Industry-specific sites: These sites allow you to connect to people who are in your industry. I-Meet, for example, is specifically geared toward event planners, while ResearchGATE is a community for researchers in the science or technology field. Industry sites help you to narrow your search when looking for services, or people with skills in certain fields. You may even want a particular department of your company, such as IT or advertising, to open an account on one of these sites.

Dig Deeper: Embracing Social Networking in IT

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Setting Up Your Profile

Your profile is the online representation of your brand and company, so it’s important to know what to add and what to avoid. Here are a few tips to be mindful of as you create your profile:
1. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. Facebook profiles, for example, allow you to include things like hobbies, favorite music, etc. Including tidbits like these can make your page warmer and more personable. “Some personal information is valuable, because it may create a bond with a customer,” says Safko.

2. But not too personal. Don’t be the “TMI” poster boy or girl, (i.e. “The wife and I are on our way to have dinner – kids are with the grandparents”). Create another page that’s just yours, sans company activity.

3. Share photos and videos. Adding multimedia to your page gives flair, and offers customers an exclusive look inside your company. LinkedIn even has an add-on that allows you to post presentations and slideshows.

4. But no office party snapshots. Though the atmosphere of Facebook is still relatively laid back, you want to maintain the perception that you’re serious about your product and customers. Pictures involving Santa hats and alcohol probably shouldn’t be in your albums.

5. Set privacy settings. On most of these sites, you can control what people see on your profile, such as pictures and blog posts, and you can even limit what other people post. Depending on the nature of your company, you should consider these restrictions. Are there any embarrassing pictures of you floating around that you might not want linked to your page?

6. But don’t be a blank slate. Imagine coming across the profile of one your favorite brands, and all that’s there is a picture and headquarters location. A little disheartening, right? If and when you do enact some privacy settings, try to keep the page lively.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Marketing

Marketing through social networks isn’t as much about selling your product, as it is about engaging your followers. “A lot of people have started Facebook fan pages with no clue to how it can benefit them,” says Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing agency based in Cary, North Carolina. “You have to think above your product.” The goal of the community-based environment of social networking sites is to provide a platform for an open, honest conversation.

The companies that are most successful at converting followers into dollars are those who interact most with the users and frequently post content related to their brand. Facebook’s Fan Page is probably the best example of how you should be marketing you company through social networking sites. The page acts as an upgraded user profile for brands, companies, and organizations to be as involved as the users, and has plenty of tools to help you do so. As users become “fans” of your page, all of your activity appears in their News Feed each time they log on. There’s also a useful feature called the Insights tool, which allows you to analyze page views, the demographics of your fans, and the number of people who view (or stop viewing) your News Feed posts.

Outdoor Technology, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of clothing and gear for skiers and snowboarders, initially sold merchandise directly to retailers. But after the company began actively using their Fan Page last September, revenue from e-commerce went from zero to $25,000 in three months, says CEO Caro Krissman. The page has now amassed over 11,000 fans. “We saw Facebook as sort of a sweet spot for where our target market is,” says Krissman. “With the ability to target users in such a focused way, we felt like there really wasn’t a better forum to go about [marketing online].”

‘Fan’ features your company should be using:

1. Comment on other users’ content or profile posts. By responding to what your followers post to your profile, you show them that you appreciate their interaction. If they know they have your attention, they’ll keep coming back.

2. Ask questions on your wall. Facebook users love to be heard. It can be surprising how many responses one question can elicit. “It starts to snowball,” says Safko. “What you’ll find is that the conversation will branch off and start another one.”

3. Posting links or threads. “One thing fan pages lets you do that Web pages don’t is encourage viral spread,” says Tobin. If you have any content that you want to circulate quickly, the fan page is the perfect tool.

4. Posting relevant events. By posting upcoming events your company may be part of or hosting, you can help drive more attendees to the function. And for those who can’t come, they get a glimpse at how active your business is within the community or industry.

Social Network Promotions
Remember, it’s called a social network, not a “business network.” Coming off as a pushy or shrewd salesperson peddling a product could scare away your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections. Remember to be genuine and personal.

Here are the things you should do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:

1. Make it benefit-based. Make the customer feel that they need to participate in the promotion. Is the product or feature available for a limited time? Are you offering exclusively to your followers on a particular network?

2. Talk about new or uncommon features. Even if you have a relatively popular product, there may be some things consumers don’t know about it. What are some new or different ways it can be used?

3. Include some discounts and savings. Offering discounts on products is usually a shoe-in to grab customers’ attention. Krissman, of Outdoor Technology, says he posts promotional codes that users can fill out on the company’s website and get up to 30 percent off a product. Not only does it drive more buyers to your product, but it also brings more followers to your page.

Here are the things you shouldn’t do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:
1. Don’t continually have sales-related messages. There are other ways to promote besides selling your product. Comment or ask questions about news or topics in your industry. “They will easily ignore you or unsubscribe you if you continue to push a sale,” says Tobin.

2. Don’t set up an expectation, then cheat on it. If you announce to your followers that your purpose is to give advice, don’t turn around and start selling. “If you violate that expectation, people are going to get upset and they’re going to leave,” says Tobin. Again, make the sale subtle – how can your product help them achieve the advice you’re giving?

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Recruiting

Social recruiting is an effective way to utilize social networks to find the best candidate for any open positions at your company. While the past few years saw the rise of job boards like Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com, the growing prominence of social networks have transformed the way businesses build their best team. Instead of relying on the “come one, come all” approach, the detailed personal information contained in profiles, such as interests and job history, allows businesses to employ social networking sites to target the specific audience or skill set they want to pull from.

According to an annual social recruitment survey published by Jobvite, an online service that helps businesses consolidate the resources of social media sites, 80 percent of companies used or planned to use social networking to find and attract candidates in 2009, with LinkedIn being used by 95 percent of the respondents and Facebook usage growing from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009.

“It’s like what’s happened to the ad industry,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite and former general manager of Yahoo! HotJobs. “It used to be that you would buy a big ad to get the consumer’s attention, but more and more companies are relying on online advertising software that puts that ad right in front of them based on data, like the other ads they click on. Social recruiting is analogous to that.”

The Benefits of Social Network Recruiting
Here are some of the primary advantages that social recruiting affords small businesses:

1. Empowers your employees to distribute job information. These days, most, if not all of your employees probably have a profile on a social networking site. By enabling them to post information about open positions, you multiply your searching reach by the thousands.

2. Helps you put the passive job candidate in your crosshairs. Job boards are mostly used by people who are proactively looking for positions. But what about the perfect potential employee who may not be scouring Careerbuilder.com every day?

3. A low-cost method of finding high-quality candidates. When looking for job candidates, it takes time to sift through resumes of unqualified applicants, and many job boards charge fees to post openings. Social recruiting helps you zone in on the best candidates, for free.

Tools to Help You Socially Recruit

1. Custom searches. Searching only by name and location doesn’t cut it when looking for the perfect employee. LinkedIn has one of the most thorough searches of all the sites, allowing you to sift through profiles by company, industry, college, and even how many “degrees” you are from the person.

3. Updating your status message. When you or your employees update your statuses, it pops up on your friends’ home page, and sits atop the profile until it’s changed. “My company is looking for … ,” is sure to snag replies.

4. Linking to stories and external content. Both Facebook and LinkedIn enable users to post external content to their profiles. By linking to articles and blogs that contain positive news about your business, you show potential candidates that it’s not just your social network connections that adore your company.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Privacy and Legal Issues

Though social networking can certainly be a fun way to help you expand your company, there are plenty of issues surrounding privacy and legalities that you should always be aware of when searching for employees, and even after you’ve hired them. “The laws [regarding online privacy and or hiring online] generally apply the same [as existing state laws],” says Megan Erickson, an associate at Des Moines, Iowa-based Dickinson, Mackaman, Tyler & Hagan law firm and author of Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law. “But now that there are all these different kinds of social media, they combine to make it a very unique environment.”

Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind to help you steer clear of legal trouble when dealing with potential or current employees and social networking sites:
1. Don’t use fake profiles. Using a fake profile when adding employees to monitor their activity can constitute as an invasion of privacy, Erickson says. “That’s just asking for lots of trouble,” she says.

2. Add a social media section to your handbook. Including language about social media in your personnel policy is paramount, especially if you plan on integrating it heavily in your company’s operations.

3. Beware of existing federal and state laws. It may help to prep yourself on the many federal and state laws regarding anti-discrimination and privacy, Erickson says, so that if you do come across an employee’s wayward photo or disparaging status message, you’ll be knowlegeable about how to proceed with disciplinary action.

Resources

To learn more about using social networking sites:

• The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, by Lon Safko and David Brake, is a great guide for business owners and executives who want to use the power of social media to grow their companies. Visit the website, TheSocialMediaBible.com, to connect with other professionals looking to do the same.

• Megan Erickson’s blog, Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law, posts up-to-date news on legal issues surrounding social media sites.

• Mashable is a great resource for news, advice, and jobs concerning all things social media.

• John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, also runs a marketing blog for small businesses called Duct Tape Marketing. Check out what he says about the 7 Truths of Social Media Marketing.

Some sites to consider joining for social networking:

• Facebook: The most popular social networking site, it allows you keep up with friends, colleagues, and classmates and features a stream-lined, easy-to-use interface.

• MySpace: Geared toward the younger crowd, this interactive site lets you connect with friends and tweak your profile with extras like themes and music playlists.

• LinkedIn: This site is strictly professional, and for good reason. You can keep up with colleagues, find employees, and network with others in your field.

• Bebo: Another primarily social site for friends that allows users to express themselves through media and interactive environments.

• FastPitch: This professional site serves as a great platform for growing companies to market themselves, allowing you to post events, press, and submit keywords to increase your profile’s SEO strength.

• Friendster: A social networking site for friends that promotes connections between international users and also boasts “Fan Profiles” similar to Facebook’s.

• I-Meet : A professional site where you can establish valuable contacts and potentially save money on event planning.

How to Use Multimedia for Business Marketing

Your guide to using photo sharing, video, podcasts, mobile marketing, and other types of multimedia to broaden your company’s reach and introduce new marketing techniques.

By Lauren Folino, Michelle V. Rafter and Ryan McCarthy | Jan 25, 2010

Multimedia, such as mobile marketing, livecasting and podcasting, photo, video and file sharing, can spread the word about your company and help build brand awareness in a very unique and powerful way. These particular types of social media marketing services also has the ability to go viral quickly. Hottrix, the Las Vegas, Nevada-based iPhone app creator, became one example of a breakthrough success story when their iBeer app, which simulates chugging a mug of beer on the iPhone, became one of the most-downloaded apps in 2008, and again in 2009.

However, your company’s chances of going viral are left more to fate than skill, but that’s no reason to discount the importance of multimedia for your business. The ability of these technologies to facilitate communication between your small business and employees, your customers and potential customers, is tremendous, says Keith Nissen, principle analyst at the Scottsdale, Arizona-based market intelligence firm, In-Stat.

“When you think about [multimedia platforms] and what that’s all about, it’s about being able to communicate mass marketing messages to the device of choice on demand,” says Nissen. “I think what’s more interesting is how these tools can be used in conjunction with other multimedia tools to support the business–the marketing, the sales and promotion of their products and services. To me, that, for a small business, is probably more important than internal communication.”

Here’s a look at some of the most effective ways to leverage media, such as photos, podcasts, videos, and other types of mobile marketing.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Sharing Photos With Your Online Community.

Several online communities exist for the purpose of uploading and sharing photos over the Web, and many small businesses have learned to take advantage of these services to market their products. Here are the most common photo sharing marketing strategies.

1. Offer real-time incentives. Twitter’s TweetPhoto will automatically enable you to publish photos to your Twitter and Facebook accounts for free via mobile and Web platforms. Who needs 140 characters to describe your business when a picture is worth 1,000 words? Tweet pictures of discounted and new items or offer exclusive incentives.

2. Join like-minded communities. At no cost, Yahoo!-operated Flickr provides a useful platform for photo management and sharing. “The first thing that I tell people is that Flickr is not just a photo storage place,” says Matt McGee, independent online marketing consultant of the Tri-Cities, Washington-based, Small Business Search Marketing. “It’s a very active community centered around Flickr groups.” For example, a pet-lovers group may get a kick out of the clothing and toys created by a boutique pet store.

3. Drive traffic to your website. Pink Cake Box, a gourmet cake shop located in Denville, New Jersey, began using Flickr in 2006 to build brand identity. Co-owner Jesse Heap says that Pink Cake Box’s website receives about 300,000 unique users each month, and roughly 10 percent of those visitors are from Flickr, where the company posts photos of interesting or extreme cakes.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Hosting Videos and Webcasting.

Sharing videos over the Web is another great resource for small businesses in establishing a social media presence, particularly because of how many people are tuning in. According to a November 2009 survey released by comScore, a digital marketing research firm headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Google’s many video sites accounted for 12.2 billion videos viewed that month, including YouTube, which accounted for nearly 99 percent of the total.

Webcasting is essentially broadcasting a video or media file over the Internet using streaming media technology, which can be distributed to many simultaneous viewers at once. Done the right way, webcasts, also called video podcasts, vblogs, videocasting or Web shows, can be effective promotional tools. “It’s a cool opportunity to take people behind the scenes of a business,” says Dina Kaplan, co-founder and COO of blip.tv, a four-year-old Internet TV network. Her network airs video podcasts from hundreds of companies as diverse as the New York City Ballet to the crafter website Etsy, which broadcasts online classes. “It’s been interesting to watch, especially in the last year, how many businesses have created Web shows to promote their product or gain exposure for principals,” Kaplan says.

Shooting a video for YouTube or starting a more elaborate webcast essentially takes four basic ingredients: equipment, a theme, an online home and marketing.

1. The equipment. Very small businesses can buy a webcam or camcorder, wireless microphone and simple video editing equipment such as Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio or Final Cut Pro 7. However, a webcam limits you to filming yourself sitting in front of a computer, and that’s not very exciting, says Peter Brusso, an Anaheim, California, podcasting producer and technology marketing consultant. Instead, invest in a camcorder, preferably a “three-chip” camera that uses three computer chips to separate colors, which results in a higher quality picture, Brusso says.

2. Hire someone. If you have a bigger budget, hire a professional. Prices run from $1,000 to $15,000, according to podcast industry sources. Employment attorney Helene Wasserman created a video podcast called Employer Helpcast two years ago to market her work as a partner with Ford & Harrison LLP, a Los Angeles law firm. Wasserman uses Brusso’s company to produce video podcasts and pays $2,500 for segments that run anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. It’s worth the money, she says. “If you’re trying to market yourself as having a very professional business, you want to put your best foot forward,” she says.

3. The show. You could have the best-looking video around, but it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t do something that was interesting and consistent, says blip.tv’s Kaplan. For webcasts, stick to a regular broadcast schedule, whether that’s once a day, week or month. And keep shows short. “Your aptitude for sitting in your uncomfortable office chair atrophies after about six minutes,” she says. Be personable, says Kaplan, who advises podcasters to stick to the old news adage to show, not tell. If you run a retail business, walk around the store, and talk about new merchandise. “Talk to a customer. If you have a hardware store, show them the new hammer on sale,” she says.

4. Hosting and marketing. Once you’ve got a video in the can, upload it for free on YouTube where it can be viewed by anyone. Webcasts can also be uploaded to free or paid hosting sites such as blip.tv, iTunes or Libsyn. Where a podcast is hosted isn’t as important as spreading the word that it’s there. Wasserman’s podcasts appear on blip.tv and iTunes and cover workplace issues such as job sharing, corporate culture and managing a multi-generational workforce. Wasserman points prospective viewers to the podcast from her website and blog and by including a tagline promoting the show in her email signature. Wasserman also uses a free service that puts word-for-word transcripts of her video podcasts on the Web, where they can be searched by Google and other search engines. More people find her podcast through search engines than by visiting blip.tv or her website, and the traffic had led to speaking engagements and new work, she says. “It’s the wave of the future. For anyone who wants to use 21st century technologies, this is the way to go.”

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: 4 Good Reasons to Go Through the Trouble of Creating a Video.

1. Show how to use your product. With a slogan as simple as “Broadcast Yourself,” many YouTube users are doing just that, especially when it comes to showing how their products or services can be used. “There are countless small business owners posting how-to videos on YouTube,” says McGee. “[For instance,] here’s how to use the product; here’s how to interact with people in our service industry.”

2. Extend your client base. In December 2007, John Tuggle, a slide and blues guitar instructor based in Decatur, Georgia, began posting videos on YouTube teaching people how to play guitar because he wasn’t generating enough interest in his hometown. By February 2008, interest in his lessens grew so much that he created LearningGuitarNow.com where visitors contacted him regularly for private lessons via Skype at the rate of $25 for 30 minutes. “I just kept [talking to people] and kept putting more out, and figuring out what people wanted. Last year I pulled in almost $100,000 from the website,” said Tuggle.

3. Entertain your customers. It is quite easy to post a video simply for visitors’ enjoyment. For instance, Vimeo, a video hosting site that aims to be a “community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make,” features a ‘Videos we like’ tab. For a small business owner, posting a video for entertainment purposes stands to generate many views, which in turn may spark interest in the company and possibly lead to the purchase of products or services.

4. Provide a unique service. LiveCast, with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada, enables live video streaming directly from a cell phone, mobile Internet device, or Mac or PC, to anyone connected to the Web. For Gordon Cooper, photographer and founder of Perfect Wedding magazine, live broadcasting gives his business a unique capability. “I can have all the guests at the wedding even if they’re not at the wedding,” says Cooper. “Guest can still experience the live ceremony [from wherever they are].” Cooper is able to charge an additional $250 for this service.

Dig Deeper: Marketing Your Business on YouTube

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Podcasting

Podcasts have become such a popular marketing tool for sole proprietors and small businesses that a small army of professional producers is out there waiting to help. Here are 9 essential steps a company needs to get started:

1. Do some homework. The best way to learn about podcasting is to listen to podcasts, says Peter Brusso, an Anaheim, California, podcasting producer and technology marketing consultant. Visit directories such as RSS Player or Libsyn and look for podcasts with a similar style or subject to you want to create, Brusso says.

2. Decide on a topic. Podcasts could focus on a company’s products or services, an industry or on management or professional issues. Whatever the topic, make sure it’s related to a company’s business in some way, says Sallie Goetsch, proprietor of The Podcast Asylum, a northern California podcast producer and consultant.

3. Gather your tools. Producing a podcast requires:
• A microphone, digital audio recorder or USB headset to record podcast episodes
• Computer with sound card and high-speed Internet connection
• Audio recording and editing software, either licensed software or free open-source programs such as Audacity.

4. Be natural. When it’s time to record a podcast, organize talking points, but don’t use a script. “People don’t like being sold. The more from the heart the better,” Brusso says.

5. Build a backlog. Before going live, build up a catalog of a dozen or more episodes. Coming up with ideas is easy, Brusso says. They can spring from talking to customers, going to conventions, reading trade magazines, or following current events.

6. Be consistent. Length, professional quality, and subject matter of a company’s podcast are important but not as much as on-air consistency. Whether it’s once a day, once a week or once a month, pick a schedule and stick to it. Podcasts are like radio or TV shows: audiences expect a schedule. Disappoint them and they might not come around again, Brusso says.

7. Not a D-I-Y type? Hire a pro. Professional producers can handle the technical aspects of starting or creating a podcast. Goetsch and partners Priscilla Rice and Michele Molitor, for example, offer a small-business podcast starter package for $1,100 that covers scripting and recording three to four podcasts plus lots of extras, including finding a hosting service, setting up a podcast blog and submitting broadcasts to podcast directories. Brusso, who works with lawyers and other sole proprietors, charges $1,000 for an hour-long podcast with similar extras. But it doesn’t have to be expensive. According to Goetsch, a small businessperson could do everything themselves with an existing computer, $20 headset, free software for audio editing and creating a podcast, and host it on their existing website.

8. Find your podcast a home. Companies can physically host a podcast anywhere, including with the service they use for their website. What really matters is getting the word out that it’s there. For maximum exposure, list podcasts on directories such as PodcastAlley.com, Podcast411, Podanza or TalkShoe.

9. Forget about making money, at least not directly. Some podcasts collect revenue from advertising that podcast directories put on their sites. But that shouldn’t be why a company does it. Podcasts should be part of a company’s overall marketing strategy, Brusso says. “To get yourself known, you have to blog, optimize your Website for search engines and podcast,” he says. “If you do all three the results are phenomenal.”

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: Mobile Marketing

There are 4.1 billion cellular connections worldwide, and with the prevalence of smart phones, the concept of browsing the Web from a mobile phone has gone mainstream. Consider this: Mobile phone carriers are sitting atop a trove of data – not just your name, address, and, of course, phone number but also credit card information, who your friends are, and where you’re located at this very moment. Even with privacy regulations, more of this information will become available to marketers as phones are used more like little PCs, creating opportunities for highly targeted ads and other marketing breakthroughs.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

• How exactly do I advertise on a mobile phone? The most common type of mobile ad is a display ad served on a Web page called up on a cell phone’s screen. The ads are created for the site’s mobile format and may not be the same as the ads you would see if you were browsing the site on a PC. Ads are priced on a Cost Per Mille, or CPM, basis – the price you pay for the ad to be seen 1,000 times.

• How do I buy mobile ads? Most advertisers work with mobile-ad networks, which bring together advertisers and websites that are frequently viewed by phone. Some of the larger players, which are owned by the likes of Google (AdMob), AOL (Third Screen Media) and Apple (Quattro Wireless), will act as full-service marketing shops. They handle the entire process, including technology, the creative content of mobile ads, and the ads’ placement.

• What do mobile ads cost? The cost of mobile ads varies due to the different types of ads, and different cell phone platforms. For instance, AdMob, one of the main mobile-ad networks, currently charges CPMs of $12 to $14 for iPhone banner ads.

• What about text messaging? One option is to buy or rent a short code, a five- or six-digit phone number from which you can send and receive text messages. One common way to use a short code is to publish it on a billboard or in a print ad (“Text 51234 for more information”) that encourages customers to enter a contest or participate in a poll.

• What does a short code cost? Cellit Mobile Marketing, in Chicago, and Movo, in Florida, sell short codes for $500 to $1,000 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of a few thousand dollars and a charge of 4 cents to 7 cents for each text message. You can also rent a code for as little as $225 per month. Keep in mind that technological standards vary. Nearly every phone on the market is equipped to send and receive texts, but some systems won’t let you embed complex graphics or photographs.

• How do I go after my best customers on a mobile phone? Google has expanded into the mobile world in several ways. Now, it allows companies to buy display ads – ads related to content – on the mobile Web. AdMob claims click-through rates on this type of ad of up to 3 percent, which is quite high. The company charges a cost-per-click (CPC) fee of 25 cents to 30 cents.

How to Use Multimedia For Business Marketing: 3 Tips for Making Your Mobile Campaign Successful

1. Determine your goals. Who is your target audience? How will they benefit from your message? Do you hope to generate revenue, generate interest, generate traffic to your website, or all three? Define your goals and set benchmarks for what a successful campaign would look like.

2. Choose your message. Your message should have a clear call to action. According to mobile marketing firm Punchkick Interactive, “over 90 percent of texts from SMS messaging campaigns are read by recipients, generating average response rates of 15 to 30 percent or more.” With the potential for that kind of penetration, it would help to make sure your campaign is simple, memorable, and factual. One thing every local business should be doing, says James Citron, CEO of mobile video marketing firm Mogreet, is attach keywords to their mobile campaigns that will resonate with customers in order to create brand awareness.

3. Pair your mobile marketing campaign with other social media marketing services. When Casa Del Mar, a luxury beach hotel located in Santa Monica, California, wanted to get the word out about drink specials, they doubled up on social media marketing services. The hotel posted messages on Twitter and Facebook saying, “Text CASA to 21534 and enjoy unlimited champagne or Bloodys. FREE.” Customers who texted received videos of the weekend brunch spread on their phone and received the beverage of their choice at the hotel. The end result was highly viral, with 250 redemptions.

Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media

Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.

The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. “You can’t buy that exposure,” says the firm’s co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.

But Mr. AvRutick’s experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they’re highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.

“The hype right now exceeds the reality,” says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.

Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.

Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

“It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect,” says Mr. Chiagouris.

A business owner’s time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot’s Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey’s respondents say it requires more effort than expected.

To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.

Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a “patient investment.”

“My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven’t made millions of sales,” says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook. “People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago.”

Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.

“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.

As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.

“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.

Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what’s being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers’ buying decisions.

Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.

Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot’s Web site about kayaking.

Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.

“I didn’t find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Lost and Found Tourist Treasures

Lost and Found Tourist Treasures by Liz Behler | AOL Travel

While traveling, vacationers typically gather more than just memories—snow globes, seashells, stacks of refrigerator magnets—but what about the things they leave behind? While many travelers believe their lost belongings are doomed to fade into a black hole, never to be heard from again, some are reunited with their possessions in unusual and inspiring ways.

Just this past February, we heard about a Spanish fisherman who netted a camera dropped off a cruise ship sailing near Ireland over two years earlier. The camera no longer worked, but the memory card inside was still filled with pictures (ever lost or found a camera? Check out I Found Your Camera, a blog that aims to reunite people with their memories). Miracles like this happen more often than you might think. Below are two tales of travelers who lost everything, only to be reunited later, and the story of one man on a mission to connect travelers with missing items. If you have a miraculous lost and found story of your own, tell us about it at TravelComments@aol.com.

A Man Without A Plan(ner)

Bert Martinez lost everything on the final night of his vacation in Hawaii. After enjoying his last meal, he left the restaurant and realized he left something very important behind: his day planner. This was in the days before PDAs and Smartphones kept track of daily routines, but inside was much more than just his schedule—the planner also contained his credit cards, identification, and most importantly, his airplane ticket. Martinez raced back to the restaurant, but it was too late, the planner was gone. He had no idea what he was going to do.

The next day Martinez arrived at the airport, hoping somehow everything would turn out for the best. He tentatively approached the ticket counter and explained what had happened. The clerk asked his name, went to the back room, and miraculously returned with his day planner intact. Martinez was blown away. The clerk explained that the manager at the restaurant where he lost his planner was married to an airline employee. Once the manager saw the plane ticket tucked inside, he gave it to his wife, who brought it to the ticket counter.

A Journal is Worth Far More Than A Thousand Words

While Martinez struggled to find the practical, others, like Emily Wolman, have lost items of a more sentimental nature.

Wolman, a commissioning editor at Lonely Planet, was driving around New Zealand when she spotted a picture-perfect scene: beautiful striated rock formations with flat tops, called Pancake Rocks, stretching along the coastline. She pulled over and hopped out of the car to snap a few quick pictures. While walking back to her car only a few minutes later, she realized her backpack was missing.

“The bag contained my life—my wallet, passport, traveler’s checks, laptop, airline ticket home, and most important to me, my travel journal.”

After lingering in the area for longer than she originally planned, just hoping her bag would turn up, she decided to continue on her trip to Queenstown.

After spending a month in Queenstown, Wolman journeyed back the way she came, passing a police station in the town where her backpack was stolen. She pulled over, and thought she’d give one last try to finding her bag. She explained her situation to the policeman, who told her no bags had been turned in during the last month, but that she should come back in a day or two, just in case.

The policeman’s words ignited an ember of hope and Wolman put the brakes on her journey once again. She ventured to the station every morning, looking for word on her bag, but nothing had changed. Finally, she decided it was a lost cause. She was going to press on, but only after one more try.

Wolman stopped by the station with low expectations. She started to thank the officers, who had been kind to her during her search, when an officer suddenly reached into a cabinet and plunked her bag down on the counter. Despite being soaking wet, Wolman knew it was her long lost bag.

It seems as though Wolman’s backpack had gone on quite a journey of its own over the past month. The back-story behind the sopping wet backpack goes as follows: a father and son were fishing on a river 125 miles away when they spotted a bag floating by. They grabbed it, and upon noticing the passport inside, realized it was probably stolen. The pair took the bag to a local police station, where it was eventually reunited with Wolman.

Upon seeing her bag, she tore into it, and found it mostly intact. Her money was gone, but her passport, laptop, and airline ticket were still there, despite having some water damage. Wolman kept digging, looking for her travel journal, a green leather covered account of a yearlong journey. While the cover was warped, and the pages swollen, nearly every word was still impressed upon the page.

“I still wish I could find those two fishermen and thank them somehow.”

Reuniting and It Feels So Good

David Stone, a metal-detector enthusiast and creator of www.ilostmyjewelry.com, finds joy in reuniting others with lost possessions.

Nearly seven years ago, Stone, a former nature photographer, began scanning beaches with a metal detector as a way to relax. Among the bottle caps, old batteries, and miscellaneous coins, Stone began finding more precious items, like custom designed jewelry, platinum set diamond wedding rings, and dozens of men’s wedding bands.

Knowing many of these items had value far greater than their cost, Stone sought out to reunite them with their owners. He began contacting hotels surrounding the areas where he made his discoveries, but found most of them to be unhelpful, asking him to leave the jewelry with them in the hopes someone came looking for it.

Stone felt uncomfortable leaving such meaningful property with any hotel, knowing that many people who lost things on the beach would consider them gone forever and would not likely report them missing. He decided to take matters into his own hands and started leaving his business cards at nearby resorts, directing people who have lost items to his website. Once there people could scan through pictures of his recent finds, or submit a description of a lost item, along with a location of where it might be.

Stone has found jewelry in six different locations, ranging from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to St. Martin, and updates his website with information on his current whereabouts. He has already reunited dozens of vacationers with lost possessions, and hopes to continue helping others.

“You don’t often find people in this world who are concerned so much for others and take the time to help their sorrows,” said Lee Glowacki, who was reunited with his wedding band after Stone found it in the ocean behind a beach resort. “Thanks to David Stone a miracle has taken place.”

Photo Courtesy of David Stone

Tips for Effective Communication

Effective communication is essential to ones career growth. It includes both conveying messages clearly and receiving messages clearly from others. Communications skills help you when presenting a weekly report to your team, completing a sales call to a possible client, emailing your boss, or chatting with coworkers. Although each situation requires a unique approach, there are some general communication tips that apply to all types of audiences.

Tip #1: Know the topic you are discussing. If you are giving a speech to a large group of people, be sure you are familiar with the subject. Or if you are sending an email to your boss, be sure to understand what you are asking or discussing. Your audience can easily pick up on a lack of knowledge and will not value your communication if detected.

Tip #2: Know the audience. There is a big difference speaking to a work friend in the break room and discussing a deal with a customer. You want to adapt to the situation and match your communication to the level that is needed. Not to say you should change who you are but understand that what you know and do not know about the audience. Are they knowledgeable on the topic? Do they have cultural differences? What are their expectations from you? How much do they know about you? These are the types of questions you want to ask yourself before deciding on a communication technique.

Tip #3: Use the right communication channel. These include face to face, telephone, video conference, and written (email, letter, memo, etc). If you are discussing a confidential topic, you would want to be sure you use a method that reaches only a qualified audience. If you are reporting on a long, in depth subject, a phone call might not allow proper interaction. Maybe graphs or displays would work better in a face to face meeting.

Tip #4: Be to the point, positive, and polite. Do not ramble on about unnecessary information or personal references when they are not needed because the audience will become distracted. Reflect the news, even if bad news, in a positive light. If you begin speaking negatively, people tend to get their back up or become worried about the topic. They will then pay less attention to whatever else you have to discuss. And, always remember your manners, they go a long way. An audience will become more receptive if they are treated well and feel respected. Being rude will create an instant barrier that is tough to get through.

Tip #5: Listen. Communication is not just about you talking, it is receiving information and feedback from others. Whether you ask a question and the audience is answering, you send an email and the recipient I responding, or you are getting the opinion of others in a team meeting, be sure to listen fully. If you do not comprehend what they say, ask questions or for them to repeat it. Listening will help you clearly understand your audience so that they will clearly understand you.

Communication skills can be learned overtime through your experiences or you can take part in a communication skills training. Many businesses or organizations offer training to their employees or members so that they can present themselves effectively.

Creating a Memorable Tradeshow Or Event

Are you in charge of an event or tradeshow? Want your attendees to have more fun and provide you with great testimonies? Of course you do well the fastest way to learn anything or generate lasting memories is by creating Intense Emotional Associations (IEAs) with your event. So here are a few ideas that will create a lot of fun emotions and lasting memories try it with your next event or tradeshow.

Nowadays videos are all the rage and most people don’t mind posing for a video bite here and there. Assign a staff or two to take short videos, 1 minute or less, of the attendees and presenters having fun at the event. While they’re in this Intense Emotional Association (IEA) ask them to give a recommendation (sometimes referred to as a shout out or a sound bite) or testimony about the event, a workshop or a presenter, then ask if they would like a copy emailed to them, you know they all will.

By taking advantage of smartphones like G1, iphone, Blackberry, etc., you could upload the videos instantly and then blast emails to the individuals in the videos or even to all the attendees, if possible, if not, make it a priority right after the event. Twitvid.com is a great way to distribute your videos via twitter, however Youtube still the most popular either one is accessible via any smartphone.

The videos will be seen and as always shared with coworkers, attendees, family and friends so now your event grows virally, also these videos can be used for future marketing of events and can be placed on your website as well.

Podcasting your video, well not really, you can however strip or separate the audio from your video and boom! You now can upload the audio to all major podcast distributors like iTunes and it’s free.

Transcribe your video into articles, yep you heard me. Articles are a great way to increase awareness and buzz about your event or tradeshow. Some editing may be required but either way you have an article for almost no time. In some cases a video and the transcription could be on the same page.
Now you have successfully created lasting memories for everyone about your event, congratulations you’re a hero!

Items you might need: A smartphone with good video quality or a video camera, I use and recommend the Flip HD camera they’re inexpensive and very easy to use and have all the software built right in the camera. High-speed internet access and a site to upload your videos like Twitvid.com, Youtube.com or Kyte.com. A note pad for collecting emails.

Internal Hires, Referrals Were Most Hired in 2009

Wall Street Journal | By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Last year, employers filled more than half of job openings with existing employees, a new study to be released Friday shows.

Internal transfers and promotions accounted for an average of 51% of all full-time positions filled in 2009, down from 39% in 2008 and 34% in 2007, reports CareerXroads, a staffing-strategy consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J. Survey respondents included 41 companies that employ a combined 1.8 million U.S. workers. Last year these firms collectively filled 176,420 positions.

For the 49% of jobs that were filled with external recruits, referrals accounted for the most hires — 27% — and about the same number as in 2008. On average, these yielded one hire for every 15 referrals received. Meanwhile, company Web sites and job boards accounted for 22% and 13% of external hires, respectively.

What the findings indicate, says Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads, is that networking is the most effective strategy for landing employment. “Job seekers should use job board and corporate sites to find information about openings, but they should use their network to apply,” says Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads.

Among the job boards that respondents credited for netting outside talent, CareerBuilder.com came out on top, accounting for 42%, however one respondent claimed a significant portion of these. Monster.com netted 12% of external hires, while aggregate job sites, which advertise openings from multiple job boards, hooked 10%. Classifieds provider Craigslist.org accounted for 2.8% of external hires.

Survey respondents also said outside talent was found via job boards that specialize in advertising open positions in specific categories. For example, Dice.com, a job board for the technology sector, netted 0.8% of external hires, as did TheLadders.com, which lists only positions paying salaries of $100,000 or more. All other niche job sites that employers identified were collectively credited with bringing in 27% of external recruits.

Going forward, the survey found that 48% of respondents expect to increase hiring in 2010 compared with last year, while just 11% predicted they’d reduce hiring. The remainder said they expect to make no changes to their head counts.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported Thursday that there were 2.5 million job openings on the last business day of December 2009. The seasonally adjusted job openings rate increased just slightly to 1.9% from 1.8% the month prior.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Social Media

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers.

define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media utilization is believed to be a driving force in defining the current period as the Attention Age. A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

Social media have been modernized to reach consumers through the internet. Social media have become appealing to big and small businesses. Credible brands are utilizing social media to reach customers and to build or maintain reputation. As social media continue to grow, the ability to reach more consumers globally has also increased. Twitter, for example has expanded its global reach to Japan, Indonesia, and Mexico, among others. This means that brands are now able to advertise in multiple languages and therefore reach a broader range of consumers. Social media have become the new “tool” for effective business marketing and sales. Popular networking sites including Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are social media most commonly used for socialization and connecting friends, relatives, and employees.