It may be easier for your customers to find you on a Google search than it is to find your contact card in their phone or PDA. Surprising, but true. How many times do we add a contact’s e-mail to our Rolodex, but never take the time to hunt down their phone number and add that in, too?
It happened to me all too recently. There I was, standing in a parking lot, needing to talk to a great freelance writer I know, but I just didn’t have her phone number handy. In fact, I had been pulling up her name and phone number from e-mail, and just couldn’t find her last message fast enough. So I used my smart phone to Google her name. She came up in the first result (as my name also does) and there she had it … her phone number right there on her Web page. Easy to find! Within 5 minutes we were on the phone, and I was able to book her time in the 15 minutes I had available that day.
How much easier, would it be, to simply have a vendor’s phone number in the banner?
Of course, it depends on what type of business you are in, and how much effort you want to spend answering incoming phone calls, but guaranteed it will help people to find you easily and quickly … even faster than if you had a phone book listing.
The other reason you might want to add your phone number is to “reduce friction” on your Web site. Friction is the resistence people feel when they do business on the Internet. Research has found simply having your phone number will boost opt-in rates and improve sales. It’s just another way people can quickly get in touch with you. It also shows you are someone “real.” Having your picture in the header and a clear statement about what it is you do also reduces friction by making it obvious within 5 seconds what your site is about.
What are other ways you’ve found to reduce friction on your site? What do you think your customers looking for when they come to your Web site? What personal touches can you add to make it fun to do business with you? Share your ideas in the Comment section below.
On Aug. 23rd Facebook will be changing the way marketers work with Facebook. This is a reminder that when you use Facebook, you do not own your content. So when Facebook changes, you have to change with them.
The biggest change is the removal of boxes that once appeared in the sidebar. This is where marketers used to be able to add ”Opt-In” boxes for their Constant Contact lists, or badges from Twitter and Skype. Boxes are what allowed people to tie in many components of their social media campaign into their Facebook landing page. They were very powerful. On August 23rd, they’ll be gone. So any content in a Facebook “box” will need to be recreated.
Boxes were also used to appease lawyers. They were where you put “community guidelines” and “rules” to keep everyone out of trouble. Now, this content will have to be moved to the “About” tab or “Info” tab. Neither tab supports FBML, but URLs do turn into hyperlinks, which is nice.
Over time, I think marketers will need to make more use of Facebook Markup Language to get the utility of boxes. FBML is HTML used specifically for Facebook. FBML allows you to create landing pages in Facebook that look and feel just like regular Web pages on the Internet.
If you’ve ever wondered, “how do I make a Facebook page engaging,” this is how. Examples of FBML are Gain detergent, Coca-Cola and Chick-Fil-A.
Facebook pages will also appear more narrow. If you’ve developed banners or images for Facebook, you may need to resize them. (Did a whole lot of graphic designers just make money?)
If you haven’t figured it out yet, all these changes are to make more room (and provide more value) to Facebook advertisers. Facebook is taking real-estate away from “free sites” and giving it to those willing to pay.
To see an example of the new Facebook page layout, look at a Facebook Event, like the one taking place at Big Island Seafood Farmer’s Market.
I wanted to find out how West Hawaii compares to the mainland U.S. when it comes to using social media for business marketing. More than 100 West Hawaii residents responded to my West Hawaii Social Media Survey in April. The results are presented below in a 19-page report with 10 charts and interpretive analysis.
This is the first look at how West Hawaii uses the Internet and social media tools for marketing businesses.
Previously, this data did not exist. In this report you’ll learn:
The percentage of West Hawaii marketers using social media to promote their businesses
How much time West Hawaii marketers spend on social media
The benefits most associated with social media
The relationship between time invested and results
The most popular tools, and which tools are best for what purpose
If you’re a marketer in West Hawaii and sometimes wonder if your efforts will pay off, these results will guide you!
If you’re already investing in social media, this report will let you compare what you’re doing to those that have the most success.
Remember, the nature of social media is to share, so if you find value in this report, please share it with your social network.
Most importantly, I need to know what questions YOU have. Tell me what the most useful information was for YOU in this survey, and what you would like to see in the next West Hawaii Social Media Survey. Use the comments section below!
Laura Roeder has taught me a lot over the past year, and I admire her greatly for how much she has been able to accomplish over the past few years. I subscribe to the “Dash” newsletter, which she runs, which is also linked to her Facebook community. The Facebook group allows people to extend the learning of her workshops and share results of what’s worked best using her methods.
Recently, Laura got a question about how much time she spends on various social media tasks. Her response is probably the best one I’ve ever heard.
The 2009 Small Business Survey found that social media adoption by small businesses has doubledfrom 12% to 24% in the last year, according to a study sponsored by Network Solutions® and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business.
The report also found that investments in Web sites and social media will be large growth areas in technology over the next 18 months. These changes are coming as small business owners try to be more innovative and successful in the marketplace.
Most often, social media is used for external marketing and engagement. Such as finding new customers, building awareness or staying engaged with customers.
Thirty-seven percent of small businesses still rely on traditional print advertising to get the word out. After advertising, the second-most popular form of marketing is e-mail (24%), followed by social media (19%).
Social media ranked about even with cold-calls (18%) and direct mail (17%), suggesting that small business owners have yet to discover the true potential of this technology. For example, the ability to collaborate with suppliers, partners, colleagues or staff.
Yet, this type of innovation is what separates the small business winners from the losers. Besides working capital, the authors found that marketing and innovation were the two largest indicators of small business success.
“There may be a vast untapped potential for using the medium to link members of the supply network, colleagues and staff to gain advantages in creativity and productivity. Such internal uses are harder to imagine and in their infancy, but have the potential to unleash a vast reservoir of creativity and joint problem solving as social media users grow exponentially. Examples of such uses are developing a new product or service, finding low cost resources, teaming to pursue business opportunities, or leveraging an expert source to solve a special problem.”
The 2009 Small Business Report goes into more detail about how the report was compiled, provides more detail on what characterizes a successful small business and provides a year-over-year Small Business Success Index. If you work with the small business community, it’s one of the most useful and fact-filled reports you’ll read all year.
