Wicked Smart Social

All small business owners are busy.  I know - I am one.  You have to do everything.  From minding the store, to doing the accounting, to performing customer service, to networking, to HR, to marketing.  And on and on and on…  When are you supposed to have time to do all that?  And if really do all of these things, will your business suffer because there is no one looking at the big picture (profitability, supply vs. demand, liabilities)?

There are multiple solutions to this problem - hire an accountant, hire a lawyer, hire an HR firm. But I’m here to talk about your marketing.  In the past you may have needed to hire an outside marketing firm.  But not anymore.

The solution is marketing automation!

Gone are the days of writing your leads on an index card, and scheduling the follow up on a desk calendar.  Gone are the days of entering the contact into your smart phone and scheduling the follow up on your Outlook or Google Calendar. — Seriously…

Imagine now that someone is interested in your product.  They can express that interest by entering their email address into an online form they find in Facebook or on your website.  They can scan a QR code on the back of your business card to learn more.  They can text a password to your short code (that they saw on the side of a truck or at your store front) to opt-in to a special offer.  That’s cool right?

But take it a step further.  Then all of these leads are automatically put into your online database.  From there you can do pretty much anything you can imagine.  Really, the sky is the limit on how you can use the information they have volunteered to you.

You can create custom campaigns based on how they first contacted you, their interest, their demographics, etc.  Then you can track their engagement in those campaigns, you can follow up with them automatically, make sure they convert from lead to customer - all while making the entire process seem personal.

Sure, you have to spend some time setting the whole thing up, but once that’s done, kick your feet back and just let it run!

Is that cool or what!?!

I’ll share more in my next post.

Until next time, stay Wicked my friends!

For FREE tutorials on all thing online and social media marketing, visit my website at wickedsmartsocial.com.

I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Personally, I hate the cooking, but love the leftovers - still working on my turkey :)

So, in today’s blog I wanted to talk about Tumblr and Google+ for business.

According to Tumblr’s About -

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.

So obviously, Tumblr is a good - and FREE - place to host your blog.  Its easy to use and fully customizable.  You can even get a custom URL.  Mine is: http://wickedsmartsocial.tumblr.com/

I haven’t had the time to really customize my blog page yet, but to demonstrate the power of what you can do on Tumblr as far as branding goes, check out this blog.  

Additionally, you can follow others and they can follow you, send messages, questions (public or private), respond to your post right on your page, etc.  Its really a social media site after all.

Eventually I plan to put my full blog on WordPress. But until that time, I’m loving what Tumblr’s allowing me to do.  I publish here and then provide a link here from my other sites as applicable - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Even once I move my full blog to WordPress, I will still continue to post to Tumblr, as it can be a useful SEO tool.  I will explain more about that as I go.

Google+ for business was just unleashed on the public one day before I started my business.  To be honest, all I have done so far is claim my page before someone else takes my name.  

I recommend that even if you can’t devote any time to Google+ right now, at least claim your page - its FREE.  Bottom line is that Google+ for business so new its still a bit of a ghost town.  So, if you can’t dive in right away, don’t worry. Because its Google, it will be there when you get to it.  And right now, they are not offering anything that much different than Facebook does anyway (except for hangouts).

I will post some how-to information as I get to it.  For now, I want to start focusing on getting a website up and running.

Until my next post, stay wicked my friends!

startupdreamer-deactivated20120 asked: what have you done? proffesion? start a business?

In reading your blog, I see that we are doing things a little similar in that we’re letting people go on our journey with us.  I have just started up an Online Marketing Business.  I’m letting people see that they can do it on their own by sharing how I’m capitalizing on all the free marketing opportunities that are out there on the web.

The one thing that social media gurus will tell you over and over is to present yourself as an expert.  Well, I’m not exactly saying I’m not an expert here, but (as you can see by my measly number of facebook fans and twitter followers) I have just gotten started.

My belief is that everyone has to start somewhere, and I refuse to buy “likes” and “followers.”  So, I may not come off to you right away as an expert, but I’m ok with proving that to you over time.

For now, I want to pick-up on my last blog about being a startup with no money. The best way to get in front of your potential customers without having a huge marketing budget is to take advantage of social media marketing.

Is it easy? I’m not going to fool you - NO, it can be confusing. The purpose of my blog is to take you step-by-step through my journey so that you can see that you can do it too!

In my last blog, I discussed branding, logo, youtube, facebook, and twitter in very basic terms.  I will continue here with very basic discussions of LinkedIn.

Remember, my blog is all about small budgets, so bring on the FREE!

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