Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Top 10 Reasons Small Business Should Venture into Social Media

Twitter has over 50 million visits each month. In January of 2009, in the US alone, over 14.8 billion online videos were watched. (http://www.kenburbary.com) Data from istrategylabs.com indicates that the 35-54 year old demographic on Facebook is the fastest growing group of new users, with a growth rate of over 276% in the last six months. During the same time, the 55+ demographic has seen nearly a 195% increase, and the 25-34 year old demographic is doubling every six months. (http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebook-demographs-and-statistics-report-276-growth-in-35-54-year/old/users)

So, why should you, as a small business owner care about the Twits and Facebookers?
The power of the internet is amazing and is growing exponentially - in the blink of an eye.
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1. Now is the time to position yourself as an online resource.
Traditional advertising is becoming passé, and people are looking not to be ‘sold’ as much as have their problems solved. Becoming a well of information for your customers positions your business as an entity there to help, not just sell.

Consider this example: As most product information can be found on the internet, by the time people enter a retailer to make a major purchase, they have typically done at least 3 months of research and already know the bottom-line-price, warranty information, safety statistics, comparable products and service needs.

Companies should position themselves as a resource by not only providing price and product information, but becoming a proactive assistant to their buyers. For example, an auto dealer could perhaps offer an online tutorial of how to change a flat tire, or a checklist of winter safety items to pack for kids heading off to college; an appliance store could have an online stain-removal guide or free downloadable college kids cookbook of simple recipes that require minimal ingredients and short preparation times. Possibilities are endless!

2. Position yourself as a leader in your industry and your community.
Social Media is still a relatively new phenomenon in the Midwest. We have let our friends on each coast set the trend and this one stuck and is only growing. By becoming involved early, your business looks like a trendsetter, and when your demographic starts joining Twitter, or searches you on Facebook, and you’re there and already established, it shows that you are forward-thinking. Imagine the frustration of scouring the phone book for your business number, and not finding it listed! The internet is already the phone book for generations X, Y and next – make sure you’re listed in their ‘phonebook.’

3. Early players have access to the most desirable ‘names,’ so the earlier claim your web space, the better!
If you own Zyskowski-Johnstone Feed-n-Bait, you may be able to wait a while before someone else scoops up your business name. However, if you are in Minnesota, and you market social media (for example) SocialMediaMN or any combination thereof, may be scarce these days. Get in early and claim your space! Even if you aren’t ready to jump into the Social Media pool just yet, that’s okay. Get your name registered until you’re ready to roll – that way it’s there, it’s yours and it’s unique!

4. Social Media is accessible.
How-to articles and books abound both online and at your local bookseller. Most are written in layman’s terms and are free of the scary techie speak that was so prevalent in the early years of the internet. Most of the applications used are on a WYSIWYG format, or (What You See Is What You Get) and as easy to use as a Windows or Apple program.

5. Social Media is :::wait for it::: FREE!
Well, mostly free, as you will need to make a time investment into your Social Media program. However the majority of the platforms that you could choose for your business Social Media are delivered to your customer’s homes, offices, favorite coffee shops, libraries, at no cost to you. Imagine! You can target market your customers – hand pick them by the thousands – for free.

6. Social Media is global.
A specialty business in Des Moines my have just the exact piece needed to round out the perfect collection, but no one in Tulsa carries that model. By becoming involved in Social Media (and the key word here is involved) you are able to reach niche markets previously unattainable, in seconds. One retailer I work with was able to help a customer halfway across the country, by connecting her with someone to answer her specific questions when her local resources were unavailable.

7. Social Media is immediate.
We all know how customers share their experiences with their circles of influence. Customer Service 101 stuff. But in the Twitter era, even standing in line at Starbucks can become newsworthy (or at least tweet-worthy). What does this mean for your business? Everything! A customer with an issue can and will spread the word about your service throughout their social networks, and those people can all respond, comment and add their experiences as well. All, in a matter of seconds. On the flipside, a customer such as the woman mentioned above will share her positive experiences likewise. What we learned about happy vs. unhappy customers no longer holds true – happy, neutral or unhappy, it’s all shared. So capitalize on positives.

8. Capitalize on positives and have your customers spread the word.
What if your business offered a special for every customer that mentioned your name or your specific product on Social Media? That is very possible and often accomplished quite successfully on Twitter. As we speak, customers are “Re-Tweeting” a link to some savvy business’s special offer. Each “RT” spreads from one social network to another like wildfire. If the right offer is made, the results will be extraordinary.

9. You will know if your efforts are successful or not, where, when, and to whom.
Unlike hit-or-miss mass mailers of the past with the traditional 1-10% response rate, coupons, messages, etc. can be targeted to specific demographic groups with the ease of a button click. One client has a Facebook ad targeted to both males and females, single and married, with a high school education or more, aged 25+ and that are not already connected to the business on Facebook. Micro-target your business to the people that are already listening and already interested. Then make great use of the multitudes of analytics (also FREE) that are already out there to determine the best approach for your business.

10. Know what’s being said about your business – and your competition’s!
Tools are available for you to log on – even with out an account – and see who is saying what about whom. On Twitter, on can literally, in a matter of seconds, target every single person that used a key word unique to your business. For example, one could read tweets from people within a 5 mile radius of Zip Code 55104 that used the word “quilting” from August 15, 2009 to October 27, 2009. You get the picture. It’s huge, it’s powerful, and it’s out there.

There is only one downside to becoming involved in web-based marketing. Outdated websites, dusty blogs and unanswered tweets just sitting out there in cyberspace for the world to see make your business look, well, not so good… So whether you choose to start out small or go whole hog, once you begin, make sure you continue your program.

The web is not getting any smaller and ignoring it won’t make it go away. It’s never to late to get involved in Social Media, but the sooner you choose to become a part of this amazing, powerful and free marketing resource, the sooner you’ll be ahead of the curve, and likely ahead of your competition as well. Happy Selling!


If you need assistance getting started, or just want some personal attention to decide the best Social Media forums for your business, the good news is that help is available! With the global (Reason #6) nature of the internet, help is just a click away, regardless of your geographic location. HarkHerold.com offers an array of Social Media services, including set up, maintenance and promotion of online accounts. ©HarkHerold.com, 2009

Friday, October 23, 2009

The Dead Horse that is Customer Service


Apparently, customer service is indeed dead. I came home to find this. My lovely fall mums.
Smashed to smithereens.
I first thought it was Halloween pranksters, until the other one, the smashee's twin, was untouched on the other side of the step.
Apparently, the postperson was in a huge hurry to deliver in sleet, snow and rain today, and must have given Herculean effort to open the screen door hard enough to knock some delivered boxes over. Over, into several just-dropped off five gallon Culligan water bottles (each weighing nearly 42 lbs.), causing them to fall like dominos down the stairs - can you imagine this - and land on top of my fall mumms.
They then rolled around the yard until they settled on the sidewalk, where they lay until my husband arrived at home to find boxes and bottles tumbled about, and a crushed flower pot. No note, no attempt to set things back right. Just stuff strewn about the front yard.
Even people that you'll never see again, can't trace and don't interact with on a daily basis, leave notes when they ram your vehicle in the street (or at least in theory they do...) But this person, comes to our home at least 5 days each week. We trust them with our bills, our credit card statements, and our personal communications. The same person who just crushed my little fall display.
Needless to say, the mumms are completely destroyed, the pot shattered on the steps, and we really have little recourse - other than to share our experience. Yes, they were dumb fall flowers. Yes, it's already snowed. Yes, yes, yes. But still. Whatever happened to customer service and courtesy?

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Box

My boss just walked into the office with his box. Torn and repaired with packing tape, this dirty, coffee-stained Talbots box is the equivalent of another man’s sumptuous leather briefcase. Instead of shiny brass combination locks, The Box has the impenetrable security seal of a single piece of paper tossed atop a rumpled tie. He’s using it as a doorstop today.

What we view as important in life is everything. It’s how we shape our lives. Do we need a supple leather case to carry our important documents, or will a dirty old box do just fine? David chooses a Talbots box, with the ironic tagline in traditional small caps, “It’s a classic.”

Ironically, there always seems to be an inverse relationship to the cost of the briefcase and the true net value of the person carrying it. Not just the monetary value naturally assigned to each of us by society, but the true net value that figures in things like family, the quality of your friendships, your health, your self esteem and your outlook on the world.

‘Back in the day,’ I had my Louis Vuitton case that I paraded with me everywhere. That bag was worth more than my savings account and IRAs combined. I needed that Louis to show the world I had arrived. No longer the redheaded Debate nerd, my bag told the world all that needed telling.

The problem was, the world wasn’t asking… and worse, the world didn’t care. I was so focused on ensuring that people knew that I wasn’t the ‘old me,’ when in reality, I was exactly the old me with really expensive stuff and an unwarranted attitude. At one point my goal was to show up at a class reunion in a limo – no wait – a helicopter – and stay just long enough to have ‘em asking in amazement, “Who is that jetsetter?”

Then I realized, much like the bag I carried, no one would care. Mostly, no one would care because they were too busy hoping the world would notice their bag, their new hair, their lovely wife or handsome husband, their cute kids, their weight loss, their business, their car, limo or helicopter…

What we carry in life is our own baggage, a true summary of our life experiences in the form of our daily outlook on life. Are we waiting for someone else to notice who we are or who we have become, or are we comfortable in our own skin as the less-than-perfect person we are deep down inside?

When we wait for the world to notice us, we have quite a task on our hands. My childhood was filled with not wanting to be noticed or picked on, my teen years hoping the world would notice how smart I was, my college years hoping the world would notice that I’d grown up and was ‘pretty,’ and my young adulthood hoping the world would notice my success. All the while, the world was patiently waiting for me to notice it.

I have an amazing and talented Mother who went without to ensure I always had enough, a loving husband who exceeds my expectations each and every day, four sweet and loyal dogs (don’t ask…), a decent enough job, and a handful of lifelong friends. Add on good health and enough to pay the bills, and that’s really all I need.

Maybe that’s my boss’ secret. He realized long before I did that it’s not about labels, expectations, or trying to impress, it’s about finding something that will work and running with it.

My fancy leather briefcases now sit dusty somewhere in the garage. I’m sure the rich scent of finely crafted leather has been replaced by the unmistakable stink of oil and gasoline.

These days, my bag carries things like a laptop, water bottles, Excederin, a soft-sided lunchbox for my yogurt and my planner. It’s durable, it’s big, and it’s very unimpressive. Most of the time, it lives tucked away under my desk. This morning, I spilled some coffee on it and the canvas top rolled the hot java conveniently onto the floormats of the car. That’s the way it is, it’s my bag - it’s no box, but it’s good enough for me.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Great free sites that social media beginners may not know about!

So as a part of this blog, I promised to take you along on my journey into the digital age. Let's start with some basic tools that I find invaluable.

By the way, all of these are COMPLETELY FREE. Nada. Zip. Zilch cost to get started or maintain. ALL are essentially Windows or Mac-based, so they are EASY to use and require no additional web or computer skills.

LinkedIn - For business and making connections, research, networking and general happy business-y thoughts. http://www.linkedin.com/in/erinherold

Facebook - Great reconnection tool for people that you want to stay in touch with - but don't have the time to make connections with each person, every day. (Friend me at HarkHerold)

HotMail, Yahoo, Gmail, Rocketmail - Each and every one of them are free webmail sites. Set up one or multiple for yourself, your family, your kids, your business - the possibilities are endless. Additionally, once you set up these accounts, you can often import your contacts from Outlook or other programs directly into the site. THEN, you can take those contacts and upload them directly into LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter (see next) and many other programs to see if your connections are already on the site. harkherold@hotmail.com

Twitter - Yeah. I didn't get it either, until I started dinging around on the web a bit more. It's fantastic. If you wanted to find someone within a 5 mile radius of any zipcode, that tweeted a question about quilting between January of 2008 and today, you can do that. It's an outstanding business tool as well, as you can connect very quickly with other professionals that share similar interests - even beyond quilting! For the first week or so, just get on and lurk - see what others are saying, who you'd like to connect with, and what's being discussed (see next for Tweetdeck). I'm addicted. Love it. In fact, I'm taking a course in online social media and am now connected to three people across the globe that have taken the same class. Great resources I'd never otherwise have found!
@harkherold

Tweetdeck - ...so you're not ready to fully commit to Tweeting, but you're curious about what's being said out there. Or what someone is saying about your company or competitor. Tweetdeck is your tool! You can pull in your Facebook pages to see live updates, and link your Twitter account (or not) for up to the minute updates on your followers. BUT the real beauty of Tweetdeck is that you can choose keywords to monitor throughout the site. For example, last week, a young woman with a Saturn VUE in California had a flat tire. I know this because I made a column that would pop up all Tweets that contained "Saturn" and "problem" - I arranged to have her speak with the Parts Department here in MN. While she chose to go a different route - everyone with "Saturn" keyworded, or her followers, or "problem" keyworded, could watch the drama unfold in live-time. Talk about making an impression! IN.VAL.U.ABLE. Period.

Then the last site I'll pump today is the one I found today - Weebly. Weebly allows anyone to create and host their own webpages - ENTIRELY FREE. Again, as simple as creating a Word document, you can make a website - I did! That's all for now! Stay tuned! http://erinherold.weebly.com

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Again - Not Marketing, Just Closure

Want to know the secret to freedom from stress, fear and anger? Forgive, let go and breathe in deeply.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Not Marketing, Just Life

It wasn't but two weeks ago when I told her she was better off without him, callously thinking how her young little heart would heal and she would find the perfect man to love and cherish her, and not stand her up time and again.

It wasn't but a few days ago, that a vindictive-sounding 20-something was on the radio with her BFF plotting revenge on a boyfriend for his Internet-cheating ways.

We remember a song or a smell and happy thoughts waft to mind. Even if the original event may have had blemishes, they are but specks of a memory that time has forgotten.

Just as easily, we empathize with friends who are experiencing loss, heartache or pain; and just as easily, we can switch back to our own lives and shed the pain of that friend like a too-warm jacket in Springtime.

It is only when it is our own pain that encompasses us, enfolds us and draws us near that we truly can empathize with others.

Without warning, dark memories of pains past come rushing back and add to the mix, stirring up dormant emotions and mixing with the new like ink in water. The pain of the each single event becomes indistinguishable, as it holds us breathless in the icy grip of fear.

What was once brightly prismatic, reflective, and crystal pure muddies with multiple colors of different inks, different hurts, until it all just swirls into an imperfect black.

Like those mixed inks, one cannot extract a single element, rather it all pours out together; dirty and ugly, permanently staining all around it.

I realize now that the times I thought I was being an empathetic listener were just times I wore the jacket.

This time, it is me telling the story. This time, however, I am not angry, I am emptied. I am not vengeful, I am crushed.

Yesterday, a little bit of my world stained black, and it hurts, folks, it hurts.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Bugati for business...

Hey Hotties - I'm immersing my brain in Twitterdom and taking in every twitterinfobit I can get my freezing cold hands on. It's like watching a video on a vacation you're about to take, or test driving a vehicle you're taking delivery of next week. I want it now - but the nature of the beast is that I must wait.

Wait until I know how to maximize my efficacy, wait until I've studied more and know more. I don't want to take that vaca without a valid visa or crash my shiny new Bugati Vayron because I didn't take time to learn the finer points of driving a quad turbocharged 1001 horsepower vehicle.

Seriously, if anyone out there thinks that the sheer-force-of-nature Vayron isn't a comparable analogy to what Twitter can do for your business, they are sadly mistaken.

Get ready for your own personal Veyron, kids, it's here, and it's almost ready to go.

Monday, October 5, 2009

...and away we go!

It's a drizzly October morning in Minnesota. The leaves are changing, coffee's brewing and HarkHerold is entering the blogosphere.

For a while, I actually thought that Online Social Marketing was reserved for the fancy people on either coast but apropos of nothing for us "fly over" dwellers. Frankly, I couldn't fathom the significance of Tweeting the world about sipping a latte or waiting in line at Target.

Sure, I cherish connecting on Facebook with friends and relatives, and LinkedIn is just a given for networking, but I just didn't make the connection of how these FREE online elements could translate to business applications.

Then - like anytime a newcomer learns a new language - it hit me. Everything clicked into place with bizarre urgency and what had to be an audible "clunk."

The secret that the coasties knew is that mass marketing is, like, so old school. Information is what's happening this minute, who or what is trending NOW, what is happening this second. Public opinion is formed in seconds and by the masses, not by reactionary after-the-fact ad placement.

Online Social Marketing can no longer be ignored - regardless of where you live, or the nature of your business. Real time, personal connections are the way to drive business in every marketplace.

HarkHerold has made the leap into the cloud, and we want you to come along for the ride. Stay tuned!

Erin Herold
HarkHerold - Marketing Excellence on Demand