Instead of searching online, consumers and business buyers who have a need are connecting to people they trust and asking for referral sources. This is why it’s *more important than ever* to be connected.

As I was writing this post I was trying to come up with a punchy headline, and it occurred me that maybe I ought to write a headline that would appeal to the Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us. I too, was resistant to the social media bandwagon at first, I admit it… I didn’t get it.

One this is undeniable though–there are 500 million Facebook users and counting.  

So if you’re a small business owner these days, while you’re counting your pennies and watching every expenditure, you’re also wondering “how do I leverage my network and tap into my market that’s on Facebook?”

To illustrate how this works, I’m using 3 Facebook plugins that illustrate how you can quickly and easily ”Like” my Facebook Page.  Is that self-serving of me? Yes–absolutely! But I’m also helping you, so it’s a win-win!

3 Social Plugins to help you Build your Facebook Page

Like Box - The Like Box you to attract and gain “Likes” from your website. The Like Box enables users to see how many users already like your Facebook page (including their friends), read recent posts from the page, and like the page with one click (I am using the “Like Box” in the right sidebar of this website under Measurable Marketing Tips).

Like Button – The Like button lets a user share your content with their friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.

Share Button - The Share Button is the easiest way to allow your content to be shared on Facebook. If you click this button it will share this post with all your friends.

Share

Ok, so hopefully you’ll see how easy this is to get people to “like” you–even if you are an old Scrooge.

Happy Facebooking, and “God Bless us everyone.”

Note: I’ve included links to the code for each of these buttons, so you can forward this post to your web developer, and put the button you’d like on your website.  Or if you don’t have a web developer, please feel free to contact me. I’d be glad to help.

It is a Marketer’s dream… You can connect with more than 500 million potential customers, you can choose your audience by location, age and interests… all with easy-to-target, self-reported demographics that are up-to-date and accurate.

If you own a business, or are responsible for marketing one, you’re right to think about creating a Facebook Page (formerly a Fan Page) and build community around your business. And you’re right to think about using a drawing, contest, or sweepstakes to grow your Fan base.

Be aware of the rules and regulations

Facebook has grown so much so quickly there’s still confusion about what you can and cannot do.

For example, it is against Facebook’s promotional guidelines to post this offer on the wall of your fan page:

“Like us and Win a $250 Shopping Spree (or some other prize)”

Potential problems with this offer:

• You can not administer a promotion on your wall (without an approved 3rd party application)
• You need to get Facebook’s approval prior to running a promotion on your wall
• You can’t use Facebook to communicate with the winner

The big distinction that Facebook makes in their promotional guidelines is between publicizing and administering a promotion on Facebook (this applies to contests & sweepstakes only):

• Publicizing a promotion means that you promote, advertise or reference a promotion in Facebook, but you do not collect entries or draw or notify winners in Facebook.
• Administering a promotion means you both publicize it and collect entries in Facebook.

These guidelines have been a boon to 3rd party applications like Wildfire, Involver, FanBase that help Marketers administer promotions through Facebook, but on the 3rd party-application page (which is technically outside Facebook). These applications require users “Like you” as a condition of entry, and then have a an entry form that’s not “on” Facebook, so it conforms to all the rules. But many of these solutions can be expensive… a minimum of $750-$1,000/month and up–making it cost-prohibitive to many small businesses.

The Solution? Use Facebook to promote, not administer, your drawing, contest, or sweepstakes

Publicizing  your promotion does not need Facebook approval, and does not need an approved 3rd-party application to run it.

You can use Facebook freely to promote, advertise or reference your promotion, but you don’t collect entries or notify winners in Facebook. 

Next Post: “3 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You“

I know that a lot has been written on this subject, but I’m putting up what I consider the top 5 Best Practices in Business Blogging for your review–if you feel I’ve missed something or I’m off the mark, please let me know!

The 5 Best Practices in Business Blogging

1. Write with a specific audience in mind — Who is your audience? As you’re writing, pretend like they’re sitting down right next to you. What is going to get their attention? What can you write about that’s going to help them solve the problem that’s been keeping them awake at night?
2. Focus on the content and help your readers solve a real problem–Chances are, you know how to help your customers solve a real problem, or else you wouldn’t be in business. Your article (or blog post) should fulfill a real need, or else it is not relevant.
3. Be educational not promotional–Blogging is not broadcasting, so educate your readers, don’t pander to them. This is your chance to show them you know what you’re talking about… by helping them solve a real problem you are establishing yourself as an expert, and you increase the likelihood that when they have a need they’ll call you first.
4. Write for readability–”Pretend like I’m in 8th grade“–that’s what one of my old bosses used to say. You impress people the most when you get your message across. In most cases, your writing should be made to be simple so that your readers follow you, and understand what you’re writing about. Write in plain english and avoid foreign languages and jargon. (This post was written at an 8th grade level--which means that most 13 and 14 year olds can understand it–you can check your own readability at http://www.read-able.com)
5. Create ways for your readers to engage with you–Comment forms, polls, social media buttons, live chat buttons encourage your readers to interact with you. Your objective shouldn’t be to get a purchase right now at this moment–but rather interaction, engagement, and feedback. Engagement deepens relationships.

When you boil it down to its very essence, Blogging is just another way to communicate–a very powerful way, because like all “real” communication– it’s a two-way street, an opportunity to engage and build relationships with others–by commenting on blog posts you can show off your active listening skills, and offer value to the conversation.

Make your content so good that people want to share it

If Social Media is about (1) connecting with others (2) collecting  information that’s important to you, then blogging is about making your content relevant so good that your readers will want to collect it and share it with their connections, friends, and followers. If you follow these 5 Best Practices for Business Blogging, your content will be so good they’ll want to share it with their friends.

So those are my 5 Best Practices in Business Blogging, and I’m sticking to them! I’m sure there are other best practices out there, so if you have any you’d like to share please “make my day!”

The same should be true of an unproductive website. You should assess your website so that you can determine whether you can fix it–or junk it, and start over.

Your website represents you. Some might even say, it is you. A finely tuned website could be working for you around the clock–helping spread the word about what you do, how you do it better than anyone, and creating opportunities with customers and prospects who need your products or services.

I realize that others have put together lists of factors that create a productive website, but I put this list together specifically for small business owners, if I’ve forgotten anything please feel free to add yours in the comment form!

7 Attributes of a Happy, Productive Website:

1. Code/structure: Is the website coded properly to build keyword densities for the main key phrases on each page?
2. Backwards Links–Do other influential websites link back to yours? Along with the code and structure, this is the #1 factor that influences your search engine visibility. 
3. Usability–Does your website follow accepted conventions of usability? Is it easy to use? Can the website be viewed in all browsers? Are there any bottlenecks or broken links? Or information that needs to be updated?
4. Identity/positioning–Does your website accurately capture your identity and position you as a leader in your field? Does it accurately and positively reflect you and your business?
5. Content–Does your website offer fresh, relevant content to engage your readers? Does it speak directly to your customers and prospects and accurately communicate what you can do to help them?
6. Capture/convert–Is your objective to generate inquiries, leads, or sales? Does your website help you achieve your objective? Does it have web forms, invitations to chat, and/or social media buttons? Do you offer an e-book or something else of value to get prospects to sign up for your newsletter?
7. Measure–Are you using Google Analytics, WP Stats, or something else to measure your success? You can’t improve what you can’t measure.

Do a Website Assessment

How does your website rank? Is it time to give your website the Pink Slip, or can you fix it up so it’s working for you? What do you need to do to fix it up?

No matter how good your website is, there is always room for improvement.

It’s kind of mind-boggling, really…

So why do so many companies keep doing the same old thing, and expect anything different? It’s insanity.

If you’d like to break out of the same old routine, and produce some real results you need to try something new.

Here are 12 great marketing ideas you can try in the coming months to achieve better results.

12 Marketing Ideas you can implement to produce better results

1. Update your strategic positioning so you really stand out from the competition
2. Create a new offer, like a payment plan, to make your services more affordable
3. Simplify your website to make it easier for customer and prospects to do business with you
4. Do an SEO Makeover to achieve a #1 ranking so prospective customers and buyers can find you on the web
5. Get other websites to link back to you using Off-page optimization to boost your search engine rankings and your website traffic
6. Start a Business Blog to establish thought leadership and niche dominance
7. Implement a Social Media Marketing Program to share your ideas with your followers
8. Create a Pay-per Click Program to augment the leads you’re getting from other sources
9. Test Landing Pages (Landing page optimization) to maximize the results from your Pay-per-click budget (you can do a lot with $200/month)
10. Create an Affiliate Marketing program to get others to identify opportunities and generate leads for you
11. Implement a Marketing Automation System with powerful marketing automation sequences to educate the prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet and convert them into ready buyers who want to do business with you
12. Accept Credit Cards online with Automated Recurring Billing to reduce time spent on invoicing and collecting payments from customers

How many of these ideas have you already implemented? Are there any other ideas you’d add to this list? What are you doing to ramp up your marketing activities?

The most successful companies are continually trying new ideas to achieve better and better results. That’s the only way that you can hope to improve.

Infusionsoft is simply the most powerful CRM/Marketing Automation tool for small business. There’s nothing better.

It’s like Salesforce.com + ExactTarget + 1ShoppingCart all-in-one.

And for two seats at $299/month, plus $59/month per additional seat, the price cannot be beat.  

You will not find a better all-in-one CRM/Marketing Automation System.  It includes:  (1) CRM (2) Autoresponders (3) Web forms (4) Order forms (5) Sales force automation (6) Shopping cart (7) Affiliate marketing management, and (8) lots, lots more, and what’s best, you can get it all without spending tens of thousands of dollars, or cobbling together other systems that do parts of what Infusionsoft can do (like Salesforce.com + ExactTarget + 1ShoppingCart, which you’d probably spend 5 figures putting it all together anyway).

If you’re looking for a CRM or Marketing Automation System for your Small Business, but haven’t been able to decide which one is best for you, here are 5 good reasons to get off the fence:

5 Reasons to get off the fence

If you’re shopping for an online CRM, and are sitting on the fence, here are 5 really cool, unique features that should make you want to sign up today:

1. Tags — Known as “custom taxonomies” or “tags”, these became popular with WordPress, and “Tag Clouds”, this is an alternate method of classifying information so it can be easily found, and it’s also great for segmenting your list “to get the right message to the right person at the right time.”
2. Marketing/Action Sequences — You can easily add/change a record’s status based on actions/ conditions, or example: A prospect buys “Product B” from you, you can change the record’s status from prospect to client, add a tag indicating that they’ve purchased “Product B”, and initiate the “Upsell marketing sequence of emails for Product B.”
3. Trackable Links — You can send an email with a link that says “Yes, have someone call me!”, and if someone someone click the link you can start an action sequence, for example, create a task, and assign it round-robin for a salesperson to follow up, followed up by another specialized sequence of emails.
4. Infusionsoft API — It’s one of the very few systems that allows you to tap directly into your database via an API, which gives you virtually unlimited ability to tie it into your operations.
5. Subscriptions and Recurring Payments – You can create order forms that accept credit cards and spread payments out over a period of time “just like a big company.”  After you’ve sold something, you can concentrate on delivering the goods–as far as getting paid is concerned you can “set it and forget it.”

Ultimately, the biggest reason why small business owners love Infusionsoft (and why I love it) is because it helps them make more money, while at the same time increasing their productivity so they don’t have to add more staff. Which means greater profitability–more money to the bottom line.

The Infusionsoft organization and culture is really a wonder to behold; and everyone–the upper management down to the troops working the line–should be praised for the culture they’ve created. They practice what they preach and are absolutely committed to customer delight. As the company who was first-to-market in the Marketing Automation Category, Infusionsoft is on an upwards trajectory, and are continually coming up with product enhancements that make the system easier to use and manage.

Does the Shopping Cart need some work? Admittedly. But the product management team is working on it. You’ve heard it here, and I guarantee they won’t disappoint.

Right now Infusionsoft is running the Double Your Sales Guarantee with a Free Trial. Simply click here to do it now.

So why aren’t companies more adventurous when it comes to trying new things?

It’s the “I hate brocolli” syndrome of marketing and business.

If you ask the average CEO, “What’s the rationale for the way you’re currently marketing your services?”  Many say: “It’s what we’ve always done.”

The sad truth is that many companies are engaging in the same old tried marketing tactics rooted in strategies that were developed eons ago (a.k.a. 2007).  They’re wasting money on tactics that are not rooted in any real, current strategy – or based on the realities of today’s marketplace.

How to get higher response rates and higher conversions

 Any Direct Marketing old timer will tell you that the secret to getting and maintaining high response rates and higher conversions is: “Test. Test. Test.”

In fact, there are some who say that  30% of your budget should be set aside for testing.

If you’re testing new ideas agains the old ones it’s the only way to know for sure that you’re marketing is continually improving. 

Apply the principles of continual improvement to your marketing. In Direct Mail it’s called “A/B Splits and Multivariate Testing.” In Google Web Optimizer it’s called “Marketing Experiments.”

Test everything. Test in order of importantance. Your offer, your keywords on your pay-per-click ads, your landing pages.

Or if you don’t really want new and better results, you can just keep doing what you’re doing — what you’ve always done.

What is the purpose behind Blogging? It’s not to show how smart or cute you are. If it’s going to be a part of an effective business strategy, you need to provide value, to show people the way, and establish yourself as a thought leader.

What is the purpose behind Social Media? It’s to connect with People: Friends, Associates, Affiliates, Prospects, Customers, and let them know what you’re up to. If you are using social media, you get to build your own channel, and you are literally the Editorial Board, Editor in Chief, Writer/Anchor, and Ombudsman all in one person.

What’s the purpose behind integrating your Blogging and your Social Media? Quite simply, it’s a radical new opportunity to put yourself “out there” in front of your clients and prospects, to help them solve problems,and position yourself as a potential solution provider, so that when they have an itch they’ll remember that you provide the scratch.

How to Integrate Blogging and Social Media: In 8 Simple Steps

1. Reserve your social media profile names: If you haven’t done so already go to Linked in, Facebook, and Twitter, and reserve your social media profile names. Optionally you can create a corporate Facebook account, or a Facebook Page, so that people can follow your business (“like you”) instead of you as an individual.

2. Build out your social media profiles: Building a good profile takes time and evolves as you evolve. To start take an hour or two and do your best to build your social media profile so that it tells people what you do and how you do it better than anyone else.  Optional: On Linked-in add Wordpress (if you have a WordPress website) and Twitter.

3. Build your base group of followers. Upload Gmail, Yahoo, AOL accounts. Or Upload a .csv file. This allows you to connect with everyone in your address book quickly.

4. Work to add followers on a daily basis. Did you meet someone at a networking event? While you’re adding them to your CRM, invite them to connect, to be a friend, or a follower.  This requires some discipline. But once you add it to your routine it’s easy.

5. Blog about things your customers and prospects are interested in. And educate them about what you do at the same time. Make what you do relevant to your followers. Jerry Seinfeld was a genius at this. Share practical tips, insights, humor, personal triumphs. Your editorial could be topically-related business news, the economy, or about the seasons and the weather.

6. Download Tweetdeck: Add your social media accounts to Tweetdeck. There are others tools out there like Hootsuite, Social Oomph. I’m wary of “auto-magic,” i.e., anything that automates your marketing so much that you end up losing the human touch. Think quality over quantity as it pertains to the content you’re writing, and your number of followers. There are no shortcuts. Just do a good job, and success will follow.

7. Update your statuses: When you post a new blog, update your statuses to all three networks (Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter) using Tweetdeck. This will increase the likelihood that your thoughts will be seen, and picked up by others. The more you interact the more you get picked up.

8. Interact with Others. Remember that Social Media is a two-way street. It’s not simply a broadcast medium. If someone takes the time to comment on something you’ve written, take the time and have the courtesy to respond. Also, comment on other posts that you find interesting. Retweet (RT) other people’s Tweets.  Follow and comment on status updates that you find interesting. Take advantage of opportunities to interact with others.

If you follow this Simple 8 Step Plan, others who use Social Media will see that the lights are on and someone is definitely home. 

Don’t forget that Social Media is “Social”

Remember to emphasize the “social” aspect of ”Social Media.” Its purpose should be to genuinely connect with people because you genuinely care about connecting with people (**not to connect with them so you can sell something**). If you’re at a cocktail party, you are a boor if all you do is talk about yourself.

So that’s how you can begin to integrate Blogging and Social Media. And if you do it right, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes YOU pushing all your new business around in a baby carriage shopping cart.

Postscript: The one item on this list that people ask me the most about is #5. “What specifically should I write about about?” My answer: “It all depends.” What is going to engage your followers? You’re the Editor-in chief; you decide what will engage your followers. Write about problems and solutions (and oh by the way if you provide the solution let your followers know, but don’t lead with a solution before you’ve got people agreeing that there’s a problem in the first place).

Why is everyone talking about “Inbound Marketing?” Who cares about the “Real-time Web?”

Several years ago when Google modified its Pagerank Algorithm, and started factoring in how other influential websites link to yours,  few people really could imagine the explosion of social media engines like Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter. Your search engine visibility is determined not only by the quality of the content on your website, but by who is linking to you.

Just recently, Google has launched the real-time web. Now more than ever there is an extraordinary opportunity for small businesses to carve out a niche in their social media marketplaces — effectively creating their own channel to communicate with their customers and prospects.

In an article in Huffpost by Manish Mehta, the Vice President, Social Media and Community at Dell Inc. (who can attribute $7 million in sales to Twitter for doing nothing at all!),  Mehta affirms “Social media isn’t a means to further a corporation’s strategy, it’s a means to help determine it.”

Sometimes pictures (or mindmaps) are better than words, so I’ve created a Mindmap that illustrates a general Inbound Marketing/Social Media Strategy.

Inbound Marketing / Social Media Strategy Cashmap for Small Businesses

It’s anchored by strategic marketing: (with introductory offers to acquire new customers, upsell/cross sell them into higher margin/higher value products, and convert them into customer advocates), and it includes what I consider the essential elements of inbound marketing strategy, which dovetail with Google’s Pagerank Algorithm: (1) a web presence that is search engine optmized, and empowers real-time expression (2) content generation to display thought leadership / attention to customer’s problems and (3) off-page optimization strategies which are essential to building followers and getting other influential websites to link back to yours.

For those who’ve been sitting on the social media sidelines hoping the whole fad might go away…, social media is not a fad, and it’s not going away. It’s going to be a critical way for you to reach your customers and prospects, and it’s more important than ever to get connected.

On the web, the time is literally now.