Luckily, there are solutions out there to help your business utilize social marketing in a productive and efficient way.

Enter Demandforce, the newest presence in the Flowtown world. You may have read about the recent acquisition of Flowtown by Demandforce and wondered what changes are in store for this community. Really, the only changes you may see are a few more references to SMB solutions alongside the same great content and infographics you are used to finding here. But, we still thought it would be nice to formally introduce Demandforce and what they can mean to our Flowtown readers.

The 411

We know that for any small business, increasing revenue, engaging and retaining customers, and being able to see a return on investment is of the utmost importance. If you are looking to accomplish any of these goals, then here is what Demandforce can do for you:

Easily Manage Your Social Marketing Efforts

With the right tools, you can monitor and track your all your marketing efforts in an efficient way. Demandforce users can create a centralized place for their customers to request appointments, write reviews, and connect with them 24/7; integrate with all their social media platforms; maintain a consistent Web presence; and more. By utilizing these tools, happy customers are encouraged to come back more often, spend more on services, and refer more business.

Retain, Retain, Retain

One of the most overlooked and undervalued assets is your own recurring customer base — you got them, now keep them! From reading this blog, you know there are many avenues to reach out to your customers, but initiating successful interactions using all the various resources can be time consuming without satisfactory ROI.

To give businesses that extra edge (and ROI), Demandforce’s system helps facilitate communication with existing customers and helps attract new ones by integrating with various management systems. This automatically targets clients who need a little extra attention, sends appointment reminders, creates campaigns, reactivates lost customers, and prompts the biggest fans to refer new clients.

Control Your Online Reputation

As user review sites gain popularity — and the power to make or break your business in the social sphere — your business’s online reputation has become an asset you must control and protect. Using technology to help you do this, Demandforce automates review collection to help you manage and respond to reviews and share those reviews on third-party web services, including search engines, websites, and indexes, all of which increase your online visibility to help potential customers find you.

Keep Your Online Info Updated

Most consumers use the Web to find the businesses and services they need; therefore, your business should be represented on as many sites as possible. Unfortunately, these sites are constantly changing, which makes keeping your info updated a major challenge. Demandforce works with the biggest players online, such as Google Places, Citysearch, and 90+ other sites, to ensure business information is presented consistently and accurately in Internet Yellow Pages databases, indexes, and directories.

Build Your Brand

Small business marketing can and should be about building a brand over time. In addition to effectively implementing social marketing efforts that mobilize community and increase revenue, Demandforce offers the guidance and expertise to help small businesses grow into a brand by advising on best practices, helping tell their story, and building lasting customer relationships.

Demandforce is all about helping businesses help themselves and hopefully, at the very least, our readers can benefit from their expertise. Check out Demandforce’s website for more info or their blog for more SMB solutions-type posts, and let us know what you think.

Running a small business takes a lot of time and energy. Between the many tasks and crises that constantly surface and the stress of maintaining everyday operations, a business can be stretched thin. And though marketing is one of the essential ingredients to keep a small business successfully running, many owners find it difficult or overwhelming to stay on top of. Luckily, in the digital age, a plethora of technologies exist to help you market smarter, not harder. Automating the following three areas can save you time and energy while ensuring you’re covering your marketing bases.

Automate Your Content Creation

markhillary

Content is king when it comes to helping your web presence. Fresh content helps elevate your search rankings, making it easier for Internet users to find you; and providing your visitors new and interesting things to check out encourages them to return to your site — and can establish you and your business as an industry thought-leader. But if you find you don’t have time to cobble together a post on breaking industry news or publish a steady stream of content, automating it may help. Content creation tool Curata gathers relevant articles and links from the Internet and posts the content to your company’s website and social media accounts — problem solved!

Automate Customer Relationship Management

Stephen Cummings

Service-based small businesses thrive on customer engagement. But taking the time to extend personal communications or track ongoing interactions takes both manpower and brainpower that may not be in high supply. Luckily, you can automate all your customer communication using Demandforce’s D3 service, which lets you manage all this through automatic appointment scheduling, reminders, customized email campaigns, and more. Plus, you can easily track results to see what’s working for you. This leaves you free to focus on the customer in front of you, knowing the others are well taken care of.

Automate Social Media Updates

InstantDane

Maintaining your social media presence is necessary, but with so many different platforms, managing each account can be exhaustive. Helpful service Ping lets you update all your social networks through one portal. You can even email or text updates that you want to share for ultimate convenience. Of course, you also want to make sure your social media updates are making the most impact. Timely.is lets you schedule Twitter posts in advance and publishes them during the times when users are most active to give you maximum exposure, killing two birds with one stone.

Ask Yourself What You Should Automate

Automating any of the tasks above, as well as other business operations, can be advantageous. However, before you decide to automate any of your marketing, do your research and ask yourself what will benefit you and your business most.

Have you automated any of your marketing? Tell us how it worked for you in the comments below.

Marketing is one aspect of your small business that you can control, even in a down economy, and is one of the most important foundations of any successful business. In fact, 73% of small business owners surveyed by Intuit said marketing and/or advertising was the most important element that would contribute to their business growth in 2012. Adopt these small business marketing New Year’s resolutions to make 2012 a successful year.

1) Give Your Website a Makeover

(Zahlm)

The online world is constantly evolving, and it’s up to you to make sure your business keeps up with the times. Your website is often a customer’s first impression of you, so make sure it’s well-maintained. Is your company info updated? Is your site easy to navigate? Update content, including blogs, photos, or recent events recaps, to beef up your site. And make sure it’s search engine optimized, and that you’re always following best practices (for example, don’t use Flash for design, which prevents customers from copy/pasting info). Check out the Small Business Association’s tips for keeping your website updated and relevant.

2) Try New Things

(Vectorportal)

One advantage of being a smaller operation is that you can perform your own market research fairly easily and efficiently. Use the New Year to mix it up and experiment with your marketing efforts. If you’re on Facebook but intimidated by Twitter, create an account, familiarize yourself with the site, and read up on how it can benefit you. If you send an annual New Year discount to your newsletter subscribers, create two versions using different text/visual representation and track which version received a better response. Utilize tools like Google Analytics, which help you monitor your online marketing efforts to gauge the success of all your campaigns. It doesn’t require a lot to step outside your marketing comfort zone, and the results will likely be invaluable.

3) Meet New People

(buddawiggi)

Social media is all the rage, and you should be active on those platforms, but work on making more real-life connections. Cultivate a relationship with a local reporter to get press for your business, visit industry conferences, network with industry thought-leaders (even better if you can start to position yourself as one), read up on industry blogs, and reach out to your extended network. Not only will this help strengthen personal connections that are vital to small businesses, you can learn much from colleagues and mentors who can help you in the future.

4) Make Yourself Mobile

(James Cridland)

Just as your website should be updated and refreshed, it should also be mobile-compatible. As more and more commerce and Web activity happens on mobile phones, your business must be on the forefront. Keep this growing trend in mind as you devise campaigns for the coming year and make sure emails and special offers are viewable on mobile devices. You should also explore services like AppStack, which can help connect you to your customers via mobile apps.

5) Lose Pay-Per-Click Weight

(Edgeworks Limited)

Many small business owners aren’t necessarily ad experts, but too many tend to be, well, ad idiots. Small businesses usually rely on online searches to lure customers, but using the “spray and pray” method in pay-per-click ads doesn’t get you what you need. To get quality customers and real ROI, you need specific, targeted ads. Re-evaluate your ad spending, and look for ways to trim. As small business and educational consultant Anthony Green points out, simple techniques, such as adding negative keywords that prevent your add from showing up in undesirable searches, will save you money and help you hone your campaigns.

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions for your small business? Tell us about them in the comments below.

To survive in the business world, you must have an online presence. And for small businesses that thrive on local business, ranking highly in search engines is even more vital to your success.

According to research from Webvisible and Nielsen, 63 percent of consumers and small business owners turn to the Internet first for information about local companies. However, 39 percent report frequently not being able to locate a particular known business. This means implementing successful search engine optimization (beyond just a few keywords) to make your company visible to potential customers should be a top priority. The good news: Just a few tweaks can increase your presence and send online customers your way. Follow these 10 tips to improve your local SEO.

1. Get Links From Local Sources

Sites that link to you help bolster your presence in search rankings, and sites associated with your location that link to you will help connect your business in search engine algorithms. Case Ernsting of Search Engine Journal recommends submitting your business info to local directories, community databases, and even your hometown’s Wikipedia page to get encourage links to your site.

2. Work Under One Domain Name

Sure you want to be recognized and use different online outlets for different thing, but having multiple websites for different services or aspects of your business can confuse the consumer—and reduce your overall search engine pull, says the Small Business Administration. It’s wiser to keep all online activity under one name.

3. Encourage Reviews

Though many small business owners shy away from reviews for fear of a bad one, search engines factor online reviews into your ranking. Think of it this way: The more people are talking about you, the more popular you are. Ask friends and customers to review you on sites like Yelp.

4. Add Content to Your Site

Whether it’s a blog, industry news, announcements, or event recaps, adding new content your site is imperative. This creates new pages that can be optimized with new keywords, expanding your company’s reach in the eyes of search engines. You can then encourage links to that content from other sites.

5. Include Content Links on Your Social Media Sites

Post links to your site on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. As Search Engine Land notes, search engines are starting to crawl and track these links back to your site.

6. Title All Web Pages

Many SEO rookies forget to make a separate title for each web page, losing an opportunity to give search engines more content to review. SEO expert Andrew Shotland recommends putting the most important keywords at the beginning of the title and adding your city name to the titles to hone in on local searches.

7. Make All Titles SEO-Friendly

Whether a blog post headline, URL, or file name, use keywords in all titling. Rich Hargrave of Local Search Source notes, however, that a URL with more than three hyphens can look like spam. Keep naming conventions simple but relevant.

8. Add Text to Audio and Visuals

Search engines scan text to determine relevancy.  If your fancy website is heavy on audio, video, or pictures, it may be visually appealing, but search engines won’t recognize anything. Make sure to include text in the form of captions or transcripts with any of this type of content.

9. Input Correct Keywords

Keywords are the lifeblood of your site’s SEO, so make sure yours are accurate and relevant to the type of consumer you want to attract. You can review Google’s Keyword Tool to find applicable terms. Also take the time to target keywords for individual pages on your site. The SBA recommends three targeted keywords per page.

10. Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free analytics software package that offers data about your website traffic and how it’s performing in search engine rankings. Periodic review of this can clue you in to trends or areas you can improve.

Do you use SEO for your small business? Leave us a comment to tell us how it’s helped you.

Small business owners have plenty on their plates. And though marketing is an important part of the business picture that many owners can — and should — take part in, there are some areas of marketing that are better left to professionals. As Harvard Professor Gail McGovern points out, “The benefits of outsourcing your marketing include cost savings and improved quality, as you can hire experts that can do their job efficiently.” Wondering which marketing tasks to outsource? Here are the top five areas where outsourcing can help you most:

SEO and Internet Marketing

(Maria Reyes-McDavid)

Internet marketing is vital in the digital age, but it requires some expertise to implement the techniques and tools that will get you the most ROI. Tools like Search Engine Optimization and Google Analytics are intimidating to most novices — for good reason. Considering that search engine algorithms and other web practices are constantly changing, this aspect of marketing is best left to experts immersed in the field. If your product or service relies on web presence, you definitely need extra help to gain footing.

Tip: The company you hire should be highly ranked in the any Internet search you perform (it’s their expertise, after all). Also make sure to ask about their practices. Though you want visibility and traffic to your site, there are some online practices that are frowned upon and can hurt your reputation.

Social Media

(Asthma Helper)

Though you can create a Facebook page or Twitter account on your own, using social media to its full advantage takes a little more effort and time than most small business owners have. This specific segment of Internet marketing has great potential if used effectively, and social media marketers know all the tricks of the trade to get the best results from social media campaigns.

Tip: If you plan to outsource this marketing, make sure you ask the right questions to find the right person for the job. And carefully read online reviews of any candidate, particularly on social media sites such as LinkedIn.

Public Relations

(SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget)

PR is an area that small business owners can greatly benefit from when needed. Do you have a new product launch or have you recently attracted some bad attention? Hiring a PR firm to do some damage control or support a campaign can help enormously. Not only do PR experts have more established contacts (and therefore greater reach), they can hone in on exactly what type of support your particular business needs. “Outsourcing gives you access to experienced marketing professionals who can quickly develop plans and campaigns on the tightest of schedules,” says The PowerMark Group President Colleen Edwards. Though you may not need a PR team year-round, it is a valuable tool when necessary.

Tip: Look for a PR firm that specializes in your industry and avoids contracts. This is a sign they’re confident in their ability to service your needs, not your checkbook.

Advertising

(Phil Campbell)

Many small business owners advertise the best they can with the budget they have. But if you’ve found that your current placements aren’t garnering enough sales, consider passing the task on. With knowledge and experience, an ad expert will help you put your resources in the right place to generate the best ROI. They can also help protect your reputation. As Staff Editor CT Moore of Revenews.com points out, a professional will know the best practices for your industry. “For example, the laws might let you make all kinds of claims in your TV ads, but that doesn’t mean that your customers will accept you making those claims.”

Tip: When hiring an ad agency, look for agencies that have crafted effective, long-term campaigns, not just clever one-offs.

Lead Generation

(Daniel Voyager)

If your sales are stagnant and your in-house resources are tapped out, outsourcing your sales lead generation can take the weight off your shoulders. In fact, it may be the better option altogether. According to Marketing Sherpa, outsourced lead generation gives you 43 percent better results than in-house. A professional in this field will help you target potential clients and deliver not just quantity of leads, but quality—and that’s what will give you a competitive edge while saving time.

Tip: There are many lead generation services, so hire one that specializes in your industry or niche. Identify the qualities you want in a lead generation representative, and base your search on that.

How to Find an Expert

If you’ve decided to outsource a task and are ready to find an expert, start by asking friends and professional colleagues for recommendations and searching online. Any talented marketing experts will successfully market themselves, so pay attention to search rankings, web visibility, and customer testimonials and reviews. Look for experts who deal with your particular industry (you can find these by contacting trade associations). Identify the qualities and type of experience you’re looking for, and interview potential candidates who match your criteria. When interviewing, make sure you’re clear about your own goals and expectations, and ask specifically how their services and practices can help you achieve them. Websites such as oDesk, BidModo and eLance, and the Outsourcing Institute can help connect you with industry professionals.

In this day in age, outsourcing is a reasonable and often advantageous tool that should be utilized by small business owners whenever and wherever necessary.

Do you outsource any of your small business marketing? Tell us what kind in the comments.

The push for social media marketing has been growing in recent years, and any modern marketing campaign must include it. But what good are social media efforts if you’re not analyzing their efficacy? Surprisingly, many people overlook an essential part of the equation: marketing metrics. These allow you to track progress and measure your ROI – both essential parts of gauging campaign success and crafting future strategies.

Luckily, social media marketers have a great variety of analytics tools at their disposal. Popular measurement systems, such as Google Analytics, awe.sm, Sysomos, etc., offer marketers an opportunity to synthesize social media information and produce real numbers. But what areas should you be looking at? Here are the essential aspects to track.

What to measure

Conversions to sales: Use tools like awe.sm to track social media activity that turns into profit. Anything that generates a monetary effect is a success: newsletter subscriptions, new member registration, etc. Make sure to track all conversions to see if any consumer patterns arise.

Blog activity: Anything related to your blog activity, including subscribers to your blog and e-mail to blog subscribers – which can be more important, is necessary to look at. Successful blogs craft a two-way communication with readers (in the form of comments and responses). Find out if your blog is being referred to by other sites, and what general traffic patterns look like.

Positive engagements: Any positive consumer interaction, whether through blog comments, Facebook post comments/likes, retweets, etc., is important, including brand mentions. You should also track negative mentions, and compare quantities. This can give you valuable feedback in terms of brand perception and interaction.

Traffic leads: How are people coming across your content? Look at the breakdown of your sources: Are social media consumers referring you? What are the most successful avenues? Consider what you can do to encourage more activity.

Your network: Who are you connecting with? Find out who your followers, fans, and members are – and who is exposed to your content. What does their interaction look like? What can you do to keep them interested?

Time: Once people make it to your site, how long do they stay? Some marketers consider duration to be more valuable (think quality vs. quality). Analyze this information to find out visitor trends: What are they looking at? Which pages trigger a higher bounce rate?

User activity: Overall, how much are your targets interacting with your social media efforts? Look at what your active base is compared to your overall network. If you can implement campaigns to encourage more interaction, you can then compare the resulting data to track progress.

With so many tools available, there is no reason not to use available metrics to help you monitor your social media actions. Resulting data will help you target problem areas, visualize patterns, identify successes, and track overall progress – all of which will make sure your efforts and energies are directed to the right place.

(original post)

As with any marketing tool, our goal is to maximize the effectiveness and exposure of your messages. The effectiveness of your Tweets is an entire other post as crafting the right Tweets is an art in itself. Here, we will focus on exposure. Below you will find some things to consider when scheduling your Tweets.

Understand The Timing

All of the tips below will go into specifics about techniques you should employ in your Twitter campaigns. They work, but only if you understand some basic Twitter time-etiquette. First, remember the Goldilocks Rule of Twitter Timing: “Don’t Tweet too much. Don’t Tweet too little. Tweet just right.”

People often ask, “How often should I Tweet?” The answer (and it’s not a cop-out) is, “As often as you need while respecting the rules of etiquette.”

An active Twitter account has many advantages. If you have an account with tens of thousands of quality followers, you will want to be in regular communication with them throughout the day. As most business owners check their emails several times during the day, so too should they check their Twitter.

There are three kinds of Tweets you’ll want to use. Replying to people who address you directly is a must and is arguably unlimited in scope. If eight people ask you something or say anything directly at you, replying to them is acceptable and necessary. People like to use Twitter as a communication tool and you won’t make people too upset if you’re popular. Replying to others means you’re active, so you won’t be breaking the Goldilocks Rule.

If you receive several communications per day, you can group them. If a couple of different people give you similar compliments, replying to them both in a single Tweet is fine. If you are not being Tweeted at a lot, you shouldn’t group the ones you get; reply individually.

The second kind of Tweet is conversational:

Searching for Tweets about your niche and starting or joining in on conversations is a good way for smaller accounts to get noticed and to get attached to the right hashtags.

The third, the “money Tweets”, are you marketing messages:

The Goldilocks Rule applies– some will go with one message a day. Others will go with several. It goes back to “as often as you need”. Overtweeting your messages will dilute them and may make some of your followers stop following you.

There is no magic number. It all depends on you, your audience, and circumstances surround the “now” of your messages. More on that at the end of this article.

Know Your Followers

Now that you know a little bit of Twittequette, having an understanding of who is getting the message is a key to knowing when to send the message. If you have a local business, it’s easy. People normally check Twitter in the early morning, before and after lunch, and at night before going to sleep.

For national or global businesses, it becomes more important to spread out your Tweets at different times. Most businesses that operate on a national level can let their Twitter account “sleep”. Even though it’s easy to schedule a Tweet at 3:00 am, your audience will be lower and having an un-manned Twitter account can lead to mistakes. For example, if you Tweet out a special or message at 2:30 am and someone replies, nobody will be there to answer them until much later that morning. However, for a global business, timing is dependent on exposure. Once you’ve sent out enough Tweets you will be able to put the data together and understand the best times to get your message across.

Su.pr by StumbleUpon offers excellent insights into the times when your own Tweets have the most effect. In the chart above, you’ll notice that this company that maintains a worldwide audience has spikes at 3:00 am, 3:00 pm, and 10:00 pm.  Once you have 30+ Tweets under your belt sent through Su.pr, you’ll be able to start gathering data about the best exposure times.

Tweet It Again, Sam

Scenario #1

You have the right message. You’ve molded it into the right piece of content. You have your shortened, tracked URL ready to go.

You’ve crafted the right mix of 110 characters (leaving 30 available for Retweets, of course). You Tweet it and…

… nothing happens.

Nobody clicks. Something went wrong. All of that work wasted. Time to start again with a new message, a new piece of… WAIT!

Don’t give up so easily. You can Tweet it again. And again. And…

Scenario #2

You just had the most successful Twitter post of your life. You Tweeted it in the morning and by mid-afternoon you had hundreds of Retweets and thousands of clicks. It’s time to put that one on the mantle and pat yourself on the back, but only for a brief moment before starting on the next super-amazing message…

WAIT! Just because you had success doesn’t mean you can’t have more success. You can Tweet it again. And again. And…

Depending on how often you have new content to Tweet and how time-sensitive your content is, you may be able to Tweet and Retweet content continuously. There are times when stories get very little posted in the morning but more when reposted in the afternoon. Sometimes, a story never takes off on Twitter, then reposted a week later yields opposite results. Strong content that’s still relevant can often be reposted weeks, even months later for a repeat of the same results.

Twitter will not allow you to post the exact same message over and over again, but you can change up hashtags to repost. All it takes is one different character for Tweets to pass through the duplication filter on Twitter.

Don’t get stuck repeating yourself over and over again, but as a general rule 5 or 6 Tweets in between makes reposting acceptable.

Creating A Scheduling Matrix

One thing that makes Twitter fun is discovery. People use it to learn the latest trends, hear the latest news, and share the latest content. Unless you’re a news organization, chances are you don’t have enough content to keep people engaged constantly. This is where a proper “Twitter Scheduling Matrix” comes into play. Spread your Tweets and reposts properly so that you can stick to a routine that fits both The Goldilocks Rule as well as the personality of your business. If you are Tweeting 5 “money Tweets” per day successfully and you’re only producing 5 pieces of content per week, you will have challenges keeping your Tweets relevant without the matrix.

We’ll use a local business as our example but the same principles can be expanded to fit whatever your business is doing. You have a blog that’s updated twice a week, daily specials, and a new video once per week. In your repository of old but relevant content, you have 30 blog posts and 15 videos. Below is an example of a scheduling matrix you can apply in this situation. This is an actual schedule for a local business in Southern California. The names of the blog posts and videos have been replaced with generic terms. Let’s take a look at the thought process day by day to understand why this matrix works for them:

Daily Special

Every day the special changes. They have one special and announce it at 7:00 am every morning, scheduled well in advance and posting like clockwork. They have a large number of “Twitter regulars” who look at this and often retweet it.

You will notice that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday they post a different piece of content shortly after their daily specials. Because of the traffic they get on weekdays from their Daily Specials and retweets, they want to take advantage of people visiting their Twitter account. Wednesdays is the exception as the manager who monitors Twitter is making purchases that day.

Based upon “best times” they discovered through monitoring clicks on Su.pr (or other analytics programs) they plan the rest of their days accordingly.

Monday

Perhaps the world moves a little slower on Mondays as we start our work week. Regardless of the reason, the peaks in traffic occur about an hour later than other weekdays. Still, it’s a good day for fresh blog traffic, so one of their two new blog posts of the week launches that morning. At noon, an older video is posted, followed by the repost (with slightly different wording) of their morning blog post. In the early evening, they select a blog post that was very successful for them in the past and repost it before their 10pm “overnight” post declaring that they have Daily Specials at 7am every morning. Monday is the only day they have 6 “money Tweets”.

Tuesday and Friday

These two days have proven to be very similar. No new content goes out since the latest blog post went out the day before. Tuesdays are normally heavy “news” days so there is more competition for eyeballs. Fridays are “bury the news” days when many people are just waiting for the week to end.

Wednesdays

Everything gets moved up a bit because of what is happening in real life as the manager in charge is off making purchases. In the morning they shoot their weekly video and post it around lunch time.

Saturday and Sunday

No new posts, just rehashing from the week and in past weeks. The account is not monitored over the weekend but the Daily Special for Monday is posted late Sunday night for the loyal “early birds” to see when they get up and around to start their week.

Overnight posts

Even though we do not have them post anything overnight, we have a different piece of “overnight content” posted at 10pm so that nightowls and early risers have something different every time.

Craft Your Schedule

Terms like “matrix” can make it seem more challenging than it really is. The overall key to success is having a plan based upon real data that you collect and having the right tools to make scheduling your Tweets as easy as possible.

Address your fans as an audience but never try to seem more important than your business really is to them. This is Twitter. The vast majority will not hang on your every word. Penetration and exposure on Twitter becomes more challenging as the site grows and people’s feeds become more loaded. Scheduling properly is everything. Remember, your audience knows what they’re getting into when they follow you. As long as you deliver consistently and without abusing the system, your strategy will flow properly and Twitter can easily become your best social media marketing tool.