How Does Facebook Benefit Small Businesses?

May 18, 2011 By 5 Comments

So online marketing services firm Constant Contact, who surveyed 1,572 small businesses about their use of social media during March and April, have discovered that 95 percent of small businesses regard Facebook as the social medium of choice for marketing compared to 60 percent who are using Twitter and a mere 45% who think YouTube is more important.

They also reported that 82 percent of small businesses surveyed said Facebook is the most successful social media platform for marketing, compared to 73 percent who are having success with video and only 47 percent with Twitter.

Finally, Constant Contact reported that small businesses were using social media as a complementary tool to other marketing efforts; notably web marketing (95%), email marketing (91%), print advertising (77%) and event marketing (53%).

Things that Make You Go Hmm

Now although I’m impressed by the figures for Facebook, the report wasn’t that useful to me because, as the story was reported by Media Post, it gave me no idea how businesses are actually using Facebook.

How does it work if 95 percent say it’s so important? Go on, help me understand. I want case studies, examples of small businesses (particularly in the B2B) space that are rocking on Facebook.

Surely social media is it a platform for idle chit chat? Facilitating conversations with clients and prospects ? Or a place to entertain and drive traffic to “proper” landing pages elsewhere? [Read more...]

Filed Under: marketing, social media, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

10 Reasons to Buck the Trend and Not Have a Business Facebook Page

July 29, 2010 By 51 Comments

mulder - scully - facebook

Mulder & Scully possibly suspicious of Facebook


We don’t have a Facebook Page at Jontus Media. And as it stands we’re not likely to, to be honest.

It’s not that I don’t think they’re worthwhile or important for business use –especially in the B2B sector. I’ve first hand experience running a couple of Pages for businesses and I’ve actually found them very successful community building (ok, lets be honest: marketing) tools.

Still, I think there are good reasons to avoid them like the plague. So in true devil’s advocate fashion, as is my want, without further ado here are my 10 reasons for you to buck the trend and not have a Business Facebook Page.

Give it a miss if:

1) You’re a small business that doesn’t have the manpower to juggle a blog, a Twitter account AND a FB Page.

2) You don’t want to spread yourself too thinly across social media sites. Better to engage 100% on Twitter and your blog, rather than try and cram in yet another social media channel.

3) You don’t fancy putting a widget on your website inviting people to join your Facebook Page – like 50 other companies with only 9 fans.

4) You don’t like Facebook’s privacy policies and the speed at which they change them without telling you.

5) You figure there’s not that much marketing value in putting your efforts into getting people to simply “Like” your brand. It’s not like people really want to hang out and get to know you. Unless you’re a really sexy brand, that is. [Read more...]

Filed Under: social media Tagged With: , ,

Is Formspring.me on Your Radar?

May 5, 2010 By 1 Comment

Check out my podcast on Formspring.me and Business Users

Are you on Formspring.me yet? Have you even heard of it?

I admit that I hadn’t until I listened to this week’s brilliant Twist Image podcast with Mitch Joel and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Within a day of installing it on a client’s site however I realised how massive this particular social media service could be. The “Ask us anything” invitation is a brilliant call-to-action, designed to engage.

Getting Users to Interact

I installed the Formspring’s widget on a client’s website to see what response we’d get. They’re a school who moved to social media marketing this academic marketing after they approached me to help them recruit new students.

Facebook, blogging and Twitter have really helped in building a community. But just one day of Formspring.me resulted in 15 questions that told me a lot about the concerns of 16-year old prospective senior high school students.

Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet formspring.me

Are you using Formspring.me?


Unlike a forum, this is easy to use and you can connect it to your Twitter or Facebook account to pipe out the questions to other channels. Students (customers?) can ask whatever they want.

Sure, I can see that some people will abuse the service and perhaps ask inappropriate questions and be vulgar and obnoxious because they can hide under the veil of anonymity. But this is also an incredibly useful way to get instant feedback on what your community is thinking.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: marketing, software Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Avoid Business Blogging Burnout – Guaranteed!

March 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

business blogging burnout

Content marketing gone to sleep?

If your online content marketing strategy relies on a daily blogging, you need to be wary of business blogging burnout and feeling blogged out.

Business blogging burnout – or crippling writers block – hits most corporate bloggers from time to time. Especially if you’re working under a strict publishing schedule that requires you to update 5 days a week like many corporate bloggers.

In many companies I see a tendency for one or two people from the marketing or communications department to be handed the responsibility for business blogging. This is ideal because it’s better to have a team of bloggers: a team is much more likely to be able to cope with the rigours of a daily and intense blog marketing schedule. It’s easier to bounce ideas off each other, suggest posts that can be covered, and keep the quality of posts high.

Business blogging that regurgitates the same material or lack vibrancy is much more likely to scare an audience away (or fail to convert traffic into buyers).

Business Blogging and Outsourcing

If you’re a small business or work alone one way of making sure you don’t suffer from blog burnout is to outsource a couple of posts each week.

Outsourcing business blog content is actually quite popular and not too expensive. Just check Elance.

Whilst outsourcing your content marketing to a ghost-blogger might take the pressure off you to create fresh content, be wary of demanding too much content. It’s far better to get one or two really excellent posts, say, than five mediocre ones.

5 Ways to Avoid Business Blogging Burnout

1. If you’re working alone for an employer, suggest bringing in someone in either in-house or by hiring another blogger to take some of the pressure off you least one day a week.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, content marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to Optimize Your Facebook Fan Page for Business

March 8, 2010 By 119 Comments

With Facebook the third biggest country in the world, it’s likely that you’ve thought of setting up a Facebook Fan Page for your business – if you haven’t done so already!

Is your business on Facebook?

The trouble is just going out there and starting a Facebook Fan Page because “everyone’s doing it” isn’t a good enough strategy to start with. From a business point of view you need to think about how it will help you reach your business goals.

When talking to clients a few key goals come up time and again which can be summarised with the following statement: We want to get into Facebook to:

  • “build community”
  • “give our business a personal, less anonymous touch”
  • “drive traffic to our website”
  • “sell more stuff”

and so on.

Given Facebook’s Terms of Use, you can’t use Facebook Fan Pages to sell directly (yet!) so let’s examine the other categories for the purpose of this post.

Building a Community Around Your Business with Facebook

[Read more...]

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Is Your Business Social?

February 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

smug fellow

Are you smug about your social media efforts?

With all the talk of social media in recent months a lot of companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon in an attempt to kick their online marketing and communications into the twenty-first century.

Maybe your business is like this?

You know: you’ve got a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account; you’re maybe posting pictures to Flickr, and monitoring realtime streams for mentions of your brand.

Trouble is: Just having the gear, doesn’t make you the belle of the ball. The tools per se don’t make you social: it’s what you do with them.

Successful online marketing with social media is about your mindset, and the communications strategy you use!

10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Business

Do you:

  • never answer questions on Twitter just to be helpful?
  • forget to respond to comments on your Facebook Fan Page the same day they’re posted?
  • find yourself erasing the comments that don’t make you look good?
  • conveniently forget to be honest when you mess up in public?
  • police every move your people make on social media?
  • always – bottom line – focus on selling more stuff
  • jump in with social media tools before thinking about your communication goals and desired outcomes?
  • forget to measure success and failure and fail to learn from it?
  • feel insecure when promoting other people’s services and products online?
  • never bother to look for new and emerging channels ?

Bonus Question?

  • Do you think you’ve got social media totally nailed?

So what about you?

If you’re answering YES to lots of these, you might want to think again about your online marketing and communications strategy.

Maybe you’re missing the point. Or maybe you’re not quite seeing the return on investment (ROI) you thought you’d be getting once your business went social.

Go on: take another look at your online marketing and how you’re using tools like Facebook, corporate blogs, Twitter and so on. Is your business really social ?

Image:FlickrCC

Filed Under: communication strategy, marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,