I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the very smart Zoya Fallah at Cisco for their service provider blog called SP360, on the topic of the use of Social Media. Cisco continues to lead the charge in using Social Media to reach out to their customers and has multiple blogs, YouTube channels, promotional campaigns and on and on for connecting to their very diverse audiences. Hats off to Cisco — one of the earliest adopters of Social Media.

Today Twitter announced their ability to help new users get started by suggesting accounts to follow.  According to their blog post:

“Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they’re interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.”

I’m all for that.  Anything that helps a newbie use Twitter in a strategic and useful way is all good.  But why only the new user?  I’d love the benefit of their algorythmic magic to make good suggestions for me.  But I’m not the only one with that thought. (love John Battelle)

Twitter promised more changes to come.  As a true evangelist, I can’t wait.

Say the word “email” and many people shudder. But email does not equal spam. Use it correctly, intelligently and strategically and you will stay in touch with clients, build your brand, and warm up prospects.  Below are 7 tips for integrating an email strategy into your small business marketing efforts

1.  Define your objectives (I know I always start here, and so should your company).  Are you using it for CRM, prospecting, branding, information dissemination or a combination of several of these?

2.  Collect email addresses ethically. Start with the email addresses of your current customers.  If these aren’t already in a primary database, access all departments within the company to gather as many customer email addresses as possible.  Accounting, tech support, customer services, marketing, and sales may all have email databases so collect them all and consolidate to begin.

3.  Build your email database. Ask for the email address of every potential customer and prospect.  Add a newsletter subscription link to your website (more on that below) and make it part of your email signature, make white papers and articles accessible from your site only with a sign-up form, make it part of the credit application.  Any opportunity to ask for an email address, do so.

4. Start publishing an e-newsletter on a regular basis. Establish a look and tone, define what types of content will be included, set a schedule and stick to it.  Twice a month or monthly is a good starting point. You may want to outsource copy writing and creative, or keep it internal depending on your organization’s capabilities and available time.

5.  Use 3rd party deployment company for ease and to maintain list hygiene (opt-outs and unsubs must be honored if you are NOT going to be perceived as spamming).  Vertical Response and Constant Contact are both excellent companies to start with if your list is under 30,000 records or so.

6.  Have a registration/sign-up mechanism on your site.  One do-it-yourself  resource is Wufoo -  a great site for online  form building and registration capture.  Certainly signing up for your newsletter will add email addresses to your database, but offering articles or white papers targeted to the concerns of your customers will not only build your database but add to your company’s credibility and positioning.

7.  Measure results and improve. At the very least, keep track of the number of opens, click thrus and unsubscribes you get with each mailing.  Is there content that had better results? Did your unsubs jump up?  Be aware of the effect your email marketing is having.  Ask your current customers what they think of your efforts, after 2 or 3 have gone out.  You will get feedback on ways to improve and enhance.

If all of this seems pretty basic…it is. But I’m amazed at how many larger organizations either do not have an email strategy, or are not doing it well.  Start now.

The new year has brought a number of inquiries from smaller companies asking for help with social media marketing and marketing in general.  For those of us in the marketing field, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that not all businesses see things from a marketing perspective. Example: we had an end-of-year meeting with our CPA firm and will be doing some marketing consultation for them, I’m happy to say. This is a women-owned firm, brilliant in the world of finance, tax prep and financial planning, but not big enough to warrant an in-house marketing expert. We mapped out some initial strategy, to capitalize on the lowest hanging fruit, and I thought I’d recap our discussion for the benefit of other small companies.

Know who your customers are so you can find more like them. Conduct a survey to find out what industry they are in, how many employees they have, general geography (how close or far away do you want to service a customer?)

Establish some initial objectives. Are you prospecting and looking for new leads?  Introducing new products or services to current customers, asking for feedback on current performance?

Start an ongoing conversation with your current customers. Start a monthly e-newsletter, and before that, start gathering email addresses from everyone you do business with to that end.  Assuming they have a website, start a blog to post updated information about the company more frequently and to start that dialog with your customers.

Social Media Marketing. If your customers and prospects are participating in social media networks, pick an objective for your social media presence, and get started with a well-thought-through SM plan and schedule.  We talked a bit about using Social Media for local marketing in an earlier post.

Establish the initial strategy — but make it simple.  Small companies don’t have marketing departments, so be sure the objectives are manageable.  Decide on tactics, the person or people who will be actually doing the work, and set a schedule.  Then keep it.