Internet Marketing Strategies Small Business

Senin, 30 Januari 2017

natalia: hi everyone, my name is natale goriel and i'm the online media coordinator for the us small business administration. iï¿½dlike to welcome you to todayï¿½s webinar. the webinar is made possible through a public/privatepartnership with microsoft and constant contact. we are really excited to work with these organizations;because, public/private partnerships allow the government and the private sector to cometogether in support of the small business community. it also allows us to hold freewebinars like this on a variety of business topics. in just a moment i will turn it overto helene cohen from microsoft. before i do that i want to say a little bitabout why sba is so excited about this partnership. we know that as small business owners andentrepreneurs you need more of two things,

time and money. our mission at the sba isto provide the nationï¿½s 28 million small businesses with the support they need in aworld where time and money are both short. we do this through what we call the threecï¿½s. first sba provides capital to small businesses in the form of a guaranteed loan,to start, expand, export or recover after a disaster. second we help small businesseswith government contracts, which is a 100 billion dollar market.finally, what brings us here today is that sba provides counseling services often atno cost. many of you might be familiar with the sba resource partner network includingsmall business development centers or mentors, womenï¿½s business centers, veteranï¿½s businesscenters and our sba field offices. i encourage

you to visit sba.gov to learn more about whatservices and events you can find in our resource partner network. in addition to the sba resourcepartner network we work with private companies to bring in expertise in high priority areaslike marketing. when youï¿½re running your business marketing might be one of those thingsyou put off doing if you donï¿½t feel like you have the skills or time.we know small business owners have a tight budget and that hiring a pr company can beexpensive, so through this partnership weï¿½ll offer you with some marketing strategies tohelp you succeed, so letï¿½s get started. iï¿½d like to now turn it over to helene frommicrosoft. helene: thank you natalia and we here at microsoftreally appreciate the partnership and looking

forward to lots of things to come in the future.good morning and afternoon to some of you. my name is helene cohen and iï¿½m a marketingmanager for microsoft in the united states small business division. i was also an entrepreneurfor over eight plus years so iï¿½m very passionate about small to medium sized businesses andtheir success. i wanted to thank you for taking the time with us today. iï¿½m going to spendthe next five to ten minutes giving you a brief overview of a study that was done objectivelyby the boston consulting group on the economic impact of technology and small businesses.next slide please. over approximately a two year period the boston consulting group wasactually hired to do a survey on over 4000 small and medium sized businesses in fiveof the worldï¿½s largest and diverse economies.

these countries included united states, china,india, brazil and germany. with the economic downturn over the past several years the studywas meant to be objective research about really how technology can help or hinder the smalland medium business in our economies. like i mentioned, the actual study was internationalin scope and in very diverse countries to see how in fact technology can help or hurtour economy. it was independently conducted. it was donethrough a number of different means including internet and phone surveys, actual interviewswith some smb owners and secondary economic research as well. the industries that weresurveyed included agriculture, manufacturing, education, it, and many others to make surethat the study in fact was diverse. next slide

please. what they found from this study wasthat small and medium sized businesses actually fell into three levels of it adoption. theyincluded laggards, followers, and leaders. if you see the chart on the right hand sidewhich shows the laggards, followers and leaders. then on the left hand side youï¿½ll see thelevel and the type of technology that was adopted. in terms of technology leaders theytended to employ the full range of available tools, everything from productivity softwareall the way to internet connectivity and also to cloud based services. if we looked at followers,youï¿½ll see that followers made a wide use of many of the technologies, but in fact werenot typically using cloud based services. then the laggards are actually defined bythe lowest level of technology needs and technology

adoptions with only 60% of laggards actuallyeven using computers. if youï¿½re in the laggard or the followerï¿½scategory and youï¿½re new to social and e-mail marketing, this webinar will really help youmove from a laggard into a follower and a leader category; hopefully, being able toassist your businesses. some key findings of this data are on the next slide, if wecan move to the next slide please. it enabled small businesses, so the businesses actually use technologyin many different ways, actually outperformed in both sales and job growth. we did see thatsme businesses were able to increase their revenue, 15% points after and create jobsalmost twice as fast as other businesses, but did not in fact use technology to takethem to the next level.

sme revenue has an opportunity actually growclose to 770 billion in the five countries if in fact technology was utilized. then alsothe ability to create new jobs, 6.2 million new jobs are actually able to be created throughthe use of using technology. if youï¿½re a small business and not currently hiring rightnow, you might not find this relevant to you, but we wanted to let you know that my staffis working with mayors, cities and business organizations at the local level across theunited states really to help partner and education on how technology can assist you.we partner with companies like constant contact and also with organizations like the sba sothat we can help educate. next slide. of all of the countries surveyed, approximately 25%of the survey was done in the united states

and this slide will basically show you thatif 15% of folks that are in laggards and 30% of followers were actually to utilize technology,engage in cloud services, use social media and social e-mail marketing, the sme say wouldbe able to actually hire 2.1 million more employees and would be able to inject an additional357 billion dollars into the economy. as you can see the study which will be availableto you on-line and weï¿½ll show you that in one moment really indicates the need and theopportunity to use technology to actually bring yourself to the next level and to allowsmall businesses to actually compete against businesses that are potentially much largerthan them. next slide. getting things done, 95% of all technology users use microsoftoffice. if youï¿½re familiar with it, there

are lots of great things that can be done.there are microsoft retail stores across the country that also offer free classes and educationon our office products. using cloud services allows you to work fromanywhere. youï¿½re no longer tied to one physical location and this is very important for thesmall business owner that is in fact mobile most of the time and doing multiple jobs.using technology can really help propel your business and help you grow a profit, extendyou reach and help you meet a lot of changing needs. next slide please. this slide actuallywill be available, made available to you after this webinar. the slide actually just shows,actually different support and resources available to you both from microsoft and constant contact.there are a lot of amazing resources through

both of our companies as well as the sba tohelp assist your businesses in getting to that next level with technology. next slideplease. finally this is the link to access the bcg or the boston consulting group study.it is htcp://aka.ms/bcg study. iï¿½ll say that one more time. htcp://, those are forwardslashes, aka.ms/bcg study. i wanted to thank you for giving me these few minutes to talkto you about this incredible study that was done. iï¿½d like to now pass this over toron cates from constant contact. ron: hi, my name is ron cates. iï¿½m the directorof digital marketing and education for constant contact. the press has been really kind tome the last few years. theyï¿½ve called me the grandfather of e-mail marketing, socialmedia pioneer, but a lot of you didnï¿½t realize,

that i am the person that created social media.way back in 1964 i was tweeting on paper, way before twitter was created. before algore invented the internet. before there was wi-fi. i have some skeptics watching so ibrought some photographic evidence. this is me in 1964, tweeting on paper. omg, rode mybike today without training wheels. that omg thing i also invented that.i did photo shop this. this is really me in 1964 though and i look at this and think ohmy gosh, what a serious young man. iï¿½m really worried about what heï¿½s going to be whenhe grows up. thatï¿½s probably a future serial killer. it turns out iï¿½m a social mediaguy, so i think we all feel a lot safer. quick tip right away. on the lower left you cansee my handle on twitter is my name ron cates.

let me give you a quick tip, even if you havenï¿½tsigned up for every social media platform yet, i want you to go out and do that today.if thereï¿½s a platform out there youï¿½ve heard of, like facebook, twitter, linkedin,even if youï¿½re not using it yet, you might use it in the future.i want you to register for it; because, theyï¿½re all free. i want you to grab your name oryour business name before itï¿½s taken by someone else. now how many have tried to registera dot com in the last five years? if you have you realize that almost every word and phraseis taken. i donï¿½t want this to happen to you. go out and register today. i learnedthis the hard way, thatï¿½s why iï¿½m more sensitive to it. i had to use my real nameron cates. i wanted to use my street name,

but it was already taken. gangsta666 is alreadygone. i donï¿½t want you to experience the same thing.weï¿½re going to start out talking about e-mail marketing, social media marketing, and howto combine the two. weï¿½re definitely going to demystify social a little bit. now wheni say e-mail marketing, i wouldnï¿½t be surprised if some of you thought well wait a minute,why bother. i read that e-mailï¿½s dead. five years ago i read that everywhere. it was aquote picked up by every bit of press. ironically it was sent to me in an e-mail. it was a quotefrom sheryl sandburg, coo of facebook, so i think there was a conflict of interest.a few months later facebook came out with an e-mail program, so you can have a facebooke-mail address.

if they want to contact you they do it viae-mail. the one requirement to join up for facebook is an e-mail address. maybe itï¿½snot quite dead yet. if i was to ask the people viewing this webinar, how many of you havetweeted today? how many have posted to facebook today? how many have checked their e-mailtoday? i know that almost every hand goes up when i talk about e-mail. it is our preferredmethod of communication in the united states. 95% of us do e-mail, between the ages of 18and 64. we do it every day, multiple times per day. weï¿½re pretty obsessed with it.we check it on the average seven times per day. small business owner 14 times per day.small business owner while traveling 24-44 times per day. if youï¿½re a fine print readerand you think youï¿½ve got me, it says 18-64.

what about 65+; because, maybe a lot of yourprospects or customers are senior citizens. it turns out thatï¿½s the fastest growingdemographic by a huge margin over any other age group. in fact in most cases e-mail isthe sole reason they went out and bought a computer. now think about it. at 75-years-oldyou probably didnï¿½t hop out of bed and say, i want to master powerpoint today, i bettergo buy a laptop. at 75 you probably didnï¿½t hop out of bed period.the reason you got a laptop is so you can communicate with your friends and family ande-mail is how we do that today. now under 18 is the lowest adoption of e-mail, but outof the group under 18 the number one reason they get an e-mail address in the first placeis not to join a social network, but itï¿½s

to buy stuff on-line. theyï¿½re a totallygolden group for a small business. now in 30 minutes or so iï¿½m going to show you howto do e-mail marketing better than some of the worldï¿½s most famous brands. i know thatï¿½skind of a lofty goal, a lofty promise, but iï¿½m going to pull it off.i have dozens of examples of huge companies that do e-mail marketing very poorly and youcan do e-mail better than they do it today. now hereï¿½s the neat thing. last year theaverage return on investment on e-mail marketing was the highest of any form of marketing.the average return was $39.40 for every dollar invested. now to put that into some real commonsensesort of scenario, letï¿½s say thereï¿½s a banking account, having a special promotiontoday and for every dollar you turn in to

them, they were going to hand you $39.40 back.where would you be right now? iï¿½d be in line with you in the longest linein the history of the earth and we finally made it to the front. weï¿½d take our newmoney and go to the back and do it all over again. now thatï¿½s the average return one-mail, but i would ask you whatï¿½s the average e-mail you get in your inbox? is it fantastic?is it sent on the right time of day, the right day of the week, the right number of charactersin the subject line? no. the average e-mail is kind of weak. itï¿½s kind of poor. eventhough the average e-mail has a phenomenal roi what happens when you do e-mail really,really well? then the return on investment is phenomenally, astronomically, almost incalculablyhigh.

weï¿½re not going to talk about average verymuch. weï¿½re going to talk about how high is high and get there. now out of the dozensof examples i have of big companies still doing e-mail poorly, i brought you one; because,we donï¿½t have a lot of time. this is one of my favorites and as we dismantle it youï¿½regoing to learn about how to do e-mail well. this one is from audi. i got it a few yearsago and they still do their e-mail marketing exactly the same way. the reason i was puton their list is; because, i had just bought two new his and her audis. now iï¿½m not married,but if you saw my picture, youï¿½d realize i have to get a date. i have to show up withcar keys, cash and usually a car. thatï¿½s why i lease also. i got put on theirlist and this is the e-mail i get in my inbox.

now you already know this, but most e-mailclients and when i say e-mail client, iï¿½m talking about the software you use to readtheir e-mail. outlook is an e-mail client. by default some e-mail clients block imagesand so the recipient says itï¿½s okay to see them and so the number one best practice one-mail, donï¿½t make your entire message rely on an image to convey the message. if theimages are blocked for some reason, will the e-mail still make sense? you can see thesetwo red diamonds in the upper left. these are where the images are. when theyï¿½reblocked i see almost nothing but the fine print at the bottom. thatï¿½s practice numbertwo. if youï¿½re using an e-mail service like constant contact, we actually allow you toput text behind your images. when images are

blocked, they can see what you wrote there.audi put nothing. behind your header logo, donï¿½t put the words header logo, put yourbrand so they know who itï¿½s coming from. this should say this is from audi, pleasedownload images. even the fine print at the bottom is done poorly. reading speed on acomputer screen is 30-40% slower than print. we have to do everything we can to make thisas easy to read as possible. last year more than half of your recipients read their e-mailon a mobile device. itï¿½s even more difficult to read. we need to use a high contrast, likea black or dark font on a white or light background, not black on gray. much more difficult toread, especially on a mobile device, almost impossible. the font is going to have to bea little bit larger. even the font type matters.

the fontï¿½s a serif like this one, this istimes new roman with the curlicues. those are slower to read on a computer screen, moredifficult to read than a sans serif font like [inaudible 00:18:26] or tahoma.essentially theyï¿½ve done kind of everything wrong that you can do wrong, but letï¿½s goahead and okay the image. iï¿½m sure it gets better. wow this is beautiful. it says ronyou should come in and buy this new car. one, this isnï¿½t the car i bought and two i donï¿½tbuy a new car every three weeks. sometimes i wait six or seven months before i buy anew car. this is where they really fail, really underutilize the power of e-mail marketing.e-mail marketing by the way is a form of social. itï¿½s the original form of social. more importantlyitï¿½s how you monetize other forms of social.

we tolerate almost zero content thatï¿½s promotionalvia social. if you tweet out buy my stuff, buy my stuff all the time, youï¿½re not goingto have very many followers on twitter or facebook. we do tolerate some promotionalcontent via e-mail, so this is how we come back and monetize the other pieces of socialand the two together amplify each other. now where they really fail is they send the exactsame message to everyone. the reason iï¿½m on their list is i just bought two new cars.they take every e-mail address they collect. they dump them all into one bucket.they should have a lot of lists. people who bought a sports car. people who bought a luxurycar, an suv. people who came in and didnï¿½t buy anything. people who bought two cars.the message should be tailored to those individuals

and thatï¿½s easy to do with e-mail. you canhave as many lists as you want. it even doesnï¿½t cost anything extra to have people on multiplelists. it de-duplicates automatically. if iï¿½m on five lists and you send to all ofyour lists at once, i donï¿½t get five e-mails. this should be tailored and targeted. youalready know that target marketing works better than any other kind.the consumerï¿½s expectation has risen. they expect it to be targeted and professionallooking. when you send something thatï¿½s not tailored and itï¿½s off-target, they optout, delete, unsubscribe or report you as spam immediately. now make it easy for peopleto connect with you, to join your e-mail list, to join your social network. with e-mail,they can text to join. you can e-mail out

a link. if they like you on facebook we evenhave a gadget you can put on facebook so that you can start to send them e-mail to collecttheir e-mail address. on your website, on every page, now for those of you who sellsomething on your website i would ask you, whatï¿½s your conversation rate?how many visitors buy on the spot? i know that no matter how great you are, thatï¿½snot a high percentage, itï¿½s not a high number. iï¿½m real interested in you. i come to yourwebsite. maybe you pay for search engine optimization for seos to make you get better found on searchsites like bing. i find you. maybe, iï¿½m just not ready to buy today. i visit yoursite. iï¿½m impressed. i go away. well we get 6000 market impressions per day per personin the united states. i can love you and forget

about you; because, i get distracted. youcan put the sign-up point for your e-mail newsletter or list on your website on everypage. i sign up for it. you now have permissionto make this a two way street. you can come back out to me. weï¿½re going to make it supereasy to join our e-mail list. they can text to join. qr code to join. join on your websiteon facebook. any place that connects with people, weï¿½re going to make it simple. onour website on every page in a prominent location iï¿½m going to have a sign-up link for mye-mail list. now when i say every page, the reason for that is today when people searchfor you on bing, people donï¿½t come to your home page as often any more.itï¿½s less than half the time. they come

to a more relevant, more targeted page, souse every page of your website. now prominent location, upper left gets more attention thananywhere else, so whatever is most important goes there. i would even give them an incentiveto sign-up right now. now this is for a tennis store; because, iï¿½m a serious tennis player.iï¿½m not real good, but i am very serious. if you sign-up for the e-mail list right now,you get ten tennis tips from rafael nadal, the man who just won the french open. thereï¿½san automatic e-mail that goes out when people subscribe.itï¿½s called a welcome e-mail. you can have those ten tennis tips right in there. itï¿½sa nice incentive to sign-up on the spot. it motivates people to sign-up immediately. likei said before every page, join our e-mail

list. they click on that. they can automaticallysign-up for your e-mail list. even an advanced best practice, archive some of your e-mails.we can actually do that for you at constant contact. make web pages out of your e-mailsso people can see what it is that you send. people are more likely to subscribe if theysee what youï¿½re going to send first. by adding that archive feature they actuallyget to see a little archive, a listing of the e-mails that you send out. youï¿½re goingto put your best ones there. i look at it. i go these are great and boom they join yourmailing list. itï¿½s that simple and that powerful and that fast and itï¿½s really easyto do. now even e-mails can go viral. i want them to forward it to their friends. weï¿½reno longer marketing to individuals. weï¿½re

marketing to people and their entire network.iï¿½ve got a big e-mail list. on the average we have 244 friends on facebook. i want themto share it with everyone. i want them to forward their e-mail to a friend.i want them to like me on facebook. i want all their friends to see my content. i wantto maximize the virability of todayï¿½s communication. forward e-mail. iï¿½m going to put that upat the top where people are more likely to see it. most people have it at the bottomand itï¿½s unlikely iï¿½m going to make it all the way down there. even a polite commandworks better than something generic like this forwarded newsletter. please forward it totwo or three friends, can double your forward rate. put it up top and double it again. agood forward rate is only about ï¿½ percent,

but by doing all these things, iï¿½ve hadmuch as high as 4%. if that isnï¿½t exciting to you, once yourlist gets bit thatï¿½s huge growth for free. itï¿½s something that only takes you about30 seconds to do. i did everything to grow my list with putting the tag everywhere, justlike i told you to. i have this number memorized eight years ago, when i sent out to my personalcontacts when i first started working for constant contact, i had 1055 subscribers.now iï¿½ve got more than a million. this 4% forward rate, or even if itï¿½s only ï¿½% forwardrate, thatï¿½s a huge number. thatï¿½s a huge list growth without much time investment andit costs you nothing. the from line. who cares? itï¿½s from me,right? well, 60% of your recipients decide

whether to open the e-mail or not, based onthe from line. thereï¿½s two pieces to the from line. thereï¿½s the from name and thereï¿½sthe from e-mail address. if you use an e-mail client like outlook you see both of those.if you see my from name ron cates and then in brackets my e-mail address. now not everye-mail client functions the same way. america on-line web mail for example is still incrediblypopular. it drops off the from name. it only displays the e-mail address.other e-mail clients do the opposite. if iï¿½m sending from really the company, but my e-mailaddress is ron1958 at yahoo.com and thatï¿½s all they see, theyï¿½re not going to openthat. by the same token if my business name, my from name isnï¿½t something they recognize,theyï¿½re not going to open that either. both

pieces of this have to clearly indicate whoyou are, otherwise the recipients not going to open it and they might only see half ofthat, either the from name or just the from e-mail address. by the way something thatcomes to my real at something dot com, itï¿½s opened a lot more than anything generic.list that or news at isnï¿½t going to get opened nearly as much as if it comes fromron cates at something dot com, even if you have no idea who the person is. the subjectline, more challenging but important, 30% decide by the subject line and today a lotof people are taking action just on the subject line without even opening the e-mail. my favoritetennis store sent me an e-mail last month. the subject line is 30% off clearance shoesthis weekend. i didnï¿½t even open the e-mail,

but i was in line on saturday. sometimes weï¿½refinding when we survey people we know about 31% of them are taking action even withoutopening the e-mail. within 14 days theyï¿½re coming in, theyï¿½remaking a purchase or taking action. they didnï¿½t even open it. they only went by the subjectline, so i strongly recommend you never clean out your do not opens; because, they can stillhave big impact. the ideal subject line is a bit challenging today, but not impossible.you might not hit ideal, but letï¿½s get as close as we can. the ideal subject line isshort. itï¿½s concise, 30-35 characters or less and that includes spaces. today sometimessubject lines are getting truncated, shortened; because, of mobile devices. make sure if itï¿½sshortened it doesnï¿½t become something silly.

make sure all the important words are up front.i do have my favorite example. this was a year ago in november. it was from neiman-marcusand the subject line is winter fashions you canï¿½t afford to miss. in my browser in mye-mail client it said winter fashions you canï¿½t afford. that might be truth in advertisingfor me, but itï¿½s not the message they intended. i see this happening all the time today, morethan half of us are reading our e-mail on a mobile device. if the subject line is shortened,does it still make sense? the ideal subject line will also have a call to action. whyshould i open this right now? the ideal subject line will even have the brand in it again,if you can fit it. this isnï¿½t going to always happen. you canï¿½t always make it work, butsometimes you can with some ingenuity. i used

to do all the marketing for ymca of the usa.their e-mails used to go out and they said ymca news. i changed it to ymca news: freespring swim tips and the open rates went up by quadruple. the ideal subject line, theone that gets the most opens every single time, hereï¿½s the big secret rule, theyï¿½rethe ones that tell exactly whatï¿½s in the e-mail. if you tell exactly whatï¿½s in thee-mail itï¿½s more likely to get opened than anything else. letï¿½s talk about social mediaand why even bother. some of us are like, well thatï¿½s just a lot of noise. i lovefacebook. i just connected with somebody from college whom i havenï¿½t seen since college.thatï¿½s 1976. i put up a picture of my dog. i did a videoof my cat doing a trick. thatï¿½s a lot of

fun, but thatï¿½s not marketing. how do weuse these platforms to move the dial for our business? last year more than half of us madea purchase based on on-line recommendation. today only 14% of trust advertisements. 78%of us trust an on-line recommendation, even from a stranger. i travel a lot and i useyelp to figure out where iï¿½m going to go eat. 90% of yelp users decide where theyï¿½regoing to eat based on their reviews on yelp. i donï¿½t know any of those people, but itrust them more than i trust traditional marketing. traditional advertising.weï¿½ve become very smart consumers. we know that traditional marketing exists just tosell us something. we kind of tune it out. 78% trust an on-line recommendation. 84% ifitï¿½s from someone that we know. when someone

on facebook likes us and our network seesthat, that has a huge impact on engagement and sales and bottom line. if they hit thefacebook like button, theyï¿½re 91% more likely to buy from us again. 93% more likely to referus to friends. itï¿½s fantastically powerful and itï¿½s unlike anything weï¿½ve ever seenin the history of the world. let me give you my view of one of the mostimportant, yet most under looked components of social media. i live in phoenix, arizonaand i have a favorite grocery store. itï¿½s called safeway. itï¿½s a pretty bit chain.you might have one in your market. you might not, but if you donï¿½t itï¿½s a grocery store.now i like safeway a lot; because, itï¿½s close to my house. they have lots of stuff.the people are real friendly. the storeï¿½s

clean. safeway actually spends a lot of timeand money, resources and investment to create this impression, to turn me into a fan.every one of you on this call, if youï¿½ve done your business more than a year you cantake the entire call and tell us all these tales of when youï¿½ve bent over backwardsto make a customer happy, to turn them into a fan. as a small business owner you do thatevery day to survive. you create these huge fans, but then what? how do you harness that?they want to become advocates on your behalf, but there really didnï¿½t used to be an easyway for them to do that. with safeway, whatï¿½s going to happen? ten years ago i liked themso much, iï¿½m going to do what, go in on my day off and stock their shelves for freeas a pay back.

thatï¿½s never going to happen. the most theycould hope for a few years ago was i was so impressed with them that i would go to a partyand i go to super dull parties, so thereï¿½s a circle of people talking about groceries.i go up and i tell them, oh i love safeway, hereï¿½s why. how many people could i possiblyimpact? how often is that going to happen? itï¿½s almost nothing. social is that cocktailparty circle on steroids. the virability is unlike anything in the history of the world.you have fans that want to become advocates on your behalf. you get them to do it on social.work the two together. e-mail and social work together incredibly well. with constant contactwe actually have this tool where people can share your e-mail when they receive it ontheir social networks, just by clicking on

a button up at the top of the e-mail. i receiveyour e-mail. i love the content or maybe itï¿½s a really strong promotion and i want to shareit with my network. i can click a button and like it on facebook or share it on facebookor on twitter. weï¿½re seeing up to 60% increase in reach of e-mail by adding this social sharebar. again, i canï¿½t think of any reason you wouldnï¿½t want to include this everytime. the average return on investment on e-mailis phenomenally high. increasing it by up to 60% just by adding a button, iï¿½m goingto do that every single time. now some of you have some concerns about social and iï¿½mgoing to eliminate all of them right now. first, youï¿½re worried that itï¿½s aboutbig numbers. you need to have a million followers

on twitter for it to work and thatï¿½s justnot true. i know some of you donï¿½t have a twitter account yet, but letï¿½s say afterthis session that tonight you go and you create a twitter account and by tomorrow you haveone follower, just one, lonely one, sad, probably has no impact at all, right?wrong. what if that one follower is me and you post something to twitter and ij likeit. it takes me less than a second to click on a button and repost or retweet that tomy followers. iï¿½ve got a pretty good number of followers, but some of my followers reallyhave a lot of followers and the virability of this is unlike anything in the historyof the world. a year ago i had about 1500 followers, but those 1500 followers createdmore than five million mentions of my name

last year on twitter; because, they have alot of followers, who have a lot of followers, who have a lot of followers, and if you postsomething and they like it theyï¿½re going to retweet it.theyï¿½re going to repost it on facebook. the whole world is going to see it. maybeitï¿½s because, youï¿½re not a writer. maybe thatï¿½s why youï¿½re not doing social yet.i totally understand this. most of us didnï¿½t get into our business to write. now i havea confession, i am a pretty good writer, but iï¿½m also a perfectionist, so i will fretover every word and sentence and phrase and at the end of the month i donï¿½t have a paragraphdone. itï¿½s kind of pointless. social is not about being perfect. perfection is thebane of social. itï¿½s about being real, authentic,

transparent.we want to connect with a real human being. the power of social media, itï¿½s a bit ironicto me, the fact that itï¿½s visual; because, i view it as a backlash to our digital age.we donï¿½t know our neighborï¿½s names anymore. we buy from the cloud. digital entities arriveinto our inbox who want to connect with a living, breathing person, but weï¿½re notwilling to get rid of our laptops or our surface pro. weï¿½re doing it now via social networks.itï¿½s real important. you decide up front, what is the persona of your business? if yourbusiness was a living, breathing human being, what language would it use?what words would it use? what words would it not use? thatï¿½s how we communicate viasocial and e-mail. itï¿½s not taking your

print marketing stuff, copying and pastingit into a facebook post. itï¿½s a whole different form of communication. itï¿½s more concise.itï¿½s less formal. itï¿½s more human. the other good news is that more than half thecontent on social isnï¿½t something that you wrote, itï¿½s something that you found andshared. hey, i found this really great article, click here to read it. itï¿½s really easyto copy a link and share that link and be the expert by being the arbitrator of whatother people should read. time wise, i donï¿½t have time to come upwith this content. iï¿½m going to show you some examples where you can come up with contentliterally in seconds. iï¿½m going to tell you right now you can invest 10 or 15 minutestwo or three days a week and you can have

a big impact on social media. where shouldi be? what platform should i be on? facebook, linkedin, what about myspace? i heard thatwas really huge. it was eight years ago. now thereï¿½s about seven people there. thereare new platforms all the time. i will bet you real money that five years from today,thereï¿½s going to be a platform more important than facebook that hasnï¿½t even been thoughtof yet. the growth of niche sites is phenomenal. ididnï¿½t know this a few years ago, but i definitely know it now. thereï¿½s a socialsite, a network for nuns thatï¿½s more important to them than facebook is. last year for funas an exercise, i created my own social network. itï¿½s for standup comics. itï¿½s called standupshare.com.itï¿½s had zero marketing. it has 60,000 members

already. hereï¿½s the point. you need to createa social presence. i recommend you at least create a facebook account and a facebook page;because, then your followers can let you know if thereï¿½s another platform thatï¿½s becomemore important. that canï¿½t happen if you have zero socialpresence. pick one or two of the popular platforms, do those really, really well and then yourfollowers will let you know. theyï¿½ll give you an idea of whatï¿½s more important outthere and you can decide where to spend your energy and time. now i talked some about content.itï¿½s about being real and authentic and transparent. this is from a farmerï¿½s market,this is real. when we think farmerï¿½s market, we usually donï¿½t think high tech, socialsavvy, but theyï¿½re incredibly smartly profound

when it comes to posting.hereï¿½s one of my favorite posts. itï¿½s 2:00 a.m. do you know where your fruit is?now that took about five seconds to type and if you say so what? within minutes there werelikes and comments. within a week there were more than 1000 comments and more than 700likes. when you scroll down the comments as a business owner, you learn invaluable informationabout your prospects and customers. they love my fresh watermelon. they wish we had peaches.parking is a real pain in the neck on saturday. think about all the things youï¿½ll learnas the owner. pages and pages and pages of content theyï¿½recreating for you. think about that. the very best stuff you can post on social passes tworules. one, are they going to want to share

it with their friends? two, would incite themto comment. i want to incite them to comment often; because, as they comment theyï¿½recreating new content for me on my behalf. pages and pages of content is invaluable thati didnï¿½t even have to do. itï¿½s almost like getting tom sawyer to get his friendsto wash the fence for him. now this took about five seconds. how many of you donï¿½t havefive seconds in a day to do this? i do this in front of big rooms and i seepeople squirm. they all want to raise their hand. i was a small business owner also. iknew that five seconds in a day could be my whole bio break for the day, how about onesecond? donï¿½t tell me that you donï¿½t have one second. click, post. watermelon cut inhalf. click, post. you say well so what? within

minutes there were likes and comments, withina week more than 700 comments, more than 500 likes. this reminds me of summer. boy i wantto go buy this right now. itï¿½s making my mouth water. anytime you have an authenticmoment of enthusiasm, even if itï¿½s about a product.i just got this new thing in, iï¿½m so excited. itï¿½s fine to take a picture of that andpost and talk about it. i have a friend that owns a hobby store in san diego. they sellradio controlled airplanes, cars and boats. he has nine employees. when the ups personbrings in that new super cool thing, the employees fight over each other to be the first to unboxit. now what would have bigger impact? he could hire a videographer. spend 30 granddoing an infomercial about his products and

put it on youtube or he could pull out hissmart phone and tape that 30 seconds of real, unbridled, authentic enthusiasm and put thatin a constant contact e-mail, or on youtube or on social.night and day difference; because, itï¿½s real. customers come in all the time and theyï¿½reexcited. record that or quote them. take a picture of them with the product. the questionsthat you get asked every single day, answer those on social. show off your expertise andyour experience. the reason your customers ask you the same thing every day itï¿½s notbecause, theyï¿½re not smart. itï¿½s because, youï¿½re an expert. youï¿½ve become an expert.you need to show that off and not shy away from that when it comes to social. i knowin this country at least, weï¿½re brought

up to be kind of humble.i donï¿½t want to buy from the ninth best in the zip code. i want to buy from an expert.donï¿½t be afraid to use that word and brand yourself in that way. show off your expertiseand your experience. itï¿½s a relative term and you certainly have it. you qualify. lastly,weï¿½re going to do another one of these in two weeks on the 24th, same time, same place.itï¿½s going to be super charged, word-of-mouth. itï¿½s social media marketing made simple.weï¿½re going to go a lot deeper into social. a lot more prescriptive. where to post? whento post? how many times? what the content should be? itï¿½s going to be a blast, soyou donï¿½t want to miss it. please mark it on your calendar or registertoday. i made sure we had some time for questions.

shoot.natalia: we do have questions here, so iï¿½m going to start here. my business isnï¿½t openyet, should i start my social media account now, or how far in advance do i start creatingbuzz? ron: i would create my facebook business pagetoday. it doesnï¿½t matter how many people find it today. some people will. i would startpromoting that to my personal e-mail list. the fact that iï¿½m opening a business, thatthey can like my page. comment about the business iï¿½m going to be creating. my past businesspractices. i could create word-of-mouth now. social is word-of-mouth. thereï¿½s no suchtime as too early. there was a big product launch in europe three years ago. they actuallystarted promoting it before it was available

for sale 18 months in advance.when it was finally available it went through the roof, unbelievable; because, of all thebuzz created. thereï¿½s almost no such thing as too much lead time.natalia: okay, some social media questions here. do social media tools think together,so one post is shared on multiple platforms? ron: some do. for example, you can have yourtwitter feed show up on your facebook page and vice versa. there are tools out therethat are free that allow you to post to multiple sites at one time. some even allow you topost in the future. iï¿½m going to mention two of them. one is called hootsuite. thatï¿½sh-o-o-t-s-u-i-t-e. there is a free version and a paid for version. the free version isvery robust. you can find it at hootsuite.com.

the other is called tweetdeck. thatï¿½s t-w-e-e-t-d-e-c-k,found at tweetdeck.com, free version. both of them allow you to create posts that goout in the future. i love this. one you log in to your free account and you can see allyour links and stuff, and your facebook stuff and your twitter stuff all on one page.you donï¿½t have to log into all those platforms separately. two i can create a post and sayi want this to go to all these platforms right now, or i can create a post and i want thisto go out to facebook tuesday, at 10:30 a.m. or i want this to go out to twitter fridaynight at midnight. even if you had only ten minutes a week you could do it all at onetime and rather than all your postings going out at one time, itï¿½d be spread out. anytime in the future. i love this feature. iï¿½m

55-years-old and iï¿½ve got four kids. iï¿½vegot tweets going out to them 40 years from now just to scare them.iï¿½m still watching you. iï¿½m very disappointed. some of you are laughing, youï¿½re thinkingthatï¿½s ridiculous, thatï¿½s not true; because, youï¿½ve seen my picture and you realize,i couldnï¿½t possibly be 55 but i swear i am. all right next question.natalia: how can a facebook page translate to sales and weï¿½ve had that question a fewtimes now. ron: it keeps you top of mind. it createsrelationships. two real important things. one we get a lot of market impressions perday and even if we love you we forget about you sometimes. by seeing you show up in myfacebook feed, i remember. how many of you

have a restaurant that you really love andyou just forget to go there sometimes? right, we all do. if i got an e-mail from that restaurantonce a month, as soon as i see the logo, iï¿½m going to salivate and go over there and buysomething to eat. if i see them show up on facebook or my twitter feed.now even more important than that by being connected on facebook or twitter or e-mail,it creates the perception of a relationship. harvard business school says people will spendmore, 67% more if they perceive they have a relationship with you. not only because,they shop with you more often. theyï¿½ll even pay a price premium. now think about that.if you create the perception of a relationship youï¿½re not competing on price anymore. thatï¿½sfantastic. now this is from harvard business

school. i read it. iï¿½m a bit of skeptic,so i said i would never do that. i guess thatï¿½s everybody else.then i thought about it, i do it all the time. iï¿½m a tennis player. thereï¿½s a tennisstore in my town called all about tennis. iï¿½m in there all the time. they know meby name. they string my racquets on the spot. they know what kind of shoes i wear. now icould drive around town and save money on shoes and stringing racquets. i could buya line and save even more money and i donï¿½t do it; because, i feel like in know thosepeople. you all have a place like that, a destination like that and you want to becomethat type of destination where the people feel like they know you and have a relationship.thatï¿½s kind of personal, but even something

as mundane as gasoline. weï¿½ll go to a fourcorner intersection. thereï¿½s four gas stations. weï¿½ll decide which one to shop at, not basedon the price at the pumps or the colors but who works behind the counter. if we feel likewe know them, thatï¿½s where we shop. social media, e-mail, they allow you to build thistype of relationship perception that really generates sales and allows you to no longercompete on price. natalia: great, how do you separate your businessfacebook page from your personal page? ron: when you first create your facebook accountyouï¿½re creating a personal profile. thatï¿½s for you, your family, your friends. separatefrom that you create a business page and thatï¿½s where you communicate with business stakeholders,customers, prospects, so you can definitely

separate the two by creating a facebook page.now you can find how to do that at facebook by clicking on the help button. thereï¿½salso a site we created that walks through all these things in detail. itï¿½s calledsocialquickstarter.com. iï¿½ll repeat that. socialquickstarter.com. it actually walksthrough every major platform, how to set it up, how to create your business page, etc.with a lot of detail. thatï¿½s free to the entire world. socialquickstarter.com.natalia: okay, we have a few e-mail questions here. how do i add a like button into an e-mail?ron: two different things one, when i send out my e-mail i want to have all the iconsof my social platform in there to make it easy to follow me. if iï¿½m on facebook andtwitter, iï¿½m going to have the facebook

icon, the twitter icon. if you happen to beusing constant contact, we actually have those built in, so you just click on a button andit is kind of automatic. now i can also set things up so that when people receive my e-mailthey can like it or share it on their social networks. that happens to be a constant contactexclusive thing. itï¿½s called the social share bar.we even report on it so we can tell you how many people liked it, shared it, what platforms.iï¿½m sure thereï¿½s obviously some way to code that. iï¿½m a good coder and itï¿½s beyondme. if youï¿½re doing this on your own iï¿½m not sure how you would create that.natalia: is a once a month magazine style, iï¿½m not sure if magazine style e-mail ora shorter e-mail once a week is better?

ron: the number one reason people opt outof e-mails, stop following you, unsubscribe it too much communication for you, too manye-mails from you. now if the content is really good you can send a bit more often. reallythis is the number one reason i love e-mail is; because, you can have multiple lists.how often you send and how much promotional content you dare try to get away with, thosetwo things vary directly with the strength of the relationship. letï¿½s use the tennisstore as an example. if i went into the tennis store once ever in my life six weeks ago,just to buy some tennis balls and i start getting an e-mail from them every week anditï¿½s buy these strings, buy these racquets, but my stuff.iï¿½m going to opt out in a second. iï¿½m

going to hate them. iï¿½m going to think theyï¿½rea spammer. they really should have more than one list. a regular customer, someone likeme i would love to get that promotional e-mail every week, but someone who just went in thereone time iï¿½m going to send once a month and itï¿½s going to be more educational contentlike how to improve your forehand. now iï¿½m always going to include some promotional contentrelated to the educational content, so i might have that entire article about how to improveyour forehand. maybe thereï¿½s a sidebar that says, ï¿½hey,by the way, did you know that the type of strings you use can have a big impact on thepower of your forehand? click here for string specials.ï¿½ the stronger the relationshipthe more often i can send. the weaker it is,

thatï¿½s probably once a month. if itï¿½sa weaker relationship prospects, weak relationship more educational content, maybe completelyeducational content. never be afraid to give away a lot of intellectual property when itcomes to marketing today. weï¿½re smart marketers. weï¿½re smart consumers.we know that our attention is valuable. we know that thatï¿½s what you want, but weï¿½rewilling to give it to you if you give us something in return and i want intellectual property.i want that more than i want money. intellectual property will get you attention more thana discount will. show me what makes you an expert. show off your expertise, your experience.you all have lots of that to share and donï¿½t tell me you donï¿½t; because, iï¿½ve beenchallenged on this. the toughest one ever,

i was in california, a lot of people in theroom and a woman stood up and she said, ï¿½ron, i get it. i really do. itï¿½s about sharingcontent and my expertise. i have nothing to talk about.ï¿½i said, of course you do, everyone does. what do you do? she said i sell commercial plasticsheeting. i thought to myself, wow, did i just really mess up in front of all thesepeople, but iï¿½m good at this and so i stalled. i said in a little bit, wow, thatï¿½s fascinating.how many kinds of commercial plastic sheetings do you sell? twenty-six different kinds. iwent wow, really, whatï¿½s the difference? now you couldnï¿½t stop her from talking.oh if itï¿½s this kind, if youï¿½re doing this project, youï¿½d want this one. itï¿½sthis permeability. itï¿½s this thickness but

if youï¿½re doing this outside youï¿½d wantthis other one. itï¿½s antibacterial. itï¿½s more permeable.thatï¿½s why iï¿½m going to buy from her, instead of going to a big box store and pickingit out on my own. you have expertise at your business. donï¿½t think that thatï¿½s no invaluableto people and donï¿½t think that itï¿½s not interesting; because, it is. thatï¿½s thereason we shop with you instead of somewhere else.natalia: awesome. should we buy e-mail marketing to get new customers or new contacts?ron: i have to try to interpret that. i think theyï¿½re asking is it okay to buy a listof contacts, for e-mail? natalia: yes, thatï¿½s how i interpret it.ron: the answer is no. intuitively it makes

all the sense in the world but this is wheredigital marketing and traditional marketing are so different. with traditional marketingi can buy a list of physical addresses and i can mail to you. youï¿½ve got your mailbox.itï¿½s filled with junk mail. you donï¿½t get mad you just throw it away. weï¿½re waymore protective of our e-mail inbox. if you buy a list and you send to me without permission.even if i gave you permission at some point, but forgot or if you send to me too often.if i donï¿½t love your content, to me youï¿½re a spammer and i canï¿½t even say it and makeit nice. iï¿½m not going to do business with a spammer.iï¿½m going to tell my friends not to so donï¿½t become the accidental spammer. a lot of smallbusinesses buy lists and it backfires. iï¿½ve

never seen a positive return on investmenton a purchased list and iï¿½ve done it for 25 years. iï¿½m the grandfather of e-mailmarketing according to the press. iï¿½m not sure if thatï¿½s a compliment or what. iï¿½venever seen a positive roi from a purchased list. you can build your list organically,naturally, very quickly and very productively just by putting the sign-up link everywhereyou connect. natalia: i think we have time for one or twomore questions. for a company to create a brand new facebook page, so our new page hasa sad amount of likes. how many likes should i get on the page before starting to includethe facebook page in my e-mails? ron: donï¿½t wait. start now. it doesnï¿½tmatter. you can say youï¿½re re-launching

it. youï¿½re not really re-launching it butwhen they donï¿½t see a lot of likes theyï¿½re not going to be unimpressed. you can evengive them an incentive to hit the like button. we have a tool at constant contact calledsocial campaigns. it creates what is essentially a like gate for facebook. when i view yourfacebook page if i hit the like button, it unlocks something, some content. it couldbe a discount. we find that expert content, insider information is more valuable. peopleare never going to hit the like button if they donï¿½t truly like you; because, theyï¿½reputting their reputation on the line. give them an incentive to hit the like buttonmakes it more likely they will. the results are the same, 91% more likely to buy fromyou again, 93% more likely to recommend you

to friends. check out the social campaignstool in constant contact. they hit the like button. it unlocks. it could be a video. itcould be something they download. it could be ten calligraphy tips if youï¿½re a calligraphystore. this insider content is incredibly valuable to consumers today.natalia: how can i get lists when previous customers didnï¿½t give out their e-mail addresses?ron: if they didnï¿½t, i would try to connect with them in a different way then. one, iï¿½malways going to make it easy. i can put a sign-up book right on my counter. i can puta poster in my store that says text to join or scan with qr code to join, every page onmy website. if theyï¿½re previous customers and i have some kind of contact informationlike a physical address. i would e-mail them

a postcard and say weï¿½re launching thisreally neat new e-mail system, where weï¿½re doing newsletters, coupons and all kinds ofvaluable information, go here to sign up for it and itï¿½s likely that they will.again, donï¿½t make it a buy my stuff promotion, but more about insider information. how youask really matters too. i know that the on the average 57% of us when shopping will giveup an e-mail address to a clerk at a store. that sounds great, but the average ask wheni go to shop, itï¿½s like hey, you donï¿½t want to give me your e-mail address do you?train your staff. theyï¿½re not asking for something. theyï¿½re giving something of valueaway for free. they just need the e-mail address to deliver it. if you gave them chocolatecake, and they were allowed to give chocolate

cake to all the customers i donï¿½t thinkthey would miss one. they would offer it to every single one. thee-mail sign-up itï¿½s like giving away chocolate cake. iï¿½m going to send valuable information,tips, resources, maybe even discounts on occasion. iï¿½m giving away this really cool thing buti need the e-mail address to deliver it. thatï¿½s how your staff needs to look at it. they needto ask every time. we see businesses that are very strict about they have to ask everytime, getting 92% of call in traffic and 98% of walk in traffic to give up an e-mail addressjust by asking every single time. if you donï¿½t ask you donï¿½t get it.natalia: helene, i donï¿½t know if youï¿½re still on the line, just one question. wherecan i find free microsoft classes and that

will be the last question?helene: hi, yes. natalia: okay, great.helene: you can find them through the [inaudible 00:56:21] but as well you can look at microsoftstore.comand find your local store, if you have a local store in the area and down below on the screenyouï¿½ll see events and things that are hosted at the store. in addition office.microsoft.comhas many, many free tutorials on how to use microsoft office.ron: one quick question that i want someone to answer. sue asked on-line how do you signup for the next one? are invites being sent out for the 6/24 webinar? we have a lot ofour listeners who want to sign up for the next one, how do they do that?natalie: yes, we will be sending out a thank

you e-mail for attending which will have thelink and weï¿½ll also send out another e-mail letting them know how to register for the6/24 webinar. everybody on here will get that information.ron: great. come on back. i want you all back. i want you to bring your friends.natalia: i think thatï¿½s all the time we have for questions.ron: excellent. thanks so much for having me everyone and for listening. i look forwardto talking to you again in two weeks. itï¿½s going to be even more fun than today as ifthatï¿½s even possible. tc0206066003p-1page 1 of 22