Mobile devices are quickly emerging as the primary method people use to find what they’re looking for in the “real world.” If an individual is looking for the best slice of pizza in a two block radius they’re not going to ask a passersby, they’re going to use a mobile app. If an individual is trying to choose between two products or services they’re going to browse a comparison website to find reviews of their options.

By practicing mobile marketing you will insure two things:

1. Your business will show up in mobile searches for your product or services offered.
2. Your business will have a POSITIVE presence on mobile platforms, one whose message brings you new clients and encourages old clients to become repeat customers.

These days you can neither afford to ignore mobile marketing, or to perform it incorrectly. You could spend hours a day attempting to monitor and perfect your mobile marketing, or you could work with a professional firm that specializes in this increasingly crucial element of customer attraction and client retention.

Google Places is a simple service offered by the search giant. When you sign up for Google Places your organization will find itself represented on Google Maps, and on the dedicated Google Places service, with a small yellow price tag. This price tag image helps your business stand out from the crowd and encourages users to click on it. Signing up for a Google Places tag is one of the fastest ways to generate visibility and interest among potential clients looking for what you offer, even if you neither rank high in the search engines nor show up at the top of a Google Maps search for your local services.

A  Google Places tag is more than a simply mention of your business, which is why we offer extensive services to optimize this potentially lucrative area of online marketing. We will make sure your Google Places tags offer powerful incentives to your potential customers (such as coupons or videos). We will also track your Google Places tag performance to make sure you’re providing the best performing information and offers to your potential clients, so your organization nets the greatest benefits from this valuable service.

On the surface Facebook ads may appear a lot like many other forms of online ads out there. They feature an image and text, and when an individual clicks on them that individual will be directed to a website or online offer. In this manner Facebook ads work a lot like Google advertisements, with one crucial difference- you have a lot more control over who sees your Facebook ads compared with who sees your Google advertisements.

Sure, Google’s advertising platform offers its share of demographic variables to target, but Google has nothing on the level of specificity offered by Facebook. Every single element of a Facebook user’s profile, from their age, to their gender, to their location, to their hometown, to the musicians they like and the preferred activities they list, can all be fed into Facebook’s advertising platform. If you had the appropriate information you could target a Facebook ad to a single individual- a level of specificity and focus no other advertising platform currently offers.

The key to advertising lies in niching your ads and sharply focusing your market, and Facebook’s advertising platform accommodates both of these needs perfectly.

At a base level it’s better to have a fan page for your business on Facebook than to not have one. Even if you don’t have a lot of time and resources to pump into actively promoting your business and engaging your clients you should still have a “home base” on Facebook which provides important information on your business. Make sure you create this page using your business’ name, include a few short paragraphs explaining what your business is and what it offers your clients, and then include a link to your business’ website.

However, if you want to get the most out of your Facebook page you need to actively engage your followers. Post regular updates and information to your page’s wall, sporadically send out messages to all of your followers, and generally use Facebook to keep your followers up to date on your business’ most recent news and developments.

Deciding how often you should engage your followers on Facebook can be tricky. On the one hand you don’t want to put too much information out there and overwhelm your followers with posts, messages and updates. Doing so will lose you followers and cause your remaining followers to unsubscribe from your updates. On the other hand you want to update often enough to keep your followers engaged and to keep them on the lookout for your more recent nugget of information.

The key to updating enough to keep your followers hooked without updating so much you lose their interest lies in updating only when you have something valuable to say. Posting one piece of valuable information a day is a good benchmark to shoot for. This valuable information can be notice of a sale you are running or are about to run, a piece of behind-the-scenes information like an engaging or tantalizing photograph, or even a Facebook specific promotion your business is running. Offering these promotions exclusively to your Facebook followers is a good way to both build up your following on the social media site and to make sure those followers actively anticipate your updates.

Overall, remember that successfully promoting your business on Facebook is all about providing a continuous stream of value to your followers. There is a lot of noise on Facebook and you will simply be ignored unless you’re offering information and data which your followers want to hear. The best way to determine if you are providing value to your clients is simple- see if you’re receiving feedback on your posts. If people “like” your posts, if they comment on your posts, if they share your posts, than you can rest assured your message is getting across and you’re actively using Facebook for your business in a successful manner.

If you’re going to waste a lot of time on Twitter it’s going to happen one way- you’re going to log in to Twitter to post something for your business and then you’re going to get caught up in the timeline of updates posted by all the people you’re following. Twitter’s timeline provides an up-to-the-minute listing of every little message the people you’re following send out into the world. Reading just one update on this timeline is akin to eating just one potato chip out of the bag- it’s impossible. Reading just one tweet leads to reading the tweet below it, which leads to reading the tweet below that one, which leads to reading the next tweet… and so on until 15 minutes have passed without you even realizing or expecting it.

There are a couple ways you can prevent yourself from wasting time getting caught up in your Twitter timeline. The first thing you can do is not follow anyone else, which will essentially eliminate your timeline altogether and remove the biggest time sink associated with the platform. This is a very effective method of eliminating the problem altogether, but it’s not an effective way to grow your followers base on Twitter. There’s no need to follow every single person on Twitter who follows you, but subscribing to other people in your industry is an important act of goodwill and a powerful method of gaining followers of your own when you’re first starting out.

There is a more elegant solution to the timeline problem which lets you follow all the people you want. All you need to do is schedule your posts using an external program like Tweetdeck. A program like Tweetdeck lets you schedule as many posts as you want for as far as you want into the future. If you’re feeling ambitious you can schedule posts for the next few months all in one go, though scheduling too far in advance prevents you from remaining flexible and topical with the information you tweet.   Scheduling a week’s worth of posts at a time is a great compromise between providing your followers with up-to-the-minute information and approaching Twitter as a daily burden. Using a program like Tweetdeck once a week will also remove the temptation of looking over your Timeline more than once a week, eliminating the program’s threat as a potential timesink.

There are plenty of other little tips and tricks associated with using Twitter effectively for your business, but none of those will provide you with too much help if you don’t have a grasp on the basic principle of the platform- provide value without getting personally caught up in its never ending torrent of noise.

Why not use our “TOI Blueprint”. Using the Blueprint, you enter in the hours you are spending on your daily tasks and the income that you want to be making. The Blueprint will show you how much your time is worth and what can be easily outsourced. For example, your goal maybe to increase your income by $50,000 this year. However, you know you will need to free up a minimum of 10 hours per week. You actually have gone as far as making a list of the tasks that you will need to do to accomplish this goal. For example:

1. Send out weekly email to clients and prospects

2. Send out a monthly postcard with offers to a list of prospects to build your database

3. Create a series of one page websites with data capture that are optimized for search engines

4. Create and maintain Social Media channels to communicate to clients and prospects.

5. Attend 2 Networking meetings a month to look for affiliates who can refer business

So how will you accomplish this? The best way is to hire a virtual assistant (VA) for 20 – 40 hours per month. You can assign these and more remedial tasks so you will have the time to plan and delegate.

If you would like a copy of our Blueprint, feel free to email blevin@transformationalenterprises.com and we will send you this spreadsheet so you can do the calculations.

The frustration lies not in the difficulty in interacting with customers, but in the implementation of their social media efforts.

Here are the top four mistakes small businesses usually commit in their social media management.

1. Incoherent social media efforts

The problem with many social media managers is that they don’t know how to make their campaigns blend together. For instance, their tweets should support their website blog posts. Videos on YouTube should be supported by what they’re doing on Facebook. Social media channels should also give customers the same feel, so as not to alienate them. The sense of consistency will let them feel at ease because they know they’re following the right Twitter handle or Facebook account.

To be inconsistent also means posting news articles on LinkedIn and posting entertainment news on Facebook. Customers don’t want to feel confused as to what kind of thought leader you really are.

2. Not connecting with customers—physically

Many business owners think that if they mention their potential customers’ names on Twitter or do retweets all the time, they’re already connecting with their customers. This is wrong.

Customers need to see that you indeed understand what they need by connecting to them physically. This means contacting them through email, phone, or even in person and make a great pitch. This is what the aim of social media marketing is anyway.

Finding your target market is not as tricky as before. Thanks to Twitter Search, you can find real-time conversations, monitor your brand, and even spy on your competitors.

3. Discarding Tools

There are many useful tools for social media that business owners fail to take advantage of. Using these tools doesn’t mean you’ll be hands-off your social media campaign. In fact, these tools can even help you become more personal and sweeping.  Launching a social media campaign often includes the use of the “Big 3” among social networking sites: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. It’s just customary to use dashboards to help you maintain these sites.

Tools like HootSuite and Tweetdeck can help you do this just by signing up and adding your social networking accounts. What’s very useful about using dashboards is that you can view updates from your accounts at the same time. This can let you save your precious time!

Other tools like Twitter Search and Tweepz can help you find relevant conversations and users. By using Twitter Advanced Search, you can even refine your search by typing key words, hashtags and location.

4. Not knowing the importance of employees

Business owners usually let social media agencies, managers or their marketing department handle their social media campaigns. Many of them leave the other employees out. This doesn’t only estrange them, but it’s not also a practical act.

No number of agencies or people can effectively build your web presence and genuinely connect with your customers except your employees. They have the best things to say about your company. So, why not let them share their real experiences through social media? Customers will be very happy to hear from your employees themselves.

Customizing Your Profile

Just as a resume is a first impression of a prospective employee, the Linkedin profile serves as means to stand out from the crowd and highlight unique skills. The focus in customizing a Linkedin profile needs to be establishing a professional persona. A headshot works wonderfully; the logo of the company for whom you work, not so much. This is a place to highlight your strengths truthfully. In order for others to find your Linkedin profile, it is helpful to use keywords in the profile.

Customizing Your Websites

One of the ways to demonstrate the breadth of your knowledge and expertise is to link to three places: your blog, your Twitter or Facebook page and an article you have written. Once again, it is helpful to think of these three things as items in a portfolio you show to a real-life prospective client, employee or employer. The article can be posted on E-zines or one of the other article directories. The subject matter in the article is most effective if it covers a scenario outlining a problem you have encountered, the action you took to resolve the issue, and the results of your action.

Recommend Others

A primary purpose of Linkedin is to network. Establishing worthwhile connections that reflect your own stage of development and that to which you want to aspire is a great away to broaden your network.

Start Your Own Group

A great way to make new contacts is start a group reflecting you knowledge, aspirations and geographical location. A smaller group of well-heeled executives is much more impressive than thousands of followers who appear to be just a random group of people who seem to be party friends.

Add an Application

Linkedin allows user to hook up a variety of applications, such as YouTube. A thoughtful presentation on YouTube allows people to see and hear the real you in action.

• Does the company have employees who possess the skills to manage marketing through social media?

• Does the company have employees willing to acquire knowledge regarding social media marketing?

• Does the company have the time to train its own employees to acquire the skills of social media marketing?
In case of social media marketing, there is usually a trade-off between money and expertise. Hiring an external firm or individual can be costly but would ensure high proficiency in the field, while appointing an individual from within a firm can save the company money, but the expertise in the field might not be as much.
Ultimately the main concern of the company is the return on investment. The core essence of existence of firms is to be profitable and secure high returns. Thus, the comparison between the estimated or expected returns gained from outsourcing and that from keeping social media marketing in-house should be the ultimate basis of decision at the end of the day.