Marketing, Social Media & Technology   

Today's blog is brought to you by Moeed Saeed, project manager with my client Total Attorneys where he leads development of their High Performance Marketing solution for lawyers in solo practice or small law firms.


Regardless of what your business you are in, chances are potential clients are using the Web to find what you are selling.  As a business owner, you should be spending little or no money on Yellow Page ads and more on Web marketing.  That’s where your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy comes in.

As most of tech-savvy entrepreneurs know, ...Read More

Comments (1)

We've been talking about branding lately and how the entire customer experience is an opportunity to reinforce your brand value. To that end, check out PhotoStamps from Stamps.com.

With PhotoStamps you can turn your logo or other brand icon into memborable stamps for all your outgoing mail. They're 100 percent approved by the U.S. Postal Service and come in denominations from 28 cent postcards to 44 cent regular first class all the way up to $4.95 for packages.

To create your custom PhotoStamp, all you need to do is upload a copy of your logo, customize with the free online tool, and place your order.

If you have any other clever ways to "touch" you...Read More

Comments (1)

Yesterday I attended the Social Media Online Marketing Masters Summit in Chicago. The ballroom at the Blackstone Hotel was packed with business owners eager to learn more about how to build their brand online and I was on hand along with @williger to provide free Twitter consultations to the 200 people in attendance.

But one of the most interesting presentations of the day was an offline retail story from David Roth and Rick Bacher of Get Stirred Up, co-founders of Cereality Bar and Cafe. Cereality served cereal - hot and cold - in any combination with almost any topping. You want some Cinnamon Toast Crunch with your Grapenuts and some berries on top? No problem. Or maybe you're a Captain Crunch + Fruity Pebbles type; they served that too.

Cereality was a huge hit in major metropolitan areas ...Read More

Comments (1)

Patrick Crane, VP of Marketing and Advertising for LinkedIn,  recently addressed attendees at the Business Marketing Association annual conference.  In his presentation, he outlined the five principles that guide future development and direction of this powerful social networking application. They are:

1. Everyone has an online professional identity
2. Everyone is an entrepreneur
3. Relationships matter
4. We're changing from an information society to an insight society
5. Open collaboration is happening on a global level

We previously discussed the importance of your online professional identity to driving business, but there are two other LinkedIn principles th...Read More

Comments (0)

I had the pleasure of hearing Patrick Crane, VP of Marketing and Advertising for LinkedIn at a conference earlier this month.  During his presentation, he laid out the five principles that guide development at LinkedIn:

1. Everyone has an online professional identity
2. Everyone is an entrepreneur
3. Relationships matter
4. We're changing from an information society to an insight society
5. Open collaboration is happening on a global level

Taking these in order, the first bullet may seem overly simple but his point was that on LinkedIn, you are your own company:

• Your name and reputation are your brand
• The salary you command is your revenue
• Your experience and knowledge is your

...Read More

Comments (0)

Earlier this month Google rolled out a new feature to their popular Google Map product. The Local Business Center team announced a powerful new dashboard that allows businesses to track exactly how their business listing is peforming in both Google Maps and Google Search.

What this means is that  business owners with one or more physical locations will be able to see what people are searcing for when they find your business listing. The new dashboard will report on:

• Impressions - the number of times your business listing appeared on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period
• Actions - the number of times people interacted with your listing; for example, whether they clicked

...Read More

Comments (0)

Earlier I wrote about how to generate buzz for your business with Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing, and shared some notes from a breakfast meeting I attended with Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.

WOM marketing is appealing to business owners because it costs very little to execute and can return record-setting sales, lower customer acquisition costs and more. Imagine arriving at your store to find a line of people outside your door; they've heard about your newest product or service and can't wait to get their hands on it! That's the power of WOM.

Andy shared with us the five basic steps that all word of mouth ...Read More

Comments (1)

Last week I had the privilege of attending an intimate three-hour roundtable discussion with the father of Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy Sernovitz at the Business Marketing Association's annual event.

Andy is a fascinating guy, full of stories about how companies large and small have leveraged Word of Mouth Marketing to drive sales. It's an alluring story. Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing has the potential for a super-sized pay-off and requires not much more than a shoe-string budget. Done well, WOM Marketing can:

• Lower your customer acquisition costs
• Reduce your customer service costs
• Make your advertising work better
• Close more sales

Andy started the discussion by describing what he calls the "Chocolate Problem."
...Read More

Comments (2)

Just last week we were chatting about  social networking and your custom URL. If you plan on using social media and networking tools to develop your brand and grow your business, then it makes sense to use the same name or moniker across the board for easy name recognition.


Update!
Since that post, Facebook has announced the availability of custom URLs that are drop-dead easy to remember. Prior to this development, if you wanted your own Facebook URL you had to use a third-party app which resulted in a simple yet not overly intuitive URL along these lines: profile.to/simasays.

But now you can hang your shingle off of Facebook.com direclty. As you may have guessed, I grabbed ...Read More

Comments (0)

If you're tinkering with social media to develop your brand and grow your business, let me first say Hooray! While the jury on the true ROI of social media is still out, it is arguably a low-cost tool in your marketing arsenal that has proven effective for many brands.

If you follow my blog or tweets, you know that I consider LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to be the holy triumvirate of social media for business. There are many more social networks but these three rank high for ease of use and interaction.

Here's a Quick Tip that you can use with all three of these sites pl...Read More

Comments (4)

When you go to a conference or networking event and collect a bunch of business cards, do you automatically add those people to your email list?

It's okay if you say Yes; many of us do. Just be sure you have a strong clear opt-out or opt-in strategy in place. I might, however, suggest a more elegant approach: Follow up personally.

Personal follow-up lets your new connection know that you value them, respect their time, and are an above-board business owner. I like to tell new contacts up front that I'm adding them to my mail list. This way, they are less likely to perceive my next email blast as SPAM. Even if they ultimately unsubscribe, an old-fashioned "heads up" goes a long way toward lessening any negative thoughts that accompany unwelcome email.

There are two ways to easily achieve this: phone and perso...Read More

Comments (3)

The next time one of your customers raves about your product or service, ask if you can quote them.

A satisfied customer can be one of your best sales weapons. Whatever you ultimately create, be it a customer testmonial, endorsement, case study or success story, a public "thumbs up" from a happy customer is a powerful sales and marketing tool.

Extra! Extra!
A glowing testimonial is arguably like a newsboy standing on the streetcorner shouting your praises. Consumers trust other consumer quotes more than any other promotional copy you may use in your marketing. And the best part? Endorsements cost next to nothing other than some goodwill and gratitude.

There is no shortage of places to showcase a customer testimonial or case study - here are just a few:

• LinkedIn profile

...Read More

Comments (2)