Social Marketing Predictions for Small Business in 2015
Social Media is the most common activity on the Web today, with the average user spending 37 minutes per day on social networks. The reach of the Internet is moving more and more to mobile devices, including wearables (like, smartwatches) and other smart devices (like, thermostats, refrigerators and cars!). More businesses than ever are embracing Social Media to market their business and this means that your business needs to compete there too. 2015 is going to be the year that Mobile Commerce sprints ahead of many other kinds of commerce, but that’s not the only thing you need to be concerned about. Want to learn what they are? Then, join us for our last Webinar of 2014 as we discuss the trends and social marketing predictions to help you plan next year’s Social Media marketing.
This Webinar, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, was presented by me, Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained, and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should attend?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
There’s a new breed of domains cropping up on the Small Business scene. They are becoming vital for local and hyperlocal business owners who want to (and in some cases must) command a brand presence online. If you’re online for any amount of your business day checking email, updating your Facebook Page Timeline, ordering supplies or checking out the competition on Google, you undoubtedly see these domains frequently. You likely recognize the big brands by theirs: nyti.ms, chil.is, youtu.be, abc.tv, n.pr, among many others. They are called short URL’s (a/k/a “tiny URL’s,” “short links,” or “shortened URL’s”) and they’re providing several powerful components in your Web presence marketing arsenal that I wish to discuss: what they are, why brand them, how to get important business information from them, and how to create short URL’s.
What is a Short URL?
A short URL is simply a hyperlink that takes your full URL (e.g., my last blog post’s URL (i.e., Web address), https://w3cinc.com/2014/08/making-time-managing-social-media-small-business/) and shrinks it to a shorter URL (which is http://w.w3cinc.com/1ux6TJZ). Most browsers cap the length of a URL to about 2,000 characters, and with the proliferation of Web services today, they continue to increase the character length for the needed functionality of their tools. Google’s own blogs range from about 59 to 90 characters in their Web addresses, and you should shoot for around 60-70 characters in length for business’ blog and Web page URL’s. That doesn’t solve many many challenges associated with having a long URL, but it is a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practice. However, the earliest URL shorteners were created to solve a practical problem. When you share long links that are typically greater than 40-150 characters in length they get broken by email, Webmail and mobile email applications. As well, when Twitter came onto the scene with their 140-character-length restriction for tweets, there was a renewed purpose for short URL’s. Now, short URL’s certainly aren’t new in a chronological sense, but they have come a long way since they were first created. More uses (and domain options) have come to be, which has lead to a Small Business opportunity to differentiate and stand out above the competition.
Why brand your Short URL?
There are several good reasons to brand your short URL. I have chosen to go with branding my short URL as w.w3cinc.com. Because I control my own domain, w3cinc.com, I can change my short URL by redirecting all those shortened URL’s to another domain in the future without hindrance. There are many services that provide generic URL shortening such as goo.gl (by Google), tinyurl.com, and ow.ly (by Hootsuite). If I were using a generic URL shortener, if they shut down or decide to delete a short URL, I could lose the long-term effect of a link I published weeks, months or years ago. So, beyond longevity of the links, branded short URL’s (“vanity URL’s”) build rapport with your target audience and exposes your business’ domain, even if you’re sharing content not on your website. Also, if your target audience trusts you, they will be more likely to click on the vanity URL you share over a generic, short URL. For example, if you see a tweet,
21 Steps to Developing the Best Web Marketing Strategy | http://ow.ly/123456
and you see this tweet,
21 Steps to Developing the Best Web Marketing Strategy | http://w.w3cinc.com/webstrategy
next to it, which would you be more likely to click? I am going to make the educated guess that the second would be more trustworthy and appealing. I have seen our clicks increase by a good 20-30% when compared against generic short URL’s when sharing on social networks for W3 Consulting. Vanity URL’s provide you with brand security, greater brand exposure, and more clicks.
Why track Short URL data?
As I said in my post about QR code strategy, data is power on the Web today. And, there are whole heaps of data you can collect with short URL’s. Of course, for the reasons I stated above, I recommend a vanity URL but a generic URL shortener will give you some or all of the data you want to be collecting. The better and more data you collect from a variety of Web, Mobile and Social Media activities, the better business decisions you will be able to make. I know it sounds pretty basic, but there’s a huge amount of technological complexity that has been synthesized with these tools to make your business decisions easy. All you need to do is capture the raw data in these tools. One example of how collecting data can drive better business decisions is a commonplace issue I see with businesses advertising online. When faced with focusing their searches to make better use of their adspend they frequently don’t look at the organic traffic they are sharing out there in Social Media and via email newsletters and other sharing activities. There is data, like the how many times do your blog post links sent to Twitter get clicked (and when), where are those visitors to your blog coming from (geographically, via which social network), and who is the greatest influencer/syndicator of your posts.
How to Create a Branded, Short URL
I recommend that you peruse your business and sales operations manual. Where in the processes do you frequently have to refer to information for your company? If the answer is not frequently, you’re likely missing a sales opportunity every time you’re on the phone or emailing with a potential client. If the answer is frequently, how often are you directing them to your website versus promising yet another email with attachments of marketing collateral? These are opportunities where you can create standard subdomain (subdomain.yourbusinessdomain.com) and subdirectory (yourbusinessdomain.com/subdirectory) forwards to your website or materials you can post on your website for ease of referring and access. Therefore, one way to create branded short URL’s is to employ subdomains and subdirectory forwards. This is a manual process and quite tedious, but there are several reasons why you might do so. One is if you have only one or two items for which you are always referring clients to on your website. Another is if you have a really short website address to begin with and the subdomain or subdirectory is also short. And, finally, if you handle a lot of phone conversations with your customers on a regular basis and want to streamline the process, or even reduce phone calls with these kinds of links.
If you self-host the WordPress content management system (CMS), you have the capacity to install a plugin that lets you create your own branded, short URL’s from your own website (named eponymously “Short URL“). While this might prove generally impractical and not create the shortest Web address, it does have some pretty useful applications.
And then there are tools for creating short URL’s such as Bitly.com. Here is a quick overview of how you can setup Bitly to handle your short URL’s while branding them at the same time (so you control the links should you ever leave Bitly, of course).
1. Go to bitly.com and signup for a free account.
2. Register a branded, short domain with your domain registrar of choice. Or, you can create a subdomain as we have done with w.w3cinc.com; you can seek instructions from your current domain registrar.
3. Under the “Advanced” tab, you will see instructions for setting up your branded short domain in Bitly.com.
Now, you can share and collect the data for all of your Web, printed and electronic communications easily for your Small Business. How might you use your new branded, short URL?
Email is a powerful communication tool when used effectively in a Small Business environment. And, Social Media is touted as the primary community-building tool on the Web. Well, email is just as powerful, and you guessed it, Google gives you the tools to build an email community using its product, Google Groups. We will provide an overview of the Google Groups tool and then cover the practical steps in creating an email community and maintaining it for your business!
This Webinar, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, will be presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained, and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should attend?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
It’s tough to think about a world that existed before Social Media, because it seems so pervasive in most people’s’ lives today. However, there was a time when Social Media was a handshake and smile, and not a Web or digital tool was involved in connecting two or more people. Since those days are long gone, we have to cope with the new digital deluge and find ways to practice safe and sane Social Media time management. Since this is one of the most oft-asked questions from my audiences at seminars and workshops, I thought I’d round-up a strategy and the best tools I’ve found for making time and managing Social Media in Small Business.
Keep Ahead of Social Media Trends
If you’re a child of the 80’s then Social Media is the fashion equivalent of wigwam socks for the modern-day business marketer. (If you’re a child of the 70’s, we’re talking about Daisy Dukes. And, for the 60’s, well, that’d be a tie for platform shoes and bell-bottoms. But, I digress.) For every generation there are many trends and in the Digital Age, trendsetting is hyperactive with new websites, Web tools and online services launching daily. To keep track, you have two options that readily come to mind.
One strategy is to set up a blog/RSS feed reader. This is a tool that lets you curate the blogs that are publishing the most pertinent content about Social Media (or any other kind of marketing on the Web and beyond) and capturing them all in one tool. This is really saves time so that you only have to check your RSS reader daily, or weekly, instead of going to 50+ websites to see if they’ve published anything new. So, you can stay abreast of all the important social trends all in one place. While there are many options of readers, I really like the combination of Feedly and Pocket. You subscribe to blogs you want to follow in Feedly and save them to Pocket, say, every Friday afternoon, then you on Monday morning you can review all the articles you saved to Pocket. Some you will want to share with others, some you’ll want to tag with keywords and save for reference and easy retrieval later; Pocket is the best person for the job here.
Also, we will be re-launching our email newsletter, soon which will be a “best in class” update on all things marketing and operations via your website, email, Social Media and blogging, online/social advertising, mobile and more. We’re really excited about the email newsletter re-launch, so if you’re not already a subscriber join now and await the first email coming in the next week or so. Basically, we will be doing all the work of reading all the blogs, email newsletters, resources and eBooks galore and condensing it down to the most important few (with our insights) to share with you on a weekly basis. Not bad, eh?
Develop a Social Media Strategy
The next logical step in managing your time on Social Media is developing a strategy that works for your business. As this topic could be dozens of blog posts by itself, I’m going to go over the fundamentals using my simple and effective Social Media Strategy Framework (pictured below).
For your Social Media strategy to work, it requires four elements to creating an online community: giving (Listen), taking (Speak), a sense of belonging (Connect), and tracking engagement (Measure). To begin the Listen phase of any Social Media strategy means that you are looking for conversations that your target audience is having already. Go to their places and talk to them; you’re giving content , advice and time to those blogs, social networks and people (through posting comments and interacting in their conversations). Note, that once you follow the diagram above back to Listen, now you’re reading the comments on your own blog and engaging with your audience there as well.
Next, you Speak by publishing great content on your blog and disseminating that to social networks, your email audience and more. We will talk about how to do that efficiently in the next section. But, this Speak phase is really about setting the tone for your brand, tell your story, and communicating your core value through competent, helpful and positive advice for your readers, or listeners (podcasts) or watchers (video blogs, or vlogs).
Following Speak, we have the Connect phase of the framework and this encompasses strengthening the bonds that you have established. This could take the form of introducing members of disparate groups to one another; perhaps you know the owner of a nail salon and the proprietor of a hair salon and spa, that you can connect so that they can refer their customers to one another. Do this proudly via Twitter or another publicly appropriate social network, then take it offline and make the “real” connection. The stronger the bonds, the stronger the web that supports your community.
Finally, you have the Measure phase, which is there because it’s all online and almost everything can be tracked. For most Small Business owners, start and grow with Google Analytics; it’s free, it helps you track all the largest pieces of the Web marketing (Web, Mobile, Email, Advertising and Social Media) in a centralized dashboard. There are many other tools that you will come across along the way that help you learn more about the effect you’re having on your target audience engagement through your Social Media work. This information will guide you well, but remember that the true guiding force for your Social Media strategy is sales. If your website is getting traffic, your blogging effectively and disseminating it outward to your audience, you should be seeing sales increasing. If not, blame not Social Media. You likely have a hole in your sales process–website navigation, poor Web copy, not enough blog deep links, or engaging in the wrong social networks. Patch those holes and let the sales flow!
Editorial Calendar for Greater Content Production
No Social Media time management article is complete without talk of an Editorial Calendar. In journalism, writers, editors and publishers live and die by the deadline. And, so should your blog and Social Media publishing! Review several of your industry competitors’ blogs and see how often they post: daily, weekly, monthly or less often? Now, once you’ve surmised what an average number of posts you’ll need to produce annually, you can start with a paper calendar and block out the general periods of your professional calendar. Is there a “busy season” in your year? When are your sales highest (check with your accountant/bookkeeper if you don’t know)? Break your year down into smaller units (“themes”) however it makes sense for your business. Thereafter, send those themes around to your staff and ask them to assemble a list of blog, ebook, white paper or other resource topics for each of the themes; this is individual brainstorming is best (and not in a group setting). If everyone gave their all, you will have an overflowing bucket of topics for your editorial calendar. Finally, you will need to assign who will be writing the content, editing, publishing and disseminating those blog links to social networks.
Thankfully, there are several tools out there to really help with managing an editorial calendar:
Google Calendar – this amazingly elegant and no-cost, and has the ability for you to make an editorial calendar so you can track themes, topics, deadlines and responsible parties all within Google Calendar. It offers color-coding, multiple calendar sharing, notes, powerful search, and access on desktop/Web as well as via mobile.
EditFlow – if you’re using WordPress as your website/blog hosting platform, EditFlow is a handy, no-cost plugin that helps manage the content-side management of your blog. This tool also really helps with the people involved in putting the content together from the initial topic ideas to drafts to the redacted versions scheduled to be published.
Buffer – This handy app helps you curate (by drafting the who tweet-sized messages for you!) and schedule posts to your major social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook). It learns from your posts when the best times are to post and adjusts to post them when more of your audience is clicking on things. Very smart tool!
HootSuite – As the granddaddy of social sharing tools, HootSuite has the greatest number of social networks that it can manage. Also, if you have a larger team, HootSuite is definitely the way to go since it manages a distributed workforce very well.
Pay Attention After Publishing
One area that can really take up a great deal of time is paying attention to all the conversations about your company, brand, products, services and your blog articles. When the conversation is happening on your website/blog, I really recommend that you sign up for Disqus (pronounced dy-skuhs, as in the word “discuss”), a social commentary profile, system and dashboard. There’s also an amazing WordPress plugin, Disqus Comment System, that helps you integrate Disqus into your blog so it manages the commenting on your blog seamlessly. Now, when you make a comment on someone else’s blog that also uses Disqus, it captures that comment also in your Disqus ecosystem and helps you track when replies happen to the comments and so forth. Very handy! If you like more email, there’s a spiffy competitor to Disqus called Livefyre and their WordPress plugin equivalent is Livefyre Comments 3. It notifies you via email when new comments happen and lets you respond to those comments via email, which it then posts as a blog comment reply. (This can be handy if you’re not at your office often and need to manage on the road.)
So, that’s for when the blogs are neatly happening on your blog/website. What about the conversations happening everywhere else on the Web? That’s where good, old-fashioned Google Alerts comes in handy. This no-cost solution built by Google notifies you of search criteria that you set up and emails you when the search criteria is met. (You can also try Google Alerts’s competitor, TalkWalker Alerts.) So, for example, I have a search set up something like this…
w3consulting AND “W3 Consulting” AND “W3 Consulting” AND “Web and Beyond” -site:w3cinc.com -site:w3.org
This Advanced Search string in Google Alerts tells Google to send me an email (or I can subscribe to an RSS feed in my Feedly account from above) to anything on the Web that matches conversations talking about my company, tagline and brand. Now, set up these same kinds of searches for your products, services and combinations that include your name and company name to catch any of those conversations happening about you and your products/services. What would take hours is now automagically gathered together for you!
Synthesize the Analytics
After all this blogging and commenting, you’re going to have a plethora of data from Google Analytics, your website/blog, Buffer, HootSuite, Disqus or Livefyre, Google Alerts and more! One way to streamline this is to use a URL shortener (which I’ll be covering in-depth in an upcoming post) so that you can have all the various tools I’ve just mentioned capture all that data into Google Analytics where appropriate. This takes some know-how that searching the Help articles on all the tools listed will explain, and taking an afternoon to set it all up. Thereafter, though, you will save in compound dividends of time! Once all your Social Media traffic clicks and engagement metrics are run through Google Analytics, you need only look there to start to understand what is working, and what isn’t. And, what I love most about Google Analytics, is that you can customize a master report that is emailed to you every week or month (to whoever in your company needs to see it). Once you’ve done the setup, all the synthesizing work is done for you and delivered to your inbox. Business decisions become faster and sounder.
There’s no question that Social Media takes time, and time is your most important commodity in Small Business. But, the world has changed and Social Media is one of the best ways to reach your target audience, understand your business and grow your sales. So, if you keep track of the Social Media trends, develop a strong, consistent strategy, master your Editorial Calendar for producing great content, and then pay attention to the conversations and the measurements, you will not only minimize time spent on Social Media but increase your business’ sales too!
As early as the 3rd century CE, there is evidence of the existence and use of the mind map–visual representations of connected thoughts. Mind maps utilize multiple parts of your brain and that means you’re building mental muscles that will help in every part of your business. Mind maps can be used for brainstorming, memorizing, teaching, and problem-solving. And, in this archived Web presentation, we focus on the benefits of mindmapping on the Web for Small Business brainstorming and problem-solving purposes. We discuss mind map techniques, the business benefits, and tools you can use.
[Note: for purposes of this Webinar, we use “mind map” as a noun and “mindmap” as verb.]
This Webinar, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, will be presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained (available in paperback and ebook versions), and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should watch?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
nonprofit executive directors and board members
If you do decide to start mindmapping on the Web, let us know and we can offer suggestions and recommendations on your technique. Just comment here or tweet @w3consulting on Twitter. Happy mindmapping on the Web!
Project management is about making sure that a goal is reached. What a “goal” and what the outcome is typically handed to a project manager, yet that’s not really the case with Small Business. As a business owner, you have to decide on what your business’ goal is and when you have reached the outcome. And, for most of business owners, you weren’t trained as project managers before you started your businesses. Thankfully, with a little training and some great Web technology available, you can become a decent project manager so that you can get more done in your business and handle more work than you thought you could–with calm and a stress-free perspective! In this hour-long Web presentation, we walk you through the basics of project management on the Web and then discuss several tools that you can use to better manage business- and client-based projects of any kind.
This archived Webinar recording, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, was presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained, and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should watch?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
Google’s mission is to make all the world’s information both “useful and accessible.” And, wow! have they certainly done that with much of the information on our planet. However, it’s sometimes a daunting task to find just the right business information when you confront Google’s sparse Google Search home screen with that blinking cursor. Enter Virginia’s resident Google-ologist to save the day! Google provides you with many advanced Google search techniques that with the right mindset and a few instructions, you can find your way ahead of the competition in both business insights and professional knowledge. Join us for this Google-enlightening session!
This Webinar, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, will be presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained, and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should watch?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
The Social Media Revolution started nearly 20 years ago! But, hands down the Social Web couldn’t have developed so quickly in the mainstream without the proliferation of the “blog.” And there’s no other blogging service out there that hasn’t had as large an impact on blogging as Blogger. In this Webinar, you will be taken through the start of a blog and working behind the scenes to get your blog running smoothly and found by your target audience. We’ll also discuss briefly Blogger’s sister service, Feedburner, a tool to help Small Business bloggers manage subscribers to your blog’s RSS feed.
This Webinar, as part of the Beyond Google: Marketing and Managing on the Web series from Virginia SBDC, presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Web & Mobile Strategist, author of SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Web Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained, and President of W3 Consulting, a digital business strategy and training firm helping business owners learn why and how to use Web, mobile and digital technologies for greater marketing and management impact.
Who should watch?
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, and solopreneurs
Office/sales/customer service managers, marketing directors, executives and professionals
Administrative/executive assistants and sales/account representatives
We’re excited to announce that Ray Sidney-Smith has published his first book, SoLoMo Success: Social Media, Local and Mobile Small Business Marketing Strategy Explained! Available now on Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook, along with paperback and audiobook versions due out in late summer 2014! Ray will be using this first ebook to test some approaches to digital publishing, by providing updates to the book for the next year so stay tuned to our Google+ page as we announce new versions that you should be able to update in your eBook readers! *Also, for today only, the Amazon Kindle book is available for $8.99 (USD)! Download a copy today!
For the Small Business owner trying to succeed in the world of Social Media (So), Local Web (Lo) and Mobile (Mo) marketing, Web & Mobile Strategist Ray Sidney-Smith provides a practical strategy guide to pave the path to SoLoMo Success!
Social Media is on the tips of everyone’s tongues these days when it comes to discussions about marketing. But, Social Media is not just about marketing, and how do you convert social engagement to sales? For many veteran and newly-minted businesses, Social Media is a mystery even after they have mastered the technical components of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, among many others. Ray thinks people have the wrong paradigm when it comes to Social Media. Small Business owners are attacking their target audience from only one angle. This is where Social Media community engagement, local search optimization and mobile marketing come into play!
Through concise chapters, SoLoMo Success takes Small Business entrepreneurs from no Web marketing experience to launching a locally-optimized website, interacting successfully on Social Media, and developing a “think mobile first” strategy for profitably impacting the bottom line. Ray even takes you on a little futuristic journey of what’s to come in the world of Small Business marketing technology.
If you want to target your customers where and when they want or need your product or service, look no further than SoLoMo Success.
I had the liberty of being able to finally join the #KaizenBiz Twitter chat (“tweetchat”) that happens on Fridays at noon Eastern. I have been wanting to join the tweetchat for quite some time (at the behest of Lois Martin (@loismarketing), but work meetings, projects and other events have kept me away until now. So, it was apropos that today’s topic was entitled “Deeper Dive Into What Social Media Trends Mean.” It was a great group and the host, Elli St. George-Godfrey (@3keyscoach), handed the torch over to Cathy Larkin (@cathywebsavvypr) to guest-host for this week’s chat. She, along with the group, were warm and welcoming, and the conversation wasn’t too stuffy but got into some good, deep discussion on Social Media trends. I saw some familiar faces from the defunct #HBRchat, which was really great to see. Below is the transcript in slideshow and feed formats. Enjoy!
[View the story “#KaizenBiz Chat – 04/04/14” on Storify]
[View the story “#KaizenBiz Chat – 04/04/14” on Storify]
We’re excited to announce that Ray Sidney-Smith has published 