Normally in the #smallbusiness world we’ll find all sorts of business advice from other tweeple.In 1 hour Mr. Broadhead tweeted 25 times about “small business” with his political agenda that he deems to be relevant to the conversation. Take a look at just a few of them with this screen shot here:

Judging by his Twitter statistics (2,951 tweets, following 163, and followed by 84) no one seems to think his posts are relevant or informative. His miniature audience is even getting annoyed as he’s lost 3 followers in the time it’s taking me to write the article.

So that’s your lesson in how not to use twitter hashtags – don’t do what he does. If you’d like to use them the correct way make sure you are posting to relevant locations. It’s not about saying a million things, it’s about being relevant to the people in your field, sharing valuable information, and building relationships. If done correctly the networking possibilities on social sites will be extremely powerful. Really this goes for anything on the Internet – share value with others, and they’ll share value with you. Cheers!

Small Business New Years Resolutions

• Lose the Budget – this one might be hard for a lot of small businesses to think about doing, especially if you’re business is having some cash flow problems. However, Internet Marketing tactics should be judged solely on their Return on Investment. If your campaigns are achieving a positive ROI – why cut the campaign short? Perhaps starting out with a test budget might set your minds at ease – then you can take a look at the numbers and decide whether you’d like to continue or not.
• Start your own Network – While it is important for a company to have it’s own social marketing campaigns going, it is just as important for the main players in a business to be well versed in the ways of social networking. Get the sales team, President, VP, and head of marketing all involved in social campaigns. This will give your company the chance to be an authority in your field on the Internet and will allow you to secure more business for your company.
• Take a look at your staff – Hiring the right staff is the most important thing a company can do – and your company is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Take a look around the office and determine if your company is working with all the right people. If you the year prior brought some unpleasantry to your company from a few of your employees, maybe it’s time to move on. It’s never fun to let go of someone – but it could be the most important move you’ve ever made.
• Set monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals – and STICK TO THEM. Set them for yourself, your sales team, your entire staff, and company wide – and let your employees know what they are. Communication and transparency inside of your business are important. It makes everyone feel like they’re a part of the team and it gives everyone something to try to reach and set rewards for reaching goals. Also, dont’ set them too high – If you set goals that are unrealistic then your employees won’t ever take them seriously.
• Read about new technologies – The most important game changer in your field may be the new technologies arising. Don’t rely on your IT department to tell you what technologies you need – sometimes you’ll hire a proactive IT department but in most cases they are more concerned with self preservation and security. Get creative and try some new things this year – don’t be afraid to have some fun with it.

So those are some ideas for your business this new year. Take my advice, or create some solid resolutions for your company. No matter what you decide to do – take some time to reflect and improve upon the things that your company does well. Happy New Year!

6 Steps for LinkedIn

Step 1. Revisit your goals.
Step 2. Layer in your keywords.
Step 3. Strip out the clutter.
Step 4. Reintroduce your personality.
Step 5. Take a hard look at your profile photo.
Step 6. Get recommendations.

Our Analysis

These steps are wonderful steps to take towards making a more marketable LinkedIn Profile. If you are an entrepreneur or business person – you simply have to create a LinkedIn. It is the most powerful business networking platform on the Internet.

Social Media Resources

This is a summary of the original article written by Jeff Haden on INC.com – Read The Original

I’ve taken a screen shot of a Facebook Fan Page in order to point out what I’m talking about.
1. A Strong Branded Image – WITH URL I might add. Since people who haven’t yet decided to “like” you fan page will only be able to see some information about you and your branded image – it’s important to have a strong branded image with your url. A Boring image could turn them away right away.

2. Additional Places to Contact You – Once you’ve gotten them to like you – they’re going might want to explore more about you. For this page we have a youtube page, we created an FBML page with a self branded video, and most importantly – we’ve given them the opportunity to sign up for our newsletter through Constant Contact. I was skeptic about how many people would actually sign up through our Facebook page for our email newsletter but it’s actually working – we’ve had the link up for about 14 days and 10 people have already signed up.

3. Contests – Look, people love contests and love free stuff. Come up with a prize that your Facebook fans would love. We’ve done multiple contests over the years and each time we’ve seen great success in the increase in our fan base as a result. You can use companies like WildFire App to track your campaigns.

4. Connecting with Partner Brands – One of the nicest features on Facebook Fan pages is the ability to “like” other brands that your company is associated with. When these companies see that you’ve liked them on Facebook often they will like you back and that will open your page up to an entirely different audience who may have never heard of you before.

5. A captivating audience – I chose to put this one last because it’s the most important and probably the most difficult to come up with. If your company already has a strong brand name, this will be easier for you to achieve. When building a captivating Facebook audience – try to target your core user – these people will be the example of how to interact with your page for the non-core users. The core users are also more likely strongly attached to your brand and will be willing to help spread your message. Remember – everything comes back to your core customer and the core values of your company. If you ever lose sight of that ANYWHERE in your business – you will likely lose your business somewhere down the line.

Thanks for reading – Make sure to sign up to receive our email newsletter – I’m building it up and have an important annoucnement coming soon that could possibly include some really cool prizes like a tablet….who knows?

Personally I am a member of many groups that are relevant to my field. Since my main focus is on small businesses I try to connect with all kinds of other start ups and small businesses as well as some of my competitors and colleagues. It’s important to connect with those in your field for obvious reasons – why you don’t want to give away your own trade secrets, you may be able to gain the competitive edge.

Lately I’ve been attempting to add 10 quality connections per week. These connections range from potential clients to people I admire in the industry. Each of these contacts I believe will give me strategic advantage in my field.

The most important thing to understand about social networking, and LinkedIn is no exception to this rule, is that it is all about give and take. While you’re looking to gain useful information from your connections, you also need to give back to the community. Otherwise – the experience isn’t going to be natural or real – and people are going to be less likely to connect with you in real life.

One of the greatest features of LinkedIn is the recommendations feature. You can ask for recommendations and give recommendations to your connections. These are real testimonials from people you’ve worked with before. I have given many recommendations for people that I’ve worked with and have received some as well.

All in all the key to increasing your connections on LinkedIn is no different that increasing your visitors to your site or you business. The best thing to do is to search for relevant groups, people, and interests to connect with and create a solid connection with them. Giving to others will always payback ten fold in the end – so make sure you’re an active member with your connections.

Mark took the things that attract people to social life in real life and put it on the Internet. He focused solely on allowing people to connect at levels that would be of interest to people – such as relationship status of the cute girl from your History 101 class, allowed them to publish interesting photos of themselves doing fun things, and most importantly from a humanistic standpoint was the allowing of people to secure their friendships through the exchange of friend requests.

We as humans all strive to be interconnected with other people – some more so than others. His expansion was even entirely scientific. He slowly expanded it from the epicenter as more and more people in schools around them heard about it, they wanted it too. Mark simply capitalized on human nature and created the most successful social platform in the history of the world.

This year, my brother and I will be having our 5 year and 10 year high school reunions. My 5 year reunion – should be coming relatively soon – I’ve heard nothing about it yet but frankly don’t care to go anyway. Facebook has allowed me to stay in touch with the people from my high school class that I want to – and not give a damn about those I don’t. The 10 year reunion is the one that “everyone has to go to” at least according to previous generations. It’s supposed to be the one where everyone has made it – they are married, have kids, and things are really exciting. My brother won’t be going to his – not because he hated high school and doesn’t want anything to do with those people – but because he already knows what is happening with his high school class – they were the first Facebook generation – back when it wasn’t open to just anybody – it was for college students only.

His expansion to the pre-collegiate and post-collegiate markets was really genius as well. I had brothers who were in college and always talked about Facebook – therefore – I couldn’t wait to get to school so that I could use Facebook. I actually remember being kind of made when I was a Freshman in college and they had just opened it up to the whole world.

The moral of the story is that Facebook works because Mark Zuckerberg and the lead people at Facebook stayed client and user focused. Not everyone who does this will see the success that Facebook has – but I can guarantee you – that if you don’t stay client and user focused – you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at ever being the next Facebook.

Here is the original posting -

Here is the link to the video that you should watch http://tlk.tc/8f2

There are a few things wrong with this posting right off the bat. First off – Blackberry is trying to brand their tablet as a professional grade tablet, yet they are trying to do so by placing the product right in the middle of a pop-culture event. There is nothing professional about the royal wedding – there are a ton of people who don’t care about the wedding, and the product placement was just a straight sales pitch. Now if the nice ET lady didn’t have to force the words “Blackberry Playbook” out of her mouth as she showed the extremely limiting features that it has for day-to-day use, then it might have been a really great product placement.

However, the playbook per Blackberry’s own branding is the worlds “first and only professional grade tablet.” While Blackberry chose to corner themselves in the professional market once more with this device – they are only hurting that image by trying to get it involved in Pop culture. Are you following what I’m saying?

Here it is in plain English – If the Blackberry Playbook truly is meant to be a professional grade tablet – wouldn’t your product be more well suited in the hands of a really well known CEO of a major corporation – letting them explain to everyone how the Tablet helps them stay on task and get work done more efficiently? Say you put it in Donald Trumps hands – who let’s be honest is getting a lot of public attention right now – wouldn’t that better serve your overall cause? I think so. It’s targeted, it’s hot, it’s fresh, and most importantly it’s relevant to the image they’re trying to portray to their consumers.

I had originally thought that I would prove how disconnected Blackberry clearly was with this posting by sharing some screen shots of the comments – for reasons of professionalism I’ll leave them out (too many F words used in too little of space). If you’d like to check out the original posting yourself you may do so on the Blackberry Facebook Page.

Here is the rule of thumb when you’re trying to do anything in online marketing – stick to these and you’ll be golden 100% of the time. Blackberry wavered just slightly and it’s pissed off some of their loyal fans.

Questions to consider when creating ANY marketing campaign

• Who is your target market?
• Is your message relevant to my target market?
• Does this campaign help to further my companies marketing initiatives?

Online marketing is all about the consumer – never lose sight of them in ANYTHING that you do – and you will succeed. Cheers!

]]> http://www.espiremarketing.org/a-lesson-in-how-not-to-use-social-media-blackberry-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.espiremarketing.org/the-noob-guide-to-internet-marketing-info-graphic/ http://www.espiremarketing.org/the-noob-guide-to-internet-marketing-info-graphic/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:56:49 +0000 Harrison Watson http://www.espiremarketing.org/?p=905 Check out the Noob Guide to Internet Marketing info graphic brought to you by Unbounce.




Thanks to my buddy Chris “Yeeples” Welsh for pointing this one out to me. Also, thanks to the orginail posters of this info graphic.

]]> http://www.espiremarketing.org/the-noob-guide-to-internet-marketing-info-graphic/feed/ 0 http://www.espiremarketing.org/involver-launches-sml-social-mark-up-language/ http://www.espiremarketing.org/involver-launches-sml-social-mark-up-language/#comments Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:43:12 +0000 Harrison Watson http://www.espiremarketing.org/?p=859

Involver – The social media marketing company has launched something that they might be worth a shout. They recently launched a new technology SML or social mark-up language. This new technology promises to give us the non-developer types the ability to create high quality content on their social media pages.

The overview page doesn’t offer much in the way of information as to what the technology will actually allow. However it does promise to give you the ability to do more with your social media campaigns, deliver more to your users, and give you the ability to get creative with your social media marketing campaigns.

I have contacted Involver and requested a demo. My hope is to share all of the capabilities with you upon completion of that demo.

]]> http://www.espiremarketing.org/involver-launches-sml-social-mark-up-language/feed/ 0 http://www.espiremarketing.org/calling-all-small-business-resources-submit-yours-today/ http://www.espiremarketing.org/calling-all-small-business-resources-submit-yours-today/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:18:15 +0000 Harrison Watson http://www.espiremarketing.org/?p=842 eSpire Marketing has recently launched the Small Business Resources Center. This section of our website is dedicated to resources and tools that are available online for small businesses to improve their marketing skills and website performance.

Visit the small business resources section and you will see some of the resources that I’ve already added to the section. Our hope is to make this section of our website fully alive and constantly updating. We want this section to be a one stop shop for all of your small business marketing needs.

The interent houses a lot of information, but unless you know what to search for, you’ll never find it all. Visit the Small Business Resource Center today

Submit your Resource

Think you have a resource worth listing? Submit your listing today. We are looking for valuable resources of all kinds for our small business resource section. Please make your submission web marketing related and visit our submission page.  A link back to the resource center is not require but is appreciated.

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