Social networking platforms build buzz, boost business and serve small businesses as low-cost/no-cost marketing tools. Small business owners need to understand how these tools strategically serve and support small business first so they best implement social media strategies to sell products and/or services.

Social Media, simply put, serves users and organizations in marketing in three ways:

1. Communication

Marketing is all about building relationships — relationships start with communication. New web tools like blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning), podcasting (BlogTalkRadio), video distribution (YouTube), event coordination tools (Meetup), wikis (Wikipedia) photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), and product review sites (epinions.com) allow small businesses to communicate, educate and share information directly with their current and prospective customers.

Content in the form of blog posts, audio, video, comparison/review sites, tweets and social network messages help share information in a less-formal way that builds the know, like and trust factors that influence decision making. Content is no longer just text. Small businesses can use audio or visual content for a “show me” and “tell me” to make communications a pack more interactive punch.

Social media’s direct communication distinction serves and supports small business as it brings the people you want to attract directly to you and makes direct communication possible. Social Media makes communication a conversation so small business owners can share, receive feedback and connect on equal ground with their target markets.

2. Collaboration

When small businesses empower their target consumers, they feel powerful. When your target market feels powerful, it trusts you, buys from you, and stays with you. Social networking collaboration transforms consumers into “prosumers”. In an era of social media prosumers, it’s people (not companies) who make, shape, or break purchase patterns.

Small businesses can ignite collaboration for marketing by creating their own communities and/or joining communities. By doing so, they can listen and connect to their target customers and build a free forum to bring their market together. Collaboration = Marketing Acceleration.

Social networking collaboration tools like review sites, video sharing sites, blogs, wikis and more allow users to self-serve, collaborate, and potentially serve as an endorser for your small business. Social media works as a marketing tool because people are more likely to trust peers rather than companies.

The power of mass collaboration serves and supports small business owners in a distinct way. Tapping/creating valuable collaborative options can bring people together to share ideas, exchange information, and help each other — and support relationship growth. Removing the “company/client” disconnect can break down elitism and boost marketing mind power.

3. Entertainment

The most important reason that social networking works as a marketing tool is simple — because it’s fun. People want to go where they feel they belong, have a voice, are listened to, and enjoy themselves. Small business owners need to be where their target markets are — and these days, the masses are on Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Linkedin, Photobucket, YouTube and more because it has entertainment value.

Remember the Will It Blend? campaigns by Blendtec? They were a perfect example of social media marketing in brilliant action. Videos were relevant as they showed the product, were entertaining (they blended an iPhone!), and they were viral! People could easily share the fun with friends due to the ease of social media sharing widgets.

You can’t put a dollar amount on free promotion. The way social media stores data as an “Interactive Rolodex” also has an entertainment factor. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming the “new databases” because they are fast, easy, and fun. People are more likely to update their Facebook and LinkedIn information than a sterile address book because it is fun.

Small business owners use social media’s entertainment factor to build their online database of contacts and connections, be visible to prospective customers, and get the word out in creative ways like YouTube videos, blog posts, images, podcasts to make people smile and spread the word.

How Social Networking Helps Small Businesses Sell

Social Media Marketing helps most small businesses boost sales indirectly by increasing relationships. Understanding that social media marketing serves users for communication, collaboration, and entertainment is the first step to considering how to strategically implement the multitude of social media marketing tools and choose the ones that work best for your unique organization.

The key thing that small businesses need to remember when using social media to help sell is that efforts must have value. There has to be value to your content, community, and execution to get people to engage with you or your organization. Social media doesn’t sell things — people sell things. Engaging in social media marketing starts the relationship-building process. Start small and snowball. Social media takes understanding, passion, effort, and commitment to make it work. Give your small business an authentic voice with social media and commit to providing value and you will be off to a smart start.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lorrie_Thomas

Working in the usual office setup is the usual scenario to maintain a job and earn a living. But if you want to have a break from your usual nine to five grind, then it is high time to look for options to make money. Here are some online home business ideas that you can try today.

Offer professional services online. Starting an online business at home does not mean that you will completely abandon what you have used to do in the office. The only difference in this situation is for you to present yourself as someone who can do this for your clients instead of doing this for your immediate supervisor. So if you write articles for websites, then you can offer professional article writing service. If coming up with best viral marketing video is your thing, why not offer these to company website owners or internet marketers instead? These are just examples of best online business ideas that you can start today using the same type of work that you have been doing through the years. All you need to do is to create your own website and promote this to get your initial roster of clients.

If you really want to have a complete career change as you create your home business, why not pursue a passion that you have already missed doing in the past? If you really love baking but are not doing it because of rushing to the office everyday, then this is the perfect time to push your baking skills to make money. Also if drawing caricatures makes you happy throughout the day, why not start coming up with samples so you can offer your passion for profit? If that is the case, you just have to prepare your digital camera so you can take pictures of your products to be posted on your website. If you are going to sell your caricatures, you can make a quick video on how you draw some basic ones to share on your site. You can even use these short demo videos to initially build traffic to your website.

Do you want more online home business ideas to consider? You can also try your hand at selling your pre loved goodies on auction sites. If you have organized garage sales before then this is something that you are comfortable doing online as well. Grab some boxes and place those pre loved items that you will sell online. This business hits two goals, that is to clear your house of excess items as well as turning these ones into additional income for your family.

Getting yourself in trying affiliate marketing is another option to make money online. You just have to find some products that you can sell online. These are mostly digital products as opposed to the physical goodies that you will sell on auction sites. No need for you to take care of shipping if you are going to offer these digital products to your customers like electronic books, guides and tutorials to name a few.

Lastly, you can also post about your everyday ideas and make money in the process. You can set up a blog using WordPress, Blogger and Site Build It and then start posting away. If you want to have a central theme on your blog, you can use free keyword tools to research on the specific topic that you want to cover. If you want to talk about general topics that’s fine as well. This is also the best time to learn about some seo techniques so you can promote your website and get more visitors. You can then sell a space on your blog to promote a product that is somewhat related on your site’s topic. For example, if you have a beauty blog, then you can sell ad space to online cosmetic companies for additional income.

These are just five online home business ideas that you can try today. There are some where you can carry over your usual office task to get started while there are some that need you to discover your previous passion to make money. But if you are going to really focus your attention and efforts to it, then you can definitely rely on this to make a sustained income for your family while you are just a chair away from them.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Reed_Slidell

For businesses serving their local market, life has gotten easier. At least that’s the case for those savvy enough to take advantage of the huge marketing gift Google has offered them.

What’s remarkable is the fact that Google has created pages not just for those businesses who already have web sites, but for millions of businesses who don’t.

The trick though is to “Claim” them, and once claimed to get them to appear on the Google 7 pack within your local market place.

Claiming is easy, but to stay on top of the local market you need to take several additional steps. First you must fill out your information as completely as possible.

In addition, you will need to accumulate citations from other sources and get reviews if you are to maintain a top billing. In the near term, for most businesses, the initial challenge is to get their forms to the 100% complete criteria. Since less than 3% of all Google pages have been claimed so far, you can discover yourself on the first page of Google already, or if not, significantly increase your chances merely by claiming the site.

But as more and more businesses learn the ropes, it appears that those who do the best job of completing the form will be ranked higher than those who only do a partial job.

If you just do the basics, company name, street address, city town, state and zip, plus your main phone you will get credit for 40% of completion. Adding your website and email address will add another 15%. If you don’t have a web site, you can set up a Squidoo page or even a Facebook fan page and use that.

The website spot is worth 10% so it’s important to get a web address of some sort. It’s estimated that even today, as many as 50% of small businesses do not have a web site. That will soon change.

Putting in any type of description of your business will add 5%. But don’t just put in something to get the 5%. Let your prospective customers know what you can do for them. Remember we are doing this to attract customers.

Next be sure to add hours of operations. At first I didn’t because I am kind of a 24/7 operation, working from home as I do. Google allows you to not list any times, but you will get 5% for filling out your hours. And another 5% for toggling any of the payment options.

All of this is pretty straight forward, but what Google loves to see are pictures and videos. They have space for 10 pictures and they want you to use all ten slots to get full credit. So get out your digital camera and take pictures of your logo, your front door, yourself, your staff, your product, yourself at work, your cat or dog or what ever. Clearly the more business and value related these pics are the better they will sell your prospective customers.

Don’t think these need to be studio portraits done by a professional. But that said the better the image the better the impression. This rule is also true for the last big hurdle for many businesses which is the video. At this time it appears that you only need to put up one video to get full credit. This can be as simple as a quick video with you digital camera or phone to a power point presentation outlining the key reasons to do business with you.

Finally, there is a place for additional details. Putting in a one line statement here will add a final 6% to your completion score.

Your first objective is to claim the site. The second is to fill out the form completely, third is to go back and improve the quality of the content. Once done, you will have a Google Places Site that will show off you business properly.

Your Google Places listing is the new Yellow Pages, and you want your listing to be accurate and persuasive. In the near term, this may be all you need to benefit from a first page listing in your market niche in your community. In the future you will need to do more to hang on to that spot, but we will talk about that in future posts.

Now before I leave, let me share with you one more benefit you probably didn’t realize. By setting up a Google Places Page, you have leapfrogged many other competitors of yours who have web pages but are not set up for Mobile phones.

Half of internet traffic is likely to be from mobile devices in 2011 and not traditional computers. Your Google Places page is set up to show up properly on people cell phones, which will give you access to this rapidly growing class of customers. Most of your competitors, even those with big classy websites are probably not set up to be seen properly on cell phones. That’s a real advantage to those who are wise enough to take quick action and get themselves seen.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Earl_Netwal

You’ve got your idea in place, you have done all the paperwork and your new business is launched. So what do you do to get it promoted to the world? This article will present three quick marketing techniques. These strategies apply whether you are a brick and mortar business at the local mall or a home based business. The power of the internet works as an equal opportunity employer.

Number 1 – Social Networking This is probably the simplest and the most familiar. We all know the power of referrals. Use your Facebook account to introduce your business to your world. Now you don’t want to come out and be a blatant advertisement. Start a conversation with a close friend about your excitement of starting your own business. Allow the conversation to evolve including products or services that you provide.

While in Facebook, accumulate more friends and join groups of like minded individuals. Join as many groups as you have interests which would include business or personal or maybe environmental. Start connecting with people outside your own social circle.

Number 2- ads While you are starting your business, your budget may be squeezed a little bit tight. If this is the case, there are many places to advertise for free. Craigslist is one of them, but you need to be very careful and examine all of their rules. There are other sites such as USFreeAds, InetGiant and more. As your business grows, you can then expand your Ads into paid ads. Take the time to look at Google AdWords. You may not be ready at this point, but it is an area that eventually you will want to incorporate into your advertising strategy and budget.

Number 3 – video marketing We all love to watch the videos on YouTube. Why not use that for your own business? If you are a little bit of a ham, video marketing will come easily. You may think that what you recording is goofy, but go for it. Try doing a search on Google for a product or service. The chances are great that on the first page of the Google search, there will be some sort of video. Videos rank very high in the search engines.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Burger