As was illustrated in my last post, you can automate the process of spreading the word across different platforms without actually having to manually do so within each application.  If you don’t want to post your marketing outreach on your personal page, make sure you create a fan page in Facebook and only post there.  Either way, your friends and family are great resources for creating word of mouth momentum.

As a consultant, I work with clients during regular business hours so it’s most efficient for me to execute social media tactics early in the morning.  The overarching goal is to remain top of mind within your “community” by consistently helping, sharing and soliciting feedback.

Here’s a quick example of linking together several tools to more efficiently bring your message to social media platforms:

It might take some time for you to figure out what tools fit your specific social media needs but, once you’ve identified the most effective system, you’ll actually find yourself able to focus on content creation instead of manual distribution.  You make time each morning to brush your teeth and have a cup of coffee so your social media efforts should be just as automatic.

I’ve shown you the tools; now it’s up to you to put them to good use.  Also, please let me know if there are any tools you’re using that you would like to share with us.

Everyone has a different system for consuming their daily dose of news and information so you need to make sure you’re presenting your message in the most effective manner for each area of your ecosystem.  In this case, let’s assume you have written a blog post and now you’re ready to alert the Twitterverse of your incredible wisdom and knowledge with respect to [insert subject here].

For Twitter, your headline has to grab the reader and compel them to click on the link.  So, as you develop your “hook”, ask yourself these questions:

• Is this relevant to my target audience?
• Would my target audience find value in this information?
• How do I create a sense of urgency?
• How is this information different?

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to add some operational efficiencies to the process which I will outline in a future post.  But, for now, go create some great content, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and showcase your expertise.

[I will be publishing the online marketing ecosystem graphic (with links) in the coming weeks so stay tuned]

As you will read throughout this series of posts, creating content is only half the battle.  The real work is identifying and managing outlets where you can share your message and extend your reach.

There are several blogging communities that allow you to create your own blog within a community and then, there are also blog directories where your self-hosted blog content is aggregated and accessible to all visitors and subscribers.

Take a look around and research some of these sites and services to see where you can get exposure for your blog content.  Sites like Blogged allow you to submit your blog and then will automatically pick up your posts as you release new content.

Several weeks ago, Chris Brogan wrote about using mind mapping to collect his thoughts and organize information for blog posts, speeches, etc.  I did some research and found a product called MindMeister that has allowed me to create a graphical representation of the online marketing universe.  Since there are so many communication tools/services/platforms available, I’ve decided to break it down into bite size pieces starting with the easiest and most cost effective way for you to begin promoting your business online.

Blogging

The most powerful tool in your “let’s get found online” arsenal is a blog.  The top six blog platforms are listed in the graphic above with the most popular being Wordpress.  ( I use Wordpress for my blog and also as the Content Management System for my website)  I think Wordpress is the best platform simply because of the seemingly endless supply of useful plug-ins and widgets that extend its functionality.  But, regardless of the platform, the most important advice I can offer is to make sure you choose a self-hosted solution. (see my post from Friday for more details)  And, finally, here are six reasons why your business needs a blog:

• Boost your organic rank (by consistently reiterating your core message and keywords)
• Position yourself and/or your business as THE subject matter expert(s) which increases your “authority” with the search engines.
• Start conversations with prospects, customers and peers by posting thought provoking advice, stories and anecdotes.  Believe it or not, blogging is very much a two way street.
• Firmly establish and manage your online reputation by consistently sharing useful information with the very people who are searching for you online.
• Your site visitors can choose to subscribe to your blog and receive the information in a way that suits them best – via email, straight RSS feed, or within their favorite feed reader.
• The only cost you incur with blogging is time.

Start the Conversation + Maintain Consistent, Quality Content = Acquired Authority and Trust

Page Titles: Do you have page titles?  Do you succinctly describe the value you offer?  If the answer is, “no”, get to work.  Your page titles can be the most important search copy on your entire site.  For example, enter “your online marketing experts” in Google and see where The Small BizNest comes up.  Experiment.  Try different copy and see what performs best.

Blog: Your blog is also very important to organic rank so you need to make sure your site, http://www.yourdomain.com, gets credit for that content.  This means you don’t want http://yourdomain.blogger.com or http://yourdomain.wordpress.com because the content is separate from your website.  Secondly, if you self-host your website, you want your content in a subfolder and not a subdomain. http://blog.yourdomain.com is seen by the search engines as a different domain, therefore, the content is not credited to http://www.yourdomain.com.  We recommend you use http://www.yourdomain.com/blog instead.

301 Permanent Redirect: Do you know if http://yourdomain.com is permanently forwarded to http://www.yourdomain.com?  It seems like this is already done because they both take you to your website, right?  The easiest way to check is to visit http://bit.ly/duz3xu and type in http://yourdomain.com and click the “check redirects” button.  Here are the results from my check:

Checked link: http://thesmallbiznest.com

Type of redirect: 301 Moved Permanently

Redirected to: http://www.thesmallbiznest.com/

If you don’t know how to do these things yourself, check with your hosting company, website developer and blogging forums for step by step directions pertaining to your specific configuration.

Good Luck!

Real time data lets you react to changes in your traffic as they occur. For example, if you had an article that hit the front page of a popular site like digg.com, you would see the traffic spike in Small Biz Insight immediately, along with links back to the sources sending you the traffic. Knowing this, you could make changes to your site or to the article itself to take advantage of the situation.

If instead you relied solely on a service like Google Analytics, it would be up to 24 hours before you even knew about the traffic, and by then it would be too late to do anything about it.

Here is a partial list of the real time information available to you in Small Biz Insight:

• Customizable dashboard
• Filtering and segmentation
• Twitter analytics
• iPhone version
• Goals and conversions
• Campaign tracking
• Support for Google Analytics tags
• Information on each individual visitor

There are two versions of Insight available – Self Serve for $9.95/month and Managed for $19.95 which will include customization and reporting services.  If you’re interested in learning more, please send us an email at info@thesmallbiznest.com or call us at (800)277-1187.

President Obama offered “total transparency” during his campaign for the office he now holds.  It sounded simple enough.  “The system is broken and we need to involve the people we represent in the legislative process.”  That’s what I heard.  That’s what I expected.  Boy was I wrong.  Not even translucency.

Toyota is the number one auto maker in the world and has enjoyed a spotless reputation for decades.  I had a Toyota Camry for five years and never spent an extra penny for anything beyond scheduled maintenance costs.  I think Toyota is one of the best (tied with Honda) at listening to their customers, turning that feedback into action and delivering a reliable product at a reasonable price.  But, they recently strayed from their core values.  They had enormous goodwill (trust equity) in the bank and all they needed to do was tell the truth about faulty gas pedals, fix the problem and move on.  Their lack of transparency, however,  will now cost them much more than replacement parts and labor.

Now, if you would like to see the antithesis of the previous examples I’ll turn my attention to Hubspot.  Hubspot recently schooled us all on operating transparently and protecting the trust of customers and supporters.  If you’re not familiar with Hubspot, check out the book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media).  Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of Hubspot, have created an entire platform to help businesses transition from outbound marketing (interruption marketing) to “getting found” with inbound marketing strategies.

There is no better free marketing information available online than the quality content that’s available from Hubspot.  That’s right, I said FREE.  Blog posts, video content, white papers, and a suite of “grader” applications that allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.  I love the knowledge and insight these guys share on a regular basis.  They’re really smart and I trust what they’re saying because it works.

Rewind to February 11, 2010.  Blog posts start popping up alerting readers that Twitter.Grader has been hacked and “Twitter users who have granted access to their accounts to Twitter.Grader have all begun tweeting a bizarre and unauthorized message.”  Holy crap!  What do you do?  Pretend it didn’t happen?  Blame someone else?  Nope.  You fix the issue and immediately address your customers in a blog post.

Not only did Dharmesh co-author a great book on inbound marketing but he also wrote a primer on “Transparency 101″ – condensed below:

Honesty: “#1.  It was my fault.  I developed Twitter Grader — and I’m the one that developed this particular feature that ended up getting hacked.  I should have known better.  I was an idiot.”

Respect Customer Fears/Needs: “#2.  HubSpot is being super-paranoid about how we deal with the issue.  We’re shutting down several of the grader.com applications (not just Twitter Grader) and will be reactivating them on completely new servers with increased security.  This level of caution is likely overkill (and expensive), but it’s the least we can do.”

Keep/Build the Trust: “#3. OAuth is a very good thing. For those of you that don’t know what OAuth is, it’s what allows users to grant access to specific applications without revealing their username/password. Twitter supports OAuth. As such, Twitter Grader allowed users to “authorize” access. This is much better than asking users for their user name and password. Because of OAuth, although the malicious user was able to post to people’s twitter accounts, they never had access to the user’s account credentials. Given that many people use the same username/password on multiple websites, this could have been very dangerous. But, OAuth ensured that the problem was much more contained.

Kudos to Dharmesh and the rest of the team at Hubspot!

A Case For Optimism?

Forbes, in association with CIT, conducted one-on-one interviews with small business owners to better understand the lessons learned from the past 12-18 turbulent months.  Their findings, although not earth shattering, highlight a bit of a silver lining when you consider that most respondents have learned to work smarter and do more with less.

Unfortunately, nobody in Washington understands the needs of small business owners, therefore; they have been left to fend for themselves and figure out creative ways survive and even thrive in a difficult economy.  If the legislators just listened to the needs of business owners, we could speed up the recovery process.

OK, I’ll get off my soap box and focus on the more interesting results of the survey:

• Nearly seven out of ten (68%) disagreed that healthcare reform efforts would benefit their businesses
• Nine out of ten small business owners agreed that current stimuli do not benefit small businesses
• 62% will invest more in marketing; specifically, lead generation
• More than 60% said they will run their business more aggressively in 2010
• 50% will invest in growth or expansion
• While 33% said they would likely reduce their hiring, 29% expected to hire more workers
• 50% will hold on to their cash
• Nearly 8 out of 10 respondents agreed – coming out of the recession, the old way of doing business won’t work; we need to find new ways to take advantage of market opportunities
• 79% say their market segment is more competitive than ever
• 46% will pursue new revenue streams

Small business owners are, by definition, risk takers and will always welcome a challenge.  The past 12-18 months have made business owners better leaders and more prudent decision makers.  However, the most telling quote from this study highlights the immense challenges ahead -  “this ordeal has taken its toll on how small business owners see the economy in general. Only about one-fifth of respondents (21%) believe that the financial crisis has already bottomed out, with 47% expecting this to occur in 2010. They predict the financial markets will turn around in 2010/2011, stability will return in 2011/2012, and growth won’t come back until 2012 or later.”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for our politicians to suddenly “get it”.  Simply take your lessons, apply them to the present and future, and continue to move the rock forward.

Today is a day for us to focus on the task at hand and to challenge ourselves to experiment, invent and “build greatly”.  As small business owners we have the opportunity to make a difference and to do so on our own terms.