At our core, EMS is a marketing company. Aside from our design work, we wanted to bring your attention to some of our other important services.

Social Media Marketing Plan Development
This printed and bound marketing plan contains a comprehensive roadmap for using social media for your business.  It is a marketing plan built exclusively for you that contains complete strategy, campaigns, schedules and tracking. This plan is applicable for any company that wants to succeed in social media marketing.

Social Media Account Optimization and Customization
Customize your social media accounts in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with branded graphics and enhancements. These accounts each offer their own options for customization and optimization to enhance the overall experience under your brand.

Google AdWords
Google AdWords continues to evolve. The current AdWords has functions and options that simply can’t be ignored. If it’s been more than one or two years since you’ve utilized this service, contact us to run a new marketing trial.

Facebook Advertising
Facebook’s advertising programs are producing solid results for many of our clients.  While it may not be a perfect fit for all, it is easy and affordable to perform a proof of concept trial to test the results. The beauty of this advertising is that you can test the waters with a small budget and no long-term commitment.

For more information about these or any of our services, call us today: 888-736-4367 or ask us questions in the comments below!

As a social strategist, I help our clients incorporate social media into their marketing plans as well as strengthen and manage their online communities. A big part of my job is to demystify the ever-growing, ever-changing, and all-mighty Social Media. So when I popped open my email a few weeks ago to find an invitation from the most widely used of all social platforms, Facebook, to take a trip to their headquarters, to say that I was excited would be putting it lightly.

As a daily user of Facebook and other social platforms, navigating their constant changes is typically manageable for me…somewhat normal, really. But anytime there is an opportunity to hear the story straight from the horse’s mouth, it’s an opportunity worth taking!

The event that I attended was called Social 4 Local. Facebook invited representatives from small businesses throughout the Bay Area to learn how to best harness the power of the social platform. Going into it, I didn’t have a lot of information about what was going to be covered. I assumed that they would be announcing the same kind of big, sweeping changes that we’ve been seeing within Facebook Profiles.

I’m sure that we all know: Facebook is always changing. The best part is that not only do they admit it, they promise it! All three of the Facebook executives that we heard from that day spoke to one of their mission statements: “We’re only 1% done.”

While they weren’t especially transparent about any huge, blatant changes to the look and feel of Pages, they did imply an underlying motivation for all of their changes: engagement.

This couldn’t have made me more happy. With all of the fancy custom applications and pages and bells and whistles available on the web within social media platforms and outside of them, it’s easy for businesses to get distracted from the entire underlying purpose of social media. Social media is not meant to serve as a billboard; it is meant to extend your reach to engage more and more people. It’s meant to make business about relationships and to make even the largest of corporations approachable. In social media, all it takes is one person, the right person, to have a profound effect on your business.

I see Facebook’s latest changes to both profiles & Business Pages as a giant leap in the right direction towards making your time on Facebook a more personal experience.

Since leaving the event, I’ve watched as Facebook has implemented subtle, pointed changes to their Pages. Here are the 5 that I think have the most powerful affect on your ability as a business to engage your audience:

Change #1: Get a Better Head Start

It used to be that you could only invite the Friends of your Facebook Profile to like your business page. NOW, you can also invite everyone on your email list. This gives you a bit more of a jumping point for building your base as many of us have bigger email lists than we do friend-counts on Facebook.

Change #2: Shift Focus Back to the Wall

For a long time, we’ve watched Facebook play a mean game of “anything you can do, I can do better.” Yelp excels in reviews….Facebook adds a Reviews Tab. Google+ launches Circles…Facebook unveils Lists. Now, Facebook is (wisely) stepping back and saying, Wait, we already do something really well: it’s called the Facebook Wall.

The fact that 4,000,000,000 (yes, that’s nine zeros, as in Billion!) pieces of information are shared on people’s Walls every single day is nothing to scoff at. As of October 31st, Facebook will be taking away two distractions from the Wall: Reviews & Discussions.

Change #3: Say Goodbye to Automation

This is one of my favorite of all of the changes that we’ve been seeing recently. Moving Facebook Page users away from auto-posting is something that I drive my clients away from doing every single day! This also speaks to the idea that Facebook is NOT supposed to be a billboard. In order to best engage in meaningful conversations and relationships with your online communities, take the time to write a short introduction to any links (or videos, or events, or anything else) that you share on Facebook.

Effective October 31st, the RSS Importer App and autoposting to Notes from your website will also be going away.

Change #4: Increased, More Organized Real Estate with Timeline & Ticker

The Ticker is not a new feature on Facebook Pages, but actually on Personal Profiles. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a condensed version of your News Feed in the upper right hand corner of your profile that shows quick excerpts of what’s happening with your Friends. You can imagine it as the “Twitter” portion of your profile. This has been a very controversial new feature, but whether you like it or not, it has expanded the potential visibility of activity about your business because it shows your friends interactions with other people and all of the Pages that they like.

The Timeline is also slowly rolling out to users. If you haven’t seen what this looks like yet, the image above is a screenshot of what my Timeline looks like. What it does is completely reorganize your entire Facebook life into something of a scrapbook. Featuring bigger images, more “Life Events” to share, and easy access to your past, I believe this is going to resonate more with users and drive more overall engagement with the site which ultimately means, more possibility for engagement with you.

Change #5: “People are Talking About This”

This is one of the great new metrics that Facebook has to offer businesses in their Insights program. This number updates daily based on the last seven days of activity on and about your Page. This activity includes:

•    Liking a Page
•    Posting to a Page’s Wall
•    Liking, commenting on, or sharing a Page post, photo, video, or album
•    Answering a Question
•    RSVPing to an event
•    Mentioning a Page in a post
•    Photo-tagging a Page
•    Liking or sharing a check-in deal
•    Checking in at a Place

This metric is great for users and for businesses!

Businesses can take a closer look at how, when, and what efforts more effective for them. On the flip side, users can see whether or not a business is putting any effort into their Page and/or whether or not people think those efforts are interesting and worth engaging with!

In Closing…

At the end of the day, just remember: you CAN be effective in Facebook as a small business without all of the fancy bells and whistles. All you have to do is be proactive in engaging in conversations and building meaningful, genuine relationships with your audience.

Join our Facebook community to stay up to date with new info on social media marketing!

What questions, comments, concerns, complaints, or rave reviews do you have about the latest Facebook changes?

What is Reputation Management & Why is it Important?

The definition of reputation management is simply: listening and responding to information (feedback, comments, complaints, praise, etc) about your business online. Sounds simple enough, right?

Social media has created an entirely new landscape for how people can find and share information. Facebook’s Founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently reported that on Facebook alone, there are 4 BILLION pieces of information shared every single day. 4,000,000,000 – that is a lot of zeros! This makes chances almost certain that one of the billions of pieces of information being passed around every day is something about you or your business.

Obviously, sharing is not a new concept. Back in the olden days, before Facebook and Twitter and Yelp took over the world, people still shared information about their life experiences with others. This information simply wasn’t necessarily broadcast worldwide, nor did it come along with a permanent digital record. But your reputation has always mattered.

There is an old saying that we all have a circle of influence of about 10 people. When something happens to you, good or bad, you share your experience with at least 10 people whose decisions may be influenced by your experience. Now, everyone in your little 10 person circle comes with an average of 130 Facebook Friends.

But managing your reputation online is about much more than being popular:

• Search Engine Visibility – Google cares if and what people are saying about your business. Ratings and reviews now play a role in where your website will show up in search engine results.
• Trust & Credibility – Not only do reviews help you build credibility with the search engines, they help you build credibility with your target audience.
• Feedback – Understand what you’re doing well so you can keep on doing it, understand what you’re not doing so well so that you can change things for the better.

Reputation Management matters because all it can take is one person, saying one good or bad thing about your business to have a profound rippling effect on your reputation.

And it matters because in this new social-landscape, consumers don’t just like to, they expect to be able to communicate with and about your business online.

In Part II of this discussion, I’ll cover the steps you’ll need to take to get started!

What are you doing to protect your business’ reputation online? What questions do you have?

An in-depth look at how the use of Facebook Causes can transform your fundraising efforts.

In March of 2011, our Capitola neighbors were devastated by the flooding that stemmed from an old, dilapidated culvert buckling under the pressure of a heavy rainy season. Homes and businesses were destroyed, displacing families and businesses; some temporarily and sadly, some permanently.

Immediately, the Capitola-Soquel Chamber of Commerce searched for ways to get support from the community. They contacted us, Equity Marketing Solutions, to see if there was a way to develop a simple website to link to a PayPal Account where people could make donations. Because time was of the essence, and we only had 36 hours to get something launched, we advised them that the fastest way to get the word out was to tie their fundraising efforts directly to their Facebook account.

The steps that we took were to create the custom welcome tab on their Facebook page to alert their Facebook following and any new visitors of the disaster and ways that people could help spread the word. We then used the Facebook Causes Application to enable people to donate money, time, and tell their friends about the different ways that Capitola could be supported. We advised the Chamber to support the Capitola Flood Relief Cause with public relations and to include it in any other Chamber correspondence related to the disaster. Although it was just one small piece of a much larger puzzle, in a very short time, the Cause rose to 157 members.

“It did help spread the word about the disaster, people did join the Cause and share it with friends… and we (The Chamber) would do it again,” said Carrie Arnone, Member Services Director of the Capitola-Soquel Chamber of Commerce. “The problem was that some people were apprehensive about giving money through the Causes application because they were unfamiliar with the technology.” She went on to say that several people did call the Chamber to tell her that they had joined the Cause but would be waiting to provide their donation at one of the formal fundraising events to follow.

Tips we learned about using Facebook Causes during a crisis:

* Make sure that all staff knows about what you’re doing and can speak to it in an educated manner to press, coworkers and customers
* Integrate links to your Facebook Cause in all of your public relations efforts
* Create a custom tab for your Facebook Page
* Embed links to the cause in prominent areas of your website
* Embed a link to your Cause in your email signatures
* Share the Cause on your Facebook page and all other active social media outlets throughout the day
* Ask your friends, family, and followers to join the Cause
* Utilize your email list to send out a dedicated blast about the Cause
* Make the use of this technology newsworthy to your local press

When using Causes, it’s important to examine more than just the dollars and cents – it’s about increasing visibility and awareness. In the case of the Cause for Capitola Flood Relief , the total number of members may seem low at 157, but you have to consider that the message also passed through the news feeds of the people who are connected to those 157 members. A conservative estimate is that the Cause reached over 5000 people over a one week period.

We were quite pleased with our inaugural use of Causes and the response that it generated in a short amount of time even in a small community like Capitola.

Have you participated in a Facebook Cause? What did you like or not like about it?

Do you feel comfortable donating money through this Facebook application?

Rae Hoffman-Dolan recently reached out and offered to guest-write for the blogs of her online community. We asked Rae a series of questions about current trends in SEO, Social Media, PPC, and Linking Strategies. We’d like to thank Rae for her thoughtful answers, and invite our readers to add their thoughts in the comments below.

Question 1. With social media on the rise in usage and the validation of blogs in search engines, how important is a traditional links procurement strategy to a web site and do links from blogs count equally as links from standard web sites?

Rae: I think everyone needs to have a balanced and in depth link building strategy. There’s definitely still value in your more traditional, standard links – like directories and other low hanging fruit. But obviously, the rise of social media has added additional avenues of opportunities, like links from various social media profiles and then those profiles give you the opportunities to get even more links (think Twitter and then Twellow for an example.) As far as blog links vs. links from standard websites… If the link is in content, the platform of the site (WordPress, static HTML, ExpressionEngine, custom build CMS, whatever the case may be) doesn’t really matter. What you need to be concerned with – what makes a difference – is the authority of the linking site. That stands for in content links. As far as say, blog comment links vs. standard links, no, I don’t think they count the same. I think in very small or low competition niches, you might see them “having an impact” much more often than in your more competitive and mainstream industries. I think folks looking for link build advice will find some in depth advice in my latest edition of Link Building Pros, a yearly interview I’ve been doing for the last few years with some of the most respected link building voices in the industry.

Question 2. I realize this would differ from industry to industry and company to company, but when creating an emarketing plan, what is the current average ratio of importance between social media to SEO and pay per click advertising?

Rae: I don’t think there’s a canned answer or even close to a canned answer for that. The need for one can change based on your effectiveness with the others. I.e. a site that has strong ranks with organic SEO may not find PPC to be heavily important where as a site without those strong organic ranks may find it absolutely imperative. Social media, in my eyes, plays a strong importance in terms of branding and send signals that will help you rank better in the engines. I think a comprehensive strategy will contain all three. I totally admit to not being a PPC aficionado, so all of my affiliate sites depend strongly on organic SEO and social media efforts. And they obviously do amazingly well. It doesn’t mean they might not do even better with PPC at play – but I’ve usually stayed focused on what I have specific talent at and haven’t explored that avenue. However, recently I bought into a LLC formation service which is a true business and not an affiliate website. On that site, I definitely recognize the need for PPC to be part of its online marketing plan. So I’ve contracted my husband (a Houston PPC consultant) to do the PPC campaigns for that company (again, I stick with my specialities and hire out for whatever I need not within them.) I’d do my best to make all three a part of your strategy – and adjust the ratio of time spent on them based on the return they bring you (and or your company.)

Question 3. For companies who cannot jump in all at once, what is most important in emarketing today? If they had to choose to start one step at a time, is it social media, SEO, or pay per click?

Rae: It depends on the budget. In most cases, I would say SEO – but given as I mentioned above that it’s my area of strength – I may be biased. SEO (especially the DIY kind if you’re a small business) is cheap, but it takes a while. PPC can be expensive, especially if you don’t know your conversion rate, cost per customer and the other metrics imperative to PPC success and have to pay to learn them. But PPC is also nearly instant. I don’t think social would ever be my “all my eggs in that basket for the first few weeks” approach. But if I were? I’d be sure to check out these reports on how social media meets public relations in the new age. I think you need a balance between all aspects of your online marketing strategy. Even SEO, PPC and social doesn’t cover it all – then you have guest posting, cross promotion techniques, press releases, optimizing for local business networks (like Yelp and Google Places), CPM advertising and various other avenues you can use to promote your site.

Question 4. The rise of social media has given new life to many SEO marketers. Where to do you think social media and SEO is headed?

Rae: Well, I think if an SEO needed social media to bring “life” to their SEO work, they may not have been doing it right. LOL. SEO used to be an essential blanket word for doing what it took for your website to be found online – in the days when the only way to be found online was via search engines. I think SEO has absolutely evolved and there are so many facets to being “found” online now – SEO is merely one part of it. The focus of SEO is to make your site as friendly to the search engines as possible. I do a lot of SEO audits and the core focus of them is making sure a site is using technical SEO (on page optimization, site structure, internal linking, site indexing methods – quite a bit more) to the best of their ability. Link development is now its own division in an online marketing plan in my eyes. Social media is slowly morphing into the new PR and as a “backup signal” reinforcing the efforts you implement with proper technical SEO and a proper marketing (AKA link building) campaign and proper PR efforts.

Question 5. What up and coming individuals should one be keeping an eye on for future Social Media development ideas?

Rae: Lee Odden is a definite one who “gets” SEO and the overall online marketing picture while being more of a PR and social media guy. Kristy Bolsinger is someone else I see sharing a lot of tactical and valuable information in the social media space. I’m sure there are others, but Lee and Kristy immediately pop into my head upon reading that question. I totally admit to being overly skeptical regarding “social media experts” because I think too many people claim the title with little more knowledge than how to build a Twitter account.

Question 6. Do you know the correlation that Google takes into account between likes and shares when it comes to social media optimization? Can you discuss social media optimization versus search engine optimization?

Rae: No one can definitely answer that question unless they’re a Google engineer. Just like SEO, the “secret sauce” regarding exactly how social media popularity impacts your search engine rankings is an educated guessing game. Some people will emerge with big time talent in the department of bring right (as with traditional SEO.) The posts on the topic have already started – you just need to test the theories and find out what works.

Secrets to Taking Great Professional Portraits

The old cliché still rings true: “you only have one chance to make a good first impression.” In today’s high-speed, social media-centric world, the amount of time you have to make that first impression count is limited, to put it gently. Few and far between are the days of handshakes and eye contact; enter the ever-more important professional portrait.

In its original intent, social media was much more about college students being social than it was about professionals being, well, professional. Today, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter provide businesses and their executives the opportunity to make connections where they may have never made connections before. However, those connections may be far less likely with the disheveled hair and seat belt across your chest in the mobile phone photo that you took of yourself last week.

Many factors play into capturing a great portrait (light, lens, setting, clothes, hair, skill to name a few).  We wanted to know what people like you and me can do on our end of the deal to optimize our experience when working with a professional photographer.

We decided to ask an expert: Wayne Wallace of Wayne Wallace Photography in Las Vegas. Wayne has been passionate about photography since high school and after 20 years in graphic design, he chose to turn his passion into a career. Now, Wayne is an award winning, published photographer whose true love is artistic portraiture.

We are big fans of Wayne because he takes outstanding corporate photos again and again and again and is a true professional. We spoke with him to get the inside scoop on how YOU can take better photographs. We chose the best of the best info from our conversation for you to consider:

Pick the right photographer for you
Choosing the right photographer should involve some careful consideration: ask around for recommendations, look through portfolios, find other corporate headshots that you like, and don’t be afraid to meet and interview this person who you’re looking to hire. It’s important to find a professional who you can trust and feel comfortable with.

Remember: as a general rule, you’re likely to get what you pay for.

Know what you want
Just like any other exercise in branding, corporate portraits should be a well-thought out project. Keep the following in mind:

Has a brand standard already been set? Bring an example of other company photos so that your photographer can achieve the same look.

What tone are you trying to set with your photograph? Corporate? Serious? Approachable?

Who is your primary audience? Other professionals and businesses or consumers? Or both?

Give yourself time to relax
Photographers like Wayne understand that people who are not in front of the camera all the time are likely to get nervous about the whole process. The longer you have to relax, the better.

He recommends that you never schedule less than an hour for a session. This will give you time to get comfortable with the lights, the camera, and your photographer. One of his great tricks is to start you off in your least favorite outfit. Since you’re already likely to feel nervous and awkward, it’s best to save the best for last when you’re nice and relaxed.

Skin Care & Make-Up
Do yourself a favor and take the time to get ready for your shoot. Especially now, with all of the advancements made in digital photography, everything is that much more clear – blemishes, unwanted extra hairs, unkempt eyebrows, etc.

Makeup and Photoshop can hide many things but what they can’t hide will stand out that much more. Show up with a clean (and tidy) face and let your makeup artist do their work. “Women often come in thinking that they can do their own make up,” says Wayne. “This is not your normal daily makeup, makeup for photography is completely different.” This goes for all of you male professionals out there, too! Don’t worry, this is not about gussying you up, it’s about evening out your skin tones and minimizing imperfections. “When you look in the mirror, you’ll think it’s too much but when you see the end result, you’ll see the difference.”

Here are some great examples of makeup-done-right by Wayne’s in-house makeup artist: Mei Li of Mei Li Makeup in Las Vegas.

Clothes

Take a long, hard look at your closet and take the following dos and don’ts into consideration:

• DO go with solid colors! Loud patterns can take away from the most important part of the photo: your face!
• DON’T wear spaghetti straps or any of those crazy crisscrossed wrap/blouse things. “They might look good when you’re standing up straight at a cocktail party but as you shift and twist during a shoot they can look awkward”
• DO choose shirts that have some visual interest around the collar and neckline.
• DO bring at least 3 – 5 outfit options. This will allow for more flexibility in choosing settings, backgrounds, and makeup

Invest in Options!

Wayne highly recommends taking a variety of images in different outfits and settings so that you can keep your image and your various social media presences fresh while maintaining a consistent tone and message.

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Having the right photographer to capture the right image of you will be a tremendous asset to your business and to your efforts in social media. By utilizing some of these techniques, we hope you will be able to capture that image that will help you open doors and create relationships.

Within a week of each other, Google and Facebook have both announced that they will be entering the Groupon-esque daily deals race.

Google Offers, still in its trial period, is starting with a roll-out in Portland, OR before it expands to NYC and SF.

Facebook Deals launched on the heels of Google’s Announcement starting with a broader base in San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and Atlanta and with a specific emphasis on deals that encourage people to be more social with group activities.

With other daily deal sites already in full swing, especially with the big fish in the sea like Groupon and LivingSocial in hot pursuit, do you think that Facebook and Google have what it takes to shake things up?

If you administer several different business pages, you may have found yourself constantly switching back and forth between yourself and your various pages. For a long time, it seemed that this was the only way to get things done. Thankfully, Facebook has made some changes in your favor!

Whether you manage one or a hundred pages, here are a few tips that will save you some time and confusion going forward!

1. The “Use Facebook As Page” option.

Once upon a time, it was awkward and complicated to get to your page from your personal profile. And it was awkward and complicated to get back. Now, there is a “Use Facebook As Page” option under the account tab at the top right of your page. Select that and you will be able to choose from the list of any pages that you administer. When you want to switch back to being you, simply visit the Account drop down again and select “Switch back to…”

2. Stop “Liking” Yourself!

Has this happened to you: You posted something on your business page, and then went back to your personal page to “like” what your business page has just posted. Only when you look to see who has liked your business page’s post, it shows that your business page is liking its own posts all the time?!

You can (and should) put a stop to that right now:

• Use Facebook As Page
• Click on the Edit Page Button on the upper right
• Select “Your Settings” from the menu on the left hand side of your screen.
• UNcheck the box next to Posting Preferences

3. “Add to My Page’s Favorites”

You no longer have to switch back and forth between profiles and pages in order to “Like” a page on behalf of your business page. While you’re browsing around with your Personal Profile, you will notice that when you are looking at a Business Page, on the left-hand side below the profile picture, you will see a link that says “Add to my page’s favorites”

Click on this link and a list of all of your business pages will pop up. Select the page that you would like to add this page as a favorite to and continue on with your browsing.

4. Featured Likes

When viewing the profile for your Business Page, you’ll notice that the other pages that you like are featured on the left hand side. If you would like to select which pages are shown there, you can!

Click “Edit Page” from your business home or profile page. Select “Featured” from the menu on the left hand side. Click on the button that says “Add Featured Likes.” You can choose up to 5 pages that will be featured there all the time. Or, you can choose more than 5 and Facebook will rotate them through.

5. Featured Page Owners

Increase the visibility of key business page owners by featuring their Facebook profiles on the left hand side of your page. Follow the steps for adding Featured Likes to your page and instead, select “Add Featured Page Owners” and follow the steps!

Is there something that you love or hate about the latest incarnation of the Facebook Business Page?

If I had to pick just one investment for small business owners to make in order to further their social media efforts, it would have to be the smart phone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an Android or iPhone fanatic; the ability to communicate with your network at anytime from anywhere is priceless.

Here’s why:

There is no time like the present.

Having the ability to post pictures, videos, and comments and make connections on the spot is priceless. While we highly recommend having a schedule and plan for your social media marketing efforts on whole, spontaneous postings are just as important. Not only do you avoid losing messages in translation from conception to posting several hours later, but your network gets to see the human side of your business; from shaky-handed pictures to minor typos and bad hair days.

Balancing your traditional marketing messages with human imperfection and personality is an important aspect of your online social efforts: it makes you real, approachable, and likeable. People trust other people and companies who are real.

Your smart phone is your social media Swiss Army knife. Phone, camera, video camera, voice recorder…all in one…talk about a time-saver!

For social media purposes, professional photo and video shoots are not always necessary. For Facebook status updates and Tweets, it’s acceptable (if not expected) for images and videos to not always be of the highest quality. Don’t hesitate to use your phone’s camera to feature pictures of your product, your employees, or the amazing sunset you saw on your way home from work. Again, these kinds of posts remind your community that you are not a robot; you are human. People like that.

Be sure that you have access to all of your social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc.

For those of you in the service industry, it’s also helpful to have access to user rating and review sites like Yelp, Urban Spoon, and Foursquare.

Personally, I love TweetDeck for keeping me up to speed on my Facebook and Twitter updates since I use those the most. What are your favorite social media monitoring applications?

Building connections with your audience gives you the chance to show your business in a different light, and to develop the consumer trust and loyalty that is necessary for business success.  These 5 tips will allow you to foster a deeper relationship with your website audience, and help you remember that there is a real person behind each email address.

1.       Make a Plan. Before you can achieve success, you must first understand what your goals are, and figure out how to get there. Come up with ideas to help you connect with your clients that are new, fresh, and applicable to your business. Write them down. Put these ideas in a realistic schedule to help you stay on track. Start implementing them and monitor the results.

2.        Make each correspondence count. When you are conducting business online, you never know who is on the other side.  The person sending you an email could be the next best customer you’ll ever have.  Remember this each time you communicate with a current or potential client, and treat them accordingly.

3.       Be unique. When you look at website after website, they quickly begin to blend together.  Do something different. Create an online identity that makes you stand out as a unique business with something special to offer, not just another anonymous website.   Your customers are unique individuals; they should see you the same way.

4.       Be helpful. Be interested in what your client’s needs are above your own.  Provide them with information that they will find interesting, even if it won’t lead directly to a sale.  If they want information or a product that you don’t have, help them find it somewhere else.  Putting your visitor’s needs above your own, you will foster trust and consumer loyalty that can’t be bought.

5.       Encourage ratings and reviews. We live in a day and age where what other people think is more important that what you say.  Give your customers the opportunity to rate and review their transactions, and provide your website visitors with the third party information they are looking for.

The key to building connections online is to remember that your audience is first and foremost human.  Although we often measure success by clicks, conversions, and ROI, don’t forget that there are real customers behind the statistics and they are what really matters.

Many business owners think that having a blog will catapult them into social media stardom and that readers from around the world will flock to their website to read it.  If you have a blog, you have probably realized by now that this is not the case.  Although having a blog is essential to social media success, building it is really just the beginning. It is what you do (or don’t do) with your blog that makes all of the difference.

Positive results come from using your blog effectively to engage your readers and develop ongoing relationships.   When done correctly, blogging can bring attention to your business, help you connect with your customers, and potentially increase sales.  The key to achieving these results is to remember that if you’re going to be involved in blogging, you have to actually be involved! This means that you are actively and continuously cultivating relationships with your readers and giving people a reason to come back time and time again to read what you have to say.  These five truths will help you avoid common blogging misconceptions and achieve the results you want from your business blog.

1. Just because you build it, doesn’t mean people will come. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is assuming that because they have a blog, people will automatically read it.  Blogging, in no way, guarantees readership.  It is completely possible that you do all of the right things, blog regularly, write about interesting topics, ask stimulating questions, and yet, nothing seems to be working.  Although this is extremely frustrating, it comes down to that fact that you can’t force people to read and interact on your blog. All you can do is keep doing what you’re doing and slowly cultivate relationships that will expand your readership.

2. There is such a thing as too many keywords. Keywords are important for improving the ranking of your blog in search engines and for increasing visibility and readership. However, more is not always better.  You want your blog post to read like a conversation you are having with a person face to face.  If you were talking to someone about the orange designer flower-print handbags that you sell, it’s probably safe to assume that you wouldn’t say “orange designer flower-print handbags” three times in one sentence.  Yes, it is important to incorporate keywords into your blog, but it is more important to do it naturally.  The ultimate goal of your blog post is to write something that people want to read, not to see how many keywords you can stuff into three paragraphs.

3. Building relationships takes work. Developing ongoing relationships is at the core of a successful blog. Start by finding blogs related to your industry that you enjoy reading. Leave a few comments, email the author, and encourage readers of that blog to check out yours. Next, ask thoughtful questions on your own blog and respond to all of the valid (non-spam) comments that you receive.  Use all of the other forms of social media you are involved in to steer people in your network towards you blog.  Most importantly, try to create ongoing communication with your readers and provide value in as many ways as possible.

4. You do not have to blog every day. It is easy to get overwhelmed when you tell yourself that you must blog every day.  Despite what some say, there is no magic number that dictates how often you should blog. When it comes down to it, it really depends on you and your business.  What is important, however, is regularity. Many new bloggers make the mistake of blogging every day for a week, then get burnt out and don’t write another post for six months. Regular blogging does not mean every day, or even every week, it just means that you pick a schedule that works for you, and stick to it.

5. Write about interesting topics. Topics. Plural. Just because you’re in the biodegradable cup business, doesn’t mean that you are limited to only blogging about biodegradable cups.  There are an infinite number of topics to blog about that are all related to your industry.  Out of those endless blogging possibilities, choose the topics that you think your readers will find most interesting and valuable.  As a business owner, you are an expert in your field, and your readers want to learn from your insights and ideas.  Share your opinion about new industry developments, predict future advancements, or provide relevant advice that you have learned throughout your career.

Your blog should be at the core of your social media efforts. Blogging, when done well, is a wonderful way to differentiate your business and to interact meaningfully with your customers.  Although there  are many tips and tricks out there for how to successfully blog for your business, the most important thing is to cultivate relationships with your readers and add value with every post.