1. Know Your Audience

Make use of services such as FollowerWonk (www.followerwonk.com) that allow you to understand exactly who your followers are, what they’re interested in, what content they’re sharing, and then study that type of content.

Determine if your current audience is the best target market for your small business. If not, you’ll need to refine your strategy to reach your target. To do so, search hashtags that directly relate to your industry/product, study the content that is successful, and replicate it in your own way. An example of a relative hashtag for a marketing firm would be #socialmediamarketing.

2. Jump-start Engagement

Utilize the power of positive story telling. Sharing positive, uplifting stories about your brand will help your followers build an emotional connection. Once an emotion connection is built, you have a follower for life.

Don’t be afraid to ask your followers for engagement in the form of retweeting one of your tweets, tweeting directly to your brand’s handle, or simply answering a question that you tweet out. One of the main laws of social media is “ask and you shall receive.” Followers are more likely to retweet a tweet that asks for it, than something that may relate to them, but doesn’t ask for engagement.

3. Develop Long Term Relationships

Treat your followers like your friends, and they will become just that. Thank them for their engagement, and reward them for it. You probably already know who your top contributors are, but have you acknowledged their efforts? Give them special treatment such as direct messaging them new discounts or insider information to ensure that they have your loyalty.

Put your followers in the spotlight. When a follower uses your hashtag or tags you in a tweet, retweet it on your account. The follower will be ecstatic, and you’ll be viewed as a quick-response brand.

Using these three tips will put your small business on the social media map in no time!

The value of quality customer service cannot be overstated. According to the infographic below, U.S. businesses lose $83 billion annually due to poor customer service. Take a look at these surprising statistics (researched and designed by clicksoftware.com) and make sure you’re implementing strong customer service tactics into your small business’ daily life!

1. Prepare for Taxes by Setting Aside Money
   Systematically setting aside a certain dollar amount throughout the year to prepare for tax season
   will ensure that you’re not caught off guard and unable to pay your taxes. Make sure you note tax deadlines on your calendar and give yourself plenty of prep time in order to meet the deadline. Making this a regular practice will keep you on the right track and away from making the worst small business tax mistakes such as dipping into employee withholdings.
2. Watch Carefully Over Your Invoices
   If you don’t have the time to review your sent and received invoices daily, make sure you have someone else on it. Don’t let your revenue sit in someone’s inbox while you’re struggling to pay your bills, keep track of what’s coming in and when. Stay on top of late invoices and give yourself reminders to contact those who haven’t paid. There’s no reason to feel like a bully for going after overdue invoices, every late payment is an interest-free loan that hurts your cash flow.
3. Plan For, and Accept, Major Expenses
   You could let your software go so far out of date that eventually it just crashes your entire system and no one can read your files, or you could plan to stay up to date and purchase new software on a routine basis without hurting your financials. Small business accounting allows for big purchases; you just have to properly plan for them. Schedule major updates in your calendar and give yourself weekly reminders to budget up to the expense. Keeping your business functioning properly and maintaining solid financials is a win-win.

Traffic Travis (www.traffictravis.com) has both free and paid levels of membership, but for a small business with one website, the free version can definitely get your website on the map and help you understand exactly what’s involved in increasing your SEO rankings. Upon downloading the software, Traffic Travis will open a video tutorial explaining how to navigate the software and begin your first project. Once you enter your website and input the keywords you feel are closest to what people are using to search for you on the web, the software will automatically pull all of your SEO reports and show you where you are on the map.

Here are a few reports that are crucial to keep an eye on:

Rankings
Under the SEO tab, the first option will be “Rankings.” This shows how close to the top of the search page your website is when people enter your keywords. The closer to “1”, the better. Rankings will also show you where you’ve been in relation to where you are now so you can keep a close eye on how your website is performing.

Competition
The Competition tab will show you how many other websites are trying to target the same keywords that you’ve chosen and how likely it is that you will have success on those keywords from “easy” to “very difficult.” To get your website on the map quickly, start targeting mostly “easy” keywords and phrases.

Link Finder
This is where you will see who your competition is on each keyword. Traffic Travis will pull the top performing links from sites around the country on each of your keywords. Spend a little bit of time going through this list and studying your competitors’ webpages for what content they’re using, and then do your best to replicate that style with your own original content. Be sure to use your target keywords in your content, but don’t over-do it. Search engines know when you’re writing duplicate content, so keep it to three mentions per paragraph.

This infographic will help small business owners get in the right frame of mind about their business plan:

It would be great if small business marketing was similar to a sports game; an announced beginning, a strategic outline that is unlikely to change, and a definitive end. However, marketing for small businesses is a long term, ever evolving process. Here are three tips for your small business success without breaking the bank:

1. Market to YOUR Customers
   One of the most common misconceptions in startup marketing is that it’s best to reach all audiences through all channels at once. “The more, the merrier” doesn’t apply when it comes to marketing for a small business. Before you start your marketing, do some significant research on who your customers are and where to find them. Then, place your campaigns strategically to reach only those individuals. If you’re marketing to the whole planet and you are not seeing results, you may not ever find out why. On the flip side; if you’re marketing to your target customer and you’re not seeing results, you can make the necessary changes rapidly enough to stay competitive.
2. Choose Your Channels Wisely
   There are so many digital channels to choose from today and social media channels are growing by the numbers. It’s easy to start posting, tweeting, pinning, posting videos on YouTube, and creating new LinkedIn groups all at once. Rather than wasting valuable time trying to juggle 8 different platforms, choose 2 or 3 that directly represent your brand in the most professional manner and hold the majority of your target customers. For example. You wouldn’t necessarily open a Twitter account for a product selling to government officials, but you would immediately open a LinkedIn account since it’s a very popular platform in that industry. Choosing wisely will save you time, money, and allow you to maintain control of your small business’ marketing.
3. Keep Testing New Ideas
   When your brand needs an extra marketing boost, you’ll want to have a campaign that you know will be effective rather than gamble on the unknown. Consistent testing is imperative to build solid campaigns. Try some A/B testing by sending out two email blasts with separate headlines to a list of like-minded people. Review those reports to see which headline received the most opens, and then send that same headline out again along with a third unique headline to test. Practicing this type of testing a few times will yield positive results and an effective “go-to” campaign headline for when your business needs a boost. This practice can also be used with social media posting, digital advertising, and website content.

Here are two improvements you can make to your small business’ sales structure to turn those leads into conversions and bring up your bottom line:

Don’t try to sell to everyone.

Yes, you want to have as many new sales as possible, but if you take into the account the cost of a pitch, you’ll realize that you should only focus on the sales that are worth the effort. Not everyone will be right for your product and not every company will be right for your service so be picky.

Follow a strategy that includes analyzing historical sales data to know where are you sales are coming from to you can define your prospects, and have a clear understanding of who and what you are as a company. You want to make sales that lead to long-term partnerships and mutual benefits, so develop the discipline to focus on what works and say “no” when necessary.

Strengthen your story.

You can be liked, personable, fun to hang out with, but being respected based on your track record is of far greater value. People love to buy from a company (or a person) who has a strong story, something compelling that inspires them and makes them feel like their money is going to the right place.

Sales is more about you than it is about the person you’re selling to, so focus on building a solid you to create an environment of successful sales.

Word-of-mouth marketing produces results when one client recommends you to another potential client because of a personal experience with your company. This form of marketing used to exist in a “Tell a friend!” fashion, but thanks to the internet, word-of-mouth marketing is easier than ever to achieve if you utilize the right tools.

Getting Recommendations

Ask. Yes, it’s pretty much that easy. Knowing when to ask and where to place recommendations is the slightly more difficult part. It’s easiest to ask a happy customer in a moment when they are pleased about a result your business has achieved for them, and nine times out of ten they will be glad to do it.

The happy moments are those few minutes when your customer has received your product or service and is in love with it. When you hear them say, “Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for,” you follow up with, “I am so glad to hear that we met your expectations! Thank you for your business. Would you mind taking two minutes to write a quick recommendation about us on Facebook? We are trying to expand and would really appreciate your voice on our social media page!” Make sure that the customer knows you’d like to hear from them personally and are not seeking mass recommendations from the general public.

One of the most popular forms of doing this is to give a certain percentage off of their service if they recommend you right then and there. If you have a brick and mortar space, consider having a tablet in the space to offer to clients so that they can check-in, post photos, and recommendations right there.

Where to Put Word-of-Mouth Recommendations

The best platforms for posting recommendations are Facebook, LinkedIn and Yelp because they will be stored on your business’ profile for eternity, and broadcasted to all of the recommender’s friends.

Third party rating sites are also beneficial to have your customer reviews on because potential customers know that you have no control over what people are saying about you on this site. Because you cannot choose to delete bad reviews and keep the good ones, the opinions are honest and unsolicited. Look around online for rating sites that apply to your industry, build up 5-10 reviews, and then send that link to your potential clients urging them to see what people are saying about your business.

When it comes to obtaining new clients, word-of-mouth marketing is crucial and social media is a powerful tool to help spread your good reputation. So, make sure your customer service skills are on point, your product is powerful, and start asking!