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What?! Facebook is free! Well of course it’s free. Anyone can sign up and post until their fingers fall off. But is that really the best use of your time? Really, this could go for any online marketing, Facebook just makes a nice example. Maybe you own a great coffee shop and bakery. Someone told you that you should really get a Facebook page to help you advertise. Common wisdom in this day and age right? Well not so fast. Don’t you have coffee to roast? What about those scones you put in the oven 45 minutes ago? Weren’t they only supposed to go in for 20? The moral of the story is, YOU’RE BUSY! You’ve got a business to run. Latte’s to make, sandwiches to serve, payroll to do. The list goes on. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are easy for your personal life. If you don’t attend to them […]

Search and converse online: A while back we wrote about the importance of engaging with people on social media. It is after all, social. Hopefully after reading that article you’ve been convinced to try stimulating dialogue on your platforms. It may not happen overnight, but with a little persistence, you can start to build a community of people around your business or product. Now, in that last post we talked specifically about Facebook, and how to craft your posts to encourage discussion. But now lets talk about how you can be even more proactive at this. Blogs. Everyone blogs. Well, not everyone but you get the point. Blogs are almost always centered on a common idea, theme, or activity which works to your advantage–It’s a whole bunch of people in one place that already share an interest with your business! Not all are created equal. Some are very good though, and […]

Stay Connected Online It’s kind of a recurring theme around here, that you need to constantly maintain your online presence. That’s OK, we don’t mind telling you more than once because anything this important is worth hearing again! The sense of reliability you portray online helps customers to see that you’ll provide the same level of service when it comes time to do business. It may not be true, but when customers come to expect a certain amount of interaction and content from you, they’ll think something’s up when suddenly your online activity slows down or stops. Of course there are millions of reasons why your online presence can slow down, you’re running a business, things happen! But as we’ve said here before, if you’re serious about online marketing — and you should be — it’s important to have someone dedicated to that job. That could be an internal employee […]

With most hate, there is some truth. Take for example a review by Jeffrey Westhoff from Northwest Herald about the movie “The Goonies”. Jeffrey wrote, “I find nothing entertaining about kids screaming for two hours.” The movie does include some screaming, but certainly not for the entire length, or even a majority, of the film. As one can see, there is some truth to Jeffrey’s hate because there is some screaming. When it comes to your business, you’ll encounter people just like Jeffrey Westhoff whether it’s on Facebook, on the phone, or face-to-face. The real problem is not the hater, it is ignoring the hater. So what can you do? Answer complaints! Why? If you want to increases consumer advocacy, answer complaints. Answering complaints has a huge financial impact and gives you a chance to turn bad news into good. A company should strive to answer every complaint, every time! Whether there […]