Here's an interesting case study on how a restaurant owner was using social media for his business.
If you are a local business owner, don't underestimate the power of location-based services like Foursquare. If you are a brick-and-mortar business, Foursquare should definitely be a part of your social media toolbox. Good news: Foursquare recently introduced business pages that allow even businesses / brands without a store-front to be part of its services. Check it out here: http://foursquare.com/business/Amplify’d from blog.hubspot.com
How do you attract a flash mob of 150+ people to your restaurant? Offer the possibility of a Foursquare Swarm Badge, of course!
Last week, restaurant owner Joe Sorge attracted 161 Foursquare users at the same time to his burger joint in Milwaukee, AJ Bombers (pretty impressive considering there are approximately only 300-400 total Foursquare users in the area). Even more impressive is the fact that the restaurant more than doubled its typical Sunday sales, with an increase of 110% that day.
So how did he do it? If you haven't heard, Foursquare is a location-based mobile app that has been growing in popularity. Using the service, people "check in" at locations and earn badges based on a variety of factors, including frequency of check-ins, etc. In order to attract people to his restaurant to raise money for the Milwaukee Social Media Community to host an event at popular interactive conference South by Southwest (SXSW), Joe promoted the possibility of restaurant-goers earning the coveted Swarm Badge, which is awarded to users who check in at a location where over 50 other users are checked into at the same time. As a result, the restaurant raised over $500 toward the SXSW meetup.
This case study is a great example of business owners harnessing the power of social media sites and applications to attract customers. It's also testament to the growing power of location-based mobile applications. Joe paid attention to his customers to learn more about them, discovered their growing interest in Foursquare, then did his research about how he could take advantage of the new trend. The result was a carefully and successfully implemented promotion that afforded him new customers and additional buzz (and -- you guessed it -- the opportunity to create more content).
The lesson here is simple: Using social media for business works. Stay on top of and understand the latest trends, and most importantly -- be creative! Think about innovative ways you can use these applications to generate traffic to your website and/or your physical store. See a complete foursquare badge list to come up with your own badge promotion ideas.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Using Social Media for Business
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Secret Google Keyword Tactic - Market Research
Stephen Pierce: "So check out today’s keyword research and market research training and put my little super secret Google keyword tactic to work for you to uncover some cash banking opportunities."
It's a simple, free way to research what people are buying now, that you have probably never seen. Watch Stephen Pierce as he shows his sneaky trick "to get cash-carrying buyers" to any website. (If you don't want to waste time, the show-and-tell is between the 7 - 11 minute marks.)Amplify’d from www.youtube.com
Monday, January 24, 2011
Google Places - Don't Try To Cheat Google
There are lots of shady ways to manipulate Google Places listings to have them rank high in the local results. They might even work in the short-term, but will not work long-term and are not worth risking having your listing banned altogether.
My recommendation is to follow the Google guidelines and do the best to optimize your listing within those guidelines. Below some news about how Google is trying to prevent fake listings.Amplify’d from blumenthals.com
Last week, I reported that a number of folks were only seeing the post card verification option and no phone verification when entering new businesses in the Google Places Dashboard.
In the forums Google noted:
Hi all,
I understand there have been some recent questions about verification methods. If a business is new to Google, certain verification methods may be unavailable depending on the information provided for the business.
Whenever Google wants to maximize their trust level in a listing they will request post card verification as it offers them the highest confidence that the listing is real.
The phone verification option is only available now when Google has strong confidence about the listing data. It appears that Google has “upped the ante” in this regard particularly in relation to new business listings.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Improve Sales Conversion With Video - Case Study
Here's an exciting study on sales letter vs. video conversion in one of my favorite niches - fitness. Check it out below.
I love videos, especially short videos! Not only are they super popular, but everyone, and every small business can create videos inexpensively and easily with tools like a flip camera or Animoto. Always remember, if you don't use video, your competitor probably does!Amplify’d from visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
Through his website SixPackAbsExercises.com, personal trainer Carl Juneau teaches men the best ab exercises for getting six pack abs. Carl heard his top competitor doubled his sales after he started to use video to market and demonstrate his products so he decided to use Visual Website Optimizer to test video on this website. Carl carried out three split tests which conclusively proved that videos increased conversions on his website by as much as 46%.
In first split test, he tested two variations of the “call to action” on his sales page.
- The control was: “Next Page Read Sample of Book”
- Variation 1 was: “Watch Video Preview”
- Variation 2 was: “Watch my #1 Abs Exercise On Video”
Here are the results for this test (goal being click on call-to-action and go to next step in funnel). Both calls to action that hinted at a video significantly increased the number of visitors who clicked to the sales page (step 3). The best-performing variation (variation 1) increased conversion by 14.18%.
In second split test, Carl tested one variation of the sales page:
- The control was a long-form salesletter, which had been tweaked extensively over two years
- Variation 1 was a one-minute professionally produced video where Carl demonstrated his best abdominal exercise. At the end of the video, the “call to action” said that more exercises could be found in the manual and the workouts
Here are the results for test #2 (goal was to go to next step of funnel). The video sales page significantly increased the number of visitors who clicked to the price/guarantee page by 46.15%.
Third split test was a follow-up test. In it, Carl tested:
- The winning video only
- The winning video at the top of the page plus his longstanding control salesletter below
To his surprise, the video-only page won. Here are the results. Adding the long salesletter below the winning sales video significantly reduced the number of visitors who clicked to the price/guarantee page by 35%.
Video converts! It did so when mentioned in a “call to action” (a 14.18% increase) and also when used to sell (35% and 46.15% increases in two different tests).
As more and more surfers have broadband Internet and powerful computers, video seems to be slowly taking over the web. Carl increased his conversions with video… why not test it and see if it increases yours?
Monday, January 17, 2011
How To Make a Facebook Group
You proudly have collected a large following of friends on Facebook, and now you realize that you don't want to share all your private photos or thoughts with all of your friends. Or maybe a lot of your FB friends are getting sick and tired of your cat pictures.
Facebook Groups to the rescue! You can easily create a group (see below) on Facebook and add only your closest friends, or only your cat loving friends to it. Now you can share privately (or publicly, if you so choose) with your group members, have group chats, share documents, create group events, and more. Give it a try today, and let me know what's working for you.Amplify’d from blog.thoughtpick.com via Google Reader
So How Do I Use It?
The groups feature is available on your left-navigation sidebar, after clicking “Create Group…” you will be prompted to name your group, add your friends to it and select a privacy setting. There are 3 settings for privacy,
- “Open” : Both members and content are available publicly.
- “Closed” : Members are available publicly but content is private.
- “Secret” : Only members will be able to see the content and the members of the group.
While old style groups are left unchanged, you can no longer create any groups in that style.
So What’s New?
The redesign of the service aims at making groups appeal to individuals and their friends rather than the entire Facebook community at large, hence people added to a group no longer have to opt in; as long as they are your friends they can add you to a group but you have the option to opt out of it.
The new groups have a group chat function where you are able to share documents and anyone in the group is able to create group events. They have also added an email notification setting that is also useful.
While those features are a welcome addition, there has been a lot of outcry about what has gone missing! For instance, there is no longer any discussion section or photo archives available for people to see all the photos uploaded to the group.
Potential:
Personally, I see a lot of potential for the new groups; the way they are done makes them have a purpose on Facebook rather than being the fanpage’s ugly cousin. With the new groups, it will be a lot easier to organize and communicate with a group, especially with the group chat. The other thing that is noticeable is that they pushed groups into a more personal space, they made it hard for marketers and promoters to use the groups feature and pushed them into creating a fanpage.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Video Marketing Done Right
Video Marketing is hot! Your business can't afford to ignore this fact, because your competition won't.
Today's article addresses a mistake that many small business owners make when trying to market their business. They advertise their business instead of educating their prospective customers. Remember, nobody wants to be sold to or watch a sales video. They want to learn something that can benefit them now, even before they buy your product or service. If you can deliver something of value, you gain their trust, and they can't help but want to reciprocate.Amplify’d from www.marketingbestpractices.com
Video Marketing for the Small Business Owner
The best way to get a customer to buy your product or services is to have them get to know you, like you and trust you. Traditionally, this has been done by getting them to walk into your physical store.
The one drawback to creating video is that most business owners still think like salespeople when they create their video messages. Coming across as a used-car salesman means that your videos will not be watched and you will have wasted your marketing dollars. How then can you best use of video to market your products and services?
The answer is with ‘education-based marketing’ that David Frey and a few other really smart marketers have used for years. It basically means that you are educating your consumers about your products and services. You are teaching them. You are empowering them with information that allows them to make an intelligent and educated decision about whether you have the right service or product for them. Video allows you to engage your viewer in a virtual conversation. When you educate and give information to someone who’s looking for that information, you are inherently seen as the go to expert, without you ever having to say “Come to me because I’m an expert!”
By providing useful content and information through video you have now set the standard by which all other business owners in your niche are viewed. When a consumer then goes to another website looking for information they will always judge those other websites based upon the content that you provided.
Video marketing is the future. Google, Cisco and Yahoo have repeatedly stated that within the next three years, 75 to 80% of all content online will be video-based. Businesses who fail to understand the significance of this statement will lose out since future customers and consumers will expect you to be on video.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Facebook Fan Pages for Business - A Labor of Love
You know your business should have a fan page on Facebook, but you are wondering what the return of investment will be on your time and effort put in.
Don't make the mistake of expecting an immediate return. Facebook is a social network, and relationships, just like in real life, take time to develop. Following are excerpts from a great article of the many benefits of having a Facebook fan page, and why you shouldn't delay getting one. I recommend clicking through and reading the entire article.Amplify’d from www.entrepreneur.com
10 Ways a Facebook Fan Page Helps Your Business
Even if members have no intention of buying anything, the community you build can benefit your business.By Mikal E. Belicove | December 28, 2009
Facebook is a social network, not a shopping network, so why should any business spend resources establishing and maintaining a Fan Page on Facebook? (A Fan Page, by the way, is a profile for a business or organization rather than for an individual.) Because even if members have no intention of buying anything on Facebook, the relationships you establish and community you build there can benefit your business in countless ways. Here, I reveal the top 10 ways a Facebook Fan Page can help your business.
- Allows you to engage with your community easily and for free
A Facebook Fan Page provides an inexpensive (free) alternative to implementing customer engagement on your own site. In minutes, you can have a branded Fan Page where customers and other brand advocates can post to your Facebook Wall, share photos and video, ask and answer questions, and interact with you and one another. Creating and managing a Fan Page, complete with a Discussions tab, is easier than launching and monitoring discussion forums or message boards on your own domain.
- Strengthens customer relations
You can significantly deepen your relationships with customers by connecting with them in a social rather than a business setting and not selling. Facebook members may not shop on Facebook, but 90 percent of them expect the businesses and organizations they deal with to have a Facebook Fan Page.
- Listening and observing has the potential to improve your business
In a social setting like Facebook, customers and prospects are likely to let down their guard and share information with you and others about products and services they like, good and bad experiences they have had with your business or your competitors, and their unfulfilled needs. Each time a Fan interacts with your Page, you are presented with a wealth of information. Tip: By default, Facebook Fan Pages include the Discussion tab. Encourage discussions to mine valuable market data and ideas on how to improve your business.
- Allows you to keep pace with the competition free of charge
Still not convinced a Fan Page is worth setting up? Then consider the competition. Even if only one of your competitors launches a successful Fan Page, that competitor can corner the market on Facebook and build a following long before you do. Stake your free claim early to establish your business as the industry leader before the competition has a chance.