Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Social Media for Every Small Business

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social-media-webinar

As the final post in my ongoing series sponsored by Comcast, I want to talk social media. As an online business owner, social media is a huge component of my business. However, these days it is important for EVERY small business no matter what you do or where you do it. Some days I love it and some days I hate it. At its core it is easy to use, but it is increasingly difficult to keep up with so many different platforms and figure out how to maximize your ROI (if you even have any right now). How do you keep it all straight?

Go Where Your Customers Are

The best advice I ever received about social media was to go where my customers are. I see articles on a daily basis about how to use and advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now even Snapchat. There’s no way for me to be able to be in all of those places short of hiring a full-time social media person (which isn’t my budget). So how do I keep up?

Although I have a minimal presence on each different platform, I focus on the ones where my customers find me and interact the most. I’m sure that I have a lot of Sunshine Rewards customers on Snapchat. But that medium isn’t conducive right now to online shopping. It’s more about big brand awareness, which is not for me. I have an Instagram account that I post to once a week, but my members are just not interested. Instead, I focus on the 7000+ fans that I have on Facebook where I can get them to interact with the deals that I post daily. I see what gets them excited and what they share with their friends. By going where my customers are, I am able to commit my resources there and see results without getting frustrated.

Learn from Others

There’s no sense reinventing the wheel when you are already spread thin. In fact, chances are pretty good that someone has already tried just about everything you want to try and answered every question that you have to ask. Find sources that you trust to help you stay educated about changes, trends, and tips. One such source is the Comcast Business Community. In fact, they recently released a recorded webinar about social media that will give you tips and advice on how to use it to increase sales. The webinar is about an hour long and you can also get the Slideshare with all of the slides.

Who can benefit from the webinar? Anyone who is either trying to decide whether social media marketing is necessary for their business or has started using social media but needs a better understanding of how to take their plan to the next level. I don’t watch a lot of webinars, but I am glad that I took the time to watch this one (and wish that I had been on it live). It helps frame some of the questions about social media in a way that will make you rethink some of your strategies and give you ideas for a new roadmap. (For a long time I was one of the people guilty of the very first thing the presenter talked about!) I knew I was going to believe in the presenters when one of the first things they talked about was exactly what I wrote above—my belief of going where your customers are instead of spreading yourself too thin.

In addition to the webinar, Comcast Business frequently releases new articles through the Comcast Business Community site. Each week there are articles about everything from social media to being an entrepreneur to how to make your YouTube channel more engaging to funding your business. No matter what line of work you are in, you will find something there to interest you.

Social media can make or break your small business depending upon how much time you are putting into it and the results of those efforts. Be smart about how you are using it and use any resources available to you. You’ll find that you can spend less time and grow your business more when you are smart about it.

Comcast Business partnered with bloggers such as me for this program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any product mentioned in these posts. Comcast Business believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Comcast Business’ policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations

What To Do if You Accidentally Tweet Porn

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(Editor Note: When you are friends with people who work in social media, you can’t help but have a lot of chatter when companies do something outrageous. The following is a collaborative guest post that came out of a conversation between such people today. Credits go to Ashley Coombe, Kim Rowley, and Daniel Feinberg for pulling it all together using Shareist.)

It’s not often that use hear anyone use the words “accidental” and “porn” in the same sentence, but today at US Airways, those two words are echoing through the halls.

Don’t worry US Airways, we’ve got your back.

We know it was just an accident. You’ve already got some of these steps taken care of, but we’re providing a guide for businesses that may accidentally follow in your footsteps:

Just in case you live in a cave, here is a recap of exactly what happened with US Airways:

(NSFW!)

US Airways Just Tweeted Out One Of The Most Graphic Things You’ve Ever Seen A Brand Tweet
YIKES. This is very NSFW and US Airways is looking into what happened exactly.

Our Suggestions:

1. Immediately post an apology with the word “Deeply” included. US Airways took care of this immediately. They deeply regretted the issue. Other options: You are deeply sorry. The staffer is deeply embarrassed. The airplane was deeply embedded….

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2. Declare that someone was FIRED! Even if you don’t fire anyone, everyone expects someone to get fired.

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3. Claim you were hacked. It probably had something to do with that Heartbleed thing. [Read more…]

Cookies and Wine: Long-Term Benefits of Good Content

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Most of the time when I write about cookies and affiliate marketing, I mean the digital cookies that result in our tracking. Not this time. This is a story about how actual cookies resulted in Facebook likes, Pinterest traffic, backlinks, and more… but not until almost a full year after a post was published. More importantly, it’s about the long-term benefits you can get out of good content.

If you want to read all about the technical aspects behind how our site was able to keep up with the traffic and the programming behind it all, check out Eric’s post: Be Ready for Viral Sharing. This is essential if you do not want your site to crash or to spend a fortune in hosting!

It Started with the Cookies

Todd Farmer, Eric Nagel, and I have a system for our Wine Club blog. We publish X number of “money posts” (highly monetized) and X number of “filler” posts. We call them “filler” for short, but they are really the content that makes up the site beyond just writing about our merchants. They can be evergreen posts related to our merchant (like How to Choose a Wine Club), Pinterest-worthy posts (like Red Wine Chocolate Cupcakes), or timely posts (like Fondue Day).

The Pairing Wine with Girl Scout Cookies post was meant to be both timely and Pinterest-worthy. Eric created an image that would clearly show both the Girl Scout cookies and the wine.

On February 7, 2013, we published it, Pinned it, posted it on Facebook and Twitter, etc. All our normal methods of sharing. In the first week, it had 319 pageviews. A couple of repins. A couple of likes. Nothing spectacular. In the time since then, it has gotten a little traffic here and there. But nothing like what happened starting January 11, 2014. [Read more…]

Using Facebook’s New Promoted Posts

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After running a promotion a couple of weeks ago that resulted in some new Facebook fans, I decided to try out the Facebook Promoted/Sponsored posts advertising option for the first time. By way of background, my page has about 3800 fans–not too big, not too small. So the advertising costs were low enough to allow me to try it out a couple of times. Plus, I lucked into a $50 Facebook advertising credit for taking a quiz.

What is a Facebook Promoted Post?

When you post on your Facebook business page now, you have the option of promoting a post. A lot of other articles go into more detail on this, so I will just stick to my personal experience. (see 4 Critical Things To Know About Facebook Promoted Posts for more information). Here’s the button in case you have missed it:

Facebook Promoted Posts Button
Facebook Promoted Posts Button

You just click on that button and decide how much you want to spend and how long you want the promotion to run. [Read more…]

The Six People You Meet on Facebook

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I spend a lot of time on Facebook for both business and personal reasons. I like that I can interact with my customers and my friends in the same place in different ways. I’m also just a social person that wants to be involved in conversations and see what is going on with everyone. Through the time that I have spent on Facebook I have come to characterize people into 6 different groups. Groups are not mutually exclusive. I know some people who actually fit into a few of them (scary!).

1) Business Blah: These are the people that only post on Facebook for business purposes, for better or for worse. If they are only friends with business associates, it works great. If they are friends with family and neighbors, those people are probably hiding their status updates because they are so tired of reading nothing but business updates. Mix it up a little, people. Tell us your company is having a great month but then show us a picture of your kid or something.

2) Attention Addicts/Sympathy Seekers: All of us follow at least a couple of these people on Facebook. I’m lumping them into the same category because their means are different but their goal is the same. Attention Addicts post seemingly innocent questions (often full of innuendo) that are calculated to get responses. “I’m feeling like such a naughty girl but am too embarrassed to say why.” Sympathy Seekers are constantly whining about their latest problems and when you share your good news, they can only top it with more bad news of their own. You consider hiding their updates but it’s like a train wreck–you have to keep watching.

3) Serial Posters: “Just woke up.” “Getting ready for breakfast.” “Easting breakfast at my desk.” “Breakfast today was great!” And on, and on, and on. Eventually you do hide their status updates because you don’t want your life to be as boring as theirs. The irony of the Serial Poster is that they also often post about how busy they are and how much work they have to get done. Chances are good that they would get more done if they didn’t post everything they were doing while they were doing it.

4) Lost in Timers. Catching up with old friends on Facebook is great until you realize that the Lost in Timer is still stuck in high school or college. Every day they are posting their favorite memory of you on your page or tagging you in pictures from 1987 that they have scanned in and uploaded. Every other post of theirs is an 80s movie trivia score or a link to a hair band video on Youtube. Memories are great but the failure to move on just isn’t healthy.

5) Players. I don’t mean in the “Playa” sense where they are dating and seeing a lot of action. I mean the game “Player.” The ones who are constantly asking you to send them chickens or kill a mob boss. We all get pulled into the games at some point. But if your status updates are 80% game notifications, you need to spend more time playing the game of life.

6) You: Clearly, you are none of the people above. They are annoying and you are not. You do your best to only post pertinent information and never to the point of overkill. You are sensitive to others and politically correct. Your posts are an equal mix of wit, social commentary, and family life. Everyone loves to read your updates and look at your pictures. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone on Facebook were like you?

(Thanks to my Lunch Friends for their thoughts on this post as I was drafting!)