Our newsletter theme this month is giving thanks (appropriate with November right around the corner). Each of us was challenged to create an article about gratitude, thankfulness, and how to say we appreciate our customers. Since I love social media, I decided to focus on that and how it can help you engage your customers and provide a way to say thanks. Companies talk all the time about maintaining loyalty from their customers but I think they tend to forget it's a two-way street.  Yes,

Over the past year, I have been reading a lot of articles about how social media is changing the world of sales. What has been happening recently is I'm actually seeing this in action. A couple of my clients decided to survey their customers to ask them how they preferred to be contacted for sales and if they searched social media for product information. In both cases, the customers responded that they wanted to be more "in charge" of the process of researching products and choosing how they

There are so many social media choices for marketing, that it can be challenging to know which is the best avenue for your product. What's the answer? Well it depends. If your market is 18 to 29 year olds, with average annual incomes of less than $50k, then Instagram is the place to market your products. Higher priced products or services won't do well on that platorm. If you are a B2B, Linkedin and Linkedin Groups are a good choice, along with Twitter, particularly if you are a service or

A client of mine called me last week concerned about some of his information showing up on a competitor's blog. When we looked at the article, it was very apparent that entire paragraphs had been copied and used in the blog. This indeed was plagerism and he called me for advice on his next steps. My client started blogging at my suggestion and I've been giving him advice on how to properly blog, including blogging etiquette. Playing nice, asking permission, and insuring that he also cited his

CRM. We have all heard that term by now. To many it means having a process in place to manage customer relationships. To others it is a tool. To me, it's all of the above. But before you can define what CRM means to you, you need to have an end goal in mind. What is the end result you want to accomplish. Are you small business trying to get new customers? Are you a large organization wanting to reach out to existing clients to improve the relationship you have with them? Are you suffering from

When you hear the term ROI, I am betting you are thinking money.  When I buy this stock, what will be my return.  If I invest in a business, will I get my money back. According to Wikipedia, ROI, or Return on Investment “is the concept of an investment of some resource yielding a benefit to the investor.”  Basically it means whatever you invest, be it money, time or effort, you are expecting some form of benefit. Often I am asked by clients to help them get across

A client called and asked me about Twitter ads. He wanted to know if they were worth the investment.  I told him I hadn't looked into it yet and set out to find out what I could for my own benefit as well.  Along the way, I discovered something nifty and free.  But really really hidden from plain view.  Which is true of a lot of things.  What I found is the topic of this blog article - Twitter Analytics. Here's what you need to do to find these little gems.  Logon

This week I had an interesting conversation with a client. They know we, as a business, are active on social media and are seeing benefits.  My customer has been dabbling in the space for a while but is finding it too hard to keep up with the effort and is considering allowing their employees to also participate in helping with social media.  They asked me what is the right approach to take and after our discussion I realized it would make a good blog article. Social media and the