Social Media is Omnipotent

Social media is all over the place, more and more frequently TV hosts remind us to check them out on Facebook or to reach them via Tweet (it sounds really odd from Dr. Phil).  Just this past week I took my bi-annual trip to the mega mall in our area and noticed a lot of signs in stores encouraging shoppers to look up their Facebook page and become a fan. My trip to the mall left me with the impression that social media has infiltrated the masses and is rapidly approaching it’s saturation point.

What does that mean for the small business owner that has a desire to maximize their social media presence and increase their bottom line in the process?  The good news it that it means there are more social media followers than ever which equates to more potential customers that are now in your extended Facebook network.  The reality is that when the saturation point hits you want to be well positioned with your fans in order to keep a captive audience.  A typical small business sets up a Fan page, invites their pre-existing friends and does little else to grow the fan base and add inherent value to their Fan page.

Keep Fans Interested and Grow your Fan Base

Let me start with acknowledging your willingness to tackle social media and kudos to you. Now that we are approaching “social media saturation” it is time for the small business owner to get a little more savvy in leveraging their Facebook presence.  The best way to add value to your site is timely and relevant page updates.

Here are the basics:

• Update your content with regularity and mix up the types of content as frequently as possible:  add video, photos, update your status to reflect what is exciting or new with your business.

• Elicit responses from Fans by asking for their feedback, opinions, etc.

• Post during “high traffic” times

• Use the calendar to add upcoming events

• Use the Facebook Fan Page to Twitter app if you are on Twitter as well

Find your Facebook groove

What is a Facebook groove?  Well it is specific to the company.  My general opinion is that if you do not have a retail store or an existing customer base that you can mine, it is much more challenging to engage a fan base.  If you are in the service industry or perhaps a niche market that customers seek out when they need your product or service, you may need to work a little harder.  A good place to start is to do a search for your industry on Facebook and check out other Fan pages.  Make note of what that particular company is doing well and implement in a way that fits your company.  Remember the old adage, copying is the highest form of flattery?  It applies on Facebook as well!

After you have checked out what your local and national competitors are doing there is another area you should address. Check out the Fan pages of large companies that you are  interested in.  This is a great way to see what others are doing to keep fans engaged and to add value to their brand.  I pay particular attention to companies that have marketing and advertising campaigns that I admire.  The best case scenario is that if a company runs a great ad campaign-they just might have a bangin’ Facebook page with a big time fan base.  Keep in mind large companies throw a lot of dollars towards marketing and advertising and have access to the best firms in the business.  The probability that you can learn something from the pros is good.  Let me help you out and give you a few companies that are “known” for having a great Fan page: Coca Cola, Starbucks and Volkswagen.  Go from there and take the time to check out companies that you admire and you will probably discover a few new ways to leverage Facebook.

Set up a Strategy

If you are not sure what to post-ask your fans!  That is a great way to get people involved and engaged.  If you offer relevant and interesting content you will have an active fan base and be more likely to grow your fan base.  The other thing you can do is create a master idea list for your Facebook page-generate a list of industry topics that you can post on, create pre -determined photo categories and commit to updating them with regularity.  People are far more likely to visit your page if update your page with relevant information.  Being on Facebook is a step in the right direction, using all of the exiting outlets a Fan page provides to craft a message, reach prospects and/or existing customers is good business.

RevenFlo offers monthly Web Marketing programs!

We ROCK your social media.  We can assist you in developing a Facebook strategy that helps position your company in the forefront of the Social Media Revolution!

Using Wordpress to Build your Business Website

The ever-versatile Wordpress technology continually proves to be one of the smartest tools every small business should have as part of their online marketing strategy. Primarily a content management system (CMS), Wordpress’s flexibility allows a small business owner to build an effective, robust website that is very affordable. Not only does Wordpress allow you to easily add, edit, delete information, it enables visitors to leave comments, questions, compliments, etc. —- vital elements for today’s business survival! Read the rest of this entry »

Website design has changed in the last 2 years, the web has shifted from static in nature to dynamic, it’s now all about the “end user” and how they interact with you online. This article will give you insight on some unconventional design elements and tactics to use in web marketing and visitor engagement. The new web is training users to interact with content, to express themselves online while raising their expectations of what’s possible. Now they visit your website…what will you offer them? Read the rest of this entry »

Every small business owner knows that having a robust web presence is key to expanding their reach to customers outside their local market area. Having a blog is also part of that robust build-out.

Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress is an open source content management platform that allows you to make updates and changes to website content with relative ease.  Being able to make changes to your website on a frequent basis allows you to keep the content on your site fresh and compelling.  This article covers the basics on “how to” post new content, tag and categorize your content.  The WordPress platform is remarkably easy to use once you have an understanding of the functionality of the platform. Read the rest of this entry »

It appears as though social media has truly reached the tipping point for mainstream America.  The innovators that have been blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing and using various other social media outlets have a lot more company these days.  For those of you familiar with the Innovation Curve, the late majority has arrived!  A large part of the growth of social media pivots around the realization that businesses can achieve greater exposure via social media.  Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s world of blogging and the web each small business has an opportunity for a voice in the marketplace. There are great blogging software applications such as Wordpress, Blogger, Joomla, and Drupal to mention a few that are free to use, three of those four are considered open source. That means that developers work on the application to invent, maintain and innovate the product for free so we can use it to get your message out to the world. 

So here you are sending out your message to would be followers, clients and participants (your community) and you have no data to tell you if your time is being well spent. Your first step would be to hook up analytics software (Revenflo uses Google Analytics, its free and packed full of info!) to see how many visitors are coming to your site each month. This will give you a good indication of how many visitors, which search terms, and overall engagement with your onsite content.

If your website is built in one of these content management systems they come with RSS built into the system. This makes it easy for visitors to subscribe to your information, each time you publish a new post it is pushed out from your site and can be subscribed to by your community in a  feed reader or aggregator. There are many of these on the web or you could also have the feeds come straight to your email inbox.

On-site analytics will give you great information about incoming visitors to your website but it will not give you the information about the outgoing content or RSS subscriptions broadcasting from your website. To track this data you will need a service like Feedburner, this is a Google product that monitors all of your outgoing feeds and gives you the ability to understand the behavior of your subscribers.

Tell me how you are tracking your website traffic or if you have questions about Feedburner or Google Analytics.

Hello all, we are crankin away here in Rock Hill on some great new Drupal projects, can’t wait to show them off. As you know 99% of our development and website builds are done in open source technologies like Drupal (these are full feature content management systems and so much more). Today I wanted to give you a glimpse on the ability Drupal has for creating a social experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Google recently added powerful new features to your Google Analytics account. Just in time for Christmas, Google gives us a great gift. Revenflo uses Google Analytics to track visitor interaction and collect data so we can make the changes to your website that are necessary to accomplish your goals. These seven new features will enable us to drill down to the data even further & quicker to provide greater insights, create deeper customizations, do more advanced analysis AND track more mobile marketing! Read the rest of this entry »