Social Media Tips

The global economic crisis is on everyone’s lips these days. Luckily, the US government is taking steps to address it and the new “Buy American” campaign is a big step in the right direction.

True, the crisis that has originated in the US drags the entire world down, but the essential part of the solution – a new wave of economic patriotism - makes perfect sense. Furthermore, the “Buy American” provision in the economic stimulus plans is the necessary guarantee of success.

Why is that, you may well ask? Because allowing people to choose means that they can, and often will, make the wrong choice. This is unfortunate at best of times, and certainly unacceptable in the time of crisis, when some dangerous freedoms need to be taken away so that the population may benefit from the strong leadership.

What about the rest of the world? We in Australia also enjoy the variants of the economic patriotism theme, so should we follow the lead and buy Australian only?

At first I thought that a resounding YES is the only answer…

…but then I started thinking. Do all of the Australian states have the interests of us South Australians at heart? I don’t think so. The eastern states in particular, with their booming economies in Sydney and Melbourne, are always looking down on us. “Buy Australian” can clearly be improved: “Buy South Australian” is the way to go, right?

Right! Except that South Australia includes a whole bunch of backwater communities, often with unfairly cheap labor, and investing any of our money on them simply makes no economic sense. We must end this constant drain on our resources, and focus on supporting OUR industry. This is the time when buying Adelaide-only seems like the only logical proposition.

Except for one thing: the snobbish southern and eastern suburbs of Adelaide do not care much for us living in Northern Adelaide. On the average they are better off than us, no doubt the result of exploiting our unwise, unrestricted spending. It is time to put a stop to that, and limit our purchases to the Salisbury Council area.

Yesterday we erected the stakes around our kraal and firmly shut the gates. True, things are a little dirty around here because we’re running low on soap, but it’s a small price to secure our economic recovery. Also, my kids worry me with their calls to make an exception and buy from the outside – they just do not see the big picture. They don’t know what’s good for them and how lucky they are that they do not get to decide. None of our money is to be wasted outside.

The buck stops here!

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Dr Alex Davidovic is the co-author (with Penelope Herbert) of the book Underdog Marketing: Enrich Your Reputation, Fashion Free Publicity and Wrestle Your Market Share from the Top Dogs

Controversy by Dr Alex buy American, buy Australian, global economic crisis, the buck stops here

More and more people are catching on to Twitter, the hottest ticket in online social marketing at the moment. Increasingly, this microblogging and social networking application is becoming part of many a company’s small business marketing strategy.

In this business TV show, three experts share their most advanced social marketing tips on making Twitter work for your business. The show is aimed at users who are already familiar with the principles of online social marketing, but who want to fine tune their tweeting to get really fantastic results.

The  experts who share their small business marketing tips on the show are award-winning business writer and PR guru Steve Kayser, Social Media CEO and founder of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) Peter Shankman, and internet marketing consultant and Facebook business coach Mari Smith.

The social marketing advice in the show begins with advice on what to tweet about, and the appropriate tone for tweeting. There is a lot of noise on Twitter, and to leverage it effectively for your business you need to become a trustworthy, likeable, highly visible, Tweeter with your finger on the pulse and plenty of followers. The social marketing tip from the experts is to tweet in a way that will begin a discussion, by sharing something of value, or taking an interesting position on a topic which is relevant to lots of other people.

The next piece of advice for anyone looking to incorporate Twitter into a small business marketing strategy is to make use of the ‘long tail’ that tweets have on the internet. Every time you tweet, a web page is created to carry that message. While this means that you must be careful not to tweet in anger, it also is a great social marketing opportunity. That’s because if you tweet about your website, a web page is created with a link to your site, and that will make it easier for the public to find your site.

There is plenty more expert social marketing advice available on the show.

Business TV

“Get off your butts and do some great content!” This is the rather direct advice of social marketing guru David Meerman Scott, on what businesspeople should be doing to market themselves in 2009.

Meerman Scott is speaking on the first of his weekly business TV shows on yourBusinessChannel. He goes on during the show to explain in more detail the fundamentals behind a really effective online small business marketing strategy.

Before the arrival of the internet, says the social marketing expert, there were only really two ways that a business person or market could get their message out to the public. First, he says, they could buy their way in. In other words, they could purchase advertisements in magazines, newspapers, billboards, television, or other formats.

Alternately, they could go to the media and ask them to run a story about their business. Neither of these methods are very cost effective or successful for most businesses, says Meerman Scott.

Fortunately, since the advent of the internet and in particular the Web 2.0 world of interactivity and user generated content, the situation has changed for the better.

Meerman Scott gives a number of social marketing tips for business looking to leverage these new online social marketing opportunities.

With a strong social marketing strategy, your business can achieve great results, he says, but it is critical to produce the right kind of content to make the most of this opportunity.

The key to a great online social marketing strategy, he says, is to produce excellent content. This can be on Facebook, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, or many other sites, but the content needs to be remarkable or really useful to get people talking.

Using these platforms for your social marketing strategy, it is important to create content that specifically targets your market, and that doesn’t focus too much on your own product.

Meerman Scott shares a host of other social networking tips on the show.

Business TV

Recently, Facebook overtook MySpace and the rest of its competitors to become the biggest social networking platform online today. If you’re reading this, the chances are that you and most of the people you know have a Facebook account. Because it is such an enormous social network, Facebook is becoming increasingly important to business.

Facebook’s greatest potential for business is in the areas of social marketing and business networking.

On an innovative new business TV series, top experts examine the latest trends in Facebook for business, and explain how you can get started using Facebook as a tool for social marketing and business networking. Leveraging Facebook for business networking is perhaps the most obvious business use of the social networking tool.

Because Facebook lets you explore your contacts’ networks, you will be able to find new contacts – whether business experts, new supplies, or potential employees or employers. With a great profile page, you can attract interest without even having to be online.

Facebook works best as a complement to your other business networking activities. As the recession starts to impact on companies’ marketing budgets, more and more businesses are looking at the possibilities of social marketing to communicate with and expand their customer base. Facebook has incredible potential as a social marketing tool. This is because of the sheer size of the community, and because of the functionality that Facebook offers in terms of identifying the interests and geographical locations of your contacts.

There are great opportunities for businesses to engage with thousands of customers at a personal level. In this business TV series, world leading experts in Facebook for business give their latest tips and tricks on how to leverage Facebook for social marketing and business networking, and what mistakes to avoid. Viewers who are subscribed to yourBusinessChannel can submit further questions on the shows, to be answered in future shows.

Business TV

There are certain key periods in the year that are particularly well suited to business networking. By concentrating your efforts at these points you will maximise leverage from your business networking efforts to achieve business success, according to Score More Sales founder and business expert Lori Richardson.

In the latest of her regular weekly business TV shows on leading online business TV network yourBusinessChannel, Richardson explains why smart entrepreneurs and executives will chose certain times of year to step up their business networking.

In the show, Richardson explains that there are three times during the year which are really worth focusing your business networking efforts on. These are opportunities to find and create strategic alliances with other people, companies, and organisations who can help bring your business success. A strategic alliance is a relationship with a partner who knows you and likes you, and who can help your business by referring work, finding new contacts, or helping your company find business success in some other way.

In this business TV show, Richardson explains that the end of the year is a great time for business networking. This is a natural time of year to get in touch with all of your business contacts, especially those who have referred business to you during the year, or who you have been in close contact with. You can send out a brief message that summarises your business success during the year, and updates any other relevant news. This will remind all your contacts not only that you exist, but also that you are an exciting person to know. You may like to contribute some idea or advice about how your contacts can achieve business success in the new year.

If you’ve missed the boat making contact at the end of the year, says Richardson, don’t be too concerned. In her show she explains that there are two other great times of year to leverage business networking to achieve phenomenal business success.

Business TV