Monday, October 15, 2012

Cheer Leading on Social Media

Social Media for business is all about creating your brand recognition and engaging your customers. So what are customers looking for?


  • A social club---customers want to belong, be on a first name basis with your business, to be part of your inner circle
  • Tips and/or give-aways---a 20% off coupon, a tip that allows customers to save money, or something totally free, delights and surprises and customers love it.  
  • Exclusivity---customer's want to claim you and let others know that you belong to them.   
  • Entertainment---a joke, a story---something that allows customers to identify and have a "me too" moment.
  • Information on your business, your attitude towards customers, your products---be sure you have links back to your own website once you teased a contact's appetite for more information through social media.
Social Media, whether through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or others, is cheer leading for your business. It's a nice demonstration of just how dedicated you are to your customer base and allows your customers to join you in the cheer.   

Monday, October 8, 2012

Stats---Only Half the Story

Viewing stats of your website or blog? Figures are available on number of views, locations of viewers, browsers you should be building for, view times, and connection speeds of your viewers.

But those statistics only tell you half the story and they increasingly are telling less and less about the total views of your site. Most statistics are driven off of cookies. Cookies can be accepted sometimes, accepted never, or accepted always by your viewers. Most customers don't worry about cookies and will accept them. Yet there are some customers who believe incorrectly that cookies store personally identifying information, so they won't allow them at all.

Some devices, though, don't deal with cookies. Some mobile devices won't give you any stats. Also there is the issue of the news reader that is used to view your blog, for example. Some readers will not produce a view statistic.

As a result, while using statistics generated is useful, it's important to keep in mind the other ways a view of your site could be generated and test and build for your whole audience.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Facebook Gifts

Businesses have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor and partner with Facebook Gifts. Facebook is offering a way for people to buy friends gifts for birthdays, special occasions, and just for the heck of it. Gifting can be private or posted to timelines.

But before you jump on the bandwagon there are a few things to consider. For example gifts bought but not picked up within a certain time frame get returned. And as new rules of etiquette evolve there may be more returns for other reasons. But if your business can offer something like an online gift card, this may be an revenue building avenue to look into.