A Referral Driven Business

Good grief, just got off the phone with someone that said he doesn't need social media because his business is referral driven. Really? Social media is a referral driven business. If you can't understand that, contact us.

#textcode_from_above#

Need a New Marketing Platform?

It is always nice to use something that is free, like social media marketing. Other marketing strategies can have real costs if they fail, but social media marketing is cheap and easy to change. You can improve your strategy by applying user feedback and learning from the mistakes of other social media marketers. This feedback, along with the tips you're about to read, will help you quickly attract customers to your site.

Try to learn from your past marketing experiences. Knowing what has worked and what hasn't will allow you to embrace strategies that work and avoid those that don't. If you do this, you'll know what works and doesn't work whenever you attempt to launch your campaign.

When developing your company's design for social networks, include more imagery than just your company logo. Many customers often want to know who is behind the product or service they use. It's important to share an appropriate family or a group employee photo now and then.

Watch traffic fluctuation with everything you do so that you can look at the results carefully. You should avoid jumping to conclusions when you have either a really good day or a bad one. Watch for trends on how your traffic flows.

You can gain a good Facebook audience by sending out an email to your contacts with a link to your page. Perhaps you have already developed your mailing list. Put it to work for you by including your Facebook link in materials you send to subscribers. This simplifies the process of finding your social media sites for your customers.

When you have found your target market, polished your products and gone to the right social media sites, it is easier to publish your content. Publishing your media is simply a matter of posting your content on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in methods that mean your target niche will come across it. Then, all you have to do is sit back and watch your profits grow.

About us, whocanihire is a simple, user friendly online directory and is ready for your companies or services listing.   We have worked with many companies looking to enhance their online presence through directories and social media.  As an example, The Mortgage Firm office located in Boynton Beach attributes 2-3 transactions per month based on their online presence.

 Join us today. Take the opportunity, get noticed.

#textcode_from_above#

Monika rocking whocanihire.com!!

#textcode_from_above#

Social Media Marketing And You: How To Expand Your Business.

Social media marketing is everywhere these days, on PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones along with traditional media promoting their social media sites.  You will not avoid it so you might as well use it to your advantage.  My hope is this article will try to help you avoid some of the common pitfalls of social media marketing and help make your plans become more effective.

Just like marketing with articles, you never want to put out low quality information that will ruin your brand’s (remember, individually you are also a brand) reputation.  Find out about different methods of advertising on social media sites before you begin. You have to remember that no two social sites are the same.  Learn a little bit about the differences between them. Perhaps one particular site reaches a majority of people and so is a worthwhile recipient of most of your efforts.

A great thing to remember before starting your social campaign is that things can get nasty on social media sites from time to time.  Be prepared to overcome or avoid any form of negativity. It is always a good thing to know that there are positive things to say about your company, but you also have to deal with complaints.  Do not ignore unhappy customers, but make an attempt to help them.

Create humorous content when possible.  Keep the humor appropriate, but use it when you can so that you can increase positive reader reaction.  When the things you post make someone laugh, they might share it with others.  This is a great way to create a word-of-mouth affect.

It is crucial that you keep your social media profiles updated and current.  Content goes stale quickly, which means you'll start hemorrhaging followers pretty quickly if you don't keep your profile updated.

Educate yourself on social networking itself.  Even if you use Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn or Twitter already, establishing a professional social media presence is very different from personal social media use.  Take the time to learn what has worked for other professionals.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will a social media presence. You won't get 10,000 followers in the blink of an eye. It can happen, but it is not very likely your profiles will get attention that fast.   Provide good content, frequently update your page and interact with your visitors and in good time you will gain a substantial following.

Failure happens to everyone, but social media is unique in that failure can be turned into success at a relatively low cost in time or dollars. It will not cost a lot, if anything at all so you can experiment with all of your ideas without losing money. The article you just read gave you some basic strategies to use as you enter the social media marketing arena, but in order to really succeed, you need to figure out what works best for you on your own.

#textcode_from_above#

Recent Review Of whocanihire.com

Website: http://www.whocanihire.com

An online presence is an opportunity today’s business can’t afford to miss. Your business has a name, street addresses and phone number, right?  A web presence made simple including important information is what whocanihire.com is about. It’s an online business directory plus more. No ads and no worries, just customers. Here’s why.

When Mr. Customer looks for your business online what will he find? An old outdated expensive website that seems like you’re closed or will he find nothing at all? Will he find updates, social media activity and you? An online identity is waiting and ready to welcome Mr. Customer and more.  Check out this YouTube video, see how it helped Paul the Plumber.

Studies show over eighty-eight percent of consumers do online research before making a purchase.  The easier it is for customers to find you online the easier it is to know, locate and call your business. A site on the web with a Google friendly profile, connected posts, tweets and social thingamajigs is a simple click away.

whocanihire is simple, user friendly and ready for your listing. Open your opportunity today at $49 per year - even Grandma approves.

Join us today. Take the opportunity, get noticed.

Written by Maria Snyder, CPA your source for small business social media consulting.

Find her at Mariasconsulting.com

#textcode_from_above#

Use Social Media Marketing To Gain A Following For Your Business

If you really want to build your business into an online name and brand, your presence needs to be visible where folks can see you.  Nowhere is that easier than through social media sites. Such websites are widely trafficked, so making use of them when developing a marketing strategy is critical.  It can actually decide whether or not you meet success or failure.  This article contains some great advice on how you can make it.

If you want your Facebook page to be interesting and to flow well, frequently put up content that looks good and is enjoyable.  Add some YouTube videos, some relevant articles, links to humorous non-offensive sites, and other potential pieces of content. Find the right balance between being friendly and professional.

Whether you're creating content to post on a blog, a Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook, it is important you come up with something catchy that people will remember you by.  Remember, headlines and titles that stand out, they can be powerful tools which draw in people and make them want to know who you are and eventually will lead them to your site.

When you develop friends and followers via social media, speak about them highly. This is strange, but people like seeing social credentials prior to interacting with you. You should blog about these friends and share them on Facebook and Twitter.  Also, incorporate links to your other pages.

Try to incorporate a lot of media outlets into your service to increase your visibility. Though Facebook is perhaps the best known vehicle, you should never disregard the potential of other sites including Twitter and Pinterest.  You have a greater chance of success if you implement many types of media outlets.

Make your site more social media-friendly with comments, ratings and favorite lists.  Your site's users will feel as if they have a voice, as they rank content on the site by popularity.

In regards to social media, never give up and stay motivated.  Once you have a loyal group of followers, your traffic and number of followers will gradually increase.  It can take about a year to build a good following and take advantage of the real benefits for your business and develop creative marketing strategies.

You will see how social media increases customer loyalty if you use these suggestions.  If you are new to this area of marketing, you will soon see these ideas as a great way of generating business, increasing the awareness of your business and getting a bigger customer base.

whocanihire.com was built to help you increase your exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts just by deciding to participate.  whocanihire.com put your business right in front of your target market, making it easy for them to locate and contact you for your services or products.

#textcode_from_above#

The Importance of Small Business Marketing Through Social Media

At whocanihire.com we believe one of the most imperative factors within the business industry is to implement a beneficial marketing strategy.  The importance of small businesses finding the appropriate marketing strategy is far more important than a larger corporation needing a sufficient amount of marketing.  With the use of social media strategies, small businesses are provided with the opportunity to raise their brand awareness and to acquire a larger loyal customer base within a limited amount of time.  There are a wide variety of different benefits to be accounted for when contemplating how to utilize social media in your small business marketing strategy.

Social media is a large portion of the internet in present day society.  Millions of individuals are constantly logging into social media websites such as YouTube.com, facebook.com, and twitter.com on a daily basis.  With the use of a social media centric marketing strategy you will be able to utilize the power that is associated with these social media websites.  Once you have created your profile you will be able to tap into a variety of different demographics and to provide more individuals with information about your products and/or services.  This can prove to be quite advantageous due to the fact that the more individuals that become aware of your business, the more likely they are to purchase what it is that you have to offer.

As previously mentioned there are millions of computer owners who are consistently utilizing the internet on a daily basis.  The majority of those who use the internet use it for social media but they also use it to conduct a sufficient amount of research.  As an example, if an individual is looking to hire a building contractor, they will search “building contractor” on their preferred search engine.  If your business is contracting, you have created your own social media profiles for your business, you will be creating your online presence on the internet and thus those who are searching for what you have to offer will find your profiles and hire you or purchase your products.

With the implementation of a small business social media marketing strategy your business will undoubtedly acquire more awareness and more profits at the end of the year.  In order to efficiently utilize marketing to your benefit, taking advantage of free social media websites can be quite advantageous due to the fact that you will essentially be marketing for free rather than spending thousands of dollars on advertisements.

#textcode_from_above#

SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK SPOTLIGHT: LINKEDIN

  

LinkedIn is a network changing.  

Among other things, they are a network where small business and big business members interact, first as strangers and then as colleagues. This network is a great place to search a potential client out and find other businesses of the same sort.

Example: Your service is writing business white papers, and looking through local midsize corporations, you can find the head of the particular department that hires and then pays external operations and vendors. And then you can send this person a letter directly telling him or her how essential your business is for them.

LinkedIn will change soon, as the network has no choice but to change because of recent successful hacking; over six million names and passwords were lost by the LinkedIn Servers.

Expect: A focus on security and related-topics to be important to users of LinkedIn as the interface of the Network is upgraded and tough. Honestly, now is a good time to start Marketing on LinkedIn because

Outlook: Still very good, though expect a sharp loss of "connections" as the initial shock of the hacking translates in to loss of interest in some of the network's users. They will bounce back though, as the network still contains methods to find specific kinds of companies and the people within these companies to speak with.

#textcode_from_above#

Why Should You Use Social Media in Small Business Marketing?

Why do you think you need to explore social media in marketing your small business? Here are some thoughts that you may want to consider...

Having a marketing strategy won’t be enough if it will not be implemented correctly to your target audience. With this in mind, the limits to innovative thinking were set to a higher level through creative ideas and determination. Because of the financial crunch we are all experiencing today; small businesses have been maximizing ways to innovate with their marketing efforts. You are not alone in this dilemma. And you do not have to be! Right now, with the help of social media experts, you can promote your business without breaking the bank.

The Internet and its Marketing Power

A lot of small businesses have realized that the internet is a suitable marketing medium with its millions of users. In short, social media offers huge marketing opportunities for everyone. If you are not yet using social media, where in the world are you? If you have not yet noticed, small businesses are developing a stable and strong presence on the Internet. I had been looking at an online directory lately and I am seeing the presence of small businesses on the web. These entrepreneurs are using social media marketing as a strong and sustainable way to develop awareness for their respective brands.

What are the Possibilities?

Businesses will surely become successful and be able to stay above the competition if they start optimizing the use and leveraging the presence of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Pinterest, to name a few of these sites. In social media platforms, it is all about people, events, and happenings. If you are not following all these, how will you know who are the people that will buy your product or service?

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook succeed by connecting masses of people and by spreading information quickly within the network. With the use of mobile smartphones and handheld devices, the power of social media is even more magnified. Small businesses could likewise use social networking sites to inform followers about their upcoming sale or events. Without a doubt, mobile marketing and social media are the future of small business marketing. Maybe it is time that you jump in too.

In social media sites, you could also send out coupons or sale codes. Through social networking sites, it is easier to form meaningful dialogue and personal relationships with the target market. With these simple practices of sending out coupons or simply replying to customers, businesses can connect with their customers on a more personal level and this could lead to long term customer dedication. This is marketing at its best, don’t you agree?

The Pitfall

But there is one caveat. One of the biggest pitfalls of utilization of social media is when businesses spam their followers with information up to the point where they tend to stop following the business altogether.  Small businesses should make sure that their followers are not being overloaded with information. It is important to always make sure that there is something meaningful in each of the updates and messages you send. In short, be genuine and sincere. Don’t mislead people and try to provide only the best information that your followers will read or watch.

The Cost of Social Media Marketing

Do you think small businesses should take advantage of social media? Of course! Why not?  You may have apprehensions because of the costs involved or the skills required with these marketing methods. The good thing is that they can use these tools even with smaller budgets. Forget the traditional methods such as TV ads or print. Who can afford them?

Businesses should devote reasonable amount of investment with their marketing strategies to be effective. This is also true with social media campaigns. But I guarantee you; gaining new customers through social networking can give you the best value for every marketing dollar. With more and more people following your Tweets or subscribing to your Youtube channel or simply buying your products, the marketing will surely pay for itself.

Take Action!

If you are now fired up to begin using social media, you might as well answer this question: How do you get started?

Find an online directory and contact the experts. Hiring the pros that can offer you reliable marketing services is the best way to go. Find the specialists that can offer you with the right choice of profile, can link your social media sites, and can assist you with your gallery.

To start right away, I only recommend you visit this site: whocanihire.com

#textcode_from_above#

Staying Relevant

A couple of easy steps to stay relevant while marketing through social media/sharing.

1. Keep information up to date. Social media affords you the opportunity to keep your information new. It also allows you to keep your marketing relevant to your business.

 2. Optimize your presence. As a business owner you want your name to be in front of as many potential clients as you can. Most importantly having a social media presence is crucial for the survival of your business. But you also want to ensure you are capturing people with the right keywords as well.  Another extremely important tool is getting on the right directories.

3. Stay on the Google radar. When you perform a search for anything how often do you go to the second page on a search result?  Probably not often.  So you want to ensure you are staying on that first result page.  Blogs are a great way to keep you near the top of a search. Another benefit of blogging is building better customer relationships. You can keep clients up to date with day to day activates directions you are headed, promotions, and allowing your customers to interact with you. 

The whocanihire.com business directory is dedicated to helping small businesses succeed in their communities through social sharing. 

#textcode_from_above#

Why Waste Advertising Dollars On Yellow Pages When You Have Social Media?

We think there are better ways to spend your money on advertising than the Yellow Pages. Need more convincing? Here are 10 reasons why we think it is a waste of money.

1. They are nowhere near number one, or even on the front page of search engines, for any important search terms. A quick look at the top search words “plumber” “electrician” and “contractor” show that they are not even in the top three PAGES! All the important categories are either taken by major firms operating in that arena, or other directories.

2. They are expensive for what you get. Could that money be better spent whocanihire.com, on a new or second website, on a social media manager that you can tie directly to sales, or on optimizing your website?
3. Most of ads in the Yellow Pages are never read. If you are ever looking for something, would you read the ads for a plumber if you were looking for a carpenter? Even ads in a major newspaper get a better viewing than that.
4. whocanihire.com can be the number one preference for finding local businesses
5. Yellow pages ads are static, so if you have a complex story to tell, you are out of luck.
6. The ads can’t be updated for AN ENTIRE YEAR, so you had better not move, change email or web addresses.
7. You can’t test copy, with different targets across different parts of the year.
8. If you are looking to reach out to your local community, you will get more mileage by spending your money on sponsoring a local little league baseball team and sponsoring your local paper’s community awards.
9. If you are a B2B business, working with your current customers on a testimonial video campaign coupled with social media will give you a greater reach than the Yellow Pages.
10. If all the free advertising was removed from the Yellow Pages, there would be very little of the book left. Think about that. Most of the Yellow Pages appeal, to both advertisers and readers, is that it is given away.  Compare that to advertising of value, like whocanihire.com, social media, a professional blogger, or even traditional newspaper advertising, where both the advertisers and the reader have to pay more.

Special thanks to our friends Marketing In Sydney on WordPress.com

#textcode_from_above#

Caught in the Web of Lies

Caught in the Web of Lies.

Parents for years have been delivering the birds and the bees talk and warning their young teens on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.  Well it looks like the kids have to start delivering a talk to their parents.  “Do not put information on the web you do not want everyone to see.” 

Enter Congressman Weiner.  In this technological age where communication with everyone is a mouse click away you must take the necessary precaution to protect yourself. The most dangerous person you are going to encounter out on the web that you must always, always be aware of is…you.  Most people can agree that if you say something, you now own those words, and it is a representation of who you are.  Social media sites like twitter, facebook, Blogger, etc are additional “mouths” and if it comes from your account, you said it, or posted it, or sent the picture.  Saying that someone hacked into your account and sent a picture of yourself is as bad as an excuse as saying that someone hacked into my brain and made me say those terrible things. 

So this brings me to my question.  Are politicians, celebrities and athletes more twisted today, or do we now have the tools to really know these wack-jobs?

www.whocanihire.com/about/

#textcode_from_above#

Social Media, not just for kids anymore.

I think this should be the whole phenomena’s new tagline.  If you have a small or medium sized business and you are not using Social Media to promote yourself or business you are blind to the most powerful source to generate new business. 

I caught myself watching commercials during a basketball game, which I think is still the only time that DVR/TIVO is not utilized today, and I noticed a few things.

Number one:

Search engines are utilizing social media.  Bing is incorporating Facebook into your search results.   Also, the entire commercial for Google Chrome shows the different social media buttons rolled into the search engine.

Number two:

When the commercials are wrapping up it seems that the product they are advertising is pushing you more toward their Facebook, YouTube or twitter page by highlighting the advertisers social media buttons. It almost seems that the website is secondary or irrelevant at this point.

So what does this mean?  It means that if you think that Social Media cannot help you and your business than I am sorry there is nothing that will help you grow your business.  If you think that mailing out post cards, advertising in the newspaper, or God forbid paying for commercials are going to help you get new business, than I think it is time that you head on back to 1992. You might have a shot there, but in today’s world, social media is king

Just a quick numbers game; how many people do you think that you can reach with a national campaign including mailing, newspaper advertising, and TV ads?  How about the cost?  Ouch. Okay how about the same campaign but at local prices, a little bit better right?  Okay how about for nearly nothing you can reach out to a half a billion of people? Enter social media for professionals.  Facebook alone has over 600,000,000 people on it and growing  as is twitter.   The major cost that a business would have to pay to get into this market is time, time to set up a Facebook page, and to manage the page. How can you afford not to adapt a social media strategy for your business?   

I wonder how long until commercials are gone all together?  Any thought……

www.whocanihire.com/about/

#textcode_from_above#

The Problem With Giving Away Promotional T-Shirts

We thought it would be a great idea to give whocanihire.com promotional t-shirts away at the annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations and parade in Delray Beach, FL.  As a start-up we thought this would be great, ordinarly it is and everybody loves a free t-shirt.  We got tremendous exposure for whocanihire and a number of businesses signed up for our service. 

A few weeks later a friend was at a wedding reception/bbq and took the photo below...Yep, that's a pig, a sawzall and a whocanihire.com t-shirt!



www.whocanihire.com/about/



#textcode_from_above#

Chambers of Commerce and whocanihire.com

whocanihire.com is a valuable tool for many Chambers of Commerce.  Any Chamber can list themselves on whocanihire.com at no cost and with very little effort.

Businesses are categorized by type, tag words and location.  The businesses may link to their website and their social media sites.  The business can promote through the chamber and whocanihire.com in addition to their current marketing efforts

whocanihire.com gives an added benefit to a Chamber of Commerce's promotional efforts for the businesses and professionals that have joined.  When a business, service or profession joins whocanihire.com and they are also a member of a Chamber of Commerce, the business will be able to place a link to that Chamber's website on their profile in whocanihire.com.  This promotes all the businesses that have joined that particular chamber as well as the business.  For the Chamber of Commerce, this is a very powerful promotional tool since the Chamber is becoming linked to all the social media sites connected to that business, service or profession!

If you are a Chamber of Commerce and would like to learn more, call Rick at 888-700-8290 or email at rick@whocanihire.com

www.whocanihire.com/about/



#textcode_from_above#