Over the past week, there have been a few incidents of poor Social Media etiquette by some famous tweeters. First Rashard Mendenhall shared is feelings about the death of Osama Bin Laden, then later this week, Reggie Bush made a comment about his time off during the NFL lock out, then when he was ridiculed by his followers, said it was a joke, and everyone should have known it. What is most troubling for me about these incidents are that I am sure that Reggie Bush and Rashard Mendenahall both have highly paid PR consultants, who should have given both a lesson on what is appropriate and what is not on Social Media. In today’s Social Media world, whatever information you put out, has the chance to be picked up pretty quickly, and could have major repercussions. So how does a small business walk the line between giving their opinion while not causing a bad public relations mark on the company?
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Tag Archive for web solutions
Common Sense Social Media Etiquette
Social Media Strategy
No matter how often I say it, or how loud I yell, I still get told everyday from customers, I want a Facebook page, so that I can increase my sales. Social Media is not a magic pill just like any other marketing tool that we use to increase our business, it takes hard work and lot of sweat equity. The nice thing about most social media is that they truly are built on sweat equity and not money.
Would you start your business without a strategy? Just open the doors and hope that people will stop by and spend their money. That sounds ridiculous. Yet according to eMarketer“One-half of companies have no social strategy”, they are just hoping that someone finds them. This is still a new medium and is a chance to get out and play with it. This eMarketer report is looking at big companies, what an advantage for small business to jump ahead of the curve. Sit down and come up with a strategy and you are ahead of many larger companies. Social Media is like the wild west right now, if you have no strategy it can be very easy to get lost in all the confusion. Look at each component and see if it is in your companies interest to get involved. Most importantly have fun! The most importan component of Social Media is to be social interact with your customers, you will gain so much information along with building a great reputation.
How does Google rank your website?
The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to get some work done, while there was a meeting at the booth directly in front of me, that I just could resist to eavesdrop on. It was a women trying to sell her services to an owner of a company that sold automotive springs. She was selling him on her SEO and PPC services. She was explaining to him the difference between the sponsored links and organic search results. The business owner than asked , “Is there a human person that looks at the sites and decides if they are relevant to the search?” Then to my amazement, she told yes. “That is why Google sponsored links are so effective.” I wanted to jump out of my table and offer my services to this business owner. One of the main reasons that Google is such a powerful company, is that their algorithm can look at sites keywords, content, links, along with other factors, and with in a split second know how relevant the site is to the word being searched. So no there are not people who review every site that is submitted to them.
Let this story be a warning to anyone that is looking in to SEO, and does not know anything about it. For small business owners, if you are looking into SEO, take sometime and do some research. You should have an understanding of what you are looking for and what can be expected. When done correctly SEO is time consuming and almost an art form. As a consumer, you should at least be able to talk to your service provider and have some checks and balances with them. Here are a few resources to help get you started.
A quick check list things that will help your website do well or poor
http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php
For the do-it-yourself-er, some sites to help with your SEO
http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2010/03/10/12-no-cost-tools-to-help-improve-your-seo/
This is my turn to blog on SEO, if you have question it usually it is here.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
Welcome to NxtGen Marketing
Welcome to the first official blog of NxtGen Marketing. I started NxtGen Marketing to help small businesses use the internet to connect with their customers in new ways. I am myself am a small business. I have grown up only knowing small business. I come from a family of small business owners; my great-grandparents, grandparents, and father have all started and ran small businesses in the Metro Detroit area. I began my career as a sales rep traveling around the Midwest, working with small retail stores. I saw their struggle to keep their businesses growing. This was the beginning of NxtGen Marketing. I saw that most of my customers did not have the time to learn how to use the internet effectively. So towards the end of 2007, I quit my job to focus on building NxtGen Marketing.