Social media helps boost small business interactions with customers

Implementing social media into daily customer interactions has helped small businesses see a surge in effectiveness for interacting with customers

As the use of social media across businesses is gradually being adopted SME’s have seen an increase in the effectiveness of social media to help market their business.

According to a 2011 study of nearly 2,000 businesses by Constant Contact, an online marketing company for SMEs, results showed that companies had increased opinion that using social media was easy and not time consuming.

The study saw an increase of 24% of businesses reporting social media was easy to navigate and a 45% increase of businesses saying it worked well with customers. In the survey of UK and US businesses, 81% reported that they dedicate a significant amount of time to social media, which is up 8% from last year.

Read more: http://media.cbronline.com/news/social-media-helps-boost-small-business-interactions-with-customers-121211

How Social Media Can Help With Marketing Your Small Business

Less than 1% of small business owners in the UK connect with clients using social media so that means that a whopping 99% are missing out on an opportunity for online marketing of their small business. Traditionally the small business was trusted by consumers and social media is the modern way of building and keeping that trust going.

The majority of people that buy from small businesses buy from the person behind the small business so as the business owner it is up to you to build and maintain a relationship with existing and potential clients. When you are considering your offline marketing strategy you should also be considering your online marketing strategy, the internet is here to stay so you might as well learn to use it to your advantage.

Read more: http://technorati.com/business/small-business/article/how-social-media-can-help-with/#ixzz1G7JSJYSH

Small business owners don’t mix business with pleasure on Facebook

WeCanDo.Biz Limited, the online business network for sales leads and referrals, has released the results of its third annual Business Networking Trends Survey.  The full survey results report is available as a free download from www.wecando.biz/surveyresults.php.

The survey confirms that use of business focused social networks such as LinkedIn, Xing and WeCanDo.Biz has increased at a greater rate over the past year than mainstream sites like Facebook for small companies.  Although over eighty per cent of respondents use Facebook, only twenty one per cent are happy to mix professional and personal contacts together on Mark Zuckerberg’s website, a marked drop from last year.

There is also a jump in the number of people concerned about the security and integrity of online networking, with more than three quarters expressing some level of concern.

The survey was conducted between November 2010 and February 2011 by WeCanDo.Biz, BusinessZone.co.uk and UK Business Forums.  Over 500 mainly UK-based small business owners participated.

Read full article: http://www.journalism.co.uk/press-releases/small-business-owners-don-t-mix-business-with-pleasure-on-facebook/s66/a543048/

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011

Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2011.

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2011 include:

• Cloud Computing
• Mobile Applications and Media Tablets
• Social Communications and Collaboration
• Video
• Next Generation Analytics
• Social Analytics
• Context-Aware Computing
• Storage Class Memory
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Computers

For the full article: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1454221

Ten tips on social networking policies

Are you struggling to tear your employees away from sites such as Facebook, Bebo and Twitter? Here are ten top tips on drafting the necessary policies on social media and networking usage.

1. Draft concisely: Clearly set out in the policies the type of conduct that will be considered acceptable  or misconduct/ gross misconduct. If you are setting certain restrictions on usage, then ensure these are communicated clearly; for example, the employee handbook.

2. Make it relevant: Make sure your policy is actually relevant to the usage of the internet or IT by staff. If a particular problem has arisen, then address this matter specifically in the policy to prevent any further incidents.

3. Enforce restrictions: You can dictate when staff may use social networking sites and what is considered reasonable usage. For example, many businesses allow staff to use social networking sites only at lunch time or not at all.

4. Be aware of boundaries: Tempting as it may be, policies should not be too far reaching. An employee’s private life is still protected unless it impacts on the working relationship with their employer.

5. Monitor usage: Reserve the right to monitor staff’s usage of social networking. This is especially important if staff are provided with a laptop or PDAs that they may use privately.

For the next 5 tips, please click here: http://realbusiness.co.uk/employment/ten_tips_on_social_networking_policies

7 Must Use Internet Social Media Avenues

One type of Internet marketing that you must be taking advantage of is social media. The truth is your Internet business will not survive unless you are involved in various forms of social media. The only exception to that would be is if you do paid advertising such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Marketing.

Perhaps you do not understand the various ways you can utilize these many types of social media to brand yourself and expand your business. Here are 7 types of Internet social media you should be doing everyday.

1. Blogging

Your competition has a blog and so should you. Blogs can serve many purposes. A couple of key points are host your own blog and consistently add fresh content. Never let your blog go stale.

2. Social Networking

My Space and Facebook are 2 of the largest. Building relationships online are a big part of having a successful Internet business. Social networking allows you to hang out with people that have similar interests to you.

3. Micro Blogging

Twitter.com is a combination of social networking and blogging. Building a large list of followers is a great way to meet people and increase traffic to your blog and websites. Plus it is fun to Tweet!

4. Social Bookmarking

Directories such as Digg and Technorati serve as search engine bait for your blog posts and for new traffic from people who read your blog articles. Bookmarking a blog post is very easy to do and the rewards can pay off for years to come.

5. Discussion Forums

This really was one of the first forms of social media and still is a great way to learn about the niche of your business and to drive traffic to it. Hanging out in discussion forums can be addictive so be careful to use them the right way and not waste time. There is an art to forum marketing and you must learn to do it correctly, but the benefits are many.

6. Email Marketing

There has always been money in having a list. The trick is to build relationships with your list and then sell to it after you have done that. For that reason we include it in social media. Today you can add video, audio, graphics, and other things to make your email more interactive.

7. Video Marketing

When Google bought YouTube everyone was put on notice that video marketing was going to be important. Today internet marketers can drive traffic and build credibility by adding videos to their blog and website.

This is 7 forms of social media you must be using everyday to build your Internet business. The most successful Internet marketers already are!

via UK Business Advisors Ltd | UKBA – 7 Must Use Internet Social Media Avenues.

Only one in ten UK small firms using social networks

Only a tenth of small businesses are using social networks to promote their firm and communicate with customers, according to a recent study by business software firm Sage. Around three-quarters of those that do use social networks are using Facebook, while a third of active social networkers use Twitter and 27% use LinkedIn.

To read more on this story go to:

http://www.sage.co.uk/PDF/ACT2010_Social_Media_Whitepaper.pdf