Why Your Business Needs Social Media Geeks As Customers

There is a generally accepted statistic in the online world that points to an average of about 1% of any population will be active content creators, 9% will be participants and the other 90% will simply "consume" that content online. If you believe those numbers, then the easy conclusion is to say that 1% is so insignificant that to focus on reaching individuals who fit into this category would just be foolish. In fact, your small business should ask just the opposite question ... how many of this 1% can you make into your customers?

Why does this matter so much? Because these individuals are the ones who are actively creating the content that others online will be reading. If you are a contractor, this 1% are the group that will post a review about your services on Angie's List. If you have a retail destination, this 1% will announce they are at your store on Foursquare, blog about it afterwards and post reviews and photos online.

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LinkedIn Launches 'Company Pages'

LinkedIn Monday announced an upgraded version of its company profiles called Company Pages designed to help businesses better showcase products and services with additional features and functionality.

The revamped profiles allow page administrators to highlight particular products or services and tailor product lists to different types of audiences. The new layout also lets companies feature product videos as well as targeted display advertising.

LinkedIn members visiting Company Pages can also post recommendations and reviews of products or services and those recommendations will appear in their own profiles as well. Businesses can also write and share their own endorsements.

Let's Make A Deal: Facebook's Groupon-Killer

Having only recently launched its location-based Places feature, Facebook is reportedly testing a "Deals" service with which businesses can offer incentives to users whenever they check-in to a physical store. 

All Facebook, which broke the news, calls the development "HUGE," suggesting that "Deals" could immediately have a big impact on the hotly-contested local business market.   


"Facebook plus Groupon?" ReadWriteWeb asks. "Considering how much profile and social data a Facebook Places check-in can carry as a payload, this sounds a whole lot more valuable to retailers than a Groupon deal. This is very different than the kind of Places-powered hyperlocal advertising that most observers were expecting to monetize the Places feature." 


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Read more recent posts:

• Ten social media problems that drive marketers nut...
• 5 Techniques to Make Your Next Post Unforgettable
• How Companies are Ignoring the consumers!
• Three Wrong Beliefs on Starting a New Blog - An eM...

Ten social media problems that drive marketers nuts

“Use social media marketing to build your business.” Sure, these are captivating buzzwords, but few understand how difficult marketing through social sites can be until they try it!  I’m learning this from experience.  The truth is that social media marketing is difficult work.  To help minimize the impact of this frustration on the beginning marketer, here are my Top 10 annoyances as I try to market through the social web and a few comments on how I’m dealing with them:

1. Marketing for producing votes – Users of sites like Digg and Reddit rate links, allowing some to soar and others to languish in obscurity. When I found myself trying to write to secure votes and work the system, I decided to re-focus on simply creating quality content in spite of the kind ratings I get.

2. Converting followers – I have hundreds, perhaps thousands of followers: Now what? Followers are not the same as sales leads are they?   I’ve learned to think differently about expectations and conversion rates. Over time, buyers will come, but you need to be patient and accept a low conversion rate as you focus on building relationships, not quick sales. 

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5 Techniques to Make Your Next Post Unforgettable

Reading a blog post should be like sinking your teeth into an ice cream cone in the middle of August.

Or the moment just before you plummet 2,000 feet in a roller coaster.

Let’s face it: blogs posts always have been, and always will be, a diversion from the mundaneness of life. No matter what your blog’s subject.

Since that’s true, let’s give people what they want.

Here are five techniques you can use to make your posts give your readers a great experience—not just dry information, but a truly unforgettable post.

1. Be a contrarian.

“If you try to write for everyone you write for no one.” ~Brian Clark

It’s okay to be controversial. After all, if everyone agrees on the same things, it’s boring.

While I don’t recommend you disagree just to get attention, there are bound to be times where your interpretation of certain concepts differs from that of many other bloggers. When this happens, don’t hesitate to share your opinion.

When readers come across your blog and read a different take from the usual, it’s refreshing. Allow readers to enjoy that experience by having the courage to be controversial.

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How Companies are Ignoring the consumers!

Watch this video for a humorous example of an egocentric advertiser and customer. This is the attitude of most of the companies. They need to realize that consumer has to be given a chance to speak up, otherwise sooner than later consumer will dump them!

Post writing by Anshul Gupta. Follow his on twitter.