Urgency Flow

Facebook fan pages offer an effective and low-cost way of social media marketing according to new research from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

The study surveyed customers of Dessert Gallery, a popular Houston-based café chain, who were Facebook Fans, with customers who weren’t. Based on surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a three-month period, the study found that the company’s Facebook fans were made more visits to Dessert Gallery each month, spent more of their eating out dollars there, and had greater emotional attachment and psychological loyalty to Dessert Gallery. Read more about the study here.

Now the authors of the study, Utpal M. Dholakia and Emily Durham, caution that “our results suggest intriguing possible correlations rather than definitive causalities” (One Café Chain’s Facebook Experiment, Harvard Business Review). It may be, for instance, that other targeted marketing strategies would have similar results.

The authors also point out that Facebook fan pages have “a narrow appeal”. Dessert Gallery did not have a Facebook fan page before the study and over the three month period, only 283 (or 2.1%) of the customers on DG’s mailing list became fans.

They conclude that “Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. Social media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”

In other words, your results may vary. But it’s still great to see research being done on social media as an effective marketing tool. There’s been an awful lot of hype about social media marketing and not a lot of attention paid to if and how social media marketing affects the bottom line of business that use it.

This article was originally published on about.com

More and more people are using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to talk about companies and products with their friends and colleagues. Learn what drives people to share information and opinions online and learn scientifically proven best practices for spreading your content virally through social media. You’ll have plenty of time for Q&A with Dan Zarrella, social media and viral marketing scientist and author of “The Social Media Marketing Book.”

Whether you’re starting a new business, or looking for ways to develop an existing operation, there’s a wealth of small business marketing advice available to “help” you. Working out what might suit you and your business is a task in itself — and that’s before you start thinking about how you might actually apply the experts’ wisdom. As it turns out, it’s not just the wackier suggestions or more innovative tips that should be considered in depth before you put them into practice. Some of the most basic advice, which many of us take as a given, is worth questioning too. Here are the five business marketing preconceptions I think every business owner should question.

Myth 1: Bigger is better
Much common business marketing advice assumes you want your operation to get bigger — that you want more clients, or more staff, or a bigger service offering, or bigger projects, or bigger pay checks. Bigger businesses face a range of challenges that the small shops don’t — from HR and company culture issues to financial, taxation, and legal hurdles. Many a small business owner finds that growth takes them away from the tasks they love, and entails all sorts of work that they’re not inspired by or interested in. Success isn’t dictated by size; it’s dictated by what makes you happy. Read the other 4 here

This article was originally published on sitepoint.com

Over the past two days, I explored the top four reasons why companies are scared of social media and how to help them overcome their fear. Once the business owner conquers their fear of social media, it’s time to act.  Here are 8 tips for companies beginning their journey in social media.

Start slow
While you may eventually want to create a presence on more than one social media site, you don’t need to dive into all of them at once. Pick one site that you are most comfortable with or that is the most relevant to your company and/or products, and create an account and a public profile.

Learn the game
Observe how others, including your competition, are participating on the social media platform you chose above. Write down what seems to work and what does not, and what you like and what you do not. Take special note of how people interact. Is it a one-way conversation or are both parties participating? What’s the tone of the conversations?

Develop a plan
It’s one thing to participate in social media but to do so without a plan can be frustrating and even damaging to your business. Think through your goals – what are you hoping to gain from your social media interactions? Then work backwards to create a process that will accomplish what you are aiming to do. Read more

This article was originally published on sitepoint.com

Marketing can be a challenging part of business, and many times, it takes a decent amount of trial and error to learn the best way to market yourself and your business. Add to the mix the uniqueness of every business, industry and target audience, and you’re looking at a lot of trial and error before you find a successful set of marketing activities.

To help new marketers learn from common mistakes before they make them on their own, I’ve compiled a list of 38 marketing mistakes that many people make but are entirely avoidable…and will help you market your business more successfully. Read the 38 mistakes

This article was originally pusblished on sitepoint.com and written by Alyssa Gregory

Interesting article about the importance of your company’s name, and the willingness of companies to pay big prices for a domain name: If the Internet has made one thing crystal clear, it’s that physical borders and geographical distance are no longer necessarily an absolute barrier for conducting business. Read more…

This article originally posted on www.techcrunch.com and written by Robin Wauters.

Email Marketing Software Comparison was created to consolidate and organize information about the top providers of email marketing software services so that you can make an “apples to apples” comparison of the different service providers and select read more

This article was originally publiced on www.email-marketing-options.com

Zoekmachinemarketing. U heeft van het begrip waarschijnlijk nog nooit gehoord. Althans, de combinatie van twee inmiddels niet weg te denken aspecten van het bedrijfsleven. Zoekmachinemarketing richt zich op het promoten (marketing) van de SEO-kwaliteiten van het desbetreffende bedrijf. Het optimaliseren van uw vindbaarheid op Google dus. Lees verder..

Dit artikel is oorspronkelijk geschreven door Eduard Blacquiere en gepubliceerd op 29 september 2009.