Friends, Followers, and Tribes: Social Network Marketing 101

by Wendy Burge 

In this day of digital communications, an evolution of social networks have emerged connecting people without geographical boundaries. Social networks in their purest form let people connect who have a commonality. It’s these commonalities that create “tribes” or groups of people who relate to their similar aspects, collectively. Social networks have become the greatest marketing tool for businesses to utilize because of their targeted, cost effective strategies for relationship marketing. However, social network sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn do have cultural distinctions that must be considered when choosing them for marketing purposes.
 
Let’s start with MySpace. This social site is largely dominated by 17- 25 year olds. Personal profiles host commentaries, video, and music. Musicians, bands, and artists often use it as a multi-media gallery to showcase their works. However, the nature of MySpace tends to feel “noisy” as profiles have individualized personalities. In general, MySpace feels like a voyeuristic glimpse into a teen-ager’s bedroom where friends come to hang-out and anything goes. MySpace has very few privacy features and profiles are open to full public viewing so businesses geared to younger consumers could take advantage of interacting with them on this site with relative ease.
 
Facebook, on the other hand, is like the office water-cooler where people share stories of their lives and things they’ve done. The median age on Facebook is 35 years old, and with 1 million users a week signing on, it’s the fastest growing social network site. It hosts 200 million active members and is predicted to hit ½ billion within the next 2 years, if not sooner. This makes it one of the best places to do business online.
 
A person is limited to having only one profile listing on Facebook and only 5000 ‘friends’-those people who are linked to your profile. As a privacy feature, people may not read your profile until you both agree to be ‘friends’. ‘Friends’ can make comments to your posts which run like news feed to your Facebook networks. For small businesses, this news-feed profiling becomes viral throughout networks that can consist of your customers, prospects, and colleagues and read by their networks attracting new clients. Their commentary to your posts allows them to co-create the experience with your business. For this reason careful consideration should be made about the content of posts, in general.
 
Your business may not host a profile page itself, but you may set up a ‘fan page’ where information relative to your business including updates on product or service offers, special events, and or activities your business may be involved in can be listed. Fan pages are open for full public view, have no limits to the number of ‘friends’, and offers target-specific broadcast of information directly to people who are interested in what you have to offer.
 
If Facebook is the office water-cooler, then LinkedIn is the corporate boardroom. As one of the largest professional network sites online, members showcase their career profiles, ‘link’ to others within their industry, and connect with people from jobs they have held or done business with. The adage “Its not what you know, but who you know’ that best describes this site. If you are a solo-professional, LinkedIn is an important site to join as your profile is like a virtual resume for other to see. It’s a great site to target other businesses for joint ventures, collaborative opportunities, and or add as referral resources too. On a note, LinkedIn has become the hottest place to be “headhunted” because companies can easily check out potential candidates who might possess the skills they are looking for.
 
Last, but definitely not least, is Twitter. Described as a micro-blog, it allows people to post up to 150 characters of information about themselves at a time. Twitter hosts over 8 million users and has no limit to how many people can follow your profile. Like a cocktail party where you share sound bites of information within a group conversation your ‘followers’ or “tweeps” can and do make comments or contribute to your posting and overall discussion. As a marketing tool, it can be used to post info regarding business products, services, or offers. Innovative businesses are using it to drive traffic back to their websites for special promotions to their consumers.

Social network sites have given businesses an innovative and new way to reach their consumers. Building upon relationships-even those without borders, considerations and courtesies should still be kept in check because potentially the whole world is watching.
    
© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

How to Eat a Marketing Elephant!

By Wendy Burge

A big challenge for small businesses is often having the time to stay on top of their marketing; the planning, prep time, and implementation. Marketing can be the white elephant in a business that needs to be addressed because it has the largest impact on the growth of the business. However, like the old saying goes, to eat an elephant you take one bite at a time. So, how do you eat a “marketing elephant”? By breaking it down into bite-size pieces to allow for more efficient and effective marketing strategies without overwhelm. The following steps will help you capture, tame, and maintain the marketing elephant in your business.
 
Bite 1. Commit to the end goal

What kind of growth do you want to achieve over a calendar year within your business?
Your objective will directly impact how and why you are developing a marketing plan. If you are in a start-up phase it may be as simple as acquiring a certain number of new clients, addition of client resources and services, and a specific dollar figure that gets you up and running. If you have been in business for a while, your goals may focus on higher profit -margins, positioning yourself as an expert within your industry, and leveraging your time more effectively. Understanding your goals also allows you to track and monitor how effective your marketing is in helping you reach them. Knowing what you want and, more importantly, why you want it, will increase your personal investment into making it happen.

Bite 2. Break it into quarters

How do you want to achieve your goals for each 90-day period? Once you know what you want, it’s just a matter of working backwards at making it happen. Take a 12 month wall calendar and break it into quarters; within each quarter work on a specific goal. If you want to increase your client volume early in the year, then over a 90-day period all your marketing focus can be on targeting this goal with special incentives, offers, and referral programs. Maybe you want an infusion of cash in your business at specific times of a year because your work is seasonal. Determining which quarter to focus your marketing to do this is, now, defined and, again, all efforts are then focused on making profits grow during a specific period of time. Working this way also allows you to be flexible and able to insert special announcements or last minute sales to increase your quarterly profits. As well, extending the launch time of a special marketing campaign can grow the anticipation and excitement of your customers about the upcoming promotion or special sale item which planning like this can create. Whatever your goal, you now have more power in making it happen when you take each quarter to develop, launch, and track your marketing efforts.

Bite 3. Map out notable events, holidays, and specials

Mapping out when to schedule events and sales promotions proves to be more effective when you plan ahead of time what you will need to create a ‘rolling’ campaign for an annual or semi-annual event. Furthermore, every quarter is filled with all kinds of marketing opportunities which you can take advantage of. The most obvious are seasonal holidays where marketing can be easily tied into the collective consciousness of the season. However, what if there are special events or days that are relevant to your industry? You can now build them into your marketing campaigns to help support your overall objective. Let’s say you have a chiropractic office and you know that in September the profession celebrates it’s ‘birthday’. This can create a great educational opportunity, as well as, a profitable one if leveraged as a special birthday savings to patients which schedule appointments on that day. Great days to honour for your business would be business opening anniversaries, owner or employee birthdays, special days important to your industry, and current or annual events that happen in your community. Have fun and get creative when it comes to making your marketing map!

Bite 4. Build in multiple contact channels

Knowing what kind of marketing campaign you are going to host and when it will occur over a quarter, now maximizes your marketing prep time. Instead of rushing last minute to pull something together, you can plan out a series of email, direct mailers, and phone or social network announcements ahead of time. This is where saving time and money becomes possible because you now have time working on your side. Direct mail pieces can be put together for the quarter by having them printed, labelled, and stamped ahead of time. As well, email marketing can be programmed ahead of time to automatically go out on specific times and dates which can co-ordinate with the direct-mail marketing pieces. If your marketing plan includes social network marketing there are applications that can now be used to schedule posting on your selected sites ahead of time, too. Leveraging time like this allows you to create more ways to get your message across effectively– instead of a one-time hit at the last minute. Furthermore, the more ways you can reach people and stand out in their busy lives the more success you will have with your campaigns.

 © 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

Getting Paid What You Are Worth

As an entrepreneur one of the hardest places to establish a set value is around being paid what you are worth. Taking the step into business for yourself means it is up to you to determine the value you have in people’s lives through the service you provide. But how do you know what that value is? How do you determine if you are charging the amount that is best for you not what an industry standard may be? The topic of money triggers all kinds of emotion and psychological responses when it comes to determining your worth, asking to be paid for your service, and evaluating the real value it creating. 

However, the topic of money is essential because you are in business and the whole point about being in business is to make a profit not merely float through life in survival mode.  A true shift in one’s thinking about money is necessary for any entrepreneur to grow a thriving business and increase their value so they are being paid what they are worth. Distinctions need to be made between some very core concepts in order to fully embrace the topic of being paid what you are worth by the people who value your service. 

Industry Pricing vs. Knowing Worth 

In the initial stages of opening a business it is easy to price your services based on the industry standards. While this may work initially people soon discover that they are trading their time for a standard set dollar amount as a general guideline, but, it just may not sustain them in the long run. If the services you offer are based on an hourly wage, you will never break through a glass ceiling that is limiting you.

However, if you know that the service you provide is worth much more than you are charging because you go beyond the typical standard, then, it is this value upon which you must base your fees. For example, if you are a book keeper who is experienced in retail and can help merchants make better choices in their spending, help them save on taxes, and show them where the money has been hiding in their business, you can provide greater value to that client  than someone who just “does the books”.  Once you determine what value your clients receive as a result of your services, then you can set your prices based on the value you offer.

Surviving Economy vs. Thriving Economy

The beauty of being an entrepreneur can be that you have to ability to create your own economy. However, once again, if you do not see the value you have to offer to clients then doing business means that you are constantly searching for the next new client to sell your services to. Unfortunately, this is the part that most people hate about their business– they do not like to feel as if they are selling, so they will under-cut their own rates and value. This is where the shift starts.

You must pinpoint exactly what you bring to the table to your clients as it relates to the business they do with you. When you have clarity about this, you can position your marketing message to directly demonstrate your value. This naturally attracts the right clients to your business and there is no need to run around trying to convince people why they should do business with you. You can clearly demonstrate this within your marketing and this then allows you to price your services higher—thus, creating a thriving economy.

Generalist vs. Specialist

The largest issue most new and some seasoned entrepreneurs have about restructuring their fees based on their worth is the fact that they have yet to claim their ‘gifts’ which only they possess and can offer. When an entrepreneur remains “general” in their services, they limit their ability to generate higher fees. However, let us stop a moment and take a look at what got them to this point. Did they up-grade skills at any point? Do they have any first-hand, personal experience in the solution offered to clients?

 Most entrepreneurs are experts at what they do and with a little ‘re-packaging’ those experiences allow them to be an industry specialist within a room of generalist. Think about this—if you were having specific health issues which involved your heart would you see a general practitioner or would you prefer to see a heart specialist? Exactly. Even if it meant you had to pay a top dollar for the specialist’s services, you just might find a way to pay for them—especially if you knew you were getting the best care from an industry expert. Remember people are paying as much for you and your knowledge as they are the technical service you offer.

Building a Business vs. Transforming Lives

Understanding the structure in which a business is created and, even more, why a business was started in the first place, is where this distinction must be addressed.  If a business was built to remove the conditions of working for others, then the point of building that business is based on the idea of “job creation”. In that situation, many of the same ‘rules’ will be applied because the only thing done was to replace the environment while maintaining the same familiar structure from the past work experience. 

Alternatively, if an entrepreneur spends the time to really evaluate the transformative value they can achieve being in service to share and, as well, to experience themselves through a lifestyle business model, then the value in the freedom it offers has a higher value.  There is then no need to compare your service with others as the more value you provide the more people will be willing to pay. Hiding behind old beliefs around your worth will only be damaging to your business growth. To ensure that you are charging in relation to the value you offer also means that you must invest in your own growth. The more you stretch your personal operating system with the help of therapists, coaches, mentors, and such, means you value growth in the process of your own business in relation to the transformations you experience, too.

Earn Money vs. Claim Money

This is the biggest shift for people to comprehend when it comes to charging what they are worth. Essentially, the majority of people have been conditioned to believe that we must be in the process of doing “work” to earn money. Our value is based on external feedback, opinions, and assessments of our worth by others. Often people feel inadequate or that they have not become enough yet to be paid for their worth in relation to what others project back to them.  People are in a constant state of competition to earn the right to make more, to have more—let alone receive praise and appreciation.

However, if you are authentically setting the wheels in motion to create a business that provides your service with intention to support and transform client’s lives then the issue is less about earning and more about knowing your value and worth. Furthermore, by setting fees that serve both the clients and you means you are so claiming this. If you are still operating from an ‘earn money’ belief and are not aware of this belief, it will trip you up as you will run around trying to create more value by doing more. You do not need to earn more credibility through certification to prove your worth. You will represent it with your gifts of service and knowledge in the value you have to offer others. Believe and know you are enough today!

Clarity between all the distinctions provided helps small business entrepreneurs build external structures in their business that supports their fees through the value, customer experience, and their overall knowledge. As well, increase the internal structure of confidence and self –worth which radiantly shines through their business and service.

© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

 

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com