Hootsuite and Your Brand

Many brands have embarked on a social media campaign in order to reach a wider audience and effectively promote brand awareness.

Of course, with so many social media accounts you need to sign up for in order to effectively promote your brand, it can be tricky to manage them all. Though you can assign different people to manage your different social accounts, it can also be very time consuming for you to have to monitor all of them to ensure that your brand campaigns are running smoothly. So is there a solution to this?

Managing your brand with Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an excellent solution to this problem. It basically gives you a social media dashboard where it integrates all your social media accounts in one convenient and easy-to-use platform. No more going from tab to tab or window to window in your browser – with Hootsuite, everything is neatly organized in one screen, so you can easily monitor your accounts, post updates, and track the progress of your campaign in one platform.

Hootsuite makes it easy for you to encourage brand awareness since everything is laid out for you in the dashboard. If you want to post the same content to your different accounts, you can easily do that within Hootsuite, saving you time and effort. And you can even schedule posts, which is an excellent feature you can use whenever you plan to be away but want to continue promoting your brand.

Hootsuite is also an excellent choice for brand monitoring. Some great Google Analytics features are built into the platform, so you can easily measure and share the results of your campaign without having to leave the dashboard. You can measure the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns, see page view statistics reports so you can see which content your audience likes, view regional traffic so you can target the locals, and even learn which channels are the best performers in terms of traffic for your brand, so you know where to focus.

Another excellent feature that Hootsuite has is the ability to shorten urls so that you can monitor whether your links are getting clicked or not. This is an excellent way to measure brand awareness and see if your call to action is effective or not.

The ability to create custom search streams also helps you monitor brand mentions so that you never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience. You can monitor mentions of your brand, keywords, competitor names, and a lot more. This enables you to gain insights on what people are searching for and talking about.

Truly, you will soon find that Hootsuite is an essential tool for brand monitoring and promoting brand awareness. Best of all is the fact that the tool is very affordable – you can actually get started on using Hootsuite to manage your brand for free. But if you want to add other team members as well as get more comprehensive reports, the pro plans start at only $5.99/month.

The Fancy - Taking on Pinterest and Social Commerce?

Many people continue to spend much of their time interacting and engaging on Facebook and Twitter, more and more individuals are also turning to sites such as Pinterest and Fancy for sharing and inspiration.

With over 11 million reported users, Pinterest seems to be on its way to becoming a highly popular social networking site. In fact, just this Monday, Forbes reported that they were now the “number three” social network joining Facebook and Twitter at the head of the class.  Pinterest is all about making highly visual and creative boards about the things you like and enjoy, and then sharing them with your friends and followers. Majority of its users are women, who enjoy pinning and re-pinning the content they find.

Getting a little Fancy?

But have you heard about Fancy? This site is actually quite similar to Pinterest, but with a couple of differences. The main difference is that unlike Pinterest, which is more about creative pictures and inspirational boards, Fancy is geared toward ecommerce, and has recently allowed users to buy products directly from the site.

Fancy started as somewhat similar to Pinterest, where you can “Fancy” the gorgeous products that are found in the site. It’s a social photo-clipping service that’s very popular among people who like looking for unique and rare things.

Interesting to note is that unlike Pinterest, Fancy’s users are 60% male and only 40% female. They are often seen posting high fashion clothes and accessories, consumer goods, and pictures of lovely and exotic places. And even though its current 250,000 users is a long way from Pinterest’s 11 million, it seems that Fancy users are more interactive in the site, as they fancy over a million products in just a week.

It joins the ranks of Google+ (another predominantly male social network – at least having more active and social males in their population) as being a network that reaches more men than women.

It first began its venture to ecommerce by offering coupon codes to users who fancy images from certain merchants. But now, you have the option of purchasing right on Fancy, without the hassle of having to leave the site.

How do you Fancy?

How exactly does it work? Well, whenever a user fancies an item, brands and retailers can then bid to sell that specific product. Once approved, they set the price and quantity for the item, and Fancy gets a percentage of the cost paid by the buyer.

It’s actually a different way of doing social commerce. Instead of brands and businesses trying their best to connect with consumers through special deals and other marketing strategies in social media, Fancy users are the ones who look for products they like, while brands and businesses bid on those products to determine who sells them.

The idea is quite new and innovative, and CEO Joe Einhorn is confident that it will soon appeal to the masses. Backed by some serious investors, Fancy seems to be set on taking ecommerce by storm.

The challenge, however, is getting more users to sign up in the site and start fancying things. Fancy’s 250,000 users is still a long way to go from where Pinterest’s 11 million users are standing.

So will Fancy be the next big thing in social commerce? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Be Careful You Don't Hand Your Brand Reputation Over to Youth

The youth today is normally seen as the more tech-savvy ones because they have grown up with the type of technology that is available to us today. It is this same technology that people have been using to improve the way they do business. We have computers and mobile phones and the vast number of applications we utilize in order to make business transactions easier and cheaper. We also have the internet where we can find millions of people to market to. Technology continues to improve in order to make our lives easier and because of this, businesses have become dependent on it.

Even though a lot of people have already become dependent on technology, there are still a lot of people who are having a hard time adjusting to computers and the internet. This is why many businesses have become interested in young professionals because the youth is expected to know more about technology. Businesses believe that younger people know how to effectively use computers and access the internet. Yet, just knowing how a tool functions doesn’t constitute expertise in marketing or at the very least communication.

There are those who know what Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are but they may not fully understand how to effectively catalyze conversations on these sites for marketing purposes. They may know how to post photos and share content but is there a true strategy and expected outcome from doing so?  Could something they do hurt your brand reputation? And, are you willing to let just anyone be responsible for your online identity?   While it may be true that younger employees or interns may be more knowledgeable in using social media, it is still important to follow tight measures to ensure that your employee is mirroring your brand online and utilizing their personal brand to express your brand in its best form.

Here are some tips on how you can protect your brand when you decide on hiring someone young to manage your social media sites:

Verify their computer skills – This is important since it involves handling your online reputation. You want to make sure that the person you are hiring for the post knows how to use the computer well and navigate the internet properly. This might seem absurd but again, you can never be too sure. Computers are made to speed up business transactions. If you hire someone who doesn’t really know what they are doing, you’re just decreasing office productivity. If the position is urgent, you want to make sure that you get someone who really knows how to handle computers and the tools that you are using.

Someone who understands your brand – It is important that the person you place in the position to handle your online presence understands who you are as a brand. If that person also has the same values as your brand does, you will have an easier time managing your employee. Make your employee understand who you are as a brand and how you want your brand to be portrayed online.

Keep constant communication – To ensure that you don’t risk your brand’s reputation you have to make sure you work closely with your employee. Establish constant communication between the two of you to ensure that your employee is doing everything right. It is going to take a while before they can adjust to the workflow which is why it is important that someone monitors your employee’s work. Keep in mind that this is your brand. Set rules for your employee to keep them from accessing their personal accounts while working. You don’t want your employee to accidentally post something on your brand profile and inadvertently cause a social meltdown.

Don’t turn all the responsibility over, yet – Don’t immediately pass all responsibility to your employee. It takes a while to get used to managing different social media at one time. You don’t want to overwhelm your employee with too many tasks because this will lead to mistakes. As you work closely with your employee, you will know when it is right to hand him or her more responsibility. Make sure to always check with your employee first though to see whether they understand precisely what they need to do and how to do it.

While I use the term “employee” here, the term freelancer, outsourced marketing department or advertising agency rep can be used, too.

Businesses have been taking their brands online and if you are thinking of hiring a young employee to manage your social media accounts on the premise that they are more knowledgeable about technology than older professionals, make sure to follow necessary measurements and provide readily accessible support, guidance and training. Marketing your brand using social media sites is not easy and if you need dependable help with your online marketing strategy, you can try Buzz to Bucks, which is a word of mouth marketing firm for small business and personal brands!

Virtual Desktops - Real Financial savings

Virtual Desktops - Real Financial savings

There's by no means been a greater time to chop overheads by up to 60%, and you can do it by deploying a Digital Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

VDI can slash the cost of your present desktop atmosphere - and lower energy use by 60%, as well. At the similar time, you get better productivity, higher security and extra business agility. VDI also reduces your total cost of possession by lengthening hardware life. This can assist you implement your VDI programme quickly and reduce your operating costs faster.

­ Minimize support prices as much as 60%
­ Improve security
­ Save on equipment
­ Enhance productiveness
­ Reduce carbon footprint
­ Increase enterprise agility
­ Assure back-up
­ Lower complete cost of possession
­ Get 12 month payback
­ Achieve integral catastrophe restoration

The most important expertise

Digital Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the certain option to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Forrester call it "the most important expertise to hit the corporate PC house because the skinny shopper". A current survey by IDG Analysis Providers suggests that 34% of corporate desktop supply can be virtualised by the tip of 2010. The reason being that the majority businesses are centred on individuals sitting at desktops, and it prices quite a bit to provision and manage this PC estate. Even worse, it has been calculated that only one per cent of the funding in desktop assets is used at anybody time - in any organisation.

Desktops are also a headache for directors; assist and upkeep are labour-intensive and Information again up and security is a constant problem.

You acquire immediately

VDI can take away all these worries and much of the associated fee since you create a virtual desktop infrastructure and consolidate the PC content onto centralised servers. Your customers have thin client access, enabling you to immediately deliver down the costs of hardware, power and licences by 40 to 60%. Security is ensured, again ups are automatic, catastrophe restoration is integral and crucially, you'll rework your administration.

Better for less

With traditional desktop computing the IT division usually has to dispatch a technician to resolve many finish consumer issues. You may stop this instantly with VDI, as a result of the main infrastructure is managed centrally.

All the things runs on servers that can be controlled centrally from an information centre. All information and applications are supplied from there to your users. This means that a technician can have any user up and working in minutes without even stepping out of the information centre. Your IT folks may give better assist at lower value, and everybody turns into extra productive.

As the primary useful resource (storage, processing power etc.) is centralised, you do not have to interchange the virtual devices. Typically, a VDI machine can run for ten years, so you scale back your complete cost of possession (TCO) nonetheless further. You protect knowledge to, as a result of the servers are safe (desktops are notoriously weak to data loss).

Still a very good user expertise

Importantly, with VDI you will not diminish the person experience. Virtual hosted desktops will not be mere dumb terminals. The top customers will obtain the identical wealthy experience they have turn into accustomed to from their PC.

Quick payback

You could see an nearly quick payback from VDI. Whenever you add up the features from centralised management and support, along with shared storage and the discharge of idle capability, clients typically achieve a return on funding inside 12 months: And it has never been extra essential to make these financial savings!

Because the numbers of employees relying on desktops has grown, the support duties have change into more demanding. It is increasingly complicated and labour-intensive to deploy or patch desktop operating methods, update anti-virus signatures and safe data. Additionally, for optimum productivity and safety, you should assist branch, distant and residential-workers as if they had been in head office.

Like taking 35 automobiles off the street

And, in case you are concerned about your carbon footprint, suppose what slicing desktop energy consumption by 60% can do for you. One medium-sized company that switched to VDI stated it was the equal of talking 35 cars off the road.

Acquire immediately

As a result of administrators can provision new desktops in minutes, giving customers their own personalised environments, with less need for retraining, you not solely decrease your TCO - you also turn into more agile. You possibly can respond sooner and compete more effectively.

Go to EMAContinuity @ http://emacontinuity.com

You must have a Social Media Process

Today, if your brand isn’t on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like, you’re going to be out of the loop and left behind. You’re going to be left in the wake of other brands’ success.

So maybe it’s time for you to jump on the bandwagon. You need to create your Facebook page, start a blog, and create a video for YouTube right now…

Or wait a minute.

Is throwing yourself head on to the oncoming train that’s social media really the best thing to do? Should you just start signing up for all these accounts without considering what’s best for your small business brand?

Of course not.

This is why it’s essential for you to have a social media process. As with any kind of marketing strategy or campaign you’re planning to utilize, you must first understand why you’re doing it and what your goals are in using it, before going ahead with implementation.

This is the reason why some brands fail in their social marketing strategy. It’s because they never had a social media process to guide them. They simply decided to get in while ahead, but they didn’t really have a clear goal on what they wanted to accomplish using these platforms.

So before you can start creating buzz in your social marketing, here are some things you should do:

Review your business goals

Before you can create a social media process, it’s important that you review your business goals. What do you want to achieve in social media? Do you want to build brand awareness, create conversation, generate leads, or sell products?

Remember though that social media is primarily for connecting with your audience, and not for selling. If you do hard selling in different social media accounts, you just might drive people away.

Consider the platforms available 

Though you may think it would be better for your small business to utilize all the social media platforms available to you, this may become time-consuming and cost-ineffective in the long run.

Instead, it is far better for you to focus on one or two platforms where you think most of your audience are in. This enables you to really target your audience and connect with them.

For example, if you’re a photographer, it may be more worthwhile for you to be on Flickr compared to YouTube or you might have concerns over copyright and want to review the platform terms of service.  Perhaps a site like Deviant Art suits you better? Or if you’re a professional looking for clients, LinkedIn may be the better choice compared to Facebook.

Understand the platform you’ve chosen

You’re not going to be successful in your social marketing if you don’t understand the platform you’ve chosen. Once you’ve determined what platforms suit your brand best, you need to study them and understand how best to engage your audience using them.

One of the worst things you can do for your small business brand is to botch up your social marketing presence because you don’t understand the platform you’re using. So study it first before jumping in.

Remember to measure

Now that you’re ready to start your social marketing campaign, it’s also important to determine what you’re going to measure. How are you going to measure the success of your campaign? If you aren’t measuring it, then how will you know if your campaign is succeeding or not, if you’re getting a return in your investment?

There are many tools that can help you measure the success of your campaign. Google Alerts and Social Mention are some of the more commonly used ones. Of course my personal favorite that I’m an affiliate with is Sprout Social.  So don’t forget to measure, since this is going to determine if you should soldier on with what you’re doing or if it’s time to re-evaluate and re-assess your campaign.

Without a social media process, your social marketing campaign will be destined for failure. So make sure that you start right. Plan ahead, and plan well. Don’t just jump into social media without reviewing your business goals, considering and understanding the platforms available to you, and having ways to measure your success.

Using social media is a great way to create buzz around your brand, but without a process, your small business brand isn’t going to go far.

Don't Disrespect Your Small-Biz Clients

When you're selling to small business, don't think of your customers as children.
You may have a big company, and theirs may be small. But don't talk down to business owners, and don't think for a minute that they are second-rate or stupid. Business owners are proud of their businesses, and they hate being talked down to.

No one means to insult their customers, but it happens all the time in small business. Take, for instance, a recent marketing venture involving Google, RBC, Rogers and The Globe and Mail.

“Get Your Business Online” (www.gybo.ca) offers Canadian business owners a free dot.ca web registration – and a free low-end hosting account. The laudable objective was to get more Canadian businesses online – but I found the solution clunky and even disrespectful.

Sure, participants could save the cost of registering a dot-ca domain name (e.g., sellingtosmallbusiness.ca), but that’s only a $13 item – and the free offer only covers the first year. Participants also got a barebones hosting account, enough to build a basic, no-frills web site – but again, the free offer only lasts a year. In ensuing years the hosting site (yola.com) collects another $13 or so per annum – although of course it really hopes to sell these clients up to more costly, but more fully featured, hosting plans.

The big problem, to my mind, was the sponsors’ assumption that a $13 fee was holding back entrepreneurs from setting up their own website. More likely, it’s a failure of vision, or ignorance of the web or how to sell on it, that prevent more companies from branding themselves and selling online. Setting up a cheap-looking website does nothing to solve these problems or  help these businesses grow.

Worse, the program allowed YOLA to advertise on the participants’ sites. Site pages also contained the phrase, “Designed by free CSS templates,” which pretty much exposes the website owners as freebie-seekers.

In other words, the program sponsors weren't respecting the participants’ businesses. They seem to have never thought about entrepreneurs' needs for credibility.

The system was finally revised to eliminate the telltale line, “Designed by free CSS templates,” but only after I complained about the program to an executive of one of its sponsor groups. I had previously denounced the oversight in my Financial Post column, but none of the sponsors seem to have noticed that. (You can read my original article on “Get Your Business Online” here.)

This is a prime example of how companies with the best of intentions can mess up when they sell to small business. Recognize the market’s need for respect and for well-considered, sophisticated solutions. Hard-working business owners deserve nothing less.

You are Your Business Brand

If you want to attract customers, you have to have a good marketing strategy. As a small business, especially when you are only starting out, you have to carefully monitor every step. You also have to monitor whether your efforts and strategies are working at attracting and gaining customers.

With small business owners, your business brand often assumes everything that the owner’s personal brand has – the good and the bad.

How do you marry the two so that it’s sustainable and duplicatable by others (team members, assistants) who come to represent your business?

Here are a few tips on how you can start building your own brand:

Your business values – You can only start building your brand when you know what impression you want to make on your customers. Setting your company values is always a good place to start. You can shape your brand based on how you want your customers to remember you. If you have employees, train them in how to act and do business the way your brand does it. Keep in mind that whatever you or your employees do or say gives people an impression of your brand. As a small business with a relatively small workforce, it’s easier for you to control your employees so take advantage of this.

As part of your marketing campaign, choose a simple branding message. This message should convey who you are and should attract consumers to try your products or services. It should be aligned with your products or services so that when consumers try it out, they will trust that you are someone who does good business.

Set the right tone – Your company voice should have the right tone when communicating with your customers. Your company “voice” should always be aligned with your business values and your brand. This adds consistency to your branding strategies. So whether you are physically or virtually interacting with customers, you should be sending your brand message in a consistent manner. This alone will help you stand out from the rest and it will help your customers distinguish you from the market.

A brand logo – People are quite visual beings and there is nothing more impressive than sending out a consistent message along with a logo or image that represents that message well. Having a good logo that complements your message will add consistency to your marketing strategy. This will also make it harder for consumers to forget you because they have something to associate their great experiences with.

Trial and error – Branding does not happen overnight which is why you have to be patient. You should be ready to try and mix things up until you can get the right tone, message, and logo to truly show who you are as a brand. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. If you have a social media account, use it to listen to what other people are saying about your business. Interact with your customers, whether online or offline. Take the feedback and use it to tweak your message, tone, or logo in order to satisfy your customers better.

Take care of your customers – Consumers can make you successful in so many ways. While it may be true that you were the one who came up with an innovation, your customers can help you shape it so as to attract even more consumers. If you know how to take care of your customers, even in the smallest way, you can become successful. Pay attention to their needs and they will keep coming back to you. Watch out for consumers trends and you will attract even more.

The toughest part of any relationship is the people. Isn’t that the truth!  Help yourself by connecting the dots on how you express your personal brand and how that translates to you business brand.  Share that with new team members and help them connect the dots from their personal brand to your business brand.  The ideal situation is when a person can express your business brand in their own style and voice – nothing is more genuine and powerful!