A lot of small business owners have a gut feeling that they should be using social media platforms to create a buzz and attract people, but they aren’t sure if they should expend the time.  First, let’s look at the reasons why businesspeople use Facebook:

• Consumer Brand building
• Personal branding
• Establishing yourself as a thought leader
• Creating a Facebook group as another touchpoint
• Advertising targeted to key demographics (this is not free – it’s pay per click).

Facebook is growing its offsite presence (it seems like an omnipresence) with ‘like’ thumbs-up buttons popping up on every website and blog, allowing users to ‘show interest’ in them and to share their message with Facebook friends at the same time. Within 3 weeks of the launch of this new ‘like’ feature, some brands were seeing traffic from the social site double (example IMDb.com, source ClickZ). So for consumer brands it works.

But for B2B, people who are looking for new opportunities and professional connections, they tend to use LinkedIn. It is easier to see if someone is credible and trustworthy, since most have their resume and recommendations from others.

But Should You Jump on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc?

There are no hard and fast rules to say you must have a presence on social platforms. If you’re flat out just following up the leads you have – why add to your stress with setting up social networking for business?

Don’t just jump in with the lemmings.  First develop a new Marketing Plan for business. See where your customers are coming from, what are they interested in, what is going to attract them?  From this information, your plan takes shape…including how best to attract, persuade and sell to your market.

You are probably going to need a central system to control your marketing communications and growing customer base.   Otherwise, with multiple databases and different lead campaigns, your worklife will become chaotic.  This is what I have found in many micro/small businesses.

So from Facebook or LinkedIn, Email marketing, Website leads, and offline leads, capture all this information together with a tool like Infusionsoft… so a step-by-step sales process can be easily set up, and you can go focus on the important work of building relationships.

Hello and welcome to the first blog post for Infusionoz!  We’re in exciting times.  At least, we feel that we are!  And I hope you feel that way too.

I must share with you something that happened on the weekend that has got me thinking… and that has made me realise the ‘social media’ age that we are now living in and how important it is to be a part of it.

Last night I went to the Adam Hills live performance at the Powerhouse in Brisbane, seated just a few rows from the front (I love being up close so I can see expressions and the REAL person!!).  Adam came onto stage to a very excited crowd and within minutes he had discovered a man seated in the front row who looked a little like Santa.  Actually maybe a LOT like Santa! No kidding, and his name was Lex Cush.  Lex went along with Adam’s frivolity of wanting to take a picture of them both together and he then posted it on his blog page via his mobile phone, and then posted a tweet (on Twitter) to see who could come back with the funniest caption.

This might not sound that strange, however it was a live show and Adam was sitting on the edge of the stage with his mobile phone in hand, sending tweets and reading some back.  Not your usual stand-up comedy!  And it wasn’t just the photo of him and Lex that was posted either, as he found humour in some of the audience’s surnames (and admittedly it was VERY funny) so had to ID them and of course take more photos to post off.

After a little while Adam checked his mobile phone for responses and read out some tweets from around the world, with proposed captions for the picture of him and Lex, and we had a laugh.

What struck me as both funny and interesting is that one of the tweet replies came from a guy in the audience… who used his mobile to respond to Adam’s tweet.   As Adam remarked: “how funny that you’re communicating with me via a satellite and we’re about 15 metres apart”.

That is exactly the sign of our times:  tweeting, blog posting, re-tweeting, and using mobile phones to post comments and keep in contact with strangers all around the world, at any time, anywhere.

Not everyone is up with it though… it’s generally seen as a ‘young persons thing’.  Yet here was Adam Hills, an almost-40-yr-old sitting on stage with his blackberry taking photos, posting them and tweeting during his show.  Technology is available and accessible to anyone who wants it, and to anyone who chooses to get on board.

In business circles the traditional marketing channels are slowly being overtaken by our social media and technology advances in marketing automation such as Infusionsoft.  Those people who haven’t yet caught on are either looking in or choosing to let it go by.  I believe, to their detriment.

Regardless of what worked yesterday, we do know that things are always changing.  Traditional marketing of the past won’t bring the same results today or tomorrow, and with social media taking charge of the way we communicate – it’s something that simply can’t be ignored.

So with the memory of last night’s performance and Adam’s versatility with his tweeting and posting, I’m off to go tweeting myself.

Have a great week!

Aveline