Increasing Sales with Social Media – Facebook, Myspace & Twitter.

There’s no doubt about it – small businesses are beginning to utilize social media tools and tactics with more frequency than ever before. A recent study by eMarketer reports that 260,000 small businesses across the US and Canada are employing social media tactics. 51% of small businesses are using social media for professional social networking using tools like LinkedIn.com and 28% are involved in microblogging using tools like Twitter.

There are several things to think about before just jumping right into using these tools. The most important is your time. Viral marketing through social media really requires a dedicated amount of time each day and you have to understand the value of your time. Many of the available tools are free to use. But that does not mean they don’t come at a cost, because they certainly do. The cost is human capital. Think of it as a pet. While the pet may cost a little or even nothing, caring for it takes a lot of time. The same is true for social media marketing and networking.

Before you start, make sure your strategy is clear! There is a lot of social media hype and peer pressure to use these technologies. Just make sure you clearly understand your key goals and objectives. For example, are you trying to build direct sales with customers, improve positioning of your product or service, or build your authority in a specific area? Answering these critical questions will help you move forward with your strategy.

Your first step should be to verify whether the audience you are trying to reach is already using social media. If your target market isn’t using Twitter or Facebook, then why are you? You also need to do your homework on where the audience you are trying to reach already exists. Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Are they joining groups or creating new ones? These are all key questions to understanding your audience and how to best engage them.

What are some of the immediate benefits that small businesses are finding with social media? Well, most small businesses will tell you that social networking can help foster stronger relationships with customers, enable a faster vehicle to answer customer questions, incorporate customer feedback, and build awareness for their expertise. However, many small businesses are still trying to understand how social media can ring the cash register.

A New Orleans-based pizza company called Naked Pizza has used Twitter to successfully ring the register. The company has over 4,700 followers on Twitter. That means every time the company has something to say, 4,700 people will receive the message and could forward it to their friends and so on, potentially reaching way more than Naked Pizza’s 4,700 followers. Jeff Leach, the CEO of Naked Pizza, reported that nearly 69% of sales were generated during a one-day Twitter advertising blitz.

Other companies are also seeing direct-to-customer sales via social media. For example, Barbershops, Spas & Salons is using Twitter to let customers know that walk-in times are available due to cancelled appointments. Before Twitter, this was lost profit.

Another great example of Twitter ringing the register is The Albion bakery. When there’s a fresh batch of bread out of the oven, it notifies Albion customers via Twitter and Facebook. If you are ready to take a dip into social media, Ad Age offers 5 tips for marketing on social media platforms:

1. Track sales made on social media.
2. Don’t use Twitter as Facebook (and vice versa).
3. Create a conversation with friends and followers.
4. Sell last-minute inventory.
5. Alert followers to changes.

As a small business, the way you spend your time is critical. So if you do decide to pursue social media, make sure that you have the proper tools to help you succeed. For example, a smartphone makes it incredibly easy for you to update your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blog accounts.

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, you don’t have time to get back to the office to engage your customers or react to their online comments. You have to be mobile and equipped at all times or lose that business to your competitors.

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Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.

The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. “You can’t buy that exposure,” says the firm’s co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using marketing with social media.

But Mr. AvRutick’s experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they’re highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.

“The hype right now exceeds the reality,” says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.

Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.

Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

“It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect,” says Mr. Chiagouris.

A business owner’s time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot’s Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey’s respondents say it requires more effort than expected.

To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.

Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a “patient investment.”

“My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven’t made millions of sales,” says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook. “People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago.”

Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.

“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.

As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.

“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.

Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what’s being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers’ buying decisions.

Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.

Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot’s Web site about kayaking.

Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.

“I didn’t find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands,” she says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

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Lost and Found Tourist Treasures by Liz Behler | AOL Travel

While traveling, vacationers typically gather more than just memories—snow globes, seashells, stacks of refrigerator magnets—but what about the things they leave behind? While many travelers believe their lost belongings are doomed to fade into a black hole, never to be heard from again, some are reunited with their possessions in unusual and inspiring ways.

Just this past February, we heard about a Spanish fisherman who netted a camera dropped off a cruise ship sailing near Ireland over two years earlier. The camera no longer worked, but the memory card inside was still filled with pictures (ever lost or found a camera? Check out I Found Your Camera, a blog that aims to reunite people with their memories). Miracles like this happen more often than you might think. Below are two tales of travelers who lost everything, only to be reunited later, and the story of one man on a mission to connect travelers with missing items. If you have a miraculous lost and found story of your own, tell us about it at TravelComments@aol.com.

A Man Without A Plan(ner)

Bert Martinez lost everything on the final night of his vacation in Hawaii. After enjoying his last meal, he left the restaurant and realized he left something very important behind: his day planner. This was in the days before PDAs and Smartphones kept track of daily routines, but inside was much more than just his schedule—the planner also contained his credit cards, identification, and most importantly, his airplane ticket. Martinez raced back to the restaurant, but it was too late, the planner was gone. He had no idea what he was going to do.

The next day Martinez arrived at the airport, hoping somehow everything would turn out for the best. He tentatively approached the ticket counter and explained what had happened. The clerk asked his name, went to the back room, and miraculously returned with his day planner intact. Martinez was blown away. The clerk explained that the manager at the restaurant where he lost his planner was married to an airline employee. Once the manager saw the plane ticket tucked inside, he gave it to his wife, who brought it to the ticket counter.

A Journal is Worth Far More Than A Thousand Words

While Martinez struggled to find the practical, others, like Emily Wolman, have lost items of a more sentimental nature.

Wolman, a commissioning editor at Lonely Planet, was driving around New Zealand when she spotted a picture-perfect scene: beautiful striated rock formations with flat tops, called Pancake Rocks, stretching along the coastline. She pulled over and hopped out of the car to snap a few quick pictures. While walking back to her car only a few minutes later, she realized her backpack was missing.

“The bag contained my life—my wallet, passport, traveler’s checks, laptop, airline ticket home, and most important to me, my travel journal.”

After lingering in the area for longer than she originally planned, just hoping her bag would turn up, she decided to continue on her trip to Queenstown.

After spending a month in Queenstown, Wolman journeyed back the way she came, passing a police station in the town where her backpack was stolen. She pulled over, and thought she’d give one last try to finding her bag. She explained her situation to the policeman, who told her no bags had been turned in during the last month, but that she should come back in a day or two, just in case.

The policeman’s words ignited an ember of hope and Wolman put the brakes on her journey once again. She ventured to the station every morning, looking for word on her bag, but nothing had changed. Finally, she decided it was a lost cause. She was going to press on, but only after one more try.

Wolman stopped by the station with low expectations. She started to thank the officers, who had been kind to her during her search, when an officer suddenly reached into a cabinet and plunked her bag down on the counter. Despite being soaking wet, Wolman knew it was her long lost bag.

It seems as though Wolman’s backpack had gone on quite a journey of its own over the past month. The back-story behind the sopping wet backpack goes as follows: a father and son were fishing on a river 125 miles away when they spotted a bag floating by. They grabbed it, and upon noticing the passport inside, realized it was probably stolen. The pair took the bag to a local police station, where it was eventually reunited with Wolman.

Upon seeing her bag, she tore into it, and found it mostly intact. Her money was gone, but her passport, laptop, and airline ticket were still there, despite having some water damage. Wolman kept digging, looking for her travel journal, a green leather covered account of a yearlong journey. While the cover was warped, and the pages swollen, nearly every word was still impressed upon the page.

“I still wish I could find those two fishermen and thank them somehow.”

Reuniting and It Feels So Good

David Stone, a metal-detector enthusiast and creator of www.ilostmyjewelry.com, finds joy in reuniting others with lost possessions.

Nearly seven years ago, Stone, a former nature photographer, began scanning beaches with a metal detector as a way to relax. Among the bottle caps, old batteries, and miscellaneous coins, Stone began finding more precious items, like custom designed jewelry, platinum set diamond wedding rings, and dozens of men’s wedding bands.

Knowing many of these items had value far greater than their cost, Stone sought out to reunite them with their owners. He began contacting hotels surrounding the areas where he made his discoveries, but found most of them to be unhelpful, asking him to leave the jewelry with them in the hopes someone came looking for it.

Stone felt uncomfortable leaving such meaningful property with any hotel, knowing that many people who lost things on the beach would consider them gone forever and would not likely report them missing. He decided to take matters into his own hands and started leaving his business cards at nearby resorts, directing people who have lost items to his website. Once there people could scan through pictures of his recent finds, or submit a description of a lost item, along with a location of where it might be.

Stone has found jewelry in six different locations, ranging from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to St. Martin, and updates his website with information on his current whereabouts. He has already reunited dozens of vacationers with lost possessions, and hopes to continue helping others.

“You don’t often find people in this world who are concerned so much for others and take the time to help their sorrows,” said Lee Glowacki, who was reunited with his wedding band after Stone found it in the ocean behind a beach resort. “Thanks to David Stone a miracle has taken place.”

Photo Courtesy of David Stone

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Effective communication is essential to ones career growth. It includes both conveying messages clearly and receiving messages clearly from others. Communications skills help you when presenting a weekly report to your team, completing a sales call to a possible client, emailing your boss, or chatting with coworkers. Although each situation requires a unique approach, there are some general communication tips that apply to all types of audiences.

Tip #1: Know the topic you are discussing. If you are giving a speech to a large group of people, be sure you are familiar with the subject. Or if you are sending an email to your boss, be sure to understand what you are asking or discussing. Your audience can easily pick up on a lack of knowledge and will not value your communication if detected.

Tip #2: Know the audience. There is a big difference speaking to a work friend in the break room and discussing a deal with a customer. You want to adapt to the situation and match your communication to the level that is needed. Not to say you should change who you are but understand that what you know and do not know about the audience. Are they knowledgeable on the topic? Do they have cultural differences? What are their expectations from you? How much do they know about you? These are the types of questions you want to ask yourself before deciding on a communication technique.

Tip #3: Use the right communication channel. These include face to face, telephone, video conference, and written (email, letter, memo, etc). If you are discussing a confidential topic, you would want to be sure you use a method that reaches only a qualified audience. If you are reporting on a long, in depth subject, a phone call might not allow proper interaction. Maybe graphs or displays would work better in a face to face meeting.

Tip #4: Be to the point, positive, and polite. Do not ramble on about unnecessary information or personal references when they are not needed because the audience will become distracted. Reflect the news, even if bad news, in a positive light. If you begin speaking negatively, people tend to get their back up or become worried about the topic. They will then pay less attention to whatever else you have to discuss. And, always remember your manners, they go a long way. An audience will become more receptive if they are treated well and feel respected. Being rude will create an instant barrier that is tough to get through.

Tip #5: Listen. Communication is not just about you talking, it is receiving information and feedback from others. Whether you ask a question and the audience is answering, you send an email and the recipient I responding, or you are getting the opinion of others in a team meeting, be sure to listen fully. If you do not comprehend what they say, ask questions or for them to repeat it. Listening will help you clearly understand your audience so that they will clearly understand you.

Communication skills can be learned overtime through your experiences or you can take part in a communication skills training. Many businesses or organizations offer training to their employees or members so that they can present themselves effectively.

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Are you in charge of an event or tradeshow? Want your attendees to have more fun and provide you with great testimonies? Of course you do well the fastest way to learn anything or generate lasting memories is by creating Intense Emotional Associations (IEAs) with your event. So here are a few ideas that will create a lot of fun emotions and lasting memories try it with your next event or tradeshow.

Nowadays videos are all the rage and most people don’t mind posing for a video bite here and there. Assign a staff or two to take short videos, 1 minute or less, of the attendees and presenters having fun at the event. While they’re in this Intense Emotional Association (IEA) ask them to give a recommendation (sometimes referred to as a shout out or a sound bite) or testimony about the event, a workshop or a presenter, then ask if they would like a copy emailed to them, you know they all will.

By taking advantage of smartphones like G1, iphone, Blackberry, etc., you could upload the videos instantly and then blast emails to the individuals in the videos or even to all the attendees, if possible, if not, make it a priority right after the event. Twitvid.com is a great way to distribute your videos via twitter, however Youtube still the most popular either one is accessible via any smartphone.

The videos will be seen and as always shared with coworkers, attendees, family and friends so now your event grows virally, also these videos can be used for future marketing of events and can be placed on your website as well.

Podcasting your video, well not really, you can however strip or separate the audio from your video and boom! You now can upload the audio to all major podcast distributors like iTunes and it’s free.

Transcribe your video into articles, yep you heard me. Articles are a great way to increase awareness and buzz about your event or tradeshow. Some editing may be required but either way you have an article for almost no time. In some cases a video and the transcription could be on the same page.
Now you have successfully created lasting memories for everyone about your event, congratulations you’re a hero!

Items you might need: A smartphone with good video quality or a video camera, I use and recommend the Flip HD camera they’re inexpensive and very easy to use and have all the software built right in the camera. High-speed internet access and a site to upload your videos like Twitvid.com, Youtube.com or Kyte.com. A note pad for collecting emails.

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