I really feel for startups or small businesses trying to figure out where to start in understanding the new media which their customers and prospects are using to get information about products and services they’d like to buy.
Dana Landscaping goes online...
If you look around on any of the search engines, you are overwhelmed with tips, tools and techniques to get going in social media. Once you start investigating them, weeks have passed and you have been up until all hours trying to figure out which of the thousands will help you weed out the massive volume of noise and focus on the signal — the valuable information about how to start and where to go.
There are three things you can do easily, and you can do today — which will get the ball rolling. The nice thing about these three things is that they start rolling fast — and so do the results.
First: Move your website from that cheesy template-based site your host sold you to WordPress.
The key to gaining visibility in the noisy world of web media today is to become a publisher of interesting content based on your expertise. That static site you are paying $4.95 a month for (or whatever) is not fresh, it’s not changing… and as a result it is probably NOT driving great search engine results for you.
With WordPress, you have incredible options for customization and design — to give your site a branded look. If you don’t think that’s your strength, there are armies or WordPress professionals out there ready to help you out with design services. It’s a competitive market, and rates are reasonable — you can get going for hundreds, not thousands, of $s.
But most importantly, WordPress is a blog platform. In addition to the core, and infrequently changing information you want for your website, blogging allows you to write a professional diary. As often as you like, you can publish snippets of insight, experience, a story from a day in your life… which communicate to readers a little something about you. Your personality comes through and prospects begin to develop a sense of who you are and how you think. You can blog from your mobile phone, your browser, at home or on the road… and WordPress makes it really easy.
Second: Establish a fan page on Facebook.
Add your logo, use your business description from your web site (to be consistent and clear… one of the keys to building your brand), and post a few images to give your page some character. You can host discussions on topics of your choosing, encourage your Facebook friends (and theirs…) to become fans of your business page, and before long you have a little Facebook community ready to receive updates in their feeds about your business.
Search for “Dana Landscaping” on Facebook… and become a fan! Every page needs 100 fans to be able to obtain a more attractive and useful custom URL for their Facebook business page. Thanks in advance!
Third, establish a Twitter account for your business.
Use your logo for the picture, provide your web site address in the account settings panel… and begin exploring this medium as well. Dana Landscaping has set up standard hashtag searches for #landscaping and a few other terms, to find out like-minded Tweeters. Tom follows those guys, and is rapidly building out his Dana Landscaping following. You can follow Tom and Dana Landscaping here.
These are the key first steps. If you make these moves, and set aside 30 minutes to an hour, three times a week, to nurture the community you are building, write new posts, respond to comments and feedback, you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.
Tom Busta of Dana Landscaping, a family-owned and operated landscape design and build company based in the Merrimack Valley, in Andover, Massachusetts, recently dove in and took these first three steps. He is developing a great online personality (though he is almost completely new to this new media world), and is building following. And most importantly, within the first few weeks he already started receiving requests for designs and price quote for new jobs. And in a slower economy, that makes all the effort worthwhile!
And the cost to Dana Landscaping to develop and launch these new marketing activities? Zero.
You may find the technology intimidating, and so firms like Elastic Brands are here to help you get going… but the point is the barriers to entry are low. It’s just hard to figure out where to start, and for me these three things are the must-do first steps.
What do you think? Are you ready?
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New blog post: Three First Inbound Marketing Steps for the Small Businessperson: a Case Study [link to post]
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Three First Inbound Marketing Steps for the Small Businessperson … [link to post]
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RT @tdempsey: New blog post: Three First Inbound Marketing Steps for the Small Businessperson: a Case Study [link to post]
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Get Started! If your new to Social Media then use this post to get started. However in our opinion we would say to use a Picture of your real self as your profile pics. Now many people don't want pics of themselves floating around the web, But remember it is always good to show that you are a real person, and a perosn that is interested in giving back to the online community that you are on and not just interested in driving traffic to your site. Become a personality that draws attention and your followers will find your site.
Thanks, twins… I think I agree with you in general (hence a photo of me which surely doesn't help advance my social agenda!
). I do think there are exceptions… especially where the presence being established is clearly for a business. But I'll certainly have a think… and talk about it with Tom at Dana Landscaping!
Yes, of course their are exceptions. it just all depends, we have accounts with a personal touch and we also have accounts that have a logo. If we were to pass on our opinion, we would like to see a personal profile pic and create a really neat Twitter background for branding purposes.
Perhaps a back ground with pics of past work!
Reading there first post it seems as is he will be writing in first person so for us it would be nice as one of his followers to put a face to a name.
Great article, Tim — insightful and practical advice for small businesses.
Most small businesses can get a lot of value from using low-cost/no-cost publishing tools like WordPress, Facebook and Twitter. They allow small businesses to build brand recognition and do hyper-local marketing – both efficiently and effectively.
I do think it's important for small businesses to invest in some up-front advice from marketing consultants like yourself, to get them started on the right foot and to understand some of the nuances (for example, how to use the built-in SEO capabilities of these tools most effectively). But once they are up and running, they can pretty much be independent – although most will benefit from having a small ongoing consulting arrangement for assistance in fine-tuning their programs and in keeping up with the latest techniques.
I have had similar success with a company called Naples Tomato, a restaurant in Naples, Florida. They are achieving not only marketing benefits but also operational benefits from their inbound marketing program. I helped them design the program, but it is pretty much run by a young employee who knows the business and is a digital native.
http://thefussymarketer.blogspot.com/2009/07/be...
Keep up these great articles coming, Tim.
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RT @tdempsey New blog post: Three First Inbound Marketing Steps for the Small Businessperson: a Case Study [link to post]
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These are all great suggestions. I would also add LinkedIn as a crucial resource. It's important that SMB people understand that you have to work at it with blogs and social media. The more good blog posts you publish and the more engagement on social media, the more likely you are to get positive results.