Social media is a great tool to help you get your name out there and demonstrate competency in your subject of interest. For example, a voice actor can leverage social media to share their demo clips, connect with industry professionals, and build on their skills as they send and receive feedback from their community. Social media is a great recruiting tool, but it can also be one of the most effective tools for the person seeking recruitment, as well. Here are some tips on how to use social media for recruitment:

Be Honest, Predictable, Courteous, and Sociable

Treat your activity online as if everything you do is seen by not only your friend and family, but potential employers as well. Chances are, recruiters and employers will check your various social media profiles to find out more about who you are and what kind of person you are. Whether or not you’re a good fit in the organization is often determined (at least during the recruiting stage) by how you interact with your friends and family online. Presenting a sociable attitude and being honest goes a long way here.

Avoid Sharing Unprofessional Details of Your Private Life (Drunken Party Photos)

Drunken party photos are everywhere on Facebook. You might notice that a few of your friends that post these photos frequently (and even have them as their profile pictures) might also be looking for work. Chances are, if a recruiter sees these photos or status updates indicating how hammered or hungover someone is, they’ll see that as a red flag of someone’s reliability and overall attitude. Keep these details to yourself or share them offline. Leave the clubbing lifestyle to the people that are paid thousand of dollars to make an appearance at clubs. Even they look bad doing it.

Be Positive – Frequent Negativity is a Sign of Someone Difficult to Work With

We’ve all heard a story or two about someone complaining about their boss on Facebook and their boss manages to find the update. This is never a good thing. In general, having a negative attitude or constantly posting about how sick (reporting every headache, sniffle, or sore throat) or mad you are about things raises red flags for recruiters. Keep the negativity to a minimum. If it’s something you wouldn’t say in a job interview, don’t say it online. You wouldn’t tell an interviewer how much you hated your last job and that your boss was a big jerk.

Demonstrate Passion for Your Field

Demonstrating passion for your field is a very good way to get a potential employer’s attention. For example, someone wanting a job as a tech writer for a news organization that frequently posts about the latest gadget and update to whatever software they use is an attractive plus during recruitment. It indicates passion, which is a vital part of success and productivity. If a potential employee seems passionate about something, they’re more likely to keep doing it long-term and put up with occasional setbacks.

Utilize Online Services Such as Linkedin for Getting Your Portfolio out There

LinkedIn is a great way to not only put your resume out there for more people to see, but connect with professionals in your field. Giving recommendations to past coworkers can also inspire them to do the same for you, if you deserve one. LinkedIn is one of the most frequented sites by professionals looking for someone in a specific field with proven experience. Chances are, if you’re trying to build a career and not just get a job to get your rent paid, a site like LinkedIn will get you further in the long-term than a local job search site.

Leave Good Recommendations for Others, They Will Likely Reciprocate

As noted before, leaving recommendations for previous coworkers and bosses on LinkedIn is a good way to inspire them to return the favor. It’s important to be honest in your recommendations, as your reputation in part depends on accurate representations of others. You never know when your recommendation could lead to that individual getting hired and some day finding a great opportunity for you in the future. On the other side, that person’s recommendation of you goes a long way towards inspiring a recruiter to give you a call over other potential talent in your field.

Cast a Wide Net, You Never Know Where Your Next Opportunity Will Present Itself

Take advantage of as many social mediums as you can. Build a reputation through connecting and engaging people on various platforms. The wider the net you cast, the more likely an opportunity will land within reach of you. Don’t put all of your efforts into a single platform, either. Some employers use different methods of finding talent than others, and you never know when that one tweet you sent out on Twitter catches the right person’s eye.

Volunteer to Do Something You Love to Do

Finding a job doing something you love to do is like winning the lottery. While it requires some amount of luck, you’ll never have a chance if you don’t take the steps required to make it happen. If your dream job is being a tech blogger, you can get some experience by volunteering guest posts to some established blogs out there. Chances are, they may have a staff of core writers they depend on to get quality content out on a regular basis, but welcome guest posts as well. Frequently offering guest posts can have the short-term benefits of getting your name out there and establishing a reputation. The quality and consistency of your work at this point can become the foundation of a solid resume later on. If your work is good enough, you may be offered a paid position down the road.

Don’t expect this to happen quickly. Chances are, you’ll be doing this during your spare time for quite a while. Use this as an opportunity to improve your writing skills and grow as a writer. Learn from your mistakes, and take actions to correct them. At the very least, you can add this volunteer experience to your resume.

Post Useful Comments in Various Industry-focused Blogs

Posting useful comments means more than just complimenting the writer on their work. It means contributing to the process and adding useful information other readers can use. Writers (especially in the areas of tech) are constantly struggling to keep up with the latest trends and technology while also fulfilling their productivity requirements. This means there may be a point or two left out of their article(s) that readers would benefit from seeing. This doesn’t mean constantly correcting the writer, either. Look to add to the conversation rather than one-up the site you’re commenting to.

The staff of this site may recognize your contributions and experience in the field and ask you to write something as well. This could be the first step towards employment if handled correctly. Recruiters for businesses in the industry may also be reading the blogs and checking the comments. You never know when something you say here could lead to them reaching out to you and asking for your opinion on something, as well.

Answer Questions Clearly in Facebook Groups, Tweets to Establish Expertise and Name Recognition

If you want to build a reputation as someone with a firm grasp on a subject, you can do so by offering your expertise and helping people (for free) on various social sites. Searching Twitter and various Facebook groups is a great way to find people that need a bit of help on something here or there. Offer your help to them in a clear and concise manor. Be friendly and courteous and remember that not everyone knows a lot about your subject of interest. Doing this is a great way to build a reputation and possibly find opportunities down the line. The person you’re answering a question for one day might not know much about televisions, but they may be a recruiter themselves for a company in the industry. On occasion, these groups may include recruiters in the industry that are searching for talent with positive attitudes and passion in their field.

Overall, social media is a powerful tool for recruiters and potential recruits. If used correctly, it can assist you in being able to establish a professional reputation, connect with industry leaders, and find the opportunity you’re looking for. Cast your net wide and keep working at it. You never know when or where the opportunity you’re looking for may present itself. Think of social media as not only a way to find employment, but also a way to positon yourself to be more employable.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How To Use Social Media For Recruitment

Social media has become one of the most widely used tools for recruiters and head hunters in recent years. Part of the reason for this is the look into someone’s personal life their social profile gives that you don’t normally find written in the pages of a resume or during a typical interview. Finding out if someone is a good fit is one of the hardest jobs for a recruiter, and leveraging the tools available through social media can make this process easier and more reliable. Here are some tips on how to use social media for recruiting:

Leverage Tools Provided by LinkedIn

Forget the dozens (and possibly hundreds) of recruiting sites out there. They’re intended to help recruiters find applicants, but they rarely give recruiters a detailed look at someone’s work history and who they associate with professionally. LinkedIn allows potential candidates to display their resume and open it up for previous coworkers and employers to give recommendations. This can be a very helpful tool for recruiters to gauge their effectiveness at their given positions and find out what kind of an employee the person is.

LinkedIn also offers a service for employers to find talent that is actively seeking a job. This can increase the amount of candidates to choose from, and give you a better chance at finding the right person. You can use these tools to let a wider group of talent know you’re hiring, and what for. A bigger pool of talent is always a good thing.

Share Experiences and Build a Reputation Through Conversation

Just because the job market is thin, doesn’t mean you’ll find the best person for the job by simply putting the opening out there. Part of recruitment is giving the talent a chance to evaluate your legitimacy and form an opinion about the company to which they are applying. If you’re recruiting for a small or new company, there is a good chance the person has never heard of it and will be hesitant to submit their application. Too many employers go under shortly before a hiring cycle, and the pool of talent is filled with cautious people.

Take the time to speak out in social communities and introduce yourself to them. The more of a reputation you build for yourself, the more likely someone will respond to you when you need them to. This also gives you a chance to connect with professionals and leaders in your market.

Take an Introductory Role in Conversations

A big point of recruiting is bringing person A and person B together. Take an introductory role in conversations and bring new people in. Creating an active conversation is a great way to draw more people in and maintain their interest. You never know when a simple introduction will lead to big opportunities in the future.

Join Communities of Prospects

If you’re a fisherman and you want to catch big fish, you will have much better luck fishing in a large body of water than a small pond. This analogy carries over to any position that requires you to seek something out, including recruiting. If you’re looking for a writer, it might be wise to join online groups of writers. By doing so, you can easily gauge the level of interest and passion various talent has for what they do. Look for the leaders of these communities and take the time to get to know them. Don’t hide the fact that you’re a recruiter, but don’t advertise yourself.

Vetting Candidates Through Their Communities

This is an area using social media for recruiting that has many Facebook users on their toes. The fact is, who someone associates with does say a lot about their overall character and personality. While many would argue that it’s unfair to judge someone by their frequent contacts on social networks, looking into their communities for a general idea of how a candidate would fit long-term is a frequent practice among recruiters.

Take a look at their profile and find out what their interests are. Do they seem like a well-rounded experienced individual that will do well in the position you’re trying to fill? If the majority of their photos and posts make them look like an alcoholic party animal, probably not. Everyone is entitled to a fun private life, but what someone puts on their public social media profile says a lot about how they would represent a company.

Record Engaging / Entertaining Video With a Targeted Message and Call-to-Action

Where written words can be easily overlooked, video is engaging and hard to ignore. Promote the position and invite talent to take part in an ongoing conversation.

If you’re seeking someone out to be a spokesperson or social media guru for your company, try making the recruiting contest more of a call-to-action encouraging individuals to submit their own video. The publicity from doing so coupled with the demonstrated ability on the part of the candidates is a win-win for your company. You may end up with the perfect person for the job and a giant boost in brand recognition.

Blog About Issues, Topics Related to Your Business

Blogs are a great way to create discussion and build community around a specific topic. If you’re recruiting for a recording studio that needs a new sound engineer, blog about some of the challenges of sound engineering and promote the post through your social media channels. People that respond will likely be professionals in the same industry, and may be searching for new opportunities within that space. At the very least, you’ve made connections with individuals that have a proven interest in the field and may present opportunity in the future.

Watch for What Prospective Hires are Getting as Bonuses

In competitive markets, hiring bonuses are often offered to talent in order to secure them in a role for a set period of time. The expense of recruiting is considerable, and having to find new talent a few months after hiring on someone isn’t something any employer wants to go through. For this reason the incentive of a hiring bonus is put into play.

Keep an eye on other recruiters in your field and find out what they’re offering prospects as a hiring bonus. Because this is typically advertised on their social media sites, finding this information can be as easy as navigating over to search.twitter.com or checking out their Facebook pages.

Survey Talent’s Social Media Stream

This is a step typically reserved for specific roles, but it can be an affective way to quickly determine whether or not someone is a good fit for your company. If they’re being hired for a public role within the company, it’s usually a good idea to find out what their connections are saying about them. Signs of unreliability, irritability, and other red flags can appear here.

Like the previous point about vetting someone through their communities, taking a look at what isn’t on paper or said during an interview is one of the greatest tools made available to recruiters through this medium. What someone’s community says about them can often reflect how their future coworkers will feel.

Post and Share Games Designed to Surface Talented Individuals

Are you looking for writers? Have a fun writing contests people can take part in to demonstrate their writing skills. This could go for artists and storytellers as well. You could find a developer to put together a game that challenges the skills of players in certain areas necessary in your field. Trivia challenges, math games, and others are great ways to find not only engage the community and offer something entertaining for them to take part in, but help you discover new talent.

Recruiting is a difficult job, and nothing is harder than finding the right person to fill challenging roles that fit your company’s environment, as well as your customer’s. Thanks to some of the tools made available through social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, this process is becoming easier and more refined.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How To Use Social Media For Recruiting

Social media and their associated sites can be great platforms for generating sales. Depending on your product, this new business medium may serve well as your primary market resource in terms of finding potential buyers and bringing them the information they need to make their decision to purchase. Here are some tips on how to use social media for sales:

Actively Participate in the Discussion

Rushing in and telling someone that buying your product or service will solve all their problems is a common and ineffective tactic used by agencies and individuals that don’t have a firm grasp on the social atmosphere they’re selling to.

Instead of using this rush tactic, take time out and participate in the community. Find out who your potential buyers are and how your product or service really can help improve their current situation. Knowing this will greatly improve your chances of making the sale.

Share your insight from time to time and give people a reason to trust that you know what you’re talking about. I hear pitches from people all the time that jump to the conclusion that they know exactly what can help me and my business when they haven’t even taken the time to get to know what I do. If you take this extra step, you can leverage a sale much easier.

Seek Out and Respond to Problems

Any product or service worth buying has value in solving a particular problem someone has. Boredom, financial well-being, a dirty house, bad IT infrastructure, and any number of problems exist between members of online communities. By reaching out and offering (at no charge) a solution to smaller problems members of the community express, you can build the trust you need to convince them to go with your larger, and potentially more expensive solution.

It’s important when doing this not to violate a code of ethics. Creating a problem, badmouthing your competition, or just plain being seedy in your business practices is never excusable and will crush any chance you have of being successful in the long-term. The goal here is to be a positive part of any online community, and a major component of that is upholding ethical practices.

Find Prospects in Communities

Potential prospects are everywhere, and social mediums give you the opportunity to identify and connect with them. Use tools such as search.Twitter.com to identify potential prospects and begin building a relationship with them using the previous steps.

Create Content in Communities as a Promotion for Your Product

Creating useful content and making it available to online communities is a very good way to promote a product or service. Useful blog posts (such as this one), helpful videos, and quick how-to guides are generally very well received by a community, especially when the content addresses a common interest.

Giving out a sample of a larger product is a proven method of promotion with a long history of success across a wide range of products and services.

Leverage Word of Mouth Advertising

Has someone blogged positively about your product? Share that post through your social channels and express appreciation for the positive write-up. A quick tweet thanking someone for a positive tweet of their own goes a long way towards showing that you are keeping an active interest in what’s being said in relation to your product as well as encouraging others to speak up and give their feedback, be it positive or negative.

Buy Targeted Campaigns on Popular Platforms

Targeted advertising campaigns are available from several major social networking sites. The right campaign can generate interest and promote brand recognition. Facebook is currently the largest and most well-known sites capable of providing targeted campaigns to businesses and individuals with something to promote. Google+ will no doubt join in soon as this network gets off the ground. After all, that’s where Google gets the majority of its income.

Targeted campaigns on social media works differently than traditional advertising. If you buy space on a billboard in a major city, your brand and basic message may be seen by a lot of people, but only a fraction of them will be interested in what you’re selling. Of them, only a fraction (roughly 5-10%) of those that are interested will take steps to check out what you’re selling. Imagine being able to target only specific individuals that have demonstrated interest in the area your product or service can help with. This allows you to concentrate your financial resources in the most effective way possible, and by coupling it with the influence inherent in social media platforms, you stand a much better chance of seeing a return on your investment.

Seed Product or Service Review Copies to Leaders

Sending out review units to key influencers is a great way to get the word out about your product. By doing so, you’re killing two birds with one stone. Not only are you getting more links out there on the web from any written and/or video reviews, but you’re also advertising indirectly to their entire community. If you want to take an extra step, allow them to give away the review unit to their community. This will draw in even more potential customers and seed a genuine want and desire for your product.

Offer Value-Add on a Purchase if the Person Reshares Trackable Link(s)

Adding an extra to someone’s purchase based on an activity they take in the social realm is cheap and effective advertising. They’re willing to share a purchase decision they’ve made with a circle of people that has some noted interest in their opinion. This can be enough to influence some of them to take a look at the product for themselves and gauge whether or not it is something they would be interested in. The value-add could be anything from an extra component to a discount. In the case of subscription services, extra time is often offered in exchange for referrals.

Build Shareable Content with Your Brand Indelibly Linked

Infographics are incredibly popular right now. They typically express a set of information in a way that is easy to understand and impresses the viewer with the scale of the subject presented. The best thing about them is how easy they are to pass around social networks and blogs. Add your logo or name somewhere in the graphic that links it to the content, but don’t go overboard. This can not only help people identify a problem that needs solving, but demonstrate how your product can help them.

Humorous content is also extremely shareable. A photo or video that makes people laugh is more likely to get shared than messages that carry no real emotional involvement whatsoever. Some of the most effective ads out there are either funny or scary.

Don’t be too eager to protect it. Derivatives and parodies are a great way to continue the momentum the original piece created and accelerate brand recognition.

A YouTube Video Goes a Long Way for the Sales Process

YouTube is a powerful platform for getting the message out about your brand or product. In addition, YouTube videos can be embedded on sites and social networks all over the Internet. The right video at the right time can become a widespread hit and go “viral” as long as you make it freely available for people to share. As with other content intended to spread the word about your product, allow the community to create parody and share the video in their own way. Nothing kills an advertising meme faster than overzealous copyright claims on advertisements.

Social media is a great platform for sales. Knowing your community and how your product can help them is a big part of any successful sales campaign made through social spaces. In the end, the less like a car salesman you are, the more likely people will respond positively to what you have to say.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How to Use Social Media for Sales

Advertising and marketing go hand-in-hand while being two very different areas of business. While marketing works to position the company for success, advertising is done with the goal in mind of getting the brand out there and promoting specific announcements, products, or services. Social media can be effectively used for advertising, and has been in the past to some success. Unfortunately, many companies try to use social media as a single-purpose tool instead of seeing the whole picture. Here are some tips on how to use social media for advertising:

Don’t Advertise Directly

This seems like a complete counter to what many advertising executives have grown to know for decades. Explaining social media to someone that has been in advertising for a long time can be a difficult process, but the facts are undeniable.

Try to position your advertisement in a way that reflects the community you’re trying to grab. For example, several major car companies were quick to jump on board Empire Avenue, a virtual social stock market game. They could have told everyone about their new vehicles and how they could get you from point A to point B, but they didn’t. Instead, they invested in members of the community and carried on a conversation about the people they were speaking to, not their products. By doing so, each of these companies achieved an advertising value worth its weight in gold as each and every person they interacted with was left with a new appreciation for the brand.

People expect TV commercials to tell them about how great something is, or position it in a way that makes it look cool. Social media is a community and a direct ad is akin to a person with a giant sign screaming at the top of their lungs that you should try a product. Sometimes, it’s what you don’t say that matters most.

Create Something Entertaining

One of the most successful advertising campaigns in history came in the form of a man in a towel, standing in his bathroom answering questions in a humorous way. The Old Spice commercials were a hit on TV for their entertainment value and unique style of humor, but the real splash came when they took the campaign to the social space and started making videos on the fly to respond to questions and comments from their community. Their videos on YouTube achieved viral attention almost instantly, and what started as a good television campaign ended as a great social media campaign.

As to the previous point made about direct advertising, not one of the social media ads directly promoted their products. In fact, he hardly mentioned the brand name at all. People know what brand your message represents in social media by the user/page name and the discussion around them.

Build on What Works

If you find something that appears to be creating buzz, build on it. Generating positive community response is one of the best ways to kick off or accelerate a campaign. Be careful not to overdo it, though as people tend to recognize when the gimmick has past its prime faster than you may think. In cases of viral YouTube videos, sequels or attempted reconstructions of the magic often fall flat and fail miserably.

If something you say or do generates a lot of attention, focus on what made that happen and work from there rather than repeating the same thing exactly the same way over and over again.

Be Genuine

Being genuine with your message is essential and sits at the core of any successful campaign. Don’t bother with covering up problems or smoothing over everything with a glossy finish. You’re a company that has something to sell, and they know that. Put that aside for a moment and forget everything you know about advertising to this point.

If you’re not genuine in your message, no one will be interested in hearing it. Saying you’re the best and everyone needs your product is fine when you’re on television or a billboard, but in the realm of social media it’s connections with the community that matter more than any slogan or motto ever will. Connect with them, show concern for their problems when they express them and take actions to resolve them, publicly.

Be Quick

Passing everything through a legal team takes time, and causes you to lose the effectiveness of the message. If a point is raised in your community and you don’t address it right away, you’ve already dropped the ball. Waiting sometimes two weeks for a team of layers to approve everything you say and do is like tying your feet together when you’re trying to run a marathon. Don’t be left behind.

For that matter, try not to let anything get past you if at all possible. Social media is easier to scale than you realize and even large companies are beginning to find that out. No, you can’t respond to each and every person that asks you a question on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. You can make an effort to address enough of them to show you care about what they have to say. Just because you may not be able to reach all of them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Be Open

Being open and being genuine go hand-in-hand. If someone relays a negative experience with your brand, product, or service, address it publicly and make an honest attempt to resolve the issue. Sometimes, just saying your sorry is enough to change their opinion and settle what might otherwise be a public relations nightmare while it’s still small. This goes along with being quick, as well.

You might even need to take that extra step to provide customer satisfaction and ask them for a second chance, on the house. Too often companies take the road of not rewarding people for giving them a bad name. Taking the high road and asking for a second chance gives the impression that your company really cares and is willing to go that extra mile to make sure their customers are happy. Believe me, this speaks volumes about a company’s character and has a much greater impact in the long-term than yet another post about how great your product is.

Interact with the Audience

If any of the previous points didn’t drive in the importance of interaction, let me be absolutely clear on this. Interacting with people, no matter who they are, is key to a successful social media campaign. Social networks aren’t supposed to be one-way megaphones that allow you to shout slogans at a large number of people. If you want to spread your message through social media, do it by interacting with people in your community. After all, that’s what you’re building here.

Television isn’t a community. Audience members may yell at their screens from time to time but they don’t expect a response. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and other social networks are intended to give everyone a voice about practically everything. If someone spends enough thought and energy into mentioning your brand or reaching out to you, give them the courtesy of a response. As an individual, I don’t have any personal relationship with any brands I see on television. I do, however, form a bond with companies and individuals I interact with online.

Utilize All of Your Available Tools

If there is one thing social media has brought to the table, it’s a powerful set of tools that can help you gauge your effectiveness and extend your reach. For example, Ping.fm is a great way to make updates to multiple networks at once. URL shortening sites like Bit.ly allow you to not only cram a long url into a small space, but see detailed statistics on how many people are responding to the link, where they’re from, and what they’re saying about it.

Facebook has fan pages available so you can create a centralized hub for your brand and connect more directly with people interested in hearing more while breaking free of that 5,000 friend barrier present on normal profiles.

If a new network pops up, join it quickly and make an impact while the space is fresh. Being an early adopter has its advantages as you are capable of becoming easily recognized and better positioned as a small pool of people grows in to a mature social network.

Empower Your Community to be Your Evangelists

Empowering your community members is one of the best ways to gain what essentially counts as free advertising. Sometimes people just enjoy a particular product or service and want to tell their friends about it. Don’t stop them from doing so, and give them the platform to let their voice be heard.

If someone has something to say about your product or service on Twitter, retweet it and thank them for their feedback. You may even want to keep them in mind for a future YouTube campaign or offer them a chance to test an upcoming product or service before it’s released to the general public. If you think their positive feedback is handy now, wait until you launch the next big thing and they’ve got the chance to show it to the world.

Recognize your potential evangelists and make sure they know you’re appreciative of their efforts.

Learn What Your Customers Want

At to points made previously, social media isn’t a one-way conversation. Take time to listen to your customers and make sure their feedback is received. Sometimes, the best ideas come from your community. Think of a social network as a kind of focus group with a much broader range of experience and interests. Bouncing ideas to your community is a good way to let them know their opinion matters and save your research team a lot of time and expense trying to determine what people want. In many cases, your customers will be more than happy to lend their honest opinions, as long as you’re willing to hear them.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How To Use Social Media For Advertising

Being in business usually means having to deal with frequent expenses. You’ve got to deal with taxes, payroll, office fees, and advertising among countless other expected and unexpected expenses. Thankfully, social media has provided a platform to help fulfill several otherwise costly needs of doing business. In addition, a proper social media policy can open your business up to virtually endless opportunity as you build lasting relationships with complementary brands and your customers.

Give Your Employees a Voice

Giving your employees the opportunity to make an impact through social media has a number of advantages. While many businesses still cling to the idea that any and all public knowledge of the company should be managed by a select few trained public relations professionals, a growing number of them are beginning to grasp the concept that social media is a terrific tool for giving your business a more genuine image. Allowing your employees (at least some of them) the ability to identify themselves with your brand gives them the power to act as spokespeople for your company. For them, it creates a shared interest in your brand’s success as their reputation becomes tied with how they handle inquiries.

Build a Reputation and Watch for Problems You Can Openly Solve

In addition to giving you a more genuine image, social media has the potential of allowing you the chance to build a reputation in your industry. One great way to make this happen is by taking advantage of powerful tools like search.Twitter.com to identify problems and dispense advice related to your field.

When dispensing advice, don’t push your brand on them. Chances are, they will take note of your having come to their aid and keep you in mind when their friends mention a similar issue. In addition, your combined follower base will likely take note of the helpful gesture and seek out your services in the future.

Give Your Customers a Voice

Social media is a two-way street. While you’re reaching out and connecting with customers, don’t be surprised when a few of them return the favor. Some of them will be happy, and others will have issues that need to be addressed. Don’t worry; this can be a very good thing as it allows you to solve someone’s problem in a public realm where others can see that, while your company isn’t perfect, it cares enough to keep an eye out for people having issues.

For example, let’s say you run a bakery and someone tweets out that you have the worst doughnuts in town. Their friends have taken note of their complaint and will likely avoid your business and possibly continue to spread the negative feedback even further. If you’re keeping an eye out for these things, you can use it as an opportunity to go out of your way to change your reputation with that customer and their friends. Apologize for the bad experience and offer a solution. Ask them, and a couple of their friends, to stop by the shop and give you another chance to make a positive lasting impression. Chances are, the very action of taking on your doubters head-on will turn a few heads. If they take you up on the offer, give them the service and care you would give a potential investor. Should you manage to change their minds, they’re more likely to tell their friends the story about how your bakery went out of its way to put an otherwise negative experience right.

Find Out What Your Competition is Doing

The beauty of social media is that you can not only connect with your audience, but take a look at your competition as well. This doesn’t mean you should start pinging your competitors’ followers. Take note of what they’re doing and what works for them. More important, keep an eye out for what doesn’t work so you can make sure not to repeat the mistakes yourself.

Scout for Future Talent

As your business expands, you are likely going to be on the lookout for talented individuals to fill gaps in your staff. The beauty about a site such as LinkedIn is that it connects you with potential employees with open resumes and recommendations from coworkers and employers alike. If someone in your community (yes, you should be building a community through social media) shows potential and interest in your brand and/or field, they might end up being a good fit down the road.

Observe Trends

Like keeping an eye on your competition, trends are an important thing to follow. Not only should you be observing trends in your field, but in the social media realm as well. Taking advantage of certain trends could help you become more visible to potential clients. This goes for any aspect of your business from your core topic to marketing and economical trends. Knowing where things are heading is a good way to position yourself for success down the road.

For example, a new social network is often met with a burst of active communication between early adopters. Frequently, a new brand or individual can flourish based on being somewhere early enough to grab the reigns as a new network emerges. Google+ is currently the hot new thing in town and anyone with a history on Twitter or Facebook would likely tell you that engagement through Google+ is incredibly high as people are experiencing the newness of it and reconnecting with friends, family, and brands that they drifted away from as their interest in the previous site dwindled.

Further Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is one of the most powerful steps toward building your business. For companies that have the longevity and marketing revenue to plaster their logo on everything with a surface, this is much easier. Social media gives you the ability to get your name out there by providing a useful service to the online community. In a sense, your success rests on not only how you promote your name, but how you maintain and build a community around it.

A security company that specializes in home surveillance and alarm systems may not appear to be a great fit for social media on the surface. However, it may find some success in creating conversation around topics relating to security in general. If you create an environment friendly to enthusiasts and industry professionals, they may add to the conversation, which leads to connections between community members and your brand. As they go about their daily lives, your brand will be fresh in their minds should they come across someone who mentions having experienced a break-in or general need for additional home security. Brand recognition doesn’t mean you have to be the biggest thing on the Web. It means that you need to bring enough to the table in terms of conversation and service to stay fresh in the minds of those who come across your community.

Share Offers and Value-Adds

Everyone loves a deal, as the success of sites like Groupon and LivingSocial certainly proves. Providing a value-add to members of your online community can be a great incentive to keeping them interested in what you have to say. Even though someone may not take you up on the initial deal you offer, that doesn’t mean they won’t keep you in mind (and keep following you) in case they do need something done later on.

For example, preventative maintenance on home appliances isn’t something that people do more than once or twice a year. Offering a special discount to members of your online community (Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc.) gets the word out that being a member of this group gives them an advantage over anyone else. That perceived exclusivity, whether they need your services at that exact moment or not, can be enough to convince them to give your company a follow and keep them in mind for the future.

Network with Complementary Businesses

By networking with complementary businesses, you open yourself up to potential deals that can have very positive lasting impact on your bottom line. By actively participating in their communities and interacting with them, you are making it much easier for a group of people who are already interested in what you’re offering to find you.

For example, a video production house would do well to network with a DVD distributor. By doing so, anyone interested in making an independent film and using the services of a DVD distributor has more potential of discovering and utilizing the services of that particular video production company. In addition, it increases the potential for combined package deals that work out well for the businesses thanks to an increase in revenue and the customers looking to lower their overall production costs.

There is no reason for a business to overlook the benefits of properly utilizing the free tools offered by social media. Companies both small and large can extend their reach to an active audience without having to spend the kind of money traditionally associated with advertising. The members of communities you build can become your biggest advocates and evangelists as their friends ask them for suggestions.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How To Use Social Media For Business

Social media and marketing are two subjects so frequently paired that some might consider it a match made in heaven. Whether users of these platforms realize it or not, they’re participating in marketing at some level whether they’re inviting friends to parties or spreading the word about how great their newest gadget is. The idea of using Social media for business marketing has been embraced by many forward-thinking companies, and those that have done this correctly have reaped significant reward. While the science behind marketing itself has been fairly sound for some time, knowing how to use social media for marketing means being in a state of constant adaption. Here are some tips on using social media for marketing:

Identify and Engage Influencers

Social media is about conversation and engagement. Identifying and engaging influencers in the social media realm is essential for getting your brand out there. Finding the people within a social network that have the most active community is akin to locating the most visibile billboard, most popular radio station, or best local news channel in a large city. While their audience numbers may or may not equal to the population of a city, you can bet that enough of their followers are actively participating in conversation to make their recommendation extremely valuable.

If you’ve identified a potential influencer, reach out to them and let them know why they might be interested in something you’re doing. If you are interested in marketing a particular product, offer to send them a review and/or free unit so they can see for themselves how it works. If they frequently pass on clever ads or other information, make sure they know what’s going on so they can choose whether or not to pass it on to their audience.

Create Conversation

Within your own page, create a conversation to bring people in and give you a better understanding of what they are looking for in a product and/or service. These conversations don’t have to come from a promotional position, and many times they don’t even have to have anything to do with your product. Cheesy marketing and single-subject conversation works in 30-60 second increments, but the goal for your social media presence should be to attract and keep the attention of your potential customers. This may involve straying from your primary focus from time to time and asking people how their day is going without plugging your product as the solution to every problem they relay. On the other side, it’s a good idea to bring up subjects related to your brand from time to time to increase the conversation around the subject that your business relates to. If someone relays a problem or difficulty that you really can solve, that’s when you can offer your services to help.

When considering how to use social media for marketing, too many companies miss the point. Social media isn’t about one-way communication so popular in traditional marketing. It isn’t about just spreading the message. That’s not what modern consumers are responding to. Social media gives you the tools to really connect and create conversation. As mentioned before, conversation is a powerful tool that can not only draw new people in as they see their friends joining the topic, but keep them interested as they continue the discussion and look for future topics on your page.

Utilize Helpful Tools to Spread Your Message Easily

There are many useful tools out there to help you get your message out without a lot of actual fuss needed on the part of you or your staff. If your company has an official blog, you can utilize tools like dlvr.it to take your RSS feeds and bring them to various social networks automatically. The downside of this kind of service is that it doesn’t create conversation by itself. Titles of articles and posts are usually made with search engines and news organizations in mind. You can utilize a service such as CoTweet, which allows you to give your team access to Twitter and schedule tweets ahead of time without actually giving them the main login and password. Ping.fm, is also a great service that allows you to post to multiple social sites at the same time, cutting down the need to copy and paste each update multiple times. Through a service like this, you can ask questions of your community and better position the tease to draw people in. The impact of this far exceeds that of canned article titles followed by links.

Watch What Others are Doing – and See How Their Audience Responds

It’s important to pay attention to what others are doing in the world of social media as well. Keep an eye on what other brands are doing and make a note of what works, and what doesn’t. If a particular action or trend seems to be taking off, it is generally a good idea to consider how this can work to your brand’s advantage. For example, Old Spice ran a campaign where they took questions from their social network audience and created on-the-spot videos that provided funny answers to these questions. Practically none of these videos had mention of the product or brand in question, but through this campaign they gained a significant amount of brand recognition as people recognized the character from the commercials and searched for more content.

Do Something New

This doesn’t mean you should copy what others are doing. It’s important to do something new and unique to your brand. Chances are, any attempts at copying that marketing campaign would fall short and stand out as a failure as users identify a copycat when they see it. The campaigns that go “viral” and generate the most attention in social media circles are ones that bring something new to the table, either in terms of concept or execution.

Scout for Future Joint Venture Opportunities

Social media can also be a great way to find opportunity for future join ventures. If your company is focused on making custom coffee cups, keeping an eye out for coffee makers that have an active social community can result in a future combined campaign that pairs your products together and leverages your combined audience. This could also lead to a sustained increase in reach for your brand after the join venture has concluded.

Network with Like-Minded Individuals

Also to this point, networking with like-minded individuals can result in conversation that brings two communities together. If you’re marketing a personality or consultancy, connecting and engaging with other individuals in your field can only help get your name out there and increase your overall credibility.

Reshare What Your Target Audience Creates or Finds

If someone in your community posts something interesting on their page, even if it doesn’t relate directly or indirectly to your particular subject, you may want to consider sharing it with your audience. By sharing someone’s post (Google+) or retweeting (Twitter), you are giving them a chance to shine which sends the message that you are paying attention and have an active interest in what your community members have to say. In addition, people tend to share and reshare interesting content. The fact that you helped make a particular subject grow will not be lost on your potential followers as they see your network ID as the source of the share.

Seed Your Own Unique Ideas to Generate Attention

Don’t be afraid to send out your own unique ideas and concepts for the purpose of allowing your community to add their take on it. In many ways, social media can serve as a very large free focus group that can help you gauge the interest in potential future projects. Too many opportunities are missed by not giving enough people the chance to give their take on an idea prior to it coming to life.

Social media is an excellent marketing platform for companies and individuals that take the time to learn how it works. What was once a steadfast and scientific understanding of marketing is now a constantly evolving conversation that gives your customers and audience the opportunity to take part in a two-way conversation with you and connect on a level they couldn’t before.

This post is part of a series of social media “How To” articles. Links to other parts of this series are below:
How to Use Social Media for Business
How to Use Social Media for Marketing
How to Use Social Media for Advertising
How to Use Social Media for Sales
How to Use Social Media for Recruiting
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment
How to Use Social Media for Learning
How to Use Social Media for Job Search
How to Use Social Media for Health and Wellness
How to Use Social Media for Businesses

How To Use Social Media For Marketing

Recently, Google+ has been the topic of conversation – ya know, part of that same conversation people have claimed was on Twitter (yet, impossible to follow due to Twitter not having a UX to support conversations).

I’ve been having a blast with my Plus profile – interspersing fun and functional, day in and day out. It’s insanely addictive, reminiscent of so many other social platforms in their nascent stages. We’ve been posting a flurry of helpful Google+ articles on LockerGnome over the past week or so. Why? Because people are looking for help.

My friend Chris Brogan is taking flak for wanting to teach people how to effectively use Google Plus. The arguments seem to be of one of two types: (1) It’s too early, don’t waste your money on something that could change, or the traditional blogger argument that (2) Information should be free, and Chris is a “douchebag” for charging anything for what could be given for free.

Apparently, his two-hour webinar is $47. You probably spend more on a large popcorn at a 3D movie with a date than you would on this two-hour discussion, so it’s not that a lack of money would be an issue. When you consider the lost opportunity of not being on the platform early, getting a foothold in the community could be huge if this thing is as big as everyone thinks it will be. And if Google+ flops, it would have been $47 spent – the cost of treating your family to see “Cars 2″ in theaters today (which may prove to be an even bigger waste of two hours and money).

As to the charging for his intelligence? Of course he is going to charge! If you give stuff away for free, people don’t put ANY value on it. Information is power, and the power doesn’t come cheap. If you aren’t wanting to invest in yourself or your business by leveraging someone else’s known experience, then this isn’t the seminar for you. If so, quit raining on everyone else’s parade.

And when people look for help, you can provide it – or not. You can even charge for that help – or not. And it’s the former decision, not the latter, which has seemingly given rise to a situation. Chris Brogan is under attack for planning a paid webinar around his intelligence – and his gathered intelligence, at this stage, is likely no more deep than any other Google+ user.

The platform is too new to understand it completely – but that doesn’t mean that you should wait before you NEED to begin to understand its current promise and potential. Don’t you wish you had been in early on Twitter so that you could have been on the Suggested Lists? And so that you would have built community there when the followers were high quality and the spam ratio was low?

Either way, Chris is under attack by extremely smart people who make money online by other means. This is where I’m a bit lost. What right do I have, as anybody, to tell someone what they can and cannot do with their time? What right do I have, as a person who needs to make money SOME way to pay the bills, to tell someone else how much their own time and intelligence are worth?

It’s just… rude.

I faced this type of insolence every single year I was involved in the production of the Gnomedex conference. Despite bending over backwards to create a VIP-level event for a peanut-butter price point, I had a slew of people tell me that I was doing it wrong. And Chris Brogan, by the way, was a Gnomedex attendee long before he became the person people know him as today – supportive, intelligent, and savvy.

My business organized a meetup a few weeks back with several dozen registrants, both free and paid. Interesting statistic: over 90% of the people who didn’t pay anything for a ticket didn’t bother to show up, whereas 100% of the people who purchased a pass actually attended. It was only ~$20, largely to cover their parking and a drinking ticket – there was no real profit made, and (honestly) LockerGnome probably lost money on the meetup due to the time we spent on putting it together. Thus marked the last time I ever do anything for people for free. This week’s meetup is about Google+ in Seattle (of all things).

Put up, or shut up.

If you don’t think your time is worth anything, that’s fine – it’s your time. But you can’t sit there and claim that someone else’s time is worth nothing – especially when that someone has gone to great lengths to share so much intelligence *without* charging for it!

I probably know just about as much about Google+ at this point as anybody does, but that doesn’t mean that EVERYBODY understands why this is likely to become increasingly relevant. Still, I have half a mind to pay for Chris’s webinar because I support what he’s doing for people who don’t quite understand

NEWS FLASH: Companies make an obscene amount of money by doing what you do for your personal account for free. Like, to the tune of several THOUSAND dollars to manage a Twitter and Facebook account. I’m not kidding. I’m not even close to kidding. And here’s the thing: those businesses are NOT overpaying for such services.

Here’s the thing: Chris isn’t promising an all-out guide to would-be or active Google+ users. He’s offering guidance. There’s a gigantic difference.

I wound up “plussing” what was going to be a longer piece on my Google+ profile a few minutes back, but decided to keep the update succinct: “Is it because Google+ is ‘too young,’ or because people believe that just because THEY get social media without paying for it that everybody should get social media without paying for it?”

A few notable comments have come from this…

Tim Czerwinski:

I don’t see anything wrong with what he is doing. He doesn’t appear to be misleading anyone about the product he is selling. He does not appear to be making unsupportable claims. This is in line with what he does for a living. If the knowledge he is selling is worth the price, people will pursue it. if not, it will go away. that is what markets are for. There is a huge industry built around facebook. Why would Google+ be different?

Ravarius Castor:

Well I definitely think it’s a little foolish to offer ‘expert’ device about a service that isnt’t even close to fully realized, but as already said as well I think this is a case of supply and demand. He feels he can supply guidance worth paying for, and it’s credibility and value falls on the consumers and their demand for what he is offering.

Tim Goebel:

If Mr. Brogan offers a service that others find worth exchanging their money with him to receive, I have no idea why that would be of interest to anyone else? No one is forced to do business with him, as far as I understand the situation, and if his clients feel that they receive value for their money, what can anyone outside of the transaction possibly be objecting to?

Dunno. I’m largely in the camp of “Let Chris Do What Chris Wants to Do” – which intersects with the “Do What You Want to Do but Don’t Piss in Someone’s Cheerios” camp. I’m not here to claim that what Chris has to share is anything more than Chris’s insights on Google’s new social network, but… hey, how much is two hours of your time worth? If it’s nowhere near $47, maybe you should spend less time bitching and more time moving your hourly rate north.

Is Charging for Information Right or Wrong?

Do you have a decent microphone and a unique voice? Have you considered possibly giving voiceover work a try? There are many ways to make money with your voice online, and most of them don’t even require you to leave your home at all.

First, this isn’t a good idea for everyone. It is harder than it looks to master the vocal tone required to grab the interest of the audience and accomplish whatever it is your voice is needed to accomplish. Voiceover actors rarely make big bucks (though they certainly can) doing contract work here and there. If you’re dedicated, and your voice has a quality that casting agents are looking for – you may be able to make money on the side as a voiceover actor (or actress).

You also need to invest in some decent recording equipment. A standard USB microphone might not be enough to capture the rich tones and create a true representation of your natural voice. The WAV files you send in need to be as clear as possible of any background noise or distortion cheaper setups can create. A prosumer or professional-grade condenser microphone, USB or FireWire interface, and sometimes a mixer should be considered to allow you to capture rich, vibrant sounds.

Alright, so you’ve got your equipment in place and you’re ready to start getting jobs? Well, you could find a talent manager and pay them to manage your career (maybe getting you a job, or maybe not). You could also start working now and build up your resume through a few methods online.

oDesk
oDesk is a service offered online to help people find freelance workers in a hurry to fill certain business needs. Companies or individuals needing help with a website, businesses looking for extra members of a remote development team, data entry services, content-driven sites, and agencies looking for voice talent regularly use oDesk to find the right person for the job, quickly. You can post your resume, portfolio, and link to some samples of your voice as you apply for various positions posted on the site. Once hired, your time and/or fees are all paid through oDesk which, in turn, pays you. This service is a quick way to find work, but it does have its downsides. For one, you aren’t likely to find long-term jobs here. This is primarily a site that helps companies find people to work on specific tasks for short periods of time. If you happen across the right employer, you may have further opportunities, but that isn’t the norm.

Classifieds
Another way to find voiceover work online is through a more traditional online classified system such as Craigslist. This can be a great way to find local employers and increase your chances of finding long-term employment. Radio stations, advertising agencies, and other media-related companies are often looking for voiceover talent.

Volunteer
Do you know of a podcast or show that could use some voiceover work for a frequent segment? Voiceover actors and jingle writers often submit free content to high-profile podcasts on the off chance that they might start using the contributed work. This is one way to build your portfolio without having to go through the frustrating process of tireless interviews and low-profile jobs. This shouldn’t be a primary strategy, but it could help you on your way to something great. Believe it or not, some of the best-known podcasts on the web are using jingles and voiceovers they picked up from emerging artists using this very strategy. Who knows, they may pay you to for more content down the line themselves.

How to Make Money with Your Voice Online

About a week ago, I released a video in which I explained my ongoing issues with Best Buy. Since then, Best Buy has contacted me regarding the steps they’ve taken to correct the error regarding the coupon I was unable to have honored at the time I purchased a cable modem. Brandon, a member of the LockerGnome team, has had a very different experience at his local Best Buy. In a recent video, he explained some of the advantages of brick and mortar stores like Best Buy. While my perception of one store or another may differ from the next person, he did make some solid points.

I love to shop online. The majority of the things I purchase come through Amazon or another online retailer for a multitude of reasons. There are, however, some clear advantages to buying from brick and mortar stores.

First and foremost is the concept of instant gratification. I know when I walk in to a physical store that I will likely be able to walk out with the product I came to purchase. This is a huge plus when you need something at a moment’s notice (like a cable modem) and you can’t wait for an item to be shipped to you.

Even with today’s technology and efficient shipping process, packages arrived damage more often than I would like. This is a problem that exists across the board no matter which company you decide to go with. At the shipping facility, boxes can sometimes create a jam in the conveyer which results in a cascade of events that can result in damaged goods. It happens, and can be a real disappointment when the package arrives. A retail store (the good ones, at least) typically deals with damaged goods before the products hit the shelves.

After purchase support is generally much better at brick and mortar stores than if you go with something online. I can usually take a malfunctioning product in and get a replacement on the spot without having to deal with the nightmare of shipping something back and maybe getting a working product in return. Some stores offer free returns and give you your money back if you’re dissatisfied with a product they sell. This is less common in online retail due to the costs involved with shipping and restocking to their warehouses.

When you shop at a local retail store, you have the advantage of being able to speak with someone that might be able to point you in the right direction. You may have a vague idea of what it is you’re looking for, and a knowledgeable associate should be able to find something to meet your needs. On several occasions, I’ve walked in to a store and asked for something they don’t have. I’ve been caught off guard a few times by an associate that let’s me know where I can find what I’m looking for, even if it is at a competitor’s store. This is a level of service that can keep people going back again and again.

It’s hard to ignore the many advantages to shopping online. Merchandise is often cheaper and you can browse around for the best price much faster than you could by visiting physical locations. Some online stores offer free shipping on their products. Still, brick and mortar stores have their place and a good one should definitely be supported.

The Advantages of Brick and Mortar Stores

Kevoc, a member of the LockerGnome community, has a knack for recording me during times when the words just don’t want to come out quite the way I expect them to. He seems to know just the right time to capture these little gems that don’t *always* appear on the YouTube channel. Thankfully, he’s compiled another collection of bloopers and funny situations that happen even when we’re not intending to record a video.

It’s actions like these from the viewers, readers, and members of LockerGnome that remind me why community is important. Some time ago, I wrote a post about community building. This post focused on the importance of building a community and creating a rallying point where people of similar interests can come together.

In a community setting, like the one we have here at LockerGnome, everything is on the table. A live stream is broadcast 24/7 out of my home office, giving you a very real glimpse in to what it is that makes the YouTube channel, web sites, social connections, and various other projects tick. There is a chat room going around the clock and the discussions that take place there appear on the live stream. In a sense, our community IS the driving force behind much of what we do.

YouTube comments, feedback left on various blog posts, ongoing conversations in various social networks, and email sent in has a direct impact on what we do and how we do it. Because suggestions were made and a general consensus asked for more content in HD, I put the purchase in (with the community helping to decide what was bought) for a system that helps make HD video recording easy enough to be feasible.

I believe that the next era of business won’t be defined by marketing departments or PR firms, but by how well corporations and small business alike interact with their audience. Do they listen and respond to criticism? Are they quick to act when something needs to be fixed? Do they really give their community the feeling that they are appreciated? Those will, in all likelihood, be the questions that define a business as we move forward in this socially connected and technology driven world.

Why Community is Important

The so-called “Amazon” Tax has become a huge national story as the online retail giant sent out messages to their affiliates in California announcing the end of the affiliate program there. Even though this new law has “Amazon” as a nickname, any online merchant with an affiliate program falls under its jurisdiction.

It was their affiliate program that gave California’s law jurisdiction over Amazon as they consider it a “presence” of the retailer in that state. Amazon, and online retail in general, has gained in popularity in part to the savings that come with not having to pay sales taxes on items purchased from retailers based in different states.

In 1992, the Supreme Court decided that in order for sales taxes to be collected, a retailer has to have physical presence within the state. This presence could include any business offices, warehouses, or physical stores within the borders of that state.

The new rules set in California redefines presence to include affiliates that make money by referring their audience to online retailers, including Amazon. In order to maintain a policy of providing products tax-free to their customers, they are forced to end affiliate programs in states adopting this new policy.

So, the argument might not be whether or not these taxes will hurt online retail. The fact is, local small business owners that make profits from referring people to online stores are being critically wounded by this policy. The point can and has been made that by imposing stronger taxes, the state is actually doing more harm than good to the local economy unless online retailers continue their affiliate programs and implement sales tax.

It should be noted here than many state and local governments do charge taxes for online purchases. Because they can’t tax the retailer directly, this tax is imposed directly to their customers in the form of a “use” tax. It’s the responsibility of the citizen in this case to report and track their online spending and pay the necessary dues as a result. This is an entirely different matter altogether, though it does play an important role in the overall discussion.

I asked the community how a sales tax on their online purchases would impact the frequency of their online shopping. Here are some of their responses:

Steve Woods – It’s a difficult decision for me. I buy online often for convenience and price, and do think an additional sales tax of 8-9% will still offset the price of gas and time in a store. But I have also had to consider the lack of profit to a local business in my city.

That said, many of the “local businesses” I shop from are chain stores with profits leading out of state anyway. My community and state benefit from the sales taxes only.

Having a local sales tax added to online purchases will offset some of the losses by bringing at least some sort of revenue back to my city and/or state to upkeep the roads and bridges. Even if this means the same price in or out of a brick and mortar shop, I’ve still gained the time and expense of gas.

Local merchants that create something unique have already begun the rapid shift to online sales, creating Etsy accounts and online shopping carts. If they’re making something desirable, the profits should come back to my area anyway, as potentially people from all over the world buy their goods.

Leon Carpenter – Gas costs more than taxes for most purchases — especially when Prime allows me to have free shipping. So, yes, I would pay sales tax. The only time online sales tax would give me pause is for large purchases such as TV’s etc.

Debbie Wolfe – Like several others here, I shop online for convenience & selection, somewhat for price, but not at all to avoid taxes. When I lived in California, I would also pay use tax on my online purchases.

Joe Hackman – It wouldn’t change my online purchase habits much, it’s really only a factor today on high ticket items where the tax is a significant amount.

Jen Reeves – It’s about convenience and discounts for me, not taxes.

Shane Brady – Personally, for a lot of things, the shopping experience is better online, where I can research, compare, get feedback. I still buy stuff online from companies who charge me sales tax because the whole process is nicer.

Stephen Shankland – Yes. I shop online mostly because I don’t have to drive some place, especially some place that’s closed in the middle of the night when I have time to shop.

Will an Internet Sales Tax Hurt Online Retailers?

The days of being able to easily cover up internal and external problems in business are quickly coming to a close. Customer service issues are becoming public relations problems as people are taking their complaints to social networks instead of (or in addition to) a more traditional customer service department. People today like seeing something real in the companies and brands they are loyal to. Some organizations get it, but far too many don’t.

Some businesses, which I won’t name here, like to give the appearance of caring by establishing a Twitter account and apologizing to one out of every ten complaints that are directed their way. They’ll use it to promote their big product and respond to every compliment they see. This is an obvious illusion, and one that the vast majority of regular people can see through in an instant.

In this day in age, people respect something real and genuine from both businesses and individuals. They recognize the attempts to minimize issues and expand on achievements far too easily. Brag about things that are going right, but be realistic. I’d be far more interested in a brand that owns their failures and turns them in to successes through solving the problem and taking steps to resolve it for every customer.

Timeliness is also key to successfully leveraging social media to your advantage. Letting a situation grow and fester to the point of becoming viral can be detrimental to your business. Keeping an active lookout for situations and addressing them as they come will nip potentially explosive situations in the bud and do more to improve how the public perceives your company. You want members of the public to say, “You know, they messed up there – but they took action and made sure the issue was resolved.”

This is one of the core reasons why transparency is important in business. By taking action and providing a resolution you’ve shown that you care, and most people would trust a brand that cares about righting the wrongs more than one that tries to pretend everything is perfect, all the time.

The growth of social media has given consumers and businesses alike incredible tools to communicate with each other and connect in ways that was never possible before. Now, instead of requiring countless hours of research to make an educated guess as to what your customers want, you can simply ask them and likely end up with a much more accurate response. Companies that get it are flourishing, even during these tough economic times.

Why Transparency is Important in Business

I’ve been a Best Buy shopper for as long as I can remember. At one point, I even worked there. Recently, there have been a few red flags raised in reference to some of the bad customer service decisions they’ve made recently when I’ve gone in to make purchases.

The most recent example of this came when I brought a 10% off coupon in to the store to use on a new cable modem I was getting for a service upgrade I’m having done at my home. To my surprise, the cashier denied the coupon because the word modem didn’t appear anywhere on the coupon printout (even under the list of exclusions).

As I scanned the list of applicable devices, I noticed one word that is clearly associated with the device in question. Networking is covered by the coupon, and I can’t think of any device more suited to the term than one that connects your existing network to the Internet. In fact, the only port (other than the coaxial) is a networking port. The very purpose of this device is to interact with and route information to and from your network. Why wouldn’t this be covered under networking? Cable modems are even sold in the networking area of the store – right next to routers and switches.

What’s more disturbing, is the computer system itself denied the coupon. This is either a clear indication of intentionally bad business practices or a lack of basic technical understanding on the part of the person or persons responsible for promotional offers. In either of these cases, Best Buy should know better and honor their promises. A coupon that is made with the intention of bringing customers in only works if it’s honored by the retailer.

So, over an amount of less than $10, Best Buy has lost me as a customer. The hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in profit I could give them in the coming years is now going to go to another retailer that believes in respecting their offers. This is just another reason why customer service is important in business. If the local store had the foresight to correct the problem and provide proper customer service, they could have saved a customer and avoided this public outcry for them to do better.

Do you feel I’m in the wrong? Have you ever had a disappointing customer service experience at Best Buy or another electronics store? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

Why Customer Service is Important in Business

If there is one universal truth we have all encountered at one point or another, it’s that things rarely actually go as planned. After over 3,500 YouTube videos and countless hours of live streaming, this has certainly been the case more often than not. A lot of work goes in to each and every thing we put out, and getting it right isn’t always easy.

It’s important to be able to laugh at yourself. One of the best ways to overcome frustration is to embrace it. Taking yourself too seriously is one of the biggest causes of burnout – no matter what you’re doing. The moment you begin to resent your job, your situation, or your life is the moment you open yourself up to failure. Negativity is contagious and will only serve to bring you down further.

For example, a gamer that frequently blows up when their character is killed or otherwise wronged isn’t going to enjoy the experience of playing quite as much as someone that takes disappointment in stride. Giving yourself high blood pressure isn’t going to improve your skills or change the situation. What can help is celebrating the achievements and pushing forward through the obstacles.

In business, it’s important to try to enjoy what you do. Even the most difficult job doesn’t have to be stressful if you can find something about it you like. Focus on that one thing, and remember to let yourself laugh at the things that don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes, what goes wrong ends up paying off the most in the end. This is one reason why bloopers are so popular.

Things don’t always go according to plan. The faster you realize this and adjust your thought process around it, the more likely you are to be successful – despite minor setbacks. Learn from your mistakes, and embrace them as the opportunities they present.

Things Don’t Always Go According to Plan

News Corp. has reportedly narrowed their list of possible bidders down to two remaining front-runners vying for majority shares in the struggling social network. Myspace, which sold to News Corp. for $580 million USD five years ago is for sale once again, this time in the much lower $20-$30 million dollar range. This is a far cry from the $100 million asking price originally expected for the company. For better or for worse, the News Corp. MySpace sale is nearing completion.

Ahead of the acquisition, Myspace may reportedly shed nearly half of its roughly 500 employees. This is a standard move prior to sale which makes a company more appealing by making it smaller and more trimmed down. News Corp. is also expected to keep a minority share in the company, moving forward.

So, does this mean that Myspace might actually make a comeback under new leadership? It would be difficult to really tell at this point. A look at the two companies that are leading the current round of bidding reveal two very different possible plans for the ailing social network.

One frontrunner, Golden Gate Capital, specializes in investing in failing companies. Some of their previous investments include Novell, which has since been changed dramatically. There is no telling whether Golden Gate Capital will work to improve the existing infrastructure of the social network or alter it dramatically in order to create an entirely new business model out of the property.

Another bidder for control of Myspace is Specific Media, which specializes in targeted advertising. It would be reasonable to assume that should they gain majority control of Myspace, their interests would likely be better served by an active and even growing network with which to benefit through targeted ads to users.

Could Myspace be rebranded and relaunched as something entirely new? That may be what it takes to resurrect this network in decline. However, one could argue that if Myspace were to undergo some key changes, then users might give the social giant another chance.

At this point it’s safe to say that Myspace is down, but not out. Corporations have been resurrected from almost certain failure in the past. Steve Jobs returning to Apple is just one example of a company in dire straits that turned around and came back greater than ever with only a few key changes to how they did business.

So, is Myspace in a position to make a real comeback? Leave a comment and let me know.

Myspace Sale is Nearing Completion