SuperGeeks » Market Trends

How to Use Social Media to Boost Sales

Chief Geek — Thu, 19 May 2011 06:09:34 +0000

PBN University: Selling with Social Media



Selling is a Social Experience! If you can’t engage your customers in a sociable conversation, you can’t sell them anything. Look what’s happening in Social Media today: $3.08 billion will be spent to advertise on social networking sites in 2011, up 55% over 2010 (Source: eMarketer) 67% of Twitter users said they would be more likely to make a purchase from a follower (Source: AllTwitter) 88% of marketers found that social media helps get them increased exposure style="color: #636466;">(Source: Social Media Examiner) Learn How to Use Social Media to Boost Sales: Why social media is here to stay Learn how much a Facebook fan is really worth How Twitter can make you even smarter Why HR needs to get onboard with social media, too Which companies you should emulate (and which you should not!)	Moderated by James Kerr Chief Geek SuperGeeks

Wednesday, May 25th 12:00-1:00 pm, includes LIVE Q&A Cost: $25 Registration: www.PacificBusinessNews.com For more info call: 955-8074	" width="237" height="57" alt="img" />

Tech Tools for Administrative Professionals

Chief Geek — Tue, 17 May 2011 04:15:55 +0000

Once a year, on Administrative Professionals Day, we honor the people in our organization who fight on the front lines. You know who they are. They are the ones who answer the phones, book the appointments, organize the information, greet the clients, support the boss, coordinate all the moving pieces and basically hold everything together. Without their diligence, loyalty, skills and efficiency, we would all be rendered useless and ineffective.

If you missed the official celebration last month of Administrative Professionals Day, don’t worry. It’s never too late to honor the ones who help us. In fact, every day should be Administrative Professionals Day. Make the time and show your appreciation. And don’t forget to schedule next year’s special day: 4/25/12. Put that event on your calendar yourself. (More info: http://www.iaap-hq.org/events/apw)

Now take a moment and rethink your assumptions about your company’s operations. How can you add more efficiency to your administrative layer? How can technology help your team do what they do even better? Can a new process or procedure boost efficiencies and help make your organization even more competitive?

Later this month I have the pleasure of speaking to the Hawaii Chapter of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (http://www.iaap-hawaiichapter.org/). The topic of my presentation will focus on how to harness new technology to make the office faster, better, cheaper. Here are some ideas you may want to consider:

Get an intelligent phone system.

I tell my team, “Every phone call is worth $10,000. Learn to love the sound of that phone ringing.” But that’s easy for me to say. I’m not the one answering it all day long! Fortunately, there are a bunch of inexpensive tech tools to help make phone-based communications smarter and more effective.

If you’re still using conventional phone systems, ask your internet service provider about “voice over internet protocol” (VoIP). It’s just a fancy name for computer-based phone systems. VoIP will save you money and will offer lots of neat features. Be sure to take a look at Google Voice (https://www.google.com/voice). Google Voice will translate voicemail into email and send it directly to your inbox.

Also checkout RingCentral (http://www.ringcentral.com/). We’ve had good success with RingCentral, which enables us to seamlessly route calls easily between our service centers, home offices, and our SuperGeeks in the field.

Decentralize the accounting.

I remember the days when the bookkeeper had to come onsite to do her magic and all paperwork had to be ferried back and forth to one central location. And it wasn’t that long ago.

If you’re still doing your finances the old fashioned way, i.e. from a dedicated workstation, consider web-based accounting solutions. Quickbooks Online (http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/) is a winner. Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/) is also worthy candidate. Both come with their own ecosystem of partners. This gives you the ability to integrate additional providers so you can achieve a nicely customized solution for your company’s operations. You will like how web-based models offer more automation and more flexibility, like pushing accounting features directly into the hands of your front line staff, saving you both time and money.

Put the forms online.

There are lot of things your clients can do online from your website. In fact, they prefer the convenience of completing forms, scheduling appointments, requesting information, etc via the internet. One of my favorite tools is Wufoo (http://wufoo.com/). Their motto is: We make forms fast + easy + fun. And it’s true.

Think of the paperwork in your operational cycle. Brainstorm what kids of things can be collected and disseminated online. One advantage of online forms is databasing. By capturing data digitally and sending it to the right buckets, you can drill into that data more easily and leverage it more effectively. That’s good business.

Capture receipts on the go.

Expense reporting is vital. It’s also labor intensive. Shoeboxed (http://www.shoeboxed.com/) is a neat online service that helps you keep track of your receipts. Like the other solutions mentioned above, Shoebox integrates with various service providers, including Freshbooks. Again, the more integration, the better.

Organize your contacts.

Customer relationship management, called CRM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management) is the glue of your day-to-day business. Just like the old Rolodex gave us power and authority to get things done, managing your contacts wisely will help you build networks and close sales.

There are many providers in the CRM marketspace. Ultimately, you will want one that integrates well with your accounting solution. Batchbook (http://www.batchblue.com/) does everything a traditional CRM offers, as well as social media integration. This means you can view and curate each contact’s blog posts, tweets, photos and more.

Don’t call or email. Chat.

Everyone knows Skype (http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home) is perfect for long distance calling. But did you know Skype is great for live chatting, too? We use Skype chat to message real-time between our service centers and our global software development teams. It even supports group chatting, so we can have several geeks participating in the same live chat.

In the business world, communication needs to be fast and frictionless. In fact, the sooner you get to the truth, whether it’s a client’s order or a staffing issue, for example, the more competitive your organization will become. Skype is a winner. It’s much better than Yahoo, Hotmail and Google chats. And it’s free!

Manage projects online.

I wish there were some way to automate the whole project management process. It’s amazing how quickly customer satisfaction rates can drop when updates are late and milestones are missed.

We use Basecamp (http://basecamphq.com/) to manage software development projects. We can setup milestones, store related files online, create reminders and even invite clients into some or all of the project management process so everyone is participating and well-informed.

Similar solutions include goplan (http://www.goplanapp.com/) and huddle (http://www.huddle.com/). All offer 30-day free trials.

Make your event a success.

Eventbrite (http://www.eventbrite.com/) is a very useful tool for organizing company events. The events could be anything, ranging from a seminar for your propsects to an employee appreciation BBQ for your team members. With Eventbrite, you can publish the event online, push invites via email and social media to boost registration, track response rates, generate name tags, create check-in lists, and collect money online.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I think you can leverage Eventbrite to run a bootstrapped version Groupon or LivingSocial. You can imagine you have a hot product and a good contact list and you use Eventbrite to push out timely specials, treating each deal as a kind of event. Sounds promising. Let me test it. Will have more for you in my column next month…

@wordpress has just released version 3.0.4, an important security update, if you use WordPress you should upgrade now

Chief Geek — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 03:52:03 +0000

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as “critical.”

Resolutions for the New Year

Chief Geek — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:35:45 +0000

“The sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.” – Christopher Columbus

Technology is like that for me. It’s my ocean. It pulls me closer to new horizons and at the same time eventually delivers me back where I began – kind of like something out of T.S. Elliot’s famous poem “The Waste Land.”

The metaphor works for just about anything. For in the end, we realize the only way to truly learn about life (or technology) is through constant exploration.

And so, as we wrap up this calendar year and look towards the next, with bellies full of hope and renewed enthusiasm, we should list our resolutions for self improvement. Here are my suggestions:

Get the next generation iPad. It’s due the first quarter of next year. You don’t have to like the iPad, but as a business person you do have to understand it. Consider the purchase small investment in your education. After you’ve played with the ‘natural interface’ for a while, install an app called Flipboard (flipboard.com) and play with a variety of content sources. The iPad and its competitors herald a new era in hardware and software. Now is the time to thoroughly grasp why the iPad is so popular and to figure out how your business can take advantage it.

Join the South By Southwest (sxsw.com) interactive conference in Austin, March 11-15. This yearly event brings the best and the brightest together for one long weekend of seminars, speeches, panel discussions and schmoozing. Think of it as Spring Break for nerds. Everyone is welcome. I highly recommend it. You will learn a lot about what’s happening in social media, e-commerce, search engine marketing, user experience and how your business can leverage those trends to boost profits. Let me know if you’re interested. We should go as an informal hui and serve as the geeky ambassadors from Hawaii.

Start using Plancast.com. As you might have guessed from the name, Plancast helps you plan what you intend to do. But equally importantly, it helps you meet the right people. Are you trying to break into a new market or industry? Want to deepen your network? Plancast is perfect for business. You can follow thought leaders and see which work-related seminars, conferences and events they are planning to attend and then map your own schedule accordingly. You can also see who else in your field is attending and make arrangements beforehand to meet. Plancast is free.

Ask questions, get answers and learn what you need to know at Quora.com. Social Q&A sites are nothing new. If you haven’t yet had a chance, check out LinkedIn Answers. I like LinkedIn Answers because I can help people and because in the process those people may eventually become my clients. Lately, though, I’ve been playing more with Quora. It’s a bit more social and a lot more fun. Create your Quora account during your lunch break today. It’s free and just takes a minute to get going. Follow topics and people relevant to your industry and start interacting with others. Use Quora to position your company as a leader in your field and start turning those prospects into leads.

Share your presentations using SlideRocket.com and SlideShare.net. The beauty of the internet is you can easily sell your product or service to anyone, anywhere and do it with relatively little start-up capital. Both SlideRocket and SlideShare are excellent tools to pitch clients globally. One solid presentation, coupled with strong distribution, could really boost your company’s sales. Both solutions will let you add analytics so you can you can measure your presentation’s effectiveness. You can even embed lead forms inside the presentation so viewers can easily contact you.

Access your files wherever you are with DropBox.com. It wasn’t that long ago when we stored all our files on our local hard drives or the office server and accessed those files while at work. Now, we find our working environments far more decentralized. We want to get to those files at all hours of the day, regardless of where we may be. DropBox is a terrific tool for making sure you have immediate access to the files you need. DropBox will automatically distribute and update the important stuff across all of your devices. Need the same set of files to be on your iPhone, your home computer, your office computer and your laptop while on the road? No problem. DropBox will do exactly that. And it will make sure its the most recent version of those files.

Use Evernote.com as a business tool. Evernote’s goal is to be your online brain. I use a Moleskin for quick notes, phone numbers, passwords and messages. But I use Evernote for everything else, including shopping lists, reading lists and daily action items. It’s great for capturing content on the fly and then referencing it later. But Evernote is also good for work. For example, you can snap a photo of a printed doc, store it in Evernote, and then review it during the commute home. Using its character recognition capability, you can use your cellphone to take pics of things like of business cards and expense receipts, and then file them accordingly. Evernote works across all your devices, from your cell phone to workstation, and syncs all your data so you get what you want, when you want it.

Curiosity is the key to knowledge and knowledge is the key to success. This is especially true in business, where trends and the changes in trends can bring great opportunity. The tech world is moving at warp speed. What worked 5 years ago for your business may not offer as much value today. To stay competitive, we must be competitive. That means we must maximize our exposure to new things. And given the significant return on investment it offers, harnessing the power of new technology should be one of our top priorities. Just jump into the sea. You can figure out how to swim along the way.

Bruce Lee and Social Media

Chief Geek — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:37:32 +0000

Remember that scene in Enter the Dragon, where Bruce Lee is trying to teach one of his students about focus? Bruce Lee points a finger and says to his disciple,” It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon…”

The student makes the mistake of looking at the finger. Bruce Lee suddenly swats him on the head and admonishes, “Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

You can watch the famous scene here: http://bit.ly/9tx34G

I think social media is like that. We’ve been staring so much at the finger, we’ve forgotten that we’re supposed to be getting stuff done. Well, the party’s over. It’s time to get over the shock and awe of social media and start using it for work. Yes, social media is the greatest thing since sliced bread. My point is let’s stop looking at the bread and start making some sandwiches.

One company here in Hawaii is being very smart about it. They have some pretty interesting plans for social media and have asked us to develop a winning solution.

The challenge? They have 10 locations across the Hawaiian islands and about 100 employees. Like all companies, they need to ensure everyone is plugged in and happy. That means corporate needs an effective way to keep all employees well informed of what’s happening inside the company. Yes, email works. So does texting or even faxing. But all that seems so old school now.

The solution? Social media. Imagine a password-protected space on the internet, where employees could login and get company news. Imagine a place where each employee can create his/her profile, post pictures, a brief description about themselves, and maybe something about their hobbies and interests. Imagine the ability to create groups around organizational functions. Maybe there’s a marketing group, an accounting group, and an IT group. There could even be groups for extracurricular activities, like community service projects and company volleyball after work. Imagine calendars, chats, training videos and blog posts. Imagine frictionless ways to send messages and share content and to push those messages to the desktop and to smart phones. Imagine a living, breathing, media-rich communication platform inside the company, allowing employees to share ideas and mentor each other in real-time, while working both on the business and in the business.

Interested? You can do the same for your business. Here’s what you need to know.

Something like Facebook would be perfect. It has the features you need. The only problem is employees need sufficient distance between work and play. The last thing anyone wants is the boss poking around all those private status updates. So using Facebook is – at least for the time being – not going to work.

Fortunately, there are two off-the-shelf solutions that will do everything need: SocialCast.com and SocialText. I have been playing with both and a like them very much. There are hosted options and solutions for doing everything yourself in-house. Costs range from $1-5 per user per month, depending on how many features you want. Start up costs are nominal.

My biggest concern, though, with SocialCast.com and SocialText.com is on-going cost. They can really add up over time. So if you want to use social media but don’t want to subscribe to a service, take a look at existing blogging solutions and simply customize them for your company’s needs. Most will do exactly what you need them to do, including profiles, groups, video, text/email notifications, etc. You can even password protect your hui. Consider these platforms: Posterous.com, Tumblr.com, LiveJournal.com, WordPress.org and Blogger.com. Each can be easily customized and password protected. You can even put your solution behind your website, where only authorized users can have access.

Now, when choosing a solution, make sure it offers genuine utility for your employees. In other words, if you opt for a sexy solution with all the bells and whistles, it may just be overwhelming for everyone and ultimately lead to poor adoption rates. Engineering is good. But over engineering is bad.

To get everyone on board, it’s best to keep it simple and let the solution grow organically. In the end, the solution must work well for most of the people on your team. And for those employees who are reluctant to do anything new, this may be the perfect opportunity to offer much appreciated staff training and development.

Lastly, be sure to harness the decentralizing aspect of social media. Give your employees the freedom to access the platform and supply updates anytime, anywhere. To get the biggest bang, be willing to cede some control. As I’ve discovered in my business, one idea from the least likely person on your team could be worth a million dollars.

Let me know if I can help with anything.

Use the Internet to Build Your Business

Chief Geek — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:15:03 +0000

Some companies just get it. And it’s no surprise they continue to thrive – even when the economy is poor. Professional Image, a Honolulu-based printing and copying business, is one of those companies. Let me explain why.

Last year Professional Image merged with New Tech Imaging. It was the perfect time to redesign their website. But instead of creating another brochure online, they asked themselves a super relevant question, “How can the Internet help us do what we do even better?” In other words, how can the website be used to take orders, facilitate payments, build relationships, and even offer new products and services?

Of course, the new site had to look good. After all, they have a million dollar brand; they need a million dollar website. It must exude confidence, competency and professionalism. It needs to be fresh, upbeat and contemporary. Take a look: ProImageHawaii.com

But Professional Image didn’t let aesthetics drive the redesign. Most business owners want the sexiest, flashiest site on the block. This is a mistake. Unless you’re in the design business, your site’s graphic design sense is only one part of the equation.

To avoid falling into the graphic design trap, Professional Image did what every company should do when overhauling their site: They first determined the site’s purpose and then let the design follow function. If you think about it, a pretty site is pretty, but a useful site actually gets work done.

Making a site that works, though, entails more than just focusing on function. A site must get recognized by the search engine crawlers. It’s got to be engineered to get noticed. This requires optimizing the site, both on-page SEO and off-page SEO. If you Google “copying services Honolulu”, ProImageHawaii.com ranks number one.

But a successful website is more than just high organic rankings. If you show me a website with high rankings on search engines, I am impressed. But show me a website that consistently sends you business and I am in love! Traffic is good. But high conversion rates (converting prospects into sales) are even better.

Take a look at the call-to-action items on ProImageHawaii.com. One well-placed button could be worth millions of dollars. Their site is carefully designed to generate leads and it works very well. In fact, the sales team doesn’t have to spend as much time doing cold calls anymore. The website is doing that for them 24/7. As a result, they can focus on serving clients even better.

Running a successful business is more than just capturing sales. Operations are equally important. Your website should reduce administrative costs, speed turnaround, and improve quality control.

To help clients submit orders, we added a file upload feature to their site. Sounds like a minor thing, but remember this is a print shop. Those file sizes are sometimes 500MB or more. You cannot easily email them. Sure, you could ask the client to FTP them, or deliver the content on disk. But why do that if it everything can be done from the website? The whole point of technology is to make life simpler. And the special file uploader provides this much wanted convenience.

One very exciting area of business for Professional Image is photo books. This service allows families to create custom books for everything from childhood memories to family reunions. To help them create books, we added a software wizard to the site. Now, anyone at anytime can download the tools and get started with their creations.

We also added automation. After the photo book is created, the shopping cart automatically calculates the cost of the photo books and sends those orders with the appropriate order numbers to the right printing centers. We even customized the e-commerce module so Professional Image processes orders at lower merchant fees. This means huge savings for them over time.

A big issue with any e-commerce site is a shopping cart abandonment. It is exactly what it sounds like: someone shops, adds items to their cart, and then at the final moment, decides – for whatever reason – not to go through with the purchase. As you can imagine, this is a serious problem for any business. To help understand what’s really going on, we added metrics their site. We can now measure how many people come to the site, how many actually get started with the photo books, and how many leave the site before completing an order. By studying these numbers and by tweaking the site accordingly, the business can test what works and eventually boost conversion rates.

Professional Image is exploring other smart ways of using technology:

They are creating an online video tutorial to help photo book users create their books. Again, nothing fancy is required. As we’ve seen with the success of YouTube, the video does not have to be Hollywood quality. It just has to be useful and organic. Video is very powerful. Interesting fact: Video messages enjoy a 3x higher retention rate than text and 5x more views than text.

Professional Image provides litigation support for law firms. It’s good business for them. The logical next step is to develop special offers for the legal community. This can be easily accomplished using e-mail marketing tools like Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com.

Social media is the new rock and roll. Every business must find ways to harness all that social horsepower. For the photo book enthusiasts, social media offers a unique forum to exchange ideas and develop companionship based a shared interest in crafting. Remember, a Facebook fan is more likely to spend more on your product or service, more likely to purchase from you more often (repeat sales), and more often to recommend your company to their family and friends. It’s perfect.

Click-thru advertising works very well if you do it right. Refrain from creating generic ads and sending your prospect to a generic home page. Think laser. Craft a specific ad targetting a well-defined demographic, and then send that prospect to a custom landing page, focusing on selling that particular product or service. Again, test, measure, tweak, repeat.

Never underestimate the lowly e-newsletter. Your clients want to hear from the owner. They want to know what’s new and exciting in their industry. They even want to get to know your new employee. Make it fun, informal, relevant and a soft-sell.

Automate the feedback process. Customers want to hear from you, but they also want YOU to hear from THEM. They may have an issue or they may have a suggestion. The sooner you get to the truth, the stronger your business will be. Some of our best ideas at SuperGeeks actually came from our clients. Galvanize them. Use internet-based surveys to get the job done.

The upside of the economic malaise is we business owners are forced to re-think our business models. With the advent of all things digital, it’s the perfect time to reexamine long-standing assumptions and re-tool your company around the internet. Step outside the day-to-day noise of current operations and look for inspiration and best practices from unrelated industries. I am confident you will find gold there. As they say, we never want to miss a good crisis.

Want a custom website for your business? Does your existing site need to be modernized? Request a FREE quote for your project.

Marketing 2.0

Chief Geek — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:57:53 +0000

Traditional yellow page advertising is dead.

There. I said it. Oh, and by the way, conventional libraries and Post Offices are dead, too.

Please don’t get me wrong. We still need to advertise our businesses (yellow pages), read (libraries) and communicate (Post Offices), it’s just the ‘old school’ way of doing is – well – inefficient.

So you, as business owner, have a choice. You can do business as you’ve always done, just like your parents did, and ride into the proverbial sunset. Or, you can shake up your assumptions about how thing ought to be done, and get with the times.

Take a moment and think about where we are today. The internet is no longer something that’s out there somewhere. It’s now on our desktops and on our cell phones. Hard drives used to be places where we stored stuff. Now our applications come to us, wherever we are, at the ready.

My point is this: Business is different now. And that means, among other things, we have to change with the times if we hope to find and retain customers. Over the next few months, I will map out the steps your organization needs to take to stay viable.

Step one: Throw out your old marketing manual. It’s no longer relevant.

Step two: Get listed. If data is king, and it is, then you want to add your business to those databases. Marketing 2.0 is all about being in the right database at the right time. Remember when everything was location, location, location? Well, now it’s database, database, database.

The insight I’m about to give you is worth tens of thousands of dollars, but only is you take action. Here’s what you need to do today:

Strengthen your web presence. Your company’s digital footprint doesn’t have to be elegant, it just needs to work. If you’re on a budget, create a business page on Facebook.com. It takes 30 minutes. If Facebook is unappealing, a simple, single-page website would be fine for now, too. Whatever the solution, be sure to include plenty of calls-to-action. Your web page has got to do the hustle for you. Decide it’s purpose. Is it’s purpose to collect email addresses, schedule appointments, make a sale? Don’t leave money on the table by just sharing info about your product or service. Big mistake. Instead, trigger the visitor to do something. Turn the prospect into a lead, or better yet, turn the prospect into a paying client. Think online forms, e-newsletter fields, Buy Now buttons, and prominently displayed phone numbers.

Add your company to Google Maps. Ever notice how your search results via Google almost always include Google Map results at the top? You want to be in those Google Maps results every time anyone searches on anything relating to your business. Go to this page: http://maps.google.com/ and click on the link ‘Put your business on Google Maps.’ Take the time to do it right. Include pictures, logos, videos, coupons, slogans, testimonials and more. By getting your company fully registered on Google Maps, you’re ensuring your business hits one of the worlds most popular databases: Google. Every week I get a report on where our business is coming from. I am always surprised by the number of people finding SuperGeeks via Google Maps.

Don’t forget Yahoo and Bing. Though not as popular as Google, Yahoo and Bing can bring you an awful lot of business. And since they run their own business directories, you’ll want to get listed there, too. For Bing, go to this page: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx. For Yahoo, go here: http://listings.local.yahoo.com .

But wait. There’s more. DMOZ.org is the world’s largest, human-edited directory on the web. It’s been around for several years now. You can post info about your company free of charge. So go ahead, get listed there because it’s huge and because other directories pull data from it. Google Directory, for example, pulls data from it: http://www.google.com/Top/Business/ Remember, when it comes to databases, you want your company to be everywhere. For fun, checkout YellowPages.com and SuperPages.com and see what pops up.

YouTube is a search engine. In fact, it’s one of the most popular search engines in the world. Two billion videos are viewed every day via YouTube, with the average YouTube visitor spending 15 minutes per day on it. Use YouTube to warehouse commercials, educational clips, sales pitches, seminars, how-to videos, etc. And be sure to fully describe the video with all the SEO (search engine optimization) tools already build into tYouTube. This means you must give each video a title, description and tags which match your company’s targeted keywords.

Look for other great places to submit your site. Go to your browser and enter this address: http://dir.yahoo.com . Click on the appropriate category on the left hand side and voila! You will get a listing of specialized directories. These directories see much less traffic than the big boys’, but they are highly specialized and thus worth the effort. Remember, targeted marketing is smart. Always. If you’re feeling really geeky, try this Google search string: ”computer directory -inural:yahoo.com -inural:google.com -inurl:dmoz.org” It tells Google to give you all of the computer related directories but ignore any directories that have yahoo.com, google.com and dmoz.org in their URLs. You can use the same search for your industry. Simply replace ‘computer’ with ‘auto repair’, ‘accounting’, etc.

Create a Yelp profile. Yelp.com is a social networking site where users review everything from restaurants to bookstores. It’s a local search engine , with more than 30 million unique visitors per month. Make sure your company in properly listed on Yelp. It’s a great way to share info about your company’s products and services: http://www.yelp.com/business?country=US

Ask clients to post reviews. Word of mouth referrals are useful for everyone, so it’s not surprising search engines are pushing reviews to the top of their results. Google Maps will let you review businesses. Encourage your happy clients to post something good. Do the same for Yelp. The more positive reviews your company has, the higher your company will show in the search rankings.

Look at your company from afar. This action item is real important. We spend so much time working in our business, we neglect to take evaluate it from the outside. Every three months or so, hop online and start searching like one of your potential clients would search. The goal is to see your business through the public’s perspective and to fix any issues along the way. Although rare, competitors do sometimes hijack business profiles and direct traffic to their own web sites. More often, though, a business hasn’t taken the time or energy to update their business profiles and as a result a lot of important info is incomplete or nonexistent.

Make the above your priority for the week. It doesn’t take a lot of time and you will learn quite a bit along the way. Most importantly, you will get your organization on the map. And you will get noticed.

Lastly, avoid paying to get listed in a directory. Good information wants to be free. That means good info wants to be discovered easily but also available at no charge. So be careful when anyone starts asking for money. In most cases, it’s not necessary to pay to play.

When in doubt, call me. Or email me. I am delighted to help.

How to Use YouTube for Business

Chief Geek — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:46:47 +0000

Remember that quiet, kind of unremarkable kid in high school, whom no one really noticed but suddenly grew up and conquered the world while everyone else was too busy trying to look good?

Well, YouTube.com is that superhero. And it’s all kind of happened so quickly.

YouTube is only five years old. Created in February of 2005 by three early employees of PayPal, YouTube spawned from a dinner party. They wanted to share video from the party but there was no easy way to do it…so they decided to created YouTube.

And they did a pretty good job. In November of 2006, Google purchased the company for $1.65 billion.

So why should you, as business owner or executive, care? Because there are a lot of eyeballs on that site and you can’t afford to ignore them.

Consider some of these impressive stats from Website Monitoring:

In any give day, about 2 billion YouTube videos are viewed. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all 3 major U.S. broadcast networks combined.
Twenty four hours of video are uploaded to YouTube very minute.
The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube.
More video is uploaded to YouTube in just 60 days than all the content the 3 major US networks created in 60 years.
70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the U.S.

It’s no surprise that 94 of Advertising Ages’ 100 top advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Google Content Network. The proof is clearly in the pudding. The smart business people are either already on YouTube or sprinting towards it.

Here’s what you need to know:

Video sells.

A picture is worth a thousand words. But a video is worth a million. Think about it. If you see a print ad, it’s good. If you include a picture or a graphic, it’s somehow better. But if you add video, and if the video is truly interesting and informative, your pitch is so much more effective. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling blenders (checkout ‘Will It Blend‘ on YouTube) or just trying to find a tenant for your rental unit, people love video.

Zappos says they can boost sales conversions by as much as 30% using video product descriptions online. Shoppers feel more comfortable making the purchase when they can see and hear about the product. Take a look at Zappos’ YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/zappos

Especially the soft sell.

Unless your video is a worthy of SuperBowl’s Halftime, don’t mislead yourself into thinking everyone will share your enthusiasm for your masterpiece. Remember, people don’t want to be sold. But they do want to buy.

This means you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves, brainstorm a bit, test a lot, and try to create content people genuinely want to watch – especially if you want tons of views.

Just keep it simple. You don’t have to become a movie mogul overnight. But you do need to be genuine, compelling, useful and congruent with your brand.

Take a look at what your competitors are doing on YouTube. Don’t forget the titans in your industry. You can sponge best practices from those who do it well.

For example, Home Depot does a good job of using YouTube to host how-to videos on home improvement. Their channel reaches both current and potential customers. The tactic is to serve. And the purpose is to nurture first time purchases and repeat business: youtube.com/user/homedepot

Take a look a GirlScouts’ Youtube channel, too: They are doing a terrific job leveraging YouTube to extend their brand and boost cookie sales: youtube.com/user/girlscoutvideos

It’s free.

YouTube is free. You can create an account and get started within minutes without spending a dime. Moreover, with very little money, you can reach millions of users and compete with the big boys. All you need is business savvy.

“YouTube is a robust product for any business, big or small,” adds Jamie Grenney, Senior Director of Social Media for salesforce.com. “It’s the same platform for all, so you know it’s going to be good — small businesses are going to get the same benefits as large companies.”

Any simple video camera will work. I like the Flip (theflip.com) video cameras. They are cheap ($150) and amazingly easy to use.

I also recommend Kodak’s Zi8 HD camera because it has an external mic. We use the Azden WMS-PRO for the wireless mic. It works very well.

YouTube has enough online editing software to get you going. The cameras will come with their own editing software, too. We use iMovie to edit most things. However, I am so excited about the potential for video on our website, our Facebook page, our company’s intranet and other distribution channels, we will purchase Final Cut Pro ($999) so we have even more video editing tools available in-house.

Everywhere is good.

YouTube will host your videos at their site. You setup a YouTube Channel can customize the design accordingly.

YouTube also lets you share your videos across other platforms. For example, you can embed video on your company’s Facebook page, one your blog, in your website, on other people’s sites, etc. You can even promote your video using a service called YouTube Promoted Videos (ads.youtube.com/), where Google will extend your video’s reach and you pay only for actual views.

But don’t forget to use your video in other places. You can use YouTube video as an after sales tool to explain and demonstrate product setup. You can use YouTube inside your organization to train employees and to broadcast important company messages. You can even use YouTube videos in your employment ads to capture the interest of the perfect potential hire.

Don’t forget the details.

Many people make the mistake of uploading content and then focusing solely on distribution. YouTube gives you several tools to properly categorize your video for search engines.

For example, carefully choose a title for the video which matches the target keyword search string your audience might use. If your video is about cleaning computers, don’t name it ‘Video Tips from SuperGeeks’. Instead, go with something like ‘How to Clean Your Computer’ because people are more likely to search on ‘How to Clean Your Computer’ rather than the former.

Similarly, be sure to assign right meta tags to your video. This will help ensure your video is seen by the right people.

It’s OK to be crappy.

When it comes to technology and new things like social media, the need for perfection often gets in the way of getting going. That’s wrong. Don’t shy away from new things just because they may be difficult to understand. Instead, let yourself make mistakes. Jump into YouTube with a big splash. It’s OK if your videos are homespun. It’s OK if you’re not sure what to do next. Just get going. It will make a world of difference.

If you would like to learn more about how to use YouTube for business, please join our webinar: supergeeks.net/webinars

James Kerr is founder and Chief Geek at SuperGeeks. He can be reached at (808) 942-0773 and www.SuperGeeks.net. Twitter: supergeeks

10 Tips to Build Your Business’ Online Presence (This is my BBB presentation)

Chief Geek — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:20:45 +0000

Checklist: Twitter for Business

Chief Geek — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:05:07 +0000

Join my webinar tomorrow – “How to Use LinkedIn for Business”

If you’re not quite sure how to start using Twitter for business, just follow this checklist:

Create a Twitter account.

Just get started. It takes only 5 minutes. Have fun. Don’t worry. You won’t break anything.

Be sure to choose a good Twitter handle. This is extremely important. Try to use your full name or a variation of it. You want people to recognize you and your company at an event. Be consistent with your brand. Avoid underscores and random numbers

Good: SuperGeeks or AskSuperGeeks
Bad: SuperGeeky123

Follow interesting people, thought leaders…even competitors.

Remember, Twitter is as much about broadcasting info as it is about receiving info. In fact, for many people, Twitter IS their primary news source. You can use Twitter to stay on top of events, market trends, new product announcements, etc.

Go to Twitter Search, wefollow and twitrratr. Search on topics and find people.

Complete your profile details.

Click on the Settings tab located top right of your Twitter account and then click on Profile. Fill out the requested information.

Include your domain name and a quick blurb about your company (think mantra). Keep it succinct, warm and friendly. Remember, Twitter is all about people.

Customize your page design.

Click on the Settings tab located top right and then click on Profile. Be sure to capture your company’s brand. Color scheme, slogan, etc should be congruent and consistent with your website, biz cards, brochures, etc. The visitor should know where he/she is in a blink.

Use a shortener.

Remember, Twitter limits your tweets to just 140 characters. This can be troublesome when you’re trying to share a long URL or domain name. Fortunately, there are many tools to help you shorten those long URLs. And those shorteners include statistics, so you can measure how many people clicked on the link, where they are located, whether they retweeted the link, etc. I recommend this free tool: Bit.ly

Use a management tool.

Many people have multiple Twitter accounts. One company may have multiple accounts. You can imagine how labor intensive it can be to send and reply to all those tweets. These management tools will even let you preschedule tweets and resend the same tweet several times throughout the day for maximum exposure.

Try using TweetDeck.com and HootSuite.com. Use the one you like. They are free.

Add your Twitter icon (and other social sharing icons) everywhere.

Your website, business cards, newsletters, stationary, emails, doors, counters, receipts, packaging…everywhere! The more it’s visible, the better.

Add a blog to your website.

It’s important to share your wisdom and knowledge. By maintaining a blog on your site and posting an article once a week, you will eventually build a dedicated following. Blog posts should be useful, insightful, interesting and relevant. You can post tips and tricks, case studies, best practices, news, etc and use Twitter to help broadcast those messages.

Reposition your website.

All roads lead to Rome. Think of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn as avenues back to your website. It’s ok if those roads are unpaved, just make sure you’re everywhere on the internet and your website is the target destination.

Leverage all social media.

Twitter is just one way to reach your customers. Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn are also very effective. Take the time to create an account for each. Be sure to keep your brand consistent. Use management tools to reduce your labor.

Update your company’s policy for acceptable computer-use.

You know the adage: If it’s not written down somewhere, it’s not a policy. This is especially true when defining acceptable and unacceptable use of company computers.

Take the time to map out your company’s policy pertaining to social media. Are employees permitted to visut their personal Facebook accounts during working hours? Are they permitted to represent your company on those pages? And if so, what kinds of things can they share or not share?

Computer-use policies are very important. Let me know if you’re struggling with them. I can help. Contact me:

James Kerr
Chief Geek
(808) 531-GEEK
help@supergeeks.net
Twitter: supergeeks