Social Media in small businesses is becoming more common, many are aware of the potential benefits that can be developed. Many are still lagging behind as the recent survey by Citibank has portrayed (Reuters, 2009). 86% of small businesses in the US (under 100 employees) do not use social networking sites or do not find them useful in generating business leads or to expand business, can you believe that?! I sure can.
Small businesses that use social media correctly will be using it as a relationship marketing tool rather than a point of sale tool. To do this, it does take a considered effort and time to start creating the social networks that your business can benefit from. As within the physical world networks and relationships take time develop. Small businesses need to make time or hire SMO professionals to develop social media strategies that suit their business.



What to do when people are talking about your brand on the web
Friday, October 23rd, 2009A brand’s online persona is the first impression for potential leads or clients, which counts for a lot in cyber space. Study after study demonstrates that web surfers have notoriously short attention spans. Failure to capture someone’s attention, or worse, if pegged with a negative association off the bat, odds are you won’t get a second chance to make your case. For this reason it is vital that you keep a positive online reputation intact.
The first step is to monitor your brand all over the internet. Make sure you find out about everything that is being said about your brand. First things first, you need to monitor all the keywords that are associated with your brand. This can be your brands, products, brand abbreviations, company director, public relations officer, also common misspelling of all of these variables.
Second step is to monitor your online reputation on a wide range of two-way internet mediums. This will be social networks, blogs, groups, forums, social media sites, consumer websites, and maybe most importantly on SERP’s. Use to RSS feeds to track these comment mediums with ease.
(more…)
Tags: brand comments, Brand Management, brands, Customer Relationship Management, online brand management, online reputation management, online strategies, web design company
Posted in Brand Management, Brand reputation management, Internet Marketing, Social Media Optimization | 3 Comments »