Social Brand

Social Brand Visibility: Newsvine

November 17, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Newsvine is a mix of news gathering agency and social media. It allows its members to see the latest news from the Associated Press and ESPN, post comments on them, share and discus items, and interact with other members.

The content is updated continuously and the site gives a reflection of what people are talking about at that moment. This side of their service is called “The Wire”.

Their user generated stream, called “The Vine”, allows members of the community to post links to interesting stories they found on the web, called “seeds”. It takes some time for any users “seeds” to be accepted. There is a period of germination in what they call ‘the Greenhouse’ before a posting source is considered reliable. That is done to ward off self-promotion.

Newsvine allows its members to post original articles as well, and even shares in the revenue when those articles are read.

Members can create private groups to share the news and discussions between them or public group where all the members can see what the group members are saying.

Newsvine says its members will receive 90% of revenue from advertisements that appears on their personal pages. These earnings are based on traffic to the articles and seeds, and have a complicated formula which is calculated based on 1000 page views. Getting rich off publishing articles on the site is not guaranteed by any means. The writer usually gets a few dollars a month for his/her most popular articles. Users who invest time in writing many articles can see as much as a few tens of dollars per month.

In the US, Newsvine has 1.2 million registered members.

Since 2007, Newsvine is now owned by MSNBC.com, but operates independently.

Online Resources For Your Upcoming Business

November 16, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

There are quite a few places on the internet that you can use to your advantage when trying to promote your new small business. With such a vast quantity of websites available, you are bound to find a bunch of strong outlets to let people know just what you intend to sell in a detailed and specific manner. Some of these websites are very easy to latch onto and will give you the right amount of exposure that you desire.

Facebook

One of the better options to start promoting your company is the website FaceBook. With the millions upon millions of users each and every day on that site, you are bound to have quite a few hits and inquiries about your services. The fact that you are able to create a free profile on there and also use your account as a business profile is enough to inspire people to join.

Google Places

Another great place to advertise for your small business is Google Places. Google is already well known throughout the world as being a leader in website searches and free advertising. Google Places actually takes it a few steps forward for your business as it allows you to post details about your business as well as listing it in a way that it looks like the Yellowpages. This is a very familiar and attractive way for you to get things up and running for your company and not have to spend a lot of money doing so.

Audio & Video

You are now able to integrate such things as audio and video through the Google sites that will allow you to have a more personal connection to the people that are interested in your company. This is truly state of the art and will only help in assisting those who are the driving force behind the success of your small business. Having the ability to let someone have a face to face conversation with you or one of your associates while they are in another state or even country is an amazing new tool to have for any company out there.

My advice would be to definitely take full advantage of these new and improved resources that the internet has allowed us to partake in. These new and innovative ways to show people what they need to see regarding your new company will really pay off in the long run. Even if you have a small budget for marketing, the internet will definitely fit into that budget.

Facebook Places- Where Are you?

November 12, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

For years, since the beginning of the World Wide Web, its mission has been to globalize, to connect, to turn us into a global village. Geography did not matter much anymore.

These days the trend seems to turn inward, to localization. Google places shows businesses listings first when the query includes a specific place. Different mobile Social Media tools like Foursquare and Gowalla appeared, aiming to help friends tell other friends where they and connect with them physically.

There is no one bigger than Facebook in the Social Media world. With over 500,000,000 users and growing, it is the king supreme of virtual friendship. How ironic it is that now they are trying to help you connect locally and physically.

In August 2010, Facebook started operating its Facebook Places, an application that with the help of GPS, lets users check in on their mobile phones and show their location, in hope that if you are close, you might swing by and spend time together. That put businesses in the middle of the social game.

You can leave comments on Facebook about the places you’ve frequented. Cheers and jeers alike. You can recommend a certain dish, complain about the service or by leaving a recommendation you can introduce people to a new place.

About a week ago, on November 3, 2010, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerman unveiled new features on their mobile app for iPhones and Androids, and this addition makes it much more interesting to business owners.

The new applications are called “Deals” and “Single Sign-On” and they aims to change the way customers and businesses interact.

Deals – this app allows business owners deliver information about specials and discounts to their customers, which are redeemable when the user ‘checks in’ at the place. It also allows customers to posts deals they have found, and when friends use the establishment they also get a discount.

Business owners can turn their customers into an extended sale force by peer recommendation on Facebook.

Businesses can also offer deeper discounts to friends who bring friends with them, or friends who heard about the deal through the first source. Each customer becomes a potential sales agent.

‘Deals’ has three different types of rewards a business can offer. It can be based on “loyalty,” on being “friends” or for “charity.”

The app tracks each time a specific person visits a store and takes advantage of a deal. This way, businesses can offer incentives to their most loyal customers.

The “Single Sign-On” app brings benefits to users and business owners and provides more connectivity. This feature allows Facebook users to log in and access other social media sites like Groupon and Yelp without having to log in separately. Those companies have now a new marketing tool and the ability to get to thousands of new customers.

Location-based technology has become an essential part of building solid, lasting relationships with the customers, say representatives of Facebook. If before business owners did not know why they have to be on the social network sites, now they have a definite reason to do so.

And it might be a game changers when it comes to e commerce and business advertising.

Can You Get Free PR?

November 12, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

How to make the most of your internet presence and increase your visibility is a subject many small business owners are grappling with. With the enormous speed in which social media is evolving, you probably have this question reverberate in your brain: am I doing all that I can do to advertise my business?

Even if you don’t have a big advertising budget, there are some things you can do to get free – or almost free – PR. But you have to know how to do it.

– Do your homework – know what is happening in your niche, what makes you different and better. Identify local publications and trade magazines. See which writer writes about your area of business and what is he writing about (personal story, facts, sales?)

– Build your story. It has to be compelling, short and to the point. It has to entice the writer to look into your new venture.

– Choose the date carefully. Does your business have something to do with dates? Holidays? Writers are looking for things to write about which are relevant to the date of publication. They are more likely to look into your business if it has something to do with the date of the next issue.

– There are few site you can go to which will cost relatively very little but will start you up on the road to a PR campaign:

PRWeb is one of them. Their site helps you create a press release and they will send to search engines, news sites, geographic location sites and 5 industry sites. Press releases start at $80 and go up to $360 if you want your release to appear in big newspapers like New York Times or USA today.

1888 Press Release – a similar service to PRWeb but more variety in pricing and more control over the message. They also have editors going over your press release to check for grammar mistakes and appropriate content.

MediaSync. A site that aggregates material according to subject or market and allows you to see who writes about your kind of business. It also lets you contact the writers or bloggers to offer them new information to write about. Their service is free. In the future they will introduce a paid subscription for going deeper in measuring the influence the writer has had.

Handle Your Own PR. A service designed for medium and small businesses, it offers PR tips, media lists and press release writing assistance.

These are but a few initial steps to increase the visibility of your small business, but these steps cost you – in time, not money. It has been said that the most expensive element a small business owner has is his time. If time is an issue, contracting a consulting firm that knows all the ins and outs of online advertising world and social media websites. There is much more that can be done to increase your business visibility.

Social Brand Visibility: Are You LinkedIn?

November 11, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

LinkedIn is a business based social networking site which connects you to your business contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities. It helps you expend the network of professionals in your field.

The site allows users to maintain a list of contacts with people related to their business. It connects users to friends of professional friends and increases their professional circle.

Through LinkedIn you can develop a professional profile which is posted on the web so you can establish an authoritative resource that allows people to find you.

Employers searching for workers can use their LinkedIn network to get first hand recommendation. It also allows job seekers to see if anyone needs their expertise.

Being free, open and friendly, it encourages people to approach you. When your contacts change jobs or change their e mail address you are still connected to them through LinkedIn.

This familiarity and wider circle of business ‘friends’ enables you to reach out to members of your group for direct introductions and recommendations.

You can upload your address book, develop relationships and maintain them. You can join a group and see experts talk about a common issue and solve problems.

You can share tweets and use their mobile application to stay connected on the road. It keeps you in touch with people that might matter to your career.

LinkedIn offers users the ability to research companies with which they are interested in working. When searching a specific company what is shown as a result are different statistics about the company; the ratio of female to male employees, what are the most common titles given by the company to their workers, the location of the company’s headquarters and a list of present and former employees.

LinkedIn has more than 80 million registered users in over 200 countries worldwide. It operates in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million visitors globally.

Since 2008 LinkedIn launched DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.

In November, 2010, LinkedIn started allowing businesses to list products and services on company profile pages. It allows members recommend certain products they liked and write reviews about their finds.

If you are interested in expending your circle of business connections, talk to like-minded people, help and be helped in solving professional problems, LinkedIn is a site which will allow you do all that for free.

Networking and Schmoozing Do’s and Don’ts

November 1, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

One of the most important aspects of making your small business grow is networking. With all the technology and innovation, human relationships are still the most important aspect of growing your business. After all, humans are those who order your products and services. Technology enables us to communicate faster and better, account for stock and orders and advertise, but you still need people to make the orders from you and no one else.

A big part of networking is schmoozing – making new connections and keeping the ones you have. Unfortunately, not all of us are born natural schmoozers. For some the idea of schmoozing in a convention or a gathering is enough to send chills down their spines. What can we do to be better communicators?

Here are some key points for the dos and don’ts of human relationships and schmoozing;

– Be open and real. People can smell a fake miles away (unless you are a gifted con man). Don’t pretend to be something you are not, or promise things you can not deliver.

– Don’t assume you are smarter than the other guy. You don’t know him yet. Treat him with respect and don’t BS – it destroys credibility and makes you look like an idiot.

– When schmoozing, it’s not about you as much as it is about the other guy. Find things you have in common that you can talk about. Even if you disagree about a point – but you are both passionate about your position – this is also a way to open discussion and connect.

– People like attention. A good schmoozer will give them what they want. Listen to what your new acquaintance has to say. Ask questions about him and really listen to the answer.

– Be attentive. When you really listen you might find things in common to build a conversation upon.

– Don’t go into a pitch speech right away. Get to know them first. Don’t talk at people but to them.

– You have to be brave enough to make the first step. People find it difficult to get out of their comfort zone and engage others. Someone has to start a conversation. Let it be you.

– Be appropriate and don’t overdo it. Mind their personal space and their time (especially true for small business owners. Time is their most important commodity).

– Let yourself be schmoozed. Sometimes helping others first can be an opening for a successful relationship.

Be friendly, frank and listen. People love to talk about themselves. A big part of being a good schmoozer is to make the other feel as if he is the most important thing in the world, at the moment. The worst thing you can do is ask a question and then ‘check the room’ while the answer is given. Behaving like that will alienate all those who you are trying to be in connect with.

Social Brand Visibility: Identi.ca

October 28, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Twitter or Identi.ca?

Micro-blogging has become a big thing when it comes to promoting your sites, network or keep in touch with your friends.

But which host do you prefer?

Identi.ca is a microblogging service where users post short (140 character) messages which are broadcast to their friends using the Web, RSS, or instant messages. While similar than Twitter in both concept and operation, Identi.ca provides many features not currently implemented by Twitter, including XMPP support and personal tag clouds.

Identi.ca allows free export and exchange of personal and friend’s data based on the FOAF standard; therefore, notices can be fed into a Twitter account or other service.

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Their goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. You deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence, they say. The service reached 1 million postings on November 4, 2008.

Users say it trumps Twitter by leaps and bounds in terms of features. But with these features comes an uncharted territory, much of which is sometimes getting abused.

Identi.ca is as close to Twitter as you can get. Instead of Tweets they call their massages ‘dents’. In fact it’s almost identical to Twitter….”almost” because Identi.ca was built with OpenMicroblogging in mind. This means that it is built on an open platform that can be shared with anyone who wants to host their own federated version of the software. So unlike Twitter, which hopes to monetize the service in order to turn a profit, you can host a Laconi.ca server, sharing ‘dents’ with any identi.ca accounts as well as with anyone else running the same software. This means no more down-time.

Twitter is close, and more popular, but identi.ca is robust, more reliable, and simply an ALTERNATIVE and a CHOICE.

How to Market Your Business like the Big Boys

October 27, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Sometimes looking at a big company and their marketing strategy can teach us a lot about marketing our small business.

Apple Co. is no doubt a big company. They are known for their innovation and ‘cool’ gadgets. Every launch of a new product involves a presentation by Steve Jobs. Their products are sold in the millions in the first few days (iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million in 3 days) because they create such an anticipation and smart marketing campaign. What do they do that makes them so successful?

Looking at their last few launches a pattern emerges. Not only does Steve Jobs do all the presentations, not only he wears the same clothes no matter what weight he’s in, there are some things we can all learn from the big boys, with their cool innovations, the advertising budget and the PR firm. We can do it too, on a smaller scale.

When Steve Jobs does his presentation he is concise, to the point and entertaining. He does not concentrate on the technical aspect of the new product. He doesn’t talk shop – how fast it is, how the components became smaller. What he does talks about is what their new product will do for you, the customer. How will it improve the way you communicate or do business. If a customer wants to know the specifications of their new gadget he can go to their web site and get that information. Steve jobs is talking to the average customer to show him how cool is the new product and how fun it is to use.

When thinking about marketing and advertising, think about your customers first – how will they benefit from it, what needs your product comes to satisfy.

Create a buzz. That is what Apple does best. Months before the product launch they drop a few words here and there. Obviously not every company is as highly regarded as Apple, and not every launch is a topic of conversation on the big news networks. Creating a buzz before the launch is very important. Every company that is serious about their marketing can do it through websites, social media and bookmarking sites. Don’t wait until the product is completely finished. When you create a buzz you can get feedback about what people want and think your product will be. Monitor those conversations, see what customers really want.
Create a product customers will be happy to show off. When you look at Apple’s products, not only the components are important the packaging is important as well. It is always slick and new (think iPhone, iPad, iPod.) Apple always innovates, jumps ahead in leaps and bounds, not only evolves from model to model. What can you do to your product to make it as sleek as possible, something others will be proud to share? How do you show it on your website?
Get expert advice and recommendations ahead of time. Show your product to the titans of your niche and have them write a few words about it. Put it on your website and tweet about it.
Take pre-orders. This is a must and a base to build on. Even if you are not sure yet about the final price, you can create a following you can e mail to and update on pricing and new features. A business woman I know created a buzz by tweeting about her product when it was still in the building stage. She got 150 preorders just in the first few days. The product is not finished yet.
Make a big deal out of your launch – as big as your budget allows. If not a presentation in a big ball room, you can create a launch on the web. Make sure your speech is short and entertaining. Leave the technology to the experts.

The bottom line – when you are about to launch a new product, plan the launch months before the actual date. Think what information you want to release and when, think how you can maximize your exposure and don’t hesitate to turn to experts in the field to help you plan it correctly.

Social Brand Visibility: Mister Wong

October 26, 2010 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Why call a service Mister Wong? It comes from the term “Wong the Web!” a reference to the practice of wonging, card counting strategy in Blackjack.

Mister Wong is a creation of a German company that initially wanted to take on Google. Started in 2006 the website allows customers to bookmark their favorite sites and use that list as a basic search engine. To find a site that is not on your list, you can search the bookmarks of other people. It is a peer recommended search engine that is meant to weed out the less interesting ones.

With their services users can:

Search and find the best website of a certain category.
Save and manage their sites.
Access the bookmarks from any computer.
Connect with Twitter and import links.

Management of the bookmarks can be done by accessing the website or by downloading a toolbar that allows you to bookmark without leaving the current page.

A relative newcomer, the service is available in German, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and English, and is the leading social bookmarking service in Europe with over 50 million users in 2009. They claim to be the second largest bookmarking service in the world.

Mister Wong has a different approach than Del.icio.us for example. Mister Wong’s variation is more to the point with users creating groups on top of the groups created by tags. Here, just like in Reddit, users can vote with thumbs up or thumbs down, and the recommended site will rise or fall from the top of the list. You can also make friends through the site, create user profiles and show your latest stream of bookmarks and links.

Mister Wong is another website that uses human recommendations to get a site ranked. Unlike Google for example, where new information is scanned and placed by machines, Mister Wong and other bookmarking sites concentrate on allowing you to search less cluttered result pages in an attempt to save you time and compete with the big search engines.

Their dream, to be an alternative search engine, is not yet fulfilled. With more users, and more recommendations they eventually might be able to do just that. Another great visibility opportunity.