"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 3 new articles
55% of Small Businesses that Blog have increased trafficI was perusing my blog feed and Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing feed always has interesting submittals. One in this list of articles really caught my attention: 55% of small businesses that blog have increased traffic For many in the social media world, this is a “no duh”, but for small business owner thinking about blogging, this is some serious validation to what many of us have been preaching for the last few years. Many small businesses have been asking themselves how to stand out in the leveled playing field of the web. In the early days it was awesome. You could put out a better looking web site and compete with companies 100 times bigger than you. You looked the same. Then came social media and the ability to stop broadcasting and start communicating. Many saw this as a perfect way to give great customer service and get their web site to be a lead generation engine and not just a digital brochure. However, bigger companies could throw their resources at this and build large communities and execute big campaigns. This means that there were few channels left to show you are great to work with and know your business. This was were blogging came in. The team at Inbound Marketing looked at data from 1,531 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in the sample blogged, 736 didn’t. The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:
To review the report and look the graphics, check out the full article here. Networking for Law Firms 102Guest post from Gayle Weiswasser, VP TMG Strategies with a event recap of the Networking for Law Firms 102 Last month,Dallas LawrenceVice President of Digital Media at Levick Strategic Communications and I (Gayle Weiswasser, Vice President, TMG Strategies ) spoke on a panel for lawyers sponsored by Grow Smart Business. Our planned topic that morning: “Social Networking for Law Firms 102,” and specifically how lawyers can help clients use social media in times of crisis to get their messages out proactively. The crowd was made up mostly of lawyers and law firm marketing professionals, and while we did talk about crisis communications,some of the discussion also centered around how law firms can use their own social media – websites, topic-specific blogs, and even Twitter accounts, to attract clients and manage their own reputations. As Dallas recommended, using keywords and search engine optimization on each page of a law firm website can help generate business simply by including strategic descriptions of practice areas and attorney expertise. Dallas also recommends that law firm HR departments “friend” their attorneys, so that they can see how the firm is being represented on social networks. We talked about some of the key points to consider when advising clients how to use social media to protect their reputation in a crisis: (1) have a social media presence and a crisis plan in place in advance of the crisis; (2) be willing to respond, engage, apologize, reassure and explain, for as long as it takes; (3) don’t forget to engage your employees, who can become brand messengers; and (4) use all of the tools (social and traditional) at your disposal to amplify your message. Here are some other points that were raised on our panel: Generally, bloggers write about what they are passionate about. Helping clients engage in dialogue with social media on topics of shared interest can be very rewarding for both parties. There are many tools available to clients trying to monitor what’s being said about them online. Google Alerts, BackTweet, Tweetdeck, and Tweetbeep are examples of free social media monitoring tools that can help track client names and issues, and provide instant notification of relevant discussions. Social media is also an excellent way to research jury pools and community opinion on issues related to litigation. There is no one tool that provides a silver bullet for communication today – clients need to be engaged in traditional media as well as different kinds of social media in order to reach their intended audiences. Many thanks to Steptoe & Johnson LLP for hosting the panel Event Reviews: DC Google Meetup and TechCocktail DC 6Here’s a followup to my entry about DC-area late-summer social media meetups; this week, I went to two of the events from the list. The first was the First Official DC Google Meetup, at the swank Lima Restaurant and Lounge in DC. (So swank, in fact, that a would-be attendee posted to the Meetup event page that he was turned away at the door for wearing jeans. Lesson for us all: Know about the venue, while I am a fan of the “scruffy startup techie” look, remember that it’s always better to be over-dressed than under-.) This meetup was billed as being open to Google employees, developers, and users (which, practically speaking, means “everybody.”), and featured a few Googlers from Mountain View. It’s apparently part of a Google goodwill tour happening across the country (and possibly the world), stopping in cities where they have a staff presence (and some where they don’t.) Like all events of this sort, it’s a chance for employees to press the flesh, spread the word, get user feedback and do a little evangelism. As this was mostly a general audience (and not, say, an audience of developers), the presentation content was pretty basic: History of Google and Google products, some PageRank/search 101-type info, and Q&A session featuring pre-submitted Google Moderator-ed questions, as well as live questions from the audience: And of course there was a trivia contest, where the prizes were Google Meetup T-Shirts. (Having been on both the giving and getting sides of swag distribution, I shouldn’t be amazed by the lengths people will go to get a a free, prominently branded t-shirt, yet I am.) The next event was the next night, TechCocktail DC 6, once more at LeftBank in DC. As the name suggests, this was the sixth DC edition of this tech networking meetup started by Frank Gruber and Eric Olson, though it was the first that charged attendees. However, being well-branded and well-known to attendees, I don’t think the ten bucks dissuaded anyone, as it was about as crowded as previous editions (Me, I got comped, not because of a special “in,” but because they’d offered free admission to the first folks to retweet the event info — a bit of directed word-of-mouth.) When it comes to TechCocktails and similar events (like the various Twin Techs), the draw for me isn’t the demos, but the people. (Partly because it can be challenging having a meaningful conversation in a bustling social environment). Twin Tech is particularly challenging for me, because I usually know a lot of the folks there, and if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself spending most of my time talking to people I already know, instead of meeting new folks and finding out about new companies and products: TechCocktail co-founder Frank Gruber and NetSol’s Shashi Bellamkonda. This dynamic was in full effect on Thursday, because the AIM team was there, including many of my former cow-orkers [sic] and the revitalized AIM Running Man, so I probably did spend more than my fair share of time with them. (Though I did have an interesting talk with AIM Express lead Shawn Carnell about some not-very well promoted features, including an Adobe AIR-based multi-protocol client that provides group chat, including for SMS users — I will have to try it out. Anyway, looking ahead, I can already see the events calendar filling up. Remember, folks — if you’re interested in the online space, meeting other thinkers and seeing what tech trends you should be aware of, see what’s going on in your neck of the woods and participate. More Recent Articles
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Keep a civil tongue.