Internet Marketing for Small Businesses

Using social media is no longer an option–it’s practically a requirement for small businesses who want to connect with their customers. While the tools change almost daily, the goal stays the same: interact with customers and create trust. If you’re late to the bandwagon (or just want the latest), start here.

Social Media

We now know that not every age group uses social media the same, and it’s important to know where your target market falls. For example, the 35-44 year old span uses Facebook and Twitter the most, while teens have twice as many social friends as this group. Knowing that the average social network user is 37 years old can be helpful when planning your social media marketing strategy. Roy Morejon

Does your business even need a website anymore?  Many say that a solid Facebook Page can serve the purpose of a static website, with better results. The key is to keep it interesting and continually expand your network. And where you might push your product on your website, a hard sell is less well-received on a Facebook Page. Small Business CEO

Despite the flurry of social media contests, they may not be as effective as marketers want to believe. Giving away something for free makes it difficult to target the people that enter, and simply having someone Like your Facebook wall or retweet a message isn’t all that valuable, says Social Times. People who enter social media contests aren’t likely to stick around after the contest is over, so think it through the next time you want to give away an iPad to get more customers. Social Times

Managing Your Reputation Online

Your reputation is no longer in your own hands; it’s now in the hands of your customers. And if they’re not happy, there are dozens of places they can complain about you. The key is to monitor and manage what’s being said about you online, and remain transparent in your response. What not to do? Don’t argue with your customer, and don’t fake positive reviews of your business. The New York Times

When you do get a bad review online, take appropriate steps to address the issue. First, contact the customer and see if you can amend the situation one on one. Then, apologize, remembering that the customer is never more right than when they’ve publicly blasted you. A free product or gift card can go a long way to soothe ruffled feathers. Next, ask the customer to repost a revised review, considering the efforts you’ve made toward amending the situation. Small Business CEO

SEO Best Practices

Even if you’re a newbie to search engine optimization, you should still use analytics to better understand where traffic to your site is coming from. Free tools like Google Analytics go a long way in telling you what pages people like, how much traffic you’re getting, and what keywords draw in the most visitors. Analytics should be a part of your overall internet marketing strategy, as you can see which tools are working the best. Get Places

Are your keywords outdated? If so, you’re missing out on higher rankings on search engine results. Freshening up your keywords to what’s being searched for now can go a long way to put you in Google’s favor. Use your analytics (see above) to make sure your new keywords are getting the traffic you want. SEO Chat

Where Google+ Will Fall

With so many social media users and business owners still on the fence about Google+, many ask how Google will weigh search results using its social site. Will Google give higher priority to content produced through Google+? If so, it’s sure to lose users faster than Google Buzz or Wave. After such social failures, Google would do well to tread lightly. Social Media Explorer

Despite the question of whether Google will turn to a despot with the adoption of Google+, Chris Brogan says to jump on the bandwagon anyway. By connecting with others on the platform, small businesses can expand their networks, even if Google+ isn’t quite ready to roll out business profiles. Entrepreneur

Conclusion

When David Meerman Scott wrote his book, The New Rules of Marketing PR, in 2007, social media was innovative. If you were using it, you were light years ahead of the competition. Now, the gap is closing, with more companies using social tools to market. But small businesses are still behind, with around half not using social media at all. It’s not clear why so many are reluctant to get social, but Scott provides some tips for getting started. The key, he says, is sharing valuable content and avoiding hype. Focus instead on how your products can help others. Entrepreneur

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Pardot adds powerful social features into its cloud marketing automation

Pardot on Wednesday announced that it is adding new social networking features into its already strong marketing automation service.

VentureBeat took a little heat last week when it came to the topic of marketing automation after a seemingly innocuous guest post ended up mischaracterizing some of the biggest players in this emerging space. Needless to say, we’re much more in the know about marketing automation and looking to explore how it can help businesses.

Pardot and competing marketing automation providers like Eloqua, Genius, Marketo and Silverpop make it possible for businesses to improve sales lead generation and use a content management system to better connect businesses to potential customers.

The new features Pardot is introducing today at Dreamforce are focused on using social networks and social data to help businesses find leads with more ease. They’re also designed to help business schedule the dissemination of social content across several networks.

“Social is becoming an increasingly important element in marketing and in what services businesses are demanding,” Pardot co-founder and COO Adam Blitzer told VentureBeat. “Businesses want to share content and better trace who’s responding to that content.”

The first major feature in Pardot’s new social toolbox is social discovery. Through an integration with Qwerly, Pardot can now pull public information and photos automatically from networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to create better prospect lists. Pardot can then display that social data through a new social widget, which can be viewed alongside the dashboards in Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM or NetSuite. Ideally, sales reps will be able to view social profile data before they have to call a lead. (See above for a social profile example.)

The next big social feature Pardot is adding is social sharing. Launching out of beta in September, this feature makes it possible for Pardot’s customers to schedule updates on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in advance. (Think HootSuite on steroids.) Those posts can then be tracked using Pardot’s existing bit.ly connector and provide data like click-through rates.

Finally, the last new social feature Pardot is putting out is social optimization. Using the data pulled from social media campaigns, Pardot can tell its customers which areas of social media were most effective at reaching the desired people. For example, they could learn their Facebook posts result in more prospect engagement than Twitter posts.

“With this feature, not only can Pardot tell you how many prospects clicked through, but it also it can tell you how many prospects actually generated revenues,” Blitzer said.

All in all, Pardot is partly playing catch up to the evolving demands of businesses who care about social, but it’s also taking the challenge seriously by making their social feature set robust. Ideally, we’ll see even more social integration over time with marketing automation services and see more ways sales teams can use social data to better meet their goals.

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Tags: cloud services, lead generation, marketing automation, sales, social networking

Companies: Eloqua, Genius, Marketo, Microsoft, Pardot, Salesforce.com, Silverpop, SugarCRM

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