Storm Dawg Marketing

Every small business knows that Facebook is the most popular social networking site on the planet. Every SMART small business knows that if they’re not on Facebook yet, they’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with customers and grow their business.

What small business owners may NOT know is that they need to get started RIGHT NOW.

Ireland’s LaCucina Limerick has a simple recipe for success that any small business can replicate to get their business on Facebook TODAY and start seeing results TOMORROW! The Simply Zesty blog featured them because they were able to use Facebook to:

• Connect with 2,000 people, the majority of which were local and their best prospective customers
• Ask questions, post pictures, and p interact with her customers and prospects (a simple status update of “Pineapple on pizza?” got more than 60 comments)
• Leverage the popularity of restaurant frequenters, such as the Munster rugby team, by posting stories and pictures and helping the team’s fans become their own
• And have fun with their products with a great give-away – “Tag the Pizza” (they post a picture of their pizza, ask fans to “tag” themselves in the photo for a chance at a freebie, spreading pictures of their food throughout their fans’ friends)
• (Click here to learn more about how they’re using Facebook.)

You cannot afford to wait any longer for success like this. If you don’t get your business on Facebook RIGHT NOW, then your customers won’t be talking about your business at all…or worse…they’ll be talking with your competitors.

Click here to get your business on Facebook RIGHT NOW. Then, leave us a comment below with your business’s name and a link to your page. (We want to become your fan, too! )

Does your business already have a page on Facebook? Leave us a link as a comment below and share your success!

We’ll follow up next week with some great tips on what to do with your page, and who knows…we might just feature YOUR BUSINESS!

Bryan D. Jennewein

How social are you and your business? Do you make it a point to get out there and make people aware of who you are and what your business is all about? Or, do you sit back and pray that someone does business with you today? Are you running out of ideas as to how to market your business? Take a moment and honestly answer these questions, then continue reading below about SOCIAL MEDIA.

This morning I read an article by Jeffrey Gitomer, What’s so social about social media? How social are you? As I read the article I realized that social media is the “new machine” that one can either embrace and capitalize on or continue to ignore and watch your competitors embrace the “machine” called social media and witness their exponential growth compared to your dwindling numbers. It’s up to you but for now I highly encourage you to click on the following link to read Jeffrey’s article. Afterwards I would love to hear back from you! Share your story…who knows your story may help another.

Mike Shults

Agents & brokers alike are jumping on the social media train.  It is abundantly clear that in this economy it is important to get more exposure in social networks if you are a small business.   Realtors have figured this out and are learning quickly the advantages.  A survey conducted by the NAR found that 84% of it’s agents use SMS (Social Media Sites) for business purposes.  I’m sure that you may have seen this at one time or another and not realized it…  Your friend telling you on Facebook that their home is for sale…and inserting a link to their realtor’s site.   It’s Social Media at it’s best.  Word of mouth Social.  So not only are realtors doing it…their clients are as well.  Imagine how much faster you can sell a house when you put it on your facebook wall….your clients puts it on theirs and between the two of you, you have 300 friends.  Those friends then share it with their friends…and so on.  Well now you’ve just gone viral with your listing and it didn’t cost you a thing.  Please see the attached research from our friends at ORC Guideline.  There are some great stats that you should see.

If you have any questions or stories about using Social Media Sites to get word out about your business please write in and share them!  I’d love to see what you are doing.

Have a great week!
Christina

Hey all,

I was doing some reading over the weekend, and I came across a couple of surveys that are pretty interesting.

The first one says “76 percent of small-business owners polled were not using social media or finding it helpful in generating business leads during the last year, and 86 percent said they did not use such sites to get advice or information.” http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/10/05/daily62.html

The second one leads with, “One in 10 small businesses are using social networking sites to connect with customers, according to a customer survey by software firm Sage.” http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2250764/facebook-remains-social-network

I have said this before and I will continue to say it, “Don’t get overwhelmed by information overload.” These stories are really saying the same thing but from a different point of view. About 1 in 10 small businesses are using social networking. Many people and pundits lament the business model of these social networks: Will YouTube turn a profit? Are Facebook and Twitter viable business models? Time will tell, but I think they are missing the point about social media.

It is the way people are communicating with one another. Remember the old saying about gossips: “If you want to get the word out about something, there is telephone, telegraph and tell a whoever.” Social networks are infinitely more efficient at getting the word out. If you engage your friends, family and customers and ask them to tell their friends and business contacts about your business, you can really amp up the most creditable form of advertising – word of mouth.

Social networking can also help optimize your website for marketing purposes using SEO, or search engine optimization. It turns out small business are really interested in having their websites found by people looking for their goods and services.

So it all comes down to this: Social networking is a new way of doing things for a small business, and I believe it is here to stay. Invest a little of your valuable time and think about what you can do to really amp the word of mouth that you built your business on.

Don’t work too hard!

StormDawg

Internet access in the workplace has some negative effects; however, there is great potential to increase productivity if used properly.

I recently read an article in The New York Times, “The Count – An Online Outlet for Creating and Socializing,” which discusses the role it has in “…releasing people’s creative and social energies…”  What I found to be the most interesting are the numbers: 50% of adults visit social networking sites, 23% contribute to forums and discussion groups, 19% review products or services, 16% listen to podcasts, 12% publish, maintain or update a blog, 9% use RSS feeds, and 5% contribute to or edit articles in a wiki.

Click here to read the article: The Count – An Online Outlet for Creating and Socializing

Mike Shults – StormDawg S.W.A.T.

Good morning StormDawg fans,

While the Dawg’s away, I thought I’d take a moment to update you about the StormDawg Small Business Stimulus Plan and some other pro bono work StormDawg is doing.

We’ve had close to 200 submissions for this month’s contest, and let me tell you… these are some compelling stories. I’ve even noticed that many of you took the time to Fan the Stimulus Plan’s Facebook page, so thanks! StormDawg assembled his S.W.A.T. team early last week, and we can’t put your stories down! Picking a winner for this month’s free marketing giveaway is going to be tough, but we’re getting close. Members of the S.W.A.T. team might be calling some of you to ask a few questions and flesh out more of your story, so be nice and throw them a bone. We’re going to try and do something for everyone, even if you’re not picked as this month’s winner. And if you’re not this month’s winner, there’s always next month!

It occurs to me this morning that we’ve been so caught up in this contest,  it’s easy to forget how it all started. Do you remember reading about Trinity United Methodist and Mick Doyle’s? (If not, take a quick minute to read them.) It’s how this how contest got started. Trinity and Mick Doyle’s were hurting because of our economy and needed help… so StormDawg came to the rescue. Here’s an update on each… think of it as a small taste of what our monthly contest winners can expect.

Trinity United Methodist
Trinity faced two challenges: building their congregation and funding their new community center. To help the former, StormDawg had Trinity work with American Church Lists (ACL), a division at infoGROUP that specializes in helping churches build their congregation, and Triplex, a division specializing in helping nonprofits. ACL has put together four postcard campaigns to help the church get its message out to local residents and new movers in the area. (We’ll post the designs online soon!) Triplex is doing a tremendous job getting the word out about the new community center. They are helping Trinity put together a benefit dinner and inviting local donors to attend. Triplex will send an introductory email to potential donors, asking them to watch for the invitation letter, then sending the letter, followed up with another email. What a great integrated marketing approach to getting the most attendance for their benefit dinner. (We’ll put these designs online, too!)

Mick Doyle’s
Mick Doyle’s has been marketing for years… their marketing just needed a bit of a kick. They currently market through word-of-mouth, Yellow Pages, and their website. And for a while, this worked just fine, but with the current economy, they just have not been seeing the traffic they need. The S.W.A.T. team decided to tackle this one together. We’ll help Mick with three tools: paid search advertising, an integrated marketing campaign, and we’ll take his word-of-mouth marketing into the social networking spaces. We’ll use Google’s paid search advertising to drive more traffic to his website, which we’ll also search engine optimize. We’ll do a targeted direct-mail and email campaign, aimed at his best prospects. Finally, we’ll make sure Mick has a presence on the area’s most popular social networking site, Facebook, and all the tools and training he needs to successfully engage in this space.

Think of Trinity and Mick Doyle’s as a small appetizer, and YOU can be the MAIN COURSE! Keep sending in your stories for the StormDawg Small Business Stimulus Plan, and if you’re picked, we’ll put together a plan like this for you!

As StormDawg would say… “Don’t work too hard!”

Bryan D. Jennewein – StormDawg S.W.A.T. Team

Hey all,

Here’s some interesting research from ORC Guideline about social networking and small businesses. The thing is, it is pretty easy. All you have to do is jump in and get started. It works.

Don’t work too hard!

StormDawg

Hey all,

I am writing this piece as I am headed to New York for my participation in the Liminal Group event with Granville Toogood. I am really looking forward to it, and I am going to have an opportunity to learn something and to talk to a bunch of very interesting folks about a variety of topics. It’s so cool!

This has all happened so quickly, but I guess in the speed-of-light business environment you have to move fast.

Several months ago, Scudder Fowler called my colleague, Pam and wanted to know if they could interview me and that I would recognize the name as he and I have known each other for quite some time. It turns out I know him and was skeptical about what they wanted to talk to me about. So I called him. He wanted to talk to me about marketing, the recession etc. We had just produced the first of our videos about why you should market in a down economy and so I told him to check it out. He was at his desk so he pulled up the video on YouTube and was pretty excited about us doing some things together. So I invited him to Omaha, to see what we do here and to demonstrate some of our products.

He brought one of his teammates Christina, and we knocked their socks off with everything we do at infoGROUP, and we started thinking of ways we could work together. This event seemed like the perfect starting point. I was looking for cool content for my blog, which I hadn’t really started yet, so we got to work planning our participation in this event.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I started writing some stories for the blog and with the help of Bryan Jennewein and Michelle Macnamara in our marketing department, we put together an editorial schedule and started to get busy. My idea was to tell stories that are relevant to small businesses in today’s environment, to provide business and marketing tips, but mainly to create an environment where a community of small business people could get together and help each other out.

Today I got an email from somebody that read the blog post about my sister-in-law Karen and her interest in event planning. He was taking a long shot but he was interested in talking to her about doing some long distance event planning for a group he worked for. I forwarded the message to her and even though I have no idea if it will work, it truly demonstrated the power of social networking, blogging, the internet, you name it.

I will let you know if anything comes out of the email to Karen but hey it already gave me something to tell you all about. Stayed tuned for more about my week in NYC.

Don’t work too hard!

StormDawg

Hey all,

I am sitting here trying to figure out how to use all this social networking stuff. I wonder if I can make it work for marketing, for communicating with my friends, my family, or people that are interested in the same things that I am. I wonder if I can make money out of it, or if I even should?

How do I think it should be used?

Duh! To solve problems of course! My daughter used Facebook to solve a fairly complex problem in 30 minutes. Ok, it seemed pretty complex to me!

My daughter Sam was planning to leave for Semester at Sea. They were to disembark from Halifax, Nova Scotia for a 9 week trip around the Mediterranean studying and earning college credits along the way. She made all the arrangements, plane tickets, travel, visa, passports and all of that, (I just wrote the check). She had one last task; she didn’t have a hotel room in Halifax for the night before departure. She decided to try and find somebody to share a hotel room with and that person should have a last initial as close to D as possible. Using Facebook, she was able to find what she wanted in 30 minutes. She found a girl that had a hotel reservation with extra room. Her parents couldn’t make it, so she was looking to share the room and the cost, and her last initial started with D. Sam solved the problem and saved me money at the same time, (I love that)!

If you want to know how you should be using the social media to make money, ask your kids. Chances are, they already know.

Don’t work too hard!

StormDawg