SMEketing pride ourselves on being a full service, modern marketing agency, We offer a host of services to our clients, from traditional brochure design, copywriting, all the way to social media marketing and search engine optimisation. However, recently there has been a real trend for a specific service – website design.
For a small business, getting a new website, whether it’s for a new venture or redesigning an existing website, can be a very confusing, time consuming and expensive process. Small businesses need websites that are:
Inexpensive
Easy to update and maintain
Future proof
Make use of social media marketing, such as
Blogging
Twitter integration
Social bookmarking
Search engine friendly
Look credible and trustworthy
Supports their goals and objectives
Promotes them in line with their corporate standards
Procuring a website that meets all the above is difficult to say the least. We’ve heard enough horror stories to know that obtaining all eight points is near on impossible. So this is why we’re about to launch our new service; Your Social Business.
Your Social Business aims to do all eight points above and more. We’re creating a Social Business website for it right now, so watch this space!
In the meantime, if Your Social Business sound like it’s a right fit for your website needs, please give us a call on 023 8083 7271, or message us on the new Twitter account – http://twitter.com/YourSocialBiz.
A lot of the posts here on the SMEketing Small Business Blog are regarding social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogging etc. That’s not just because it’s a service we offer – it’s because the way people use the Internet, and more importantly, consumer behaviour, is changing.
It used to always be about interruption marketing – adverts interrupting your favourite TV show, every other page in a magazine being an advert, adverts on the radio offering car insurance and local double glazing, pop ups jumping up from websites running around the page whilst you try to find the X to close it down…. you get what I mean. Marketing was all about interruption – getting in the consumers way. Did we ask for Coronation Street to be split into two halves with 3 minutes of adverts in the middle? No we didn’t. Luckily nowadays, we don’t have to put up with it anymore. We can fast forward through adverts on TV, install spam blockers and pop up blockers to get rid of those pop ups and spam emails. No longer do we have no choice over having to endure irrelevant marketing rot.
So marketers need to change the way they promote their products and services. One popular stream of thought is all about content – providing content to consumers when they want, where they want. If a young lady is online, if searching in Google for ‘red ladies bikes’ then you need to make sure that your bike website gets found in Google for that search term. That young lady may also go on Twitter, and say that ‘I’m looking for a new bike – it’s got to be red, can anyone recommend a shop?’ – again, you need to make sure you are there to answer that tweet.
Additionally, people now use the Internet to research purchases. They don’t go to Comet and ask the spotty teenager behind the till for advice, they go online and look at reviews from people who are just like them, who have bought the same printer, used it and have now formed an opinion; an opinion which they post online which is available for the whole world to see. Even my Granny, who doesn’t even have the Internet knows that online is the best place to get product advice – when she wanted a new DVD player earlier this year she called me up and asked me to go online and check the reviews of the one she wanted! The power of a positive review in Amazon is amazing – in the same way that a bad review can be disastrous. So businesses need to also monitor social media; know what is being said about products you sell, your industry, and more importantly – you!
These are just a couple of examples, but eConsultancy have some social media statistics to really bring home the fact that your small business NEEDS to be participating in social media marketing – if you’re not, you’re in danger of become an irrelevant dinosaur:
Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the Internet is on social media sites.
If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*
80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 45-millionth membership.
Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.
It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopedia.
The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million. The same report into the Blogosphere also revealed that on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period.
It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year.
The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.*
According to Socialnomics, if you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.
The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.
Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.
Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.
Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.
So social media is here to stay. If you don’t have a blog on your site, aren’t using Twitter, and don’t have a Facebook Business Page then please come and talk to us at SMEketing. For the month of November, we are offering you the chance to have a Facebook Business Page created for just £60 – get one before the offer runs out!
Facebook is a global social networking site. Many of you may use it personally, however have you ever thought of using it for your small business?
Facebook is the number one social networking site; there are more than 220 million active users with about half a million people joining every day. Facebook increased its U.S. market share from 55.15 percent in August to 58.59 percent in September, according to Hitwise.
Facebook presents a unique marketing oppoortunity for small businesses via its Facebook Business Pages. As more people are joining social networking sites, small business owners must understand that these are the sites where people go to learn more about products, services and businesses. Marketing on Facebook also has the added bonus that items you post have the ability to go viral.
So what can you do with your Facebook Business Page?
Upload Photos:You can upload phono albums to your business page – show people what your offices look like, what happened on your last staff outing. Did you recently exhibit at an event? Put the photos up so people can see who you are and what you’ve been up to.
Promote Events: If you hold events, or attend events, you can promote this through your Facebook page. You can announce the details of the event and even invite your business ‘fans’. You can also use the event tool to find events that may be of interest to you.
Post notices to your wall: The wall is the main area of your Facebook Business Page. This is where the fans (Facebook Business Pages have ‘fans’ rather than ’friends’) of your business page can see your status updates, photos and other items that you’ve added. Fans can also post their comments here and you can post comments back on their wall.
Facebook has so many excellent features for businesses, but the important thing is that you know what you are doing and why? What are the benefits of using Facebook to promote your business?
Customer interaction: By providing a place for open dialogue and communication, you can build improved relationships with your customers, suppliers and prospects.
Reputation management: You can learn about how your company is perceived in the outside world by analysing the comments you receive and through monitoring online conversations. If you pick up a negative comment, your Facebook Business Page gives you a platform in which you can rectify the situation – showing other customers exactly how good your customers service levels can be.
Lead generation: Prospects can become a fan of your business page and will get a notice in their news feed each time you add more content. If you provide valuable content it is likely that some of these fans who are not customers may soon turn into customers for you.
Increase traffic to your website: Your Facebook Business Page should have links directing fans back to your main website. Facebook can be viewed as a medium through which you can generate more visitors to your site – directing them to the exact pages that you think are relevant.
SMEketing have a special offer for small businesses wishing to start marketing their business on Facebook – the first 10 companies that contact us before the end of November can have a Facebook Business Page created for just £60! Contact us quoting ‘Facebook £60 Offer‘ today before this amazing deal runs out!
At last! Twitter has come up with a way in which you can organise the people you follow on Twitter. Previously, everybody you followed, whether they were a friend, colleague or client, was lumped into one big Twitter pot under the heading of ‘Following’. All those people that you follow on Twitter, all mixed up, with no real easy way of tracking them on a regular basis.
But now Twitter have released the latest update – Twitter lists. What are these, and why are they so good for your small business Twitter account? Below are some bullet points highlighting the main areas you need to know about Twitter lists:
Twitter lists are groups of fellow tweeters that you create yourself
These lists can be public or private
You can be added to anyones list
Anyone can follow any of your public lists – which means they can follow the list without having to follow all the users within that list
The number of followers you have will soon no longer be the gauge of the quality/success of your Twitter account – it’s all about the number of lists you are on
If you want to follow a particular group of people/companies, such as small businesses, you can find a small business Twitter list and either follow that, or look at the Twitter accounts included in that list and follow those who you think are relevant to you
SMEketing pride ourselves on being a full service, modern marketing agency, We offer a host of services to our clients, from traditional brochure design, copywriting, all the way to social media marketing and search engine optimisation. However, recently there has been a real trend for a specific service – website design.
A lot of the posts here on the SMEketing Small Business Blog are regarding 
At last! 
