This post originally appeared on Charlie Cook’s Marketing for Success site.  If you haven’t checked it out, I strongly encourage you to do so.  It is absolutely crawling with smart people with great advice .

I’m re-printing the tips for those of you that missed it.

1. Identify your target audience.  This is always the most important step, and yet people just gloss right over it.  “Everyone” is not a target audience.  “Mom’s with only 15 minutes in their day to exercise” is a target audience.  Look at your existing customers, pick the ones you are most successful with and start profiling them.  Everything from what they read to what sports they like.
2. Define your brand promise.  What is your USP (unique selling proposition)?  When you understand what your customers can count on you for, you will find that your ideal customers will flock to your site.  If you’re targeting moms who only have 15 minutes a day to exercise, then it’s clear that you want to create offers that your audience can accomplish in 15 minutes or less and see results.  That’s what they can count on you for.  If you suddenly strayed from that promise, you would lose your audience and authority.
3. Identify your keywords (10 – 20).  Focus on a handful of keywords that represent what your ideal customer is searching on.  Using our busy moms example, you might choose to focus on “15 minute abs” or “15 minute exercises” or “exercises for moms”.  It’s far more effective to choose the keywords you will focus on and be sure to use them repeatedly on your site.  You’ll also want to use those keywords in guest articles that are posted across the web.
4. Buy relevant domain names.  If you’ve taken  the time to identify your keywords, you’ll find this next step much easier. Buy domain names that contain those keywords.  Using the above example, you might purchase www.15minuteAbs.com or www.momexercises.com.  Find as many combinations that make sense and own them.  You can either forward them to your main site or create landing pages with specific offers.
5. Start a blog.  This is obvious, and so I can’t leave it off the list.  The interesting twist I’m adding is to write 7 – 10 foundation posts.  Make them evergreen and “linkable” it really helps to include a template or a download that people will pass around.
6. Write relevant and focused content regularly.  You don’t have to write every day.  It’s more important that you create content that is valuable to your readers and that allows them to get the most complete experience of your product or service.  New York Time’s best-selling author John Locke writes one post per month, but he really makes it count.  Focus your content on your brand promise.  If your brand promise is to deliver mom-friendly exercises in 15 or minutes or less.  Create content that includes videos or exercises or articles about how to modify longer exercises to fit into that time frame.
7. Create social media profiles and participate.  Regardless of where you intend to spend most of your social media time, you need to have keyword rich profiles on at least Facebook, LinkedIn and Twiiter.  the next step is to decide which social media profiles are most likely to help you achieve your goals and then participate there.  Twitter is indexed by Google and that means that the conversations you have there are available as search results and LinkedIn profiles are indexed by Google, so having a complete profile can increase your site’s ranking.
8. Write guest articles on big blogs.  Find blogs in your industry or niche that have lots of traffic.  A great resource for finding these sites is to go to Federated Media and browse sites in your niche.  Choose a handful of blogs that are a great fit and then become a regular reader nd participant.  Get to know the community and become part of that community.  The articles you contribute to these blogs should be your best and most representative content.  Reach out to the community leader and and find out where they see gaps and opportunities for growth for their site and see if you can fill that gap.
9. Create digital products / information products.  It’s common knowledge that writing a book will increase your authority.  And in an online world,  you are not limited by the cost of printing a book.  In fact the tighter and more spacialized your topic, the more likely that your content will be found by the audience that values your content most.  One resource I just learned about is Kickstart.com a service that allows you to raise money for your book or event.
10. Give webinars, seminars and teleseminars.  Another traditional way to build authority is to speak.  While you can certainly do public speaking to build your authority, a still underutilized method to speaking is to do webinars and seminars.  A really terrific strategy is Ito develop a “concept speech”, an informational, educational and benefit-rich speech that you can run again and again to new audiences.  Check out Stealth Seminar as a tool to attract new prospects to your sites and another great tip is to record your webinars as videos so that you can distribute them via Traffic Guyser.

Building authority and influence is really a function of being the perceived expert on a topic, being quoted across a variety of sites and of starting or creating new conversations on a specific topic.  All of these tips will help you achieve all three of these objectives and grow your authority as well as your bottom line.

This post is part of a “Blog Carnival” that’s being hosted by Tea Silvestre from The Word Chef Blog.  The theme of the carnival is “Building Business Relationships” it’s part of a series of posts on the subject from a variety of small business experts.

Building referrals is just as important now as if was in the past.  In fact, I think it’s much easier and more cost effective now to develop and build those relationships than it had been in the past.  What I think is more difficult is keeping those referral conversations alive and focused.

Social media tools make it infinitely easier to find and connect with people, but because so many social media tools use a “timeline” format you can see and start a conversation one minute and forget about it the next simply because the screen has been refreshed with new conversations and posts.  This makes it difficult to move referral and opportunity conversations forward.

Here’s my killer time-saving and stress-reducing recipe for cooking up new business using a social media based referral strategy.

Total Time: About 2 hours to create social media accounts and generate list and about an hour per day managing your system

Yield: Profitable New Opportunities and Customers

Difficulty: Easy Peasy if you stay with it

Ingredients:

• No more than 3 specific marketing goals
• Twitter account – in your name, brand name or company name
• Facebook account
• LinkedIn account
• Try Nimble.com as a tool to integrate your social media conversations and create action items from those conversations
• A list of about 200 names, you can create a list or just go down your email address book and pull the people you think can help you get referrals

Directions:

1. Set your marketing goals and objectives. These goals should look like something like this: “Launch a webinar series targeting pet shop owners in March” or “Find 5 market research contacts at big box stores who want to use our online survey tool”.  Setting clearly defined marketing goals will guide your social media networking strategies.
2. Create a list of 200 referral contacts.  Use your email database to create a list of 200 people with whom you want to have referral relationships.  Go through that list and label people “friends and family” then “partners” and finally “influencers”.   As you are labeling and grouping your contacts, you might get ideas about the ways in which they might be able to help you achieve your goals i.e. “Introduce me to the CEO of company X”.  I’d recommend that you write that next to their name while you are thinking about it, it will save you time later.
3. Work your LinkedIn Contacts.  Go through your list of 200 and find everyone on LinkedIn.  If you are not connected to them, connect with them.  If they do not have a LinkedIn account, then you will have to manage that relationship via email and face-to-face methods only.  As you are doing that, you can send them an email message touching base and asking to schedule a catch-up call to discuss what they’ve been up to and how you can help each other.  You can also share what you’ve been up to and what you are looking for – they might respond with a connection or introduction on the spot.    Another great idea is to leave an endorsement for people as you check their presence on LinkedIn.  Leaving an endorsement for them will prompt them to leave one for you and to get in touch with you to catch up.  It’s a wonderful surprise and great “gift” to receive.
4. Search Twitter for conversations around your goals.  Notice what the conversations are and who is having the conversations.  Create a Twitter list of the people labeled “Networking” or maybe even around your goals such as “market research” (to use our previous example).  Take 15 minutes a day to monitor the conversations on that Twitter list and engage in conversations with those people.  Follow their links, re-tweet their content, comment on their links and articles.  Of course, don’t forget to search for your list of 200 on Twitter and add them to your Twitter list.  This way you are tracking their conversations as well.
5. Use Facebook to Network with Friends and Family.  Many businesses are hip to creating Facebook Fan pages, but your personal page may be more powerful as a networking tool.  I recommend posting pictures of what you are up to around your business and sharing with friends and family.  A friend of mine is in the promotional items business and often takes pictures of creative T-shirts and other items at trade shows that he things are very effective.  It tells us where he is that day and it gives us ideas that we can use for our promotional projects.  If you own a restaurant, take a picture of the daily special, if you are making a sales call or want to connect with someone, just ask your friends and family.  But don’t oversell on Facebook, it will be perceived as spamming and can backfire.
6. Check out Nimble.com.   My new favorite social media and sales management tool is Nimble.com.  It was developed by Jon Ferrera, the CEO of the successful sales CRM tool Goldmine in response to his peeve of having referral and opportunity conversations fall through the cracks.  Nimble will integrate your email, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and show all the conversations in one stream or separate streams.  What I love about it is that it allows you to see all these conversations in one place and then you can also create an action item for yourself around that conversation.  Nimble is basically a social CRM tool that increases the value and ROI of your social media conversations.

Now, you might think all this will take an entire day’s worth of work.  Well, I won’t lie to you – the set-up probably will.  In reality, you can spend a day planning and strategizing your referral system – but once it’s done and you’ve focused your efforts, all it will take is about 15 to 30 minutes a day of working your system to keep those relationships and sales opportunities flowing your way.

This post is part of the  The Word Chef Blog  Blog Carnival hosted by Tea Silvestre.   Join us for a fun and informative  1-hour Tweet Chat about Business Relationships, how to build them and nurture them on Thursday, September at 1 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific.  Your participation in the Tweet Chat enters you into a drawing for a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

Do it yourself marketing has seen several evolutions in the past several years. With the advancement of internet technology and then the social media revolution, DIY marketing has had to make several adjustments. In many ways, marketing has become intrinsically married to the internet and social media culture. For many DIY marketers, this can be a struggle. While it’s impossible to market something without it being seen or heard by the public, it is also a challenge to manage new technologies and multiple social media accounts. These three tools can help you manage your various social media accounts for simpler and more successful marketing.

1. TweetDeck: This application is by far one of the most popular social media managers available. Allowing users to view their Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and Twitter accounts all from one interface, TweetDeck simplifies social media for the mega user. Use TweetDeck to stay up to date on local events and marketing opportunities, while also, easily managing your correspondence with customers and business associates on your various platforms. Tweetdeck enables you to divide your contacts into columns, so that you can separate specific groups of people into different areas. This allows you to manage your marketing schemes more quickly and easily.

2. Gist: This tool allows users to collect all of their contacts from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and more in one centralized location. This organizational help can be invaluable for marketers trying to manage their network. Gist provides you with the latest news, blog posts, and tweets from anyone in your professional network when you want to receive it and where you want to receive it. Because Gist is so customizable, it can be extremely useful for nearly any user. By gathering the essential information from your inboxes and social networks, Gist provides the perfect way to speed up your marketing potential. Use Gist to become more productive with marketing and connecting to professional contacts.

3. Ping.fm: While Gist is more focused toward organizing your many social media contacts to simplify managing networks and new updates, Ping.fm focuses on making posting to various platforms simpler. This tool allows users to ping a message or data to multiple social media accounts from one location. This can be especially useful for DIY marketers, hoping to get their company or product seen through social media outlets. Ping allows you to select which accounts you want to post to and really speeds up the process of getting your voice out there.

With all of these tools and services free to download and use there is really no reason DIY marketers looking for some aid with managing their busy social media accounts shouldn’t try all of them. Check them out and decide which services would be most valuable for you and your marketing efforts. Social media is a great way to get your ideas out to the public and to develop a strong professional network. As social media expands and evolves, tools and applications for managing these accounts will become ever more useful.

About the Author:  This guest post is contributed by Patricia Garza, who writes about gadget, technology, design, social media, e-learning related articles at online university rankings.

I’m always being asked for strategies to increase the ROI of social media.  DIYMarketers are busy folks and no one has any time to waste.

My advice to every crazy-busy  small business owner who has recognized that social media as a marketing vehicle is just too valuable to pass up is to streamline and automate wherever possible.

Tools to Help You Automate

My favorite automation tools are HootSuite, MarketMeSuite and SocialOomph.  Each of these social media apps allow you to manage many accounts and automate and schedule Tweets.   I allocate about 15 minutes a day to review my goals and strategies for social media and program any Twitter love I want to hand out to my community.

I use automation to do the things that don’t require any personal interaction.

• Promote your peeps. For example, if my clients are running a special contest or program, I create unique tweets with hashtags and links and program those to go out over the course of the day/week or month depending on the program.
• ReTweet. I pay attention to content that I’m always re-tweeting.  For example, I noticed over time that I re-tweet just about every quuote, cartoon or infographic that’s out there.  So I automate those items.  I also have people whose content I just love that I’ve automated as ReTweets.
• Manage Followers. I’ve automated my following using SocialOomph.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t clean my lists, it just means that I follow everyone and then about once a month, I spend an hour or so watching TV and cleaning my list.

Automation Doesn’t Build Relationships or Influence — Conversations Do

Don’t think that automating everything will bring you success — in fact, it will ruin your brand reputation.  Brand equity and follower responsiveness is built with personal conversations that you have with people and the action items that come from those conversations — and THIS is where so many of us fall down.  We have these great ideas, and we don’t follow through — and this is where Nimble becomes your saving grace.

Nimble is the Next Generation of Relationship Management – Social CRM

Anyone in sales and marketing is familiar with the CRM systems like SalesForce, ACT and Goldmine.  These systems were developed to manage customer relationships, but have evolved into sales and marketing management reporting systems rather than relationship development systems.

I have several clients who use all of these programs and they definitely bring value — but with 28 million small business owners and over 50% of them being solo-preneurs, these systems really do little to manage those all-important and profitable relationships.

The observations I’m making here aren’t just mine — these ideas come straight from Jon Ferrara, the developer and CEO of Goldmine and now, the creator of Nimble — the latest CRM tool for the social generation of small business owners.

Nimble Streamlines and Automates the Relationship Building Process Without Sacrificing the Personal Touch

I’m a Google Apps girl.  And on any given day, I can have as many as 15 tabs open in my browser.  I hop and skip from email to calendar to HootSuite and then click over to my Google task manager to make sure I am getting everything done that I’m supposed to do.  It’s crazy.

I’m always looking for tools that will help me reduce the number of tabs I have open in my browser.  Nimble is one of those tools.

Nimble combines the three core activities that every small business owner has to manage 80% of the time; email, calendar and social media conversations.

All you do is register, import your email accounts, primary Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and your calendar.  That’s all there is to it.  The entire process took me about 3 minutes.  And I did it while chatting with Jon Ferrara about a completely unrelated topic.  So you won’t need a lot of concentration to complete the task successfully.

Nimble keeps things very simple — notice that I said PRIMARY social media accounts and calendar.   Nimble’s focus is on building profitable relationships and actions and not just on generating tweets, updates and content.

Nimble Ties Contacts, Conversations and Tasks Together

I haven’t used this feature much – but I’ve only been using the system for a day, so it’s just a matter of time.  Nimble gives you the ability to TIE TOGETHER your social conversation with contacts and tasks.  Here’s how it works.

Say you start a Twitter conversation with someone.  They ask you a question, you answer and then you start a conversation about a potential opportunity you want to create together — say you decide to partner on a webinar for example.  So now, you’re going to move the conversation to an email.

With every other system, the Twitter conversation is lost in the Twittersphere and then it continues in your email client.  Then you add tasks on your list.  In Nimble — ALL of these things become CONNECTED.  So that you can see that you started your relationship on Twitter and then migrated it to email and then you can create tasks from the email or the Twitter stream.  In the midst of all this, you’ve added this new person into your personal contact database.

Standard marketing strategy for maximizing on social media is to transition these virtual relationships into REAL LIFE, face-to-face interactions — and Nimble allows you to do that.

What You WON’T Find in Nimble — Today

One notable item that’s missing from Nimble that makes in practically incomparable to the current CRM systems is it’s lack of sales funnels and management reporting.  The focus is squarely on meeting people, building and generating leads and generating tasks based on these relationships.

That doesn’t mean that these items aren’t coming.  In my conversation with Jon, he shared the future of Nimble and you can expect to see all these items and more become part of the application — for a fee.

For now, I’d recommend that you sign up for Nimble and give it a shot.  It will take some practice to wean yourself away from the myriad tools you’re using now.  I still find myself going over to my email now and then before I remember that I can send messages from Nimble — but guess what?  That doesn’t matter because Nimble still keeps track of all that.  So you can send email from ANY device you like – and it will be connected.

Nimble is a super new tool. I’ve already noticed that I’ve increased the number of valuable interactions and conversations that I’ve had on all my social networks.  So far, I’ve found Nimble to be a valuable complement to my automated social media content.  It’s helped me to become a more interactive and influential part of the conversation.

Related articles

• CRM Daily | Nimble Offers Social Relationship Manager for Teams (serve4impact.com)
• Nimble Launches 2.0 – Unifying Team Contacts, Communications and Collaboration (diversity.net.nz)
• Using Nimble.com to Unify Your Social Network Contacts (readwriteweb.com)
• 5 Ways to Get Started With Social CRM Today (oneforty.com)
• Thinking one step ahead with social CRM (customerthink.com)
• Striking the Right Balance With Social CRM (customerthink.com)
• 5 Tools for Automating Twitter (blogs.sitepoint.com)
• 10 Steps to integrate CRM and Social Media (#SocialCRM, #scrm) (customerthink.com)
• The Top 5 Alternatives to Salesforce.com (customerthink.com)

In today’s technology-based world, social media is a crucial aspect of your marketing campaign. Think about it, everyone has a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, or a LinkedIn profile. And now, with smart phones proliferating the market, all of these social networks can be accessed with the touch of a button anywhere in the world (well, anywhere that has signal). This being said, DIY marketing strategies have embraced social media as a tool that can project their brand across the planet, no matter how large or small their company may be. To become a household name organizations no longer have to be the biggest, most lucrative in the industry – they just have to know how to use Twitter.

It naturally follows that social networks are something that you need to become involved in; however, there are many horror stories of brands being ruined by poor social media skills, stories that you want to avoid reliving at all costs. So how do you build your brand across the range of social media applications without ruining the reputation of your company? The process is simple, but it takes hard work and a lot of patience. When you get it right, though, all of the effort will certainly pay off.

Susan Gunelius recently wrote an article on Entrepreneur about a similar topic that provides a jumping off point for our own discussion. Her article can be found here.

1. Know your target demographic. Some social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, are used by a wide variety of individuals and can be confidently incorporated into any social media campaign. Other sites should be investigated before committing a great deal of time to them.

Consider this scenario: you have opened a teen clothing store, geared toward kids aged 12 to 18, and want your social media efforts to speak directly to your target shoppers. In this case, LinkedIn is most likely a lost cause, as these customers will probably not be involved with this social networking site. Does this mean that you ignore LinkedIn completely? No – the site can still connect you to others in your industry; however, you do not want to focus all of your attention on this account, simply make an informative page and check up on it regularly.

1. Appoint a social media manager. Your brand must be consistent in voice and your accounts must be maintained regularly, so the best way to ensure that your campaign runs smoothly is to have one person handle it. Remember that this will take up a good deal of time and, while it may not be generating income now, it will eventually, so be sure to give the individual enough time to truly work on the project. Only choose someone you trust to work diligently, though, because the Internet is full of distractions.

When you go over this project with your social media manager, be sure that you communicate the image you wish to build clearly. For example, some companies simply post links to their website and to other important information, while others open up a dialogue with their friends and followers. The best approach is one that is natural, which brings us to point 3.

1. No one wants to hear you promote your business all the time. Social media is about getting the word out, true, but it is not about shameless self promotion. Share some links to your brand, some updates on sales or specials that are currently going on, but also share links and information that you think your followers will be interested in. Be careful to keep this professional, though. The last thing you need is an inappropriate link under your business’ name.

Most importantly, be a real person on the other end of the computer, be someone that can relate to followers and open a discussion with members of the target demographic. This will earn their trust and, ultimately, their business.

1. Consider starting a blog. Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr are all ways for you to enhance your brand and really illustrate the core values of your company. Posts should be made regularly and should pertain to important issues that readers will face. Remember, do not just promote your company – offer entertaining and informative information that will have people looking forward to the next post. These also, as Gunelius mentions in her article, provide additional entry points for consumers.

The most important aspects of building your brand through social media are to remain visible and consistent. By doing these key things, you should attract the attention of consumers who will eventually begin to invest in your company. Remember, though, that this is not just about driving sales, this is about building a relationship with a community. Doing so may not cause your monthly revenue to spike, but it will cause your organization to have a more positive reputation and to be trusted by a larger amount of consumers.

Terry Crenshaw covers economic trends in the United States and writes for www.peterorszagsite.com. Terry is especially interested in tracking the ideas of Peter Orszag and other economic experts as the economy attempts to recover from the recent recession.

As if you didn’t have enough social media channels to manage, our guest author today, Jey Raul, introduces us to Viadeo, which is gaining traction in Europe.  It’s a social bookmarking site you’ll want to explore and see in how it compares to all the others.

Viadeo is a social network created by Thierry Lunati and Dan Serfaty. It was originally launched in France but now has a steady following in Europe and other countries. Basically it is designed for people who wish to increase their business enterprises, develop and manage their network of professional contacts and take their career opportunities forward. There are many reasons behind why Viadeo has been named as the best social bookmarking site:

1) Creating a network- Viadeo helps to develop and manage business contacts on a long term to establish trust and a good working relationship between customers, co-workers, superiors and so on. The network formation is based primarily on recommendation from members.

2) Developing business- The company ranks the 3rd, when it comes to professional social networks. Most members also use it to find job opportunities, suppliers, partners and customers. People who are employed in the sales department are very active on these networks.

3) Managing a career- Their careers are the major motivational factor in members setting their accounts on Viadeo. Receiving job offers, observing the markets or finding a job are some of the activities that happen on the site. At times, some recruiters also use the website as a hunting ground to find employees.

There are number of features that the site offers that makes it one of the best social bookmarking sites:

• Communities- This is a private space that is made to be available to partners of the same company. There are around 5000 communities. The community can either be professional or voluntary, cultural, student or somebody who is starting his own business.
• Groups/Hubs- These are open forums that provide the members a platform to comment and discuss on professional topics. There are around 100,000 hubs present on Viadeo.
• Expert-Similar to Yahoo! Answers, the features allow the users to post professional related to most network members. The professionals are the ones who have carved their own niche in their respective field.

The above listed reasons and some others such as personal branding that allow you to upload your professional achievements such as your curriculum vitae and career development. The site is so thorough and career-oriented that irrespective of whether you are an employee or a seller, you will find takers. This is also a great platform for you to upload the details of your business and present it in an interactive way, so that consumers are hooked on to it.

The twist to this social networking site is, it competes directly with professional biggies such as Silicon Valley’s LinkedIn and Germany’s Xing. The biggest difference between Viadeo and LinkedIn is, it offers profiles in multiple languages.

• Viadeo is a lot more streamlined and organized as compared to LinkedIn. A devoted LinkedIn user, but at times, the site does tend to be a little unorganized.
• LinkedIn went a step ahead to mark its territory by being the first major social network to put forth an IPO which caused their profits to shoot up to $9 billion last week. However, Viadeo did not take the same step as it wanted to concentrate on their loyal shareholders and profits.
• Now, the multi-language strategy is a great plus point, according to the company big shots. On the other hand, LinkedIn has the tendency to cover 200 countries and has members from all Fortune 500 companies. Here, Viadeo says that at least one in six members is either an entrepreneur or a businessman.

The one reason why Viadeo has not yet filed for IPO is because; it hasn’t gained enough ground or presence in the US to file for one. The one similarity between Viadeo and LinkedIn is, both are equally “highly profitable” and works on free membership.

About the Author: Jey specializes in writing about search engine marketing and social media; he enjoys playing World of Warcraft or reading books when he’s not finding new ways to do online marketing. Jey’s company QualitySubmissions specializes in French Directory Submission and Deep Link Submission Service.

When you’re running around trying to generate sales and build your business, you may not be thinking about some basics that you may not think are important, but may actually be hurting your brand.  Go through this list and if you’re doing any of these – quickly and quietly make the change, you will notice a difference.

1. Using a generic email.  This might have been OK 20 years ago.  It’s not really OK now.  When people hear or see your name or company, the first place they go is to the web to see who you are and what your company does.  If you still have a yahoo, aol or hotmail email address, this doesn’t really help sell your brand.  Even solo entrepreneurs should have a branded email address.    It takes a couple of minutes to go over to GoDaddy.com and grab a custom URL.  While you’re at it, grab your name as a URL as well.  If you sell or leave your company, at least you’ll have a branded email for yourself.
2. Not recording a personal voice mail.  If your cell phone or company phone goes to the default voice mail,  take the 3 minutes to actually record a nice voice mail for the people who will get it.  This says a lot about who you are as a business person.  If you don’t take 3 minutes to record a voice mail, will you take 3 minutes to call me as your customer?  If you actually have your voice mail message recorded by someone else or a secretary (I hear these a lot), this is becoming highly inappropriate and says to the caller that you don’t know how to use a phone or voice mail.  It DOESN’T say that you are too busy.  And if you are too busy to record your own message, then you don’t care about the caller.
3. Ignoring LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. If you look at it from the context of celebrities tweeting and sharing what they had for breakfast, then you are missing the big picture. Social media been around for over 5 years now.  People choose to do business with people they know and like.  And the way we find this out today is by looking for them on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.  If you don’t have a presence there, then it’s like you don’t have a phone or business card.  It says something about you and the business that you run — and what it says has nothing to do with wasting time and has everything to do with whether you are up to speed with how your customers communicate.  Use LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as a company and employee directory or an address book at the very least.  Create a complete profile that includes a picture.  Participate at least a couple times a week.
4. Your company voice doesn’t match your customer’s voice. There is no such thing as a controlled marketing message.  You can’t afford (literally and figuratively) to have marketing materials and communication not sound like you or your employees.  The tone, the words, the messages and the attitude should match.  If you’re a serious company, then everything should be serious.  If you’re a casual company, then everything should be casual.  It’s even better if your company’s voice matches your customer’s voice.  So if you’re company is serious and your customers are casual — find a tone that is a little of both.
5. Talking like a company and not a person.  There is a universal law out there that pulls at opposites.  For example, when technology creates the opportunity for less face-to-face interaction, people want more human-friendly interaction.  With automated phone messages, email, social media, etc.  your company absolutely has to sound more like a human than some faceless organization.  Best Buy has done a great job with this and their blue team that answers questions.  Sears has followed suit as have many, many consumer big-box stores.  Your small business isn’t really looking big by acting like a faceless corporation — it’s looking fake.  Don’t be afraid to be yourself and let your human side shine through.  Customers love this and appreciate it.
6. Not having a signature in your emails.  For heaven’s sake, put your contact information in your email.  It’s ridiculously unprofessional.   Most people get emails on their cell phones and will want to call you back – make it easy for them to do this.  Also include a cell phone number because you are never at your desk.  Customers can’t call and ask questions if you’re not at your desk or answering the phone.
7. No blog – no connection to a person to contact.  A recent study showed that over 60% of all businesses now have a blog.  AND they are seeing the benefit from a blog.  Don’t over think this.  Start a blog.  A CEO starting a blog and blogging about challenges solved, obstacles overcome and what they are thinking and committed to for their company is like a customer catnip.  People literally can’t resist reading it, getting to know you and your company.  This allows them connect, comment and start a conversation and relationship.

Maybe you think these items are trivial, but like tiny home repairs that quickly make your house look shabby when ignored, these seemingly unimportant details are making you look bad and rather foolish in the eye of your customers.

Don’t make the mistake of looking at your business differently if you’re a manufacturer or industrial B2B company.  The line between consumer and industrial is blurring every day.

Pay attention to your own opinions about companies as you go about your business and notice what judgement you make along the way.  Your customers are doing the same with you.

Ivana has been publishing some great tips on using LinkedIn as a customer communication tool. A strong LinkedIn profile offers some other benefits, and one of the most overlooked is the ability to use your profile as a search engine optimization tool for your business.

LinkedIn give you the opportunity to have up to three outbound links. You can not only have these links pointed anywhere you want, but can also pick the anchor text as well! This means that you can let Google and other search engines know about your site via LinkedIn AND can give Google the right keywords.

Here is an example from my LinkedIn profile:

The two links I’ve pointed to are my company, OfficeDrop’s home page – where I am optimizing for Digital Filing System – and our document scanning page, where I am optimizing for document scanning.

Here is how you do it: Go to “edit profile” then scroll down to the website section, where you will see edit buttons. Add your company’s site – but don’t select “my company” in the drop down, instead choose “other” and then and enter the text as your target keywords. That’s it!

If you get the other people at your company to update their LinkedIn profiles then you’ll have several new, optimized links directing Google love to your site!

Attention CEOs Who Hate LinkedIn

As the leader of your company – there are so many more important things to think about than whether you’re on LinkedIn, the quality of your profile or any of that stupid social networking fluff.  You’ve got a company to run.  It’s all about profits, new, more profitable customers, launching new product, market share and building a business.

But maybe you’ve noticed that it’s not as easy to get face-to-face time with customers.  And the budget to do the advertising or trade shows is wearing more than a little thin — especially when you look at your ROI on those things.

Only 4% of CEOs are on LinkedIn!  Why does everybody care about whether a CEO is on LinkedIn or NOT?  Isn’t it just a waste of time, effort and money?  Give me ONE good reason why I need to waste my time with LinkedIn!  Here are three.

3 Quick Reasons Why CEOs Should Spend Time on LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn is a credibility directory.  LinkedIn sits in the social networking category.  But it’s really a credibility directory.  The most basic marketing activity for any organization is to make sure that your company is listed in a directory.  Well, LinkedIn is a directory.  If you and your organization and the key members of your organization aren’t listed — you aren’t credible.
2. LinkedIn is your first impression. The first thing many people do when they hear your name is search you out on LinkedIn.  How they perceive you will depend on what’s on your profile.  If what you have on there doesn’t give them a reason to see you, speak to you or take you seriously they won’t.
3. Your network is your net worth. Are you worth knowing?  Your customers and decision makers look at your profile unconsciously asking the question “How can this person help me?”  Are you worth knowing?  Who else do you know?  If I can’t see that, I don’t have an impression of you.  And if I don’t have an impression of you, I don’t have time for you.

What’s Stopping You From Using LinkedIn

I’ve told you just three reasons why CEOs should use LinkedIn — now YOU tell me what’s stopping you.

In the comment section below — tell me why you hate LinkedIn or what frustrates you about LinkedIn.

Ready to Use LinkedIn in Powerful Strategic Ways – Astound and Amaze Your Friends!

So many CEOs have told me they don’t use LinkedIn — but then when I told them just a few of the ways they can leverage the power of LinkedIn to save time and money on sales and marketing activities — they were all ears.

So I’ve decided to pull together a teleseminar — that you can listen to in your office, on the road or download to your mobile device – and learn what 95% of LinkedIn USERS don’t even know.

LEARN MORE About How CEOs Can Use LinkedIn

I ran across this fantastic article on the OneCoach blog called “10 Most Common Website Mistakes” where they outlined some of the basics of what should be and should NOT be on your web site.

And this inspired me to write a take on this with my own checklist which includes some of their points — and then some.

If you’re currently unhappy with the state of your web site and are considering a redesign, I’d like to lay out a web redesign checklist for you to consider.

1. Do you have a form to capture (generate) leads? Think of your web site like fly-paper.  I know it’s not really an appealing thought, but your web site should contain information so appealing to your target prospect that they should fly towards it, stick to it, read it and then give you their name and email to get more information.
2. Does your content educate and help your prospect choose? Your customer shops just like you do (even if they are an industrial buyer).  They ALL get on the web.  They Google your product or service and they look for information that will help them choose.  Instead of showing them a building or talking about YOU and your company, talk about what they are going through.  What frustrates them when they are buying what you are selling?  What information do they need when they are choosing your product?  Make your content about THEM and they will make their buying decision about YOU.
3. Do you have an easy to find call to action? Tell your visitors what you want them to do.  Don’t worry, they will love you for it.  Tell them to download a report or to register for tips.  Tell them to call.  Think of yourself as the expert and doctor of what you do and give them the prescription for success.
4. Do you know your baseline statistics? BEFORE you redesign, make sure that you collect a baseline for what’s happening NOW.  How many visitors?  Where do they come from?  What pages do they visit the most?  What are your keywords.  There are many, many statistics that you can collect that will help you set goals for your next design.
5. Do you have a blog? A blog as a necessity for every web site.  The more fresh content that you have on the web, the easier it will be for those leads to find you.  You don’t have to blog every day, but you do need to update the content regularly.  You don’t need to be the writer either – ask members of your staff or maybe several customers can contribute now and then.  This isn’t new anymore, but it is the equivalent of FREE advertising and public relations where you control the story and the information.
6. Is your site too beautiful and technically or graphically complicated to be useful? Don’t get me wrong.  A well designed site is lovely, but not if your customer can’t read it or see it on their mobile device or when they print the text, they can’t read it because the color of the font is too faint.
7. Is your writing too technical and too long? The most effective writing is in active voice; where your customer and their frustrations are the focus.  Go through your web site and eliminate acronyms and technical terms that your prospect may not understand.
8. Have you promoted your web site? No one can come and visit your site if you don’t tell them about it.  The best way to market and promote your site is by updating the blog and by adding video.  If you’ve been avoiding social media sites – this is the best reason to get involved in several focused communities such as industry web sites and LinkedIn and Facebook Groups.  If your specific industry isn’t active – target groups focused on your customers.  Got a restaurant?  Join a local group of foodies.  Do you own a gym?  Get involved in a local weight loss group.  Or maybe you have an industrial company that makes widgets.  Think about where your widgets go and get involved in those communities.  If your company makes parts for medical devices, join a nursing group or automotive products?  Join a group of dealers who sell that brand of vehicle.  There are lots of opportunities.

In several articles, I’ve said that you should re-design your web site if it hasn’t been updated in about three years or more.  But one thing that I didn’t say is that you should focus on updating your site so that prospects and leads can find you, learn about your products and how to choose them.

So go ahead and update your site – but follow this checklist first.