Should your business become active in Facebook?

Should your business become active in Facebook?

To help you make an informed decision about your company’s Facebook strategy, Hubspot compiled these fantastic Facebook business stats.

1. 93% of adult US Internet users are on Facebook. (source: BlogHer, April 2011)
2. One out of every eight minutes online is spent on Facebook. (source: ComScore, February 2011)
3. The average Facebook user spends more than 11 hours per month on Facebook. (sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2010 & Facebook Press Room, 2011)
4. Facebook is overtaking Google and Yahoo in total time spent online. (source: ComScore, August 2011)
5. Facebook has become the top choice for social sign-in. (source: Janrain, April 2011)
6. Facebook has become the preferred way to share content online, second only to email—for now. (source: Chadwick Martin Bailey, September 2010)
7. The average number of “likes” per post on a brand’s Facebook page is 54. The average number of comments per post is 9. (source: Visibli, April 2011)
8. More than half of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool. (source: Outsell, December 2009)
9. More than half of small businesses agree that Facebook is beneficial to their business. (source: Ad-ology, November 2010)
10. More than 1/3 of marketers say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)
11. The number of marketers who say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased 83% in two years. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)
12. 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B companies that use Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer through this channel. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

Information provided by: Internet Marketing in a Box

Is Social Media Just a Time Suck for Small Business, Real Estate Agents & Mortgage Brokers?

Social media time management is an ever-evolving environment. New tools are coming out every day, and it can be hard to keep up. Furthermore, many of us, including myself, have wondered whether all the hard work will pay off. Bottom line: Leveraging social media correctly in conjunction with the rest of your marketing/business plan will increase your revenue; I saw my income increase exponentially! I will give you five tested tips and tools that will help you efficiently manage your social media.

But first just a few stats for those data-driven agents out there:

• 50 percent of small-business owners reported getting new customers from social media. (CrowdSpring)
• Nearly 80 percent of active Internet users visit social networks and blogs. (Nielsen)
• 91 percent of online American adults (approx. 129 million) access some form of social media each month. (Experian)
• According to an analysis of 4,200 companies by the business consulting giant McKinsey Global Institute, social technologies stand to unlock from $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value.

Now, on to the goodies.

1) You must be an “iAgent” — and by that I mean, an agent of the Internet. Mobility is key. You need to be able to work from anywhere from your “virtual office.” Whether it be on your laptop, smartphone or tablet, you must be on one of them. The operating system is your choice: Droid or iPhone or Blackberry. All have App stores where you can find Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc.

2) Dashboards. Having all your accounts in one place really is a time saver. I use HootSuite and simply love it! I manage many of my accounts from this one platform (desktop and mobile). There are also others out there like TweetDeck, CoTweet, and Seesmic.

Now, if a dashboard is too overwhelming, try connecting some of your accounts together. For instance, you can use Facebook Connect to connect your Twitter account to your Facebook profile so when you post to Facebook, your posts will feed automatically to your Twitter stream.

And vice versa, you can go into your Twitter account and connect your Facebook profile. INSIDER TIP: Create a personalized #hashtag so you can build an audience around a specific theme, event or discussion topic, and then add that stream to your dashboard.

3) Create a posts bin. It is a very simple tool that many agents don’t think about. When you come across good content to share, save it for later in the posts bin. So, if you have writer’s block or have been busy with customers, you will have ready-made content.

4) Integrate a social media daily checklist. Go here for a great one (and free) viaHubSpot to download and personalize. Simple, easy and efficient.

5) Take advantage of alerts apps and tools that go straight to your phone and/or email. Depending on your preference, set them up for daily or weekly timing. My favorites are TweetAlarm, TweetBeep, Facebook Page Weekly Insights Alerts, Repinly, Pinterest Weekly, and Unroll.me.

I hope these tips and tools help you. No more time “suckage” for you and if you need a little help, email us for a free consultation. maria@internet-marketinginabox.com

Building Your Personal Brand

Building Your Personal Brand (Pt 1 of 2)

Describe yourself in one word.

What’s the word?

What one word do others use to describe you?

(Don’t know? Ask a few people.)

Is it the same word?

That word is your reputation, your personal brand.

Is that the brand you want and need to accomplish your goals in your marketplace?

If not, that could be what’s holding you back.

The world is changing all around us (noticed yet?). The 40-year job security is a laughable memory. Pension? Social security? Hilarious!

No, in this day and age YOU have to create your own security. You already know that. That’s why you read our blog.

In this whirlwind of change the only thing that is constant and your greatest asset, no matter what the future holds, is your personal brand. It is your only security for your future.

It’s time we build your brand—the one you want and need for your greater future.

First off, let me dispel what you might think a personal brand is. It is not your business card, brochure, website or magnetic car signs.

Your personal brand is the powerful, clear, positive idea that comes to mind whenever other people think of you. It’s what you stand for—the values, abilities and actions that others associate with you. Your personal brand tells your audience: Who you are, What you do and What makes you different or How you create value for your target market.

Look, here’s the deal… know it or not, like it or not, YOU are a brand.
And you have been shaping your brand since you first started walking and talking.

Every day, through every communication and interaction you have, every room you walk into, every hand you shake, every picture you post, blog you publish, comment you make, tweet, ‘Like’ or Facebook posting you make, you are sculpting your brand. These many thousands of chisel marks ultimately shape the statue that is your personal brand.

So the question becomes, How does your statue look to date? Is it as magnificent as Michelangelo’s David or might you need to improve your sculpting skills, just a bit?

Over the next couple posts I’ll outline a 5-point Game Plan to help you select, develop, package, distribute and reinforce your new, beautiful and compelling brand.

5-Point Personal Brand-Building Game Plan  

ONE—Pick Your Word

Select your brand. Forcing it into a single word causes you to become crystal clear, thus making it clear how to live up to your word and for others to understand you, in a single word.

Example: What word would you use to describe me and my brand?

My hope is you quickly picked the word “success.” Not because of the title on my business card or the masthead of our magazine, but because I personify, live up to, deliver on that word, every day in every conversation. The way I walk, talk, dress, show up, perform and deliver on every commitment I make. I am intentional about living up to and demonstrating that word in all that I do and all that I am. That’s my brand.

What’s your word? What’s your brand? Pick it now.

I want to give you some time to think about and come up with your word and we’ll continue the discussion next week.

What single word sums all that you aim for? Write the word you you’ve chosen in the comments below.

Why Every Business Should Use Facebook

By LEE AASE | 

As I previously mentioned, I had an opportunity a couple of weeks ago to distill my thoughts on the business benefits of Facebook for an article Julie Sartain was writing for Computerworld. It was a really useful exercise for me, and an opportunity to encapsulate what I’ve learned in the 10 months or so since I first wrote about Facebook Business Uses.

You can find many of these thoughts expressed, described and demonstrated in more detail in posts linked to SMUG’s Facebook Business page, in its Facebook category or in the formal Facebook curriculum, but I’m posting my full essay here.

===

From telephones on each salesperson’s desk to fax machines in every work unit to the hundreds of millions of workplace personal computers connected to the Internet, U.S. business leaders have invested incalculable billions of dollars over the last several decades to connect their employees with the outside world and with each other.

They’ve justified these investments because of increased productivity and greater organizational agility. In 1990, for example, being able to receive customer purchase orders by fax instead of via FedEx or local courier was a huge advance, well worth several hundred dollars for the device purchase and the monthly charges for the requisite extra phone line.

And if AT&T had offered its business customers a free fax machine and dedicated phone line, can you imagine anyone declining?

Social networking sites like Facebook are a much more profound communications phenomenon than the fax, and Facebook’s functionality far surpasses the transmission of black-and-white document images. Yet not only are many businesses failing to take advantage of the free communication services Facebook provides: some actively block their employees from accessing it from their workstations.

What’s wrong with this facsimile? Can you even conceive that business owners and managers would not only reject the mythical free fax offering, but would call security to have the AT&T representative escorted from the premises?

Many managers misperceive Facebook, and therefore fail to appreciate its benefits. I’ve listed some practical Facebook business uses below. While every category won’t apply to every business, if you can’t find some way to profitably leverage a free communications network that has more than 70 million active members, your main business problem is likely lack of creative thinking and vision.

Here are five free Facebook business uses you should consider, plus a low-cost bonus:

Directory Listing: You can establish a free “fan” page for your business or organization in Facebook, complete with links to your Web site, photos, videos and contact information to key employees or salespeople. It’s like a supercharged multimedia white pages listing in a telephone directory. Here’s the Mayo Clinic Facebook fan page.

Word-of-Mouth Catalyst: When people become a “fan” of your organization, or when they write on your wall, it shows up on their Facebook profile and in their friends’ news feeds.

Collaboration Networks: Facebook allows you to form an unlimited number of free groups. They can be open to anyone, closed (you must invite or approve new members) or even secret (their existence doesn’t show up on your profile.) The latter two types could enable your employees to collaborate with each other and with external vendors or agencies, without providing them VPN access behind your corporate firewall.

Free Intranet: Speaking of corporate firewalls, if you run a small business, Facebook could be your intranet, through a secret or closed group. You can post important updates from leadership, invite discussion and even use Facebook Chat for instant messaging, without any expense or IT support. Each work team or unit within your company could have its own secret Facebook group for collaboration.

What about data security? Let’s face it: you probably have a hard enough time getting your employees to pay attention to your corporate priorities. Do you really think it’s likely your competitors will A) Find out that you have a secret Facebook group, B) Have the technical sophistication to engage in strategic espionage, and C) Effectively share the information from your secret group with their employees to put you at a significant competitive disadvantage?

Don’t use Facebook to store your bank account or credit card numbers or other information that could have serious legal ramifications if released, but understand this: most of your corporate information just isn’t all that interesting.

Focus Groups: Groups also let you invite current or potential customers or clients to interact with you and share feedback on your products and services. You can bring them together without travel expense or schedule coordination, and your group can be much larger than what can be managed behind the one-way mirror of a focus group.

The Non-Free Bonus: With 85 percent of college students having profiles, Facebook ads could be a great tool for employee recruitment. You can target pay-per-click ads to students at particular schools, with specific college majors and to undergrads or those who already have their degrees, with a link to a Facebook group or your recruiting site. The extra bonus is that by showing openness to social tools like Facebook that are part of how today’s students interact, you’re more likely to be perceived as a desirable place to work.

I’m not advocating diving into Facebook without first thinking exactly what you hope to accomplish, and whether Facebook is the right fit. But given its power (and the new privacy settings, demonstrated in Facebook 210, which enable separation of personal and professional networking), the burden of proof in the discussion should be on those who oppose its use.

===

What do you think? What other practical uses for Facebook have you found? I’d love to hear your stories. And if you disagree with anything I’ve said, I’d be glad to hear your reasons.

AWESOME to meet Mayor Michael Hancock & be a Part of the Peace March!

Myself and Internet Marketing in a Box were glad to support & market for our client Fresh Start Laser Skin Rejuv & Tattoo Removal Clinic as a part of this PEACE event! And I must say it was also AWESOME to meet Mayor Michael Hancock!! This was truly an uplifting event and proof people from all walks of life and various ethnicity can come together in Joy & Peace! 

Check out the Pics from the Event!!

did you know there is nothing more boring then a bland FB page?

Be Unique and Keep Updating: There’s nothing more boring than bland Facebook pages. Add lots of personality andfun to your profile. If possible, try to create applications just for your page. Offer something different so that they keep coming back, instead of letting them wait for updates from you. If you check Dell’s Facebook page, you’ll see that it keeps updating its status and gives new information on their products and about technology.

Is your Business on Facebook??

Is your Business on Facebook?? Check out these stats....
Need to set up a page or maintain one? We can help ~ :)

Car dealers go social - USATODAY.com

Click here .... Car dealers go social - USATODAY.com Watch this Video :)

TORRANCE, Calif. —Just a few years ago, John Pohlig might have hung up balloons and perhaps an inflatable gorilla outside this Honda dealership here to attract shoppers.

• 
  Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
  John Pohlig, director of marketing for Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, California, uses Facebook and other social media to try and increase business.

Enlarge

Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

John Pohlig, director of marketing for Scott Robinson Honda in Torrance, California, uses Facebook and other social media to try and increase business.

Instead he's posting notes on Facebook and other social media sites. The effort is aimed at getting people to comment on what kind of car they're likely to drive on a vacation — and includes dangling the chance to win a free iPad in return for a "like" endorsement on Facebook.

Four thousand "likes" later, and Scott Robinson Honda has a huge Facebook base. But can Pohlig, the dealer's marketing director, point to actual car sales from his activities?

"No," he says. "But we're building relevance out there. Our objective is to reach as many people as possible. Over the long run, this will help build our business and our company."

Active Facebook users can't help but notice that more businesses are creeping into the conversation on the social networking site — and that local car dealers are one of the most aggressive and prominent talkers. Some 41% of dealers now have Facebook pages, according to CNW Research.

• MORE: Five social media marketing tips

Most dealers, however, farm out the social media posting work to others. "Their niche is selling and servicing cars," says Richard Valente, founder and CEO of Irvine-based TK Carsites, which provides Internet marketing services for dealers.

Matthew Funk, an aspiring Los Angeles novelist, is one of the TK Carsites writers who pens Facebook notes for dealers and assists them with their strategic plans.

"Auto dealers not on Facebook are missing the boat because that's where their customers are," he says. "And that's where their customers expect them to be."

Shifting to the Web

Valente's firm helps some 40 dealers nationwide with their daily Facebook image, both in penning notes and advising them on social media strategy. TK Carsites' rates start at $700 monthly for basic Facebook marketing and go all the way up to $8,000 monthly for website design, hosting and marketing services.

Some dealers are more proactive than others. Chuck Capps, one of the owners of Advantage Nissan in Bremerton, Wash., says he spends a few hours daily on social media. Facebook may not be a huge traffic builder for the dealers, but it does help get people to their websites, emerging as a vital marketing tool that for some has replaced the weekend newspaper ad.

Thanks to widgets designed by TK Carsites, Capps can instantly initiate a chat session with a Web shopper, offer directions to the dealership, show videos of cars, and tout discounts and specials.

So much so that some 68% of his business now starts at the website — from customers finding the dealership online, initiating contact and making an appointment to meet.

"People don't just drop in like they used to," he says. "Before they visit, they've already done their homework, narrowed their choice down to 2 or 3 vehicles, talked to us online about pricing."

Capps used to spend $25,000 monthly on weekly newspaper, radio and TV advertising. Now he's only spending money online, with $8,000 monthly to TK Carsites.

At Holmes Honda, in Shreveport, La., e-commerce director Bear Goodman says his Internet sales department has helped generate 30% of the company's total income.

"People don't have time to spend all day at the dealership anymore," he says. "We answer all their questions online before they come in, and get them right out."

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Hi Merchants and Friends of Louisville Colorado

Are you a part of the LCV Merchants group?
Reminder this week is the Monthly meeting - please click on one of the Event invites and RSVP! See you there :)

Facebook Invite for LCV meeting

LinkedIn LCV Merchants Monthly Meeting Invite