At this point, even your grandmother knows about Facebook. So it stands to reason that any small business that wants to establish an online presence should know how to utilize it. But, as you might guess, there are many out there that are hurting their brand by being on Facebook. This is because they have no real sense of how to maintain an online presence.

So what do you need to do (or not do) on Facebook to help build an online awareness of your band as reach as many people as possible?

• Keep your page active. Don’t simply create a Facebook page just to have one. You should be using it at least once a day (for those busy super-swamped offices, we’ll let you off the hook and say every other day) to post useful information or to build your network. Don’t create your page and let it slowly die, collecting internet flies.
• Keep in mind that “active” means productive. Try not to flood the walls of your fans with twenty posts a day. A a small business, the only reason you’d have to post more than 2-3 times a day is if you’re having a Facebook-fueled contest…
• ..which is not a bad idea. Use Facebook to hold contests for freebies or giveaways to your fans. Maybe your 1,000^th fan gets a special discount or the 50^th comment on a post wins a free product.
• Publicize it. Once your page is active and you have gained a nice number of friends/followers, make sure people know it’s there. Link to it from your website. Put it on business cards. Mention it in ads. Anywhere you can place that little blue box with the “f” in it, do so.
• For the love of God, don’t talk about your lunch or what you’re drinking. Post meaningful content that is going to be useful to your core audience. This can be promoting specials you are having or linking to relevant blog posts within your industry. Just make sure your content is relevant to your audience and not the filler material that pollutes roughly 75% of Facebook.
• Stay open to comments and feedback. In the world of Facebook, you are likely to attract more fans when they see that you actually value and even interact with the people that take the time to post on your wall.

See? Facebook is about more than political rants and adorable pictures of cats. Use it right and it can help build your brand ins ways you never imagined.

Many small business owners make the mistake of thinking that branding is just a matter of slapping some consistent logos and colors on business cards, flyers, and maybe a sign or two along a major highway. Believe it or not, there is still a huge percentage of small business owners that fail to implement their branding practices into their online presence.

This is obviously important for your website or blog, but it can be equally as important for your social media platforms. In the realm of social media, there are basically two juggernauts right now (and for the last few years): Facebook and Twitter.

Today, let’s take a look at how you can effectively promote and/or your company on Twitter.

• First of all, hope that it isn’t too late to use your actual company name and that it has not yet been snatched up by someone else. If you run into this unfortunate event, it’s time to get clever with new ways to abbreviate your company name.
• Decide right away if you will be branding on a personal level or if you will be leading with your company. That is, on Twitter, are you Bob Smith, the president of Awesome Company A or are you just Awesome Company A? This is a big decision and one that can actually confused your followers more than you may think.
• Incorporate your company colors into your header and background. Make everything uniform, from business cards to Twitter backgrounds.
• Consider mutual branding. If you have employees that also have a Twitter account, ask them if they would be willing to be a representative of the company rather than just posting personal links to their interests. This makes your company look more like a family and you also get a lot of connections through their networks.
• Perhaps most importantly, remain professional and try to keep personal opinions about politics or even popular culture to yourself.

Social media is one of the largest areas in which you can brand your company. Make sure you do it right and your brand stands the chance of becoming one of the most followed within your social media circle.

These days, the release of a movie’s trailer is almost as big as the release of the movie itself. Due to this, it is hard to keep anything a secret.  However, when done correctly, viral marketing can be seen at its finest at the movies.

So yes…let’s take a cue from the movies. Check out how effective viral marketing can be.

One of the better examples of the past ten years or so (or, depending on who you ask, ever) was the viral marketing push behind Cloverfield in 2008. The trailer came out of nowhere and was attached to the highly anticipated Transformers film. The day after Transformers release, more people were talking about this trailer than the Transformers movie.

That’s because there was no name given to the trailer. It was a trailer for a movie with no name. The trailer showed a party and then a disastrous scene as the party-goers ran to their roof and saw that NYC was apparently under attack by something. Rather than a title, audiences were given a release date: 1-18-08.

And that’s where the viral marketing kicked in.

Clever movie-goers figured out that the date could be used as a website handle when entered into an address bar as www.1-18-08.com. The site offered very little—just still photographs that were distributed every few weeks.

This set the internet on fire. People became obsessed with trying to find clues in the trailer. This led to someone eventually noticing an odd logo on a character’s shirt—a logo for a product called Slusho. This led to the discovery of a website for the fictional Slusho soda. The trail apparently ended here until the About section was discovered and readers found a bio on the founder of the company. This led to another site which led to another site, eventually leading a very determined audience to the website of the soda’s parent corporation…who just happens to be into deep sea drilling.

As if this weren’t enough, many of the characters seen in the trailer were given MySpace accounts (remember MySpace?) where very vague and subtle movie hints were doled out in bios and comment threads.

While the chances are good that your small business doesn’t have the budget for these sorts of tricks, there are many jumping points to be considered here. Have fun with your viral marketing and find ways to have your target audience become obsessed to the level of Cloverfield fans.

As a small business owner, have you ever seen a commercial for a larger company that featured a very well-known celebrity? Did you get just a little jealous, wondering just how effective one of your ads could be with a celebrity in it?

As it turns out, you have no real reason to be jealous. Recent trends are showing that having a celebrity in your ads really doesn’t help at all.

Ten years ago, this would be a totally different story. Looking back through history, it’s safe to say that Michael Jordan, Grant Hill and many other athletes helped sell tons of Gatorade. But this isn’t really the case now—not with new brands, anyway.

Sure, Oreo is selling lots of product, but it has nothing to do with Eli and Peyton Manning being in the commercials. Instead, Oreo sells lots of product because the product is so well known that it is ingrained in our culture.

But things get different when it comes to lesser known companies. Recent studies have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that celebrity endorsements have very little—if any—impact on consumers. While there has been so proven reason why this is so, many feel that it is because of the abundance of scandals related to celebrities. Lance Armstrong and Tiger Wood were once great sales draws but now look at them (and in the case of Lance Armstrong, look at how well RadioShack is doing after his No Emoticons campaign).

The truth of the matter is that today, people trust the word of those within their social network much more than they trust a celebrity. The reason behind this is simple. The celebrity is being paid to endorse the product, while those in their network are genuinely impressed with the product. Also, it is much easier to relate to someone that is not making millions of dollars a year.

This is a great way of how everything in marketing has shifted due to social networking. Keep this in mind as you plan out future campaigns. Remember that honesty and genuine passion trumps just about everything, even the allure of a celebrity and celebrity ads.

Having a social media presence and having a basic understanding of how to operate each account is a great way for small businesses to expand their audience. But that’s only part of the social media equation. It’s also important to have a set of standards and policies set in place for social media use. This may sound silly, but in the unfortunate event that you are faced with some sort of PR crisis, you’ll see the need for such measures.

The fact of the matter is that social media and public relations are linked more closely than most people think. Social media shows a certain side of your business to the world. It is your responsibility to make sure that side of the business is represented professionally and with a consistent tone.

Here are a few key items to try to iron out when you set forth your small business social media rules.

• Make sure all of your employees are aware of the policies you’re putting in place. You may also want to make sure they know that any in-depth conversations or statements placed on their own social media accounts about the inner-working of the business are not allowed.
• Assign one or two people to keep tabs on online conversations that involve your business or brand.
• Come up with guidelines to follow when consumers reach out to you via social media. Have a good idea of how you will respond to them and make sure you respond to all potential clients in the same way.
• What measures need to be taken in order to make sure your business keeps the same persona, style, and tone? This can often be effective when only one person is in charge of handling your social media accounts.
• In the event of a PR crisis, have a template for a formal response that you can post to your social media accounts in a very quick fashion.

Social media is both fun and productive for small businesses.  With a set of social media policies set in place, you can use social media confidently and almost like an automatic marketing machine. What other items would you suggest adding to a social media policy?

As a business owner, it can often be very hard to separate yourself from your business, especially when speaking to others within the industry. In some environments, this is perfectly okay. At seminars and similar events, people expect you to talk yourself up. But if you’re having a casual lunch with people within your local network, you may want to tone it back a bit.

There is a fine line between remaining professional and promoting yourself in everyday conversations. Too much promotion can drive people away, yet not mentioning your business at all may leave you losing a potential business opportunity.

There’s no golden rule here—no exact science to finding the balance in where typical conversation ends and shameless self-promotion begins. To clear the waters a bit, here are some strategies to help you find a common ground.

• Rather than speaking endlessly about yourself, ask others around you questions. This is a great tactic, as it redirects the conversation elsewhere. Also, if you ask the right questions, you can learn new information about your industry.
• Never approach a conversation with direct sales in mind. If you do this, you are no better than those annoying Spam e-mails that pop up in your inbox—uninvited and irritating.
• Avoid words like “me”, “my”, and “I.” If you use them too many times in the course of a short amount of time, people are going to notice.
• Try not to speak ill of your competitors. This makes you seem jealous. Instead, try to work the successes of your competitors into the conversation.
• If, in the course of conversation, someone brings up an issue that you believe your service or product can help solve, it is okay to mention it. But be brief; drop the bait and see how they respond.
• If someone praises you or your business, thank them but then deflect the conversation to how the business of customers like them is what keeps you afloat.

Keep these things in mind the next time you are in a conversation about your industry. You might be surprised just how far not talking about yourself will get you.

In marketing, one of the most beneficial things any small business can do is find ways to turn their disadvantages into strengths. At first glance, this may seem impossible—but that’s where guerilla marketing comes in.

“Guerilla Marketing” is a term that is derived from “Guerilla Warfare.” It usually involves using guerilla warfare techniques to improve your marketing without spending much; this can be done by using the resources you already have to expand on your marketing in creative and aggressive ways.

Think guerilla marketing might be just what you’ve been looking for? If so, here are three tips to help you get started.

Use Emotion as a Tool: Small businesses with limited budgets have one luxury that larger businesses don’t. Larger businesses have a reputation to uphold and, therefore, are very hesitant to go to extremes in order to play on the emotions of their audience. Meanwhile, a lot of small businesses are doing just that—by playing on the emotions of your audience, you are taking the chance to get personal with them. Sometimes this can be presented with humor while other times may call for a tear-jerking message. But do it in a way that is going to truly resonate with your target demographic.

Build Quiet Relationships: Due to competitive environments, many small businesses feel that they need to take on a very isolated approach—an every-man-for-himself mentality. This is understandable, seeing as how partnering with anyone would cut into their core of customers. Still, marketing studies are showing that this is not a very good mindset to have if you want to succeed. In fact, fostering relationships and partnerships with other businesses—often larger and more successful ones—is a great way to gain exposure to potential clients. More than that, it’s a great way to network and learn from those that have made it.

Be tech savvy: This links back to using your current resources, but you can take it one step further. Take some time to get very good with creating videos. Post these videos to your blog and then send them out into the world via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social media platform you have been using. And speaking of social media…use every outlet you can. Each new social media platform you implement into your marketing tactics creates one more solid chance of discovering new clients and network partners.

Marketing success doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to spend big money. As a small business, finding ways to cut expenses is crucial so if you can find ways to save money on your advertising efforts, you should take advantage of them.

There are a few very inexpensive—or even free—marketing tactics you can look into that often go overlooked. Before you start sinking cash into iffy marketing efforts, consider some of these options.

Show That You Are an Expert: Write a few articles about your industry. Share some of your personal insights and thing you have learned over the years. You can look for places to publish them via online publications or local outlets such as magazines or newspapers.

Social Networking: Social Networking holds a place on all lists like this one for a reason; there has never been an easier way to share your message and knowledge with so many others. With social networking, you can connect with facets of your target audience that would have been unavailable to you 10 years or so ago.

Be a Sponsor: Keep an eye out for charity events in your area and ask if they are looking for sponsors. The key here is to be genuine and sincere. Make sure the event is something that you care about or, even better, is somehow related to your industry. This is also a great way to generate some great public relations buzz (again, for free)!

Teach a Class: You might be surprised to find that there are numerous opportunities to teach a class within your town or area. Contact your local government representatives to find out if there are any opportunities within the government or local businesses for you to teach or lead a class related to running a business, business practices, or anything related to your industry.

Sure, these options take a bit of time and effort, but the amount of money they can save as opposed to traditional marketing practices make it well worth it.

Yes, Easter is over but that doesn’t mean it’s time to forget about Easter eggs. We’re not talking traditional yummy Easter eggs here, but the sort that is used as a clever tactic used in virtually every form of media.

If you’re not up on your pop culture jargon, an “Easter egg” is something that is hidden in products that are usually only picked up on by a few people but then go viral via the internet. It’s essentially something for those “in the know” and is a great way to add value to a product for truly devoted fans.

Easter eggs have become so popular that Google now has a few of them buried in plain sight all along their home page. Want to see what we mean? Go to Google and type in a search for “do a barrel roll” or “askew.” If you’re a sci-fi geek, search for “the answer to life the universe and everything.”

Easter aggs are also found in the form of hidden tracks on CDs, background items included in the backgrounds of TV shows as a nod to loyalists, and even in video games. Honestly, it can be a lot of fun once you get into it.

You can use the Eater egg approach in your marketing tactics, too. How? Well, just look at the Google example above. People like Google as a company because they are always displaying their sense of fun. And sharing secrets like the search page Easter eggs (oh, there are many more) is fun for everyone.

Granted, incorporating Easter eggs into your marketing plan will take some creativity and deep thinking, but it can be well worth it. It can help to engage your audience in a unique way and help to make sure your brand will be remembered for its creativity and effort.

Some ides to start with:

• Stick Easter eggs into your ads
• Create your brochures to hide or disguise some other fun tidbit.
• Get sneaky and creative with your website

What are some of your favorite Easter eggs? How can you use those ideas to build on your marketing efforts?

Writing isn’t for everyone. The sooner over-ambitious business owners realize this and stop blogging, the better.

If you want your business to consistently put out material that is going to bring traffic to your site, you need professional writing done. You need the skills of a talented copywriter. Finding one isn’t hard; there are hundreds of thousands of copywriters looking for consistent work. You can find them on popular sites like Elance or Odesk.

But how can you tell if a copywriter is going to be a good fit? How can you tell if they are really going to bring results?

Here are some ways to find out:

• Visit their own website and read every page. If you aren’t pleased with the way they are representing themselves, chances are you won’t like the way they’d represent you.
• Check their references and look at the content on the site of some of their other clients. When reading the content, look for bland writing and grammatical errors.
• Test them on the fly. If they come in for an interview, have a short piece that you have written at hand. Ask them how they would improve it. When they make suggestions, ask questions as to their reasoning. A good copywriter will be glad to explain themselves. Alternatively, you likely don’t want to get involved with a copywriter that gets defensive when you ask questions.
• Can they make sense out of chaos? That is, if you handed them several sheets of paper with hurried notes on it (and little instruction) could they create something logical and readable out of them?
• What is their personality like? While many writers can switch up their personas in their writing, you may want to steer clear of copywriters who approach everything as a serious and rigid affair. Liveliness in a copywriter usually translates into the copy they create.
• During conversations, your copywriter should always be asking questions to milk more meaning from your ideas. Also, try to keep tabs on how they speak to you when explaining their own thought process. Are they speaking to you as if you were an equal or a child?

If you’re lucky, you’ll land a great copywriter than you can develop a long-term working relationship with. Just make sure your interests align and that you are comfortable working together in a fast paced environment.