Below are some of the most common mistakes that businesses and people make when it comes to social media networking. Try to avoid all of these.

1. Setting up a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter page and then not providing updates. Would you send out a blank newsletter to your customers ??

2. Thinking I understand social media and I can just do it myself. It may be more cost-effective or time-effective to delegate certain social media responsibilities to a company that specializes in it or for someone else to handle.

3. Forgetting that social media is about creating interaction with your clients or customers, not just about sending out information.

4. Clicking onto a site for “business” and then getting distracted by other information or friend updates.

5. Spending too much time on sites you enjoy and not fully evaluating whether that particular site is the most effective one for your time and efforts.

So many companies and products are reviewed online by opinions of their customers. Today, more than ever people are posting their personal opinions. They are posting them – Positive and Negative.  Services like Yelp make it easy for people to review personal experiences of other customers.  Yelp has shifted the way testimonials are viewed. They are right in front of you, at the click of a mouse. You can read whether or not a restaurant has excellent, good or bad service and the quality of their food.  You can even get a full understanding of a restaurants atmosphere just by reading the reviews posted by other people that have been there.

If you are planning a vacation, Trip Advisor is a company that allows all reviews to be posted right on the site.  If you want to understand what a hotel is like in Venice or if a hotel has a view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, just click on Trip Advisor. They will let you know.  They even reveal the date and time of the most recent posts so that you can see if it is out dated.  I recently went on a trip to St. Thomas and I reviewed two hotels that I was debating on staying at.  I ended up picking the Ritz Carlton based on reward points, etc. but my point here is that the reviews were right on target.  They even instructed me which side of the hotel had the best view of the ocean, which side had be renovated and what restaurants where best to eat at off of the resort.  It was a phenomenal experience and I am so grateful that I was able to read the reviews before hand.

So my point is here, for companies.  Hug your customer- you may never know what review they might post.

Please join Phil Percuoco and Boston Web Creative on Thursday, February 4th at 12:00pm-1:00pm for the Underground’s presentation at the New England Grows Conference. It is at the BCEC in South Boston.  The conference is for members only of the green industry in New England. For more information regarding the conference please click on New England Grows Conference.

Often I hear from my customers how do I back up my content on my blog. So I did some snooping today and I found the below tutorial on the wordpress.org site. You will need access to your ftp information and some knowledge of how the blog is set up to do this by your self. Please if you are not comfortable leave it to the professionals.

Create a Regular Database Backup

Every post and page you write in WordPress is stored in a MySQL database. There aren’t separate files for each page or post. It’s important to regularly back up your database in case something goes wrong (such as with a rogue plugin or a misguided upgrade attempt). You can manually back up your database by using a tool like phpmyadmin, but it’s much easier to simply use the WordPress Database Backup plugin.

To create a regular database backup schedule:

• 1. Download and install the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
• 2. In your blog’s admin panel, go to Manage > Backup.
• 3. In the Backup Options section, select Email backup to and then enter your email address.
• 4. In the Scheduled Backup section, select Once Weekly.
• 5. Select any tables you want to include. These tables refer to data from any plugins you’ve added, not to your posts and comments.
• 6. Click the Submit button at the bottom.

Each week, you’ll receive an email with your database. The database is light and won’t take up much space in your email program. If your site ever crashes, you can restore your entire site’s posts, pages, categories, and tags (but not images) through the database file. Images are stored in wp-content/uploads folder

Now more than ever, company marketers are challenged with improving performance with fewer resources and shifting marketing budgets from traditional to digital tactics like SEO and social media. There are significant benefits from combining search engine optimization and social media marketing tactics ranging from increased social network discovery via search to the ability to attract links for improved SEO.

Implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content is leaving money on the table. Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking.

1. Find the Audience:
Understand their behaviors, preferences, methods of publishing, and sharing.
Most companies that are involved with the social web in the channels where their customers spend time have a good sense of where to start. Get involved.
2. Define your objectives:
Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales, and SEO has long been directly accountable to substantial improvements in web sales. Social media is not direct marketing. The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search.
3. Establish a game plan:
The game plan for reaching objectives in a combined SEO and social media effort will often focus on content and interaction, since it is content that people discover and share. Whether a keyword-focused strategy for reaching goals means publishing new content or creating an opportunity for consumer-generated content, it must involve proactive promotion and easy sharing ability.
4. Creating a strategic mix:
The strategic mix for a social media marketing effort is based on doing the homework of finding where the desired audience spends its time interacting with and sharing content. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing effort happens within the strategic mix and optimizing content for keywords.
5. Measure your goals:
Leveraging both social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Marketers can use specific measurement tools to monitor the effect of their social web participation as well as the search engine performance of SEO efforts.

Extend the value of your investment. By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort and vice versa, marketers, public relations and advertisers can extend the value of their investment. Well optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search and help increase sales.Advertisers and companies that fund social media campaigns can continue to realize the traffic benefit from optimized interactive content long after the campaign has ended.

Search Engine Optimization

I recently read the book titled Accidental Billionaire:The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, from the author of the book ” Bringing Down the House,” Ben Mezrich. I am not sure if just because both of these ideas started in the heart of Boston but these two stories I find to be very intriguing.

I wanted to touch on the founding story of Facebook and recommend it as an interesting read for all of you who are interested in understanding social media and how it was started. The concept and idea is so simple, which is one of the reasons why social networking and media have changed lives and companies today.

If you are interested and have some time, I would recommend reading this book.

Accidental Billionaire

Check out Boston Web Creative’s latest e-commerce site…. KAI NATION !

Many companies and individuals think that once you have a website setup and uploaded to the internet, the customers will automatically follow. One of the key aspects and potentially the hardest part of understanding e-commerce is; how do you find your customers and how do your customers find you ?? In most cases this seems like a simple answer, but it takes strategic implementation, a targeted marketing plan and focus.

Having a website is only the first step in creating your business – increasing traffic and visitors to your site should be the next priority. These services are designed to drive targeted traffic to your website – the end result – increasing your bottom line! Here are a few of the basic tips to get started with SEO and SEM once you have created your online store.

1 – Utilize Search Engine Optimization

2- Pay Per Click: Pay Per Click search engine placement is the only guaranteed way to hold top placement in the search engines. Anyone who has the budget and is willing to spend what it takes to be #1, can be!

3- Link Building-Meta Tags: The major search engines, including Google, now track the number of incoming links to a website in order to determine the website’s popularity. The website is then given a corresponding Page Rank, which is used to help determine search engine rankings.

4- Analysis: The most important part of web marketing is to work with a company that you can trust. They need to be able to analyze your website and understand where the traffic is coming from.

5- Utilize all social networks: Add +SHARE buttons to your site.

6- Add a Blog: A blog is a great way to create a relationship with your customers. It also creates a sense of following on your site.

7- Email Newsletters and Press Releases: Targeted HTML E-mail campaigns are one of the lowest priced and easiest ways to increase customer retention and repeat sales by keeping in touch with your existing customers.

8- Build a customer/VIP e-mail database: Another great way to keep in touch with your very important customers.

E-commerce is expected to grow 12% in 2009… go get the market share !

I watched a very interesting video the other day that featured this company as arguably one of the best companies in the world that fully understands the definition of customer service. The company is Zappos. They started in 1999, and have been growing at a rapid rate ever since, largely due to their company values and culture. Every small and large business can reference this business perspective of valuing your employees and also valuing your customer as the #1 priority. Your customer and employees are the key players that keep your business running. Trust your employees to let them be themselves, let them be creative and empower them with the understanding that their ideas will be implemented and heard. Experience the success together…

Care about your employees as people. Care about your customer. Watch this video…
“WoW your customer “ These guys get it !

Love Your Customer