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Small business networking: Are you making the most of it?
May 04, 2010
In less than twenty years, networking has gone from something done informally to being a prime marketing tool for small business.
The opportunities are endless. You can network at any time of the day or night – face to face and online.
The big question is “Have your social networking skills and practices kept pace?”
What are the changes?
- Small business networking is now one to many and many to many, not just one to one.
- Business networking and your website are intrinsically linked.
- Networking effectiveness is boosted by switching from sales oriented messages to content and permission-based marketing.
To make the most of these, here are five networking tips:
Online social networking profiles
Create or update your online profile for all the networking groups to which you belong. Be consistent with what you write and keep them up to date.
Join social networking sites
Choose the ones that best suit your business. The top social networking sites are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Generally, Facebook is great if you have a large following already. Linkedin is a business-oriented site. Twitter is good for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markeitng, providing your market is there, too! There are smaller ones, most of which are industry specific or geographically based. Still, choose the ones best for your business.
Create content
If you are already glazing over at the idea of creating articles and content generally, come back!
With online networking, posts are like attending an event where the emphasis is on sharing information.
There’s a bonus for this activity; you can use this content in other areas of your marketing. What’s more, you can create lead magnets from these and the comments received.
Comment of what’s being said
Monitor what others are saying and add your thoughts – just as you would in face-to-face networking. Remember, nothing is deleted on the Internet, so keep your comments in line with your business aims and values.
People buy from people they trust and the easiest way to build this is through consistency.
Have one-to-ones
It doesn’t matter whether you network face to face or online, you want ways to explore potential. A one-to-one over the phone is a quick and easy way to decide how to move forward, even if that is to arrange an appointment.
These are five networking tips you can do today and over time they increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Tell me which of these are you doing now?
This blog post by Karen Purves originally appeared at KarenPurves.com
Work deeper with few, or shallower with many?
October 26, 2009
Is it better to work with more businesses (in a relatively shallow way) or is it better to work with fewer but in a more intense way (and therefore with more long-term benefit)?
When working in Africa my preference was to work longer and deeper with fewer people - by handing over the tools I was able see more benefit.
But does this theory (better to go narrow and deep rather than broad and shallow) hold in the UK?
Applied to your own business (and specifically to your marketing) is it better to narrow your focus and look for deep knowledge in a narrow field (niche) or is it better to go broader and shallower?
Case Study One: the business coach who only sells to dentists charges four times the going rate because of his narrow focus/niche expertise.
Case Study Two: the 'tart with a heart' business will sell anything to anyone and does make sales but she gets known for what she does and becomes known as a 'jack of all trades'... Gets lots of work but at low rates. "Jump!" the clients say. "How high?" she says...
Do you have the bottle to go narrower and deeper in your niche or is the recession making you more of a tart? How do you think this is perceived in the marketplace?
Good Neighbors Can Make a Difference at the Local Level, says Yahoo
September 21, 2009
I have to admit I find Yahoo one of the most frustrating online companies I have ever encountered. However, I also consider it the biggest innovator, and that’s the frustration. The labs division of the company produces many fantastic products and services, yet only a small percentage of these ever get air time.
The latest product to come from the Silicon Valley beast is Yahoo Neighbors, a mashup between local search and social networking. Currently only available in the States, Neighbors is in effect a message board for local communities. If implemented correctly, this will provide a fantastic real time view of “the word on the street” to Yahoo searchers. I think a good description for this is “the conversation layer”.
Having spent some time playing with Neighbors I have to say it’s brilliant. Its contents are categorised into sections that really matter locally, such as business recommendations, education and even restaurant reviews. While we may discuss how social networks and presence management are essential for business (and they are), often the same thinking doesn’t translate for local businesses. This is where Neighbors could potentially help. Small businesses could exploit the service in numerous ways, from basic exposure, to the creation of a “linked-in” style authority status, but at a local level.
Yahoo Neighbors is pretty awesome, and the concept of the conversation layer doesn’t just apply to the larger and more web savvy businesses. This is a service that seems to bridge that gap between large and small extremely well.
I just hope it’s not another bright idea that gets stifled due to lack of business support from the big Purple. Oh, and I also hope that it eventually finds its way over the pond to us!
A Wordle of opportunity - Is your blog on topic?
July 20, 2009
As with many things there is often a solution and increasingly that solution is web based and I don't just mean your simple search engine query input and pages upon pages of answers solutions. Clever computer types have created a myriad of tools for web analytics and monitoring. Some tools offer fantastic graphical representations that will illustrate where you have come from and where you ought to be going. Having demonstrated the web application of Tweetdeck in my previous post as a means of monitoring your small business online in the real time stream of consciousness that is Twitter, this post will demonstrate to you just how you can analyse your company blog-where it has come from and where it ought to go. Whatever purpose your blog serves, it is expected that posts will be categorised and then subcategorised by 'Tags.' Not only will tags organise content for you, search engines love nothing more than to feast on tagged content. Tagging makes life easier for you, search engines and your reader. Now here comes the web solution to analysing your blog content. Assuming your blog has an RSS feed-many blogging platforms throw this nugget in for you- copy and paste the feed URL into the appropriate field on Wordle, sit back and watch it make a pretty diagram for you. Wordle, in their own words, ‘…is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.’ Now you could compare your Wordle diagram with your blog’s ‘Tag Cloud,’ should you have one or just take the results at face value. What does it tell you? Does the diagram match up to your perceptions of what you think you blog about and in turn demonstrate you are writing on topic and selecting the most appropriate tags for your wonderful content? Or does it highlight a need to tweak your content? It could be that it encourages you to write more broadly or to focus on one particular topic in order to readdress the balance or to fine tune your niche. You will see that I have produced the Wordle diagram for this here blog, we can see that ‘Marketing,’ ‘Business’ and ‘Online’ feature prominently, as you would hope for a blog which shares the latest thoughts on marketing to small businesses in an ever increasing online world. It could be suggested that the Marketing Donut blog would do well to drive more content along the lines of the key topics which are displayed on the Marketing Donut site itself in order to increase the depth of coverage in the field of Marketing. Give it a go and see if it gives you an illustrated guide to being on topic or not. Where have you come from and where do you want your blog to go?
Show time
March 27, 2009
Well, we’re nearly there. The team has been working flat out to meet our content deadline of 31 March and it looks like we’re going to make it.
Producing 100 web pages of practical, high quality, search engine optimised copy and sourcing some 300 online tools and other resources in less than three months is no mean feat.
Loading the content will start in earnest on 1 April (who chose that date?!), before we launch on 20 April. But that’s just the start. Post-launch, our challenge is to create a constantly evolving, dynamic and truly interactive site. You can help us to make it happen.
We want small business owners to use the Marketing Donut regularly, so we need to ensure a fresh stream of new material and ongoing dialogue. But this doesn’t mean throwing anything and everything related to marketing up there. Continually, we ask ourselves: ‘Is this really relevant to SMEs?’ and ‘Is it practical?’
If it’s textbook marketing theory you’re after, best go elsewhere. The aim of the Marketing Donut is to tell busy SME owner-managers what they need to know, when they need to know it. Hopefully, this will help them overcome their challenges quickly and effectively.
Your feedback is vital to the success of the site, so please let us know what you think on 20 April.
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