Embracing social media is key for small businesses hoping to strengthen their customer relationships in an engaging way. But with so many social media platforms across the web, it’s can be overwhelming to maintain a presence on each. A better alternative is to be active on those sites that can help your business most, but how do you know which one is best for your business? We break it down for you here.

Facebook

codemastersnake

On Facebook you create a business page where you can post updates, photo, video, and connect with “fans,” potential customers, and others in your industry.

Audience: Facebook has over 800 million active users, closely split between women (58%) and men (42%). Contrary to popular belief that social media is only popular with younger generations, 54% of users are actually aged 35-54, with 67% making $25,000-$75,000.

Best For:

Google+

ivanpw

G+ works like Facebook in that you can interact more dynamically with your social network. But G+ allows you to compartmentalize your social networks, meaning you can tailor certain messages to certain contacts.

Audience: G+ is still relatively new, however, the majority of early adopters are male (63%) compared to female (37%). The site user audience also skews younger than other social networks with the majority of users being between age 18-34.

Best For:

• Businesses with consumers who are younger/early adopters.
• Creating more targeted social interactions via “groups,” allowing you to send special discounts just to repeat customers, for example.

Pinterest

ohmeaghan

Pinterest is a virtual pin board that allows users to “pin” photos/links they like, then organize them into boards.  Other users can like, comment, and re-pin these links.

Audience: Pinterest’s popularity has exploded. The site’s estimated to have received nearly 11 million visits during one week in December (almost 40 times the number of visits six months earlier). It is definitely female-dominated (83%), and 70% of users make $25,000-$75,000.

Best For:

• Gaining exposure for products, particularly creative or design-specific products (every post requires a photo).
• Businesses with visual goods that also want to engage with their consumers and industry.

Tumblr

joshwept

Tumblr is a simplified blog that lets you post many things, including text, photos, links, music, videos, with the added benefit of being able to post from your phone, browser, email, etc.

Audience: Tumblr is a newer social media platform that is more popular with younger demographics: 72% of users are under age 44, with more women (62%) than men (38%) using it.

Best For:

• Tech-savvy businesses that want to use the highly customizable interface as an extension of their brand (some moderate HTML tinkering is required).
• Those on-the-go — you can update from mobile devices and set posts to publish later.
• Businesses with content that is highly visual — half of all posts are photos.

Twitter

Rosaura Ochoa

Twitter is a social media site that allows you to post 140-character messages to interact with your networks.

Audience: The majority of Twitter users are female (62%), though males (38%) also contribute; 71% of users are ages 25- 54; 63% of users make $25,000-$75,000.

Best For:

• Companies that don’t have a lot of time but want to stay connected.
• Finding out who’s talking about your company, allowing you to engage directly to do things like promote new products, provide customer service, conduct market research by asking questions, get feedback, etc.

YouTube

codenamecueball

This video-sharing website allows users to upload their own video clips, including tutorials and video blogs.

Audience: YouTube attracts men and women almost equally, but notably one of the largest segments of users are those age 45-54 (30%), followed by 35-44 (22%), and 25-34 (18%).

Best For:

• Businesses that provide services or products that are conducive to a visual medium, such as tutorials, demonstrations, etc.
• Brands that can properly produce (and benefit from) quality videos.

Which social media platforms do you use for your small business? Tell us about it in the comments.

With awards season right around the corner, a presidential election, and a seemingly endless stream of Hollywood failures and feuds, 2012 is shaping up to be another eventful year in celeb social media. Twitter continues to be the online playground of the stars, giving followers a front-seat look at all the action, and we predict plenty of celebrities will perpetuate the drama off-screen. Here are the five Twitter meltdowns we anticipate seeing in 2012.

Kanye West

Dell’s Official Flickr Page

Kanye has maintained a crazy reputation, further supported by his amusing tweets. Whether making deep confessions like “I know this is not a very rapper thing to say but I haven’t bought a new car or piece of jewelry in about 2 years…” or musing “There are so many broken systems from the economy to school systems jail systems… we need experts for this…,” his Twitter feed is all over the place. But considering that he’s nominated for seven Grammys this year and has a history of being a sore loser, we’re likely to see a profanity-laced tweet storm if he goes home without a gold gramophone.

Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher

cliff1066™

The king and queen of Twitter have announced their divorce, and their post-breakup activity has been heavily documented. But just as they once couldn’t keep their hands off each other, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to stay silent on their favorite social media platform. Though Demi’s feed has gone dark since her recent hospitalization, she’ll surely return  — though she may end up ditching her @mrskutcher twitter handle.

Miley Cyrus

benyupp

Taking a cue from other troubled Disney princesses Demi Lovato and Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus’ bad behavior is only increasing. Her hard-partying ways have been well-documented, while her film LOL has been shelved. Though she has had an on again/off again relationship with Twitter in the past, she seems to be tweeting full steam ahead — let’s just hope she’s not manning the Titanic.

Newt Gingrich

AmericanSolutions

If he loses the GOP nomination or presidential election, emotional Newt Gingrich may not have much reason to maintain composure. Thus far he’s been accused of having fake followers, but he may gain more legit ones if he takes to Twitter to air his grievances or continue his infidelity record by pulling a stunt a la Anthony Weiner.

Steven Tyler

SongLyrics

The Aerosmith frontman made headlines recently after botching the National Anthem, but this aging rocker may also be gunning to take the crazy American Idol judge crown from Paula Abdul. His perpetual use of the caps lock already gives his tweets some crazy character, but gems like “HEY… COLLECTING SOME STAR DUST & MOONBEAMS 4 D NEW RECORD… SO SORRY YA ALL FOR D LAG TIME… BEEN OFF D GRID SW” make us think he may have more up his tattooed sleeve.

Luckily, you and your business don’t have to stage a meltdown to get more fans. Read more Flowtown articles about how Twitter can help your small business here:

“Should You Buy Twitter Followers?”
“Case Study: How Humphry Slocombe Got 300,000 Twitter Followers”
“Should You Have a Twitter?”

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.

Social media is the new marketing frontier, and any business that plans to stay relevant has to adapt to new trends. Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms, and small businesses are learning to put it to good use, as tech writer Joel Newman points out, by doing market research and building relationships through interaction. And as the Twittersphere expands, only those businesses that can attract more followers will be able to maintain attention—or so some say.

The theory is this: The more followers you have, the more noticeable your presence, the more followers you’re likely to get, and the more reach you’ll have. But for small businesses, this is a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. How can you build a large audience to attract a large audience, without a large audience? The solution: For a fee, you can buy Twitter “followers” to gain popularity. Here we detail the pros and cons for those wondering if paying for Twitter followers is a worthy investment.

The Pros

(Creative Tools)

As Twitter’s popularity has exploded in the last few years, many pay-for-followers services have sprung up, promoting the benefits of an extended Twitter network, based on the following.

1. Popularity rules. The more followers you have, the more impressive you will seem. Because social media relies on collective opinions, customers or other tweeters will stumble upon your profile and notice your clout.

2. Increase search engine rankings. As search engine alogrithms from Google evolve and take social media popularity into account, the more followers you have, the higher rankings you will earn in search engines.

3. Expand your reach. A larger network not only expands your immediate reach and ability to promote your brand and business (hopefully getting new customers), your followers’ ability to retweet, share, and recommend means you will be reaching many more people, and enticing them to follow you as well.

4. It’s inexpensive. There are many companies selling Twitter followers, which means the price is kept relatively low. Though the quality of followers these companies offer varies widely, most charge a few cents (sometimes less) per follower. So if you just want to try it out as an experiment, you won’t be out major bucks.

The Cons

1. Followers are not always the real deal. Many argue that quality is more effective than quantity in terms of Twitter followers. Because there are so many companies (not all reputable), eager to make a buck, some “followers” are not much more than spambots. As J.J. McCorvey of Inc.com found when he bought followers as an experiment, the quality varies greatly by company and price point: $20 got him 1,000 followers, though most were inactive Twitter users who did not tweet much or have large followings. His $18 for 2,000 targeted followers earned a few retweets, but not a ton of engagement. If you don’t do your research and find the right company, you may end up with a whole lot of nothing.

2. No definitive ROI. Simply having followers won’t give your business the visibility and engagement it needs to generate a worthwhile return on investment. For a small business owner, attempting to engage a larger, inactive network can cost more effort than its worth. Like McCorvey, Stephen Baker of Businessweek purchased followers, but found they were inattentive and did not respond when he messaged them specifically. Worse, he received generic spam from them. You may spend more time trying to get a response from 1,000 people than you would from 100 quality, interested followers who can actually generate new business for you.

3. Some require personal account info. Some companies require your account password to access your account and encourage followers. This can be risky to your online reputation and, in the hands of a shady company, can be used for malicious purposes.

4. Twitter doesn’t allow it. Twitter encourages best practices to keep the community safe from spammers. Many of these services know how to subversively attract followers without getting caught by Twitter. If you want your company to be completely above board and follow the most ethical practices, this is not the way to go.

The Verdict

(walknboston)

Though there may be some advantages to buying Twitter followers, there are many more critics who are suspicious of the practice and its efficacy. Successful social media interaction relies on engaged followers who have a vested interest in following your brand and with whom you can establish a genuine relationship. Buying fans violates that authentic bond, and the quality of follower is often even lower than the cost. A small business can likely benefit more by building a modest but solid Twitter following the old-fashioned way, and implementing established techniques to grow their Twitter network.

Do you think buying Twitter followers is a good idea? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.