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10 Social Media Marketing Commandments

Pay Attention. Commandments aren’t meant to be interesting.

Applying the basics of social media and content marketing can give a competitive edge for your business to upraise the current level of your consumer base. However, in order to use and enjoy the full potential and capacity of these marketing strategies, you should first establish a strong understanding and comprehension about their specifications. Without previous experiences and insight, it can be challenging to learn their languages.

Only when you learn the basics of social media and content marketing will you take advantage of their capabilities. Therefore, you can’t disregard the purpose of the fundamentals. If you want to advance, then better know them by heart. Abide to the commandments and you will attain your greatest mean, the bottom line.

The Commandment of Paying Attention

The ingredient of the social media and content marketing success is less talk and a lot of listening. You have to be WITH your target audience and know what their best interests are. In fact, it is not all about you. It is all about serving the best interests and affection of your target audience. Read their thoughts written online. Associate yourself with them through online forums. It is only then you can intensify and strengthen consumer value.

The Commandment of Specialization

With specialization comes greater opportunity to surpass and to be superior. A vague social medial and content marketing strategy has a minimal contingency of success while a distinctive centralized strategy brings forth the chances of success.

The Commandment of Essence

The essence and feature win over the figures. Better are few World Wide Web networks and intermediaries wherein they focus and discuss quality contents with their own consumers than having a million online connections which will abandon their consumers when they initially keep in touch.

The Commandment of Endurance

Success is not instant. The same thing happens with social media and content marketing success. One must endure and commit to the journey in order to attain the pleasing repercussions of patiently waiting and working.

The Commandment of Connection

Developing highly-structured and error-free contents together with establishing a network of quality online followers results to linkages and bonds. As your loyal followers tend to repost and somehow advertise your contents on their blogs and other social media accounts, it will lead to a promising broadcast. And through that course, it will give birth to new dimensions where numerous potential consumers can discover you as competent.

The Commandment of Prominence

Online users will tend to flock on the giant and influential networks and markets. It is therefore worthy correlating to them who have the same enthusiasm with your business and lay a strong foundation of professional and working relationship with them. They might present your content to a large online audience.

The Commandment of Worth

Do not just limit your focus only on promoting and advertising your products and services. You must be cognizant about the value of hosting sensible conversations with your target audience. Take time to know what your audience’s preferences are and create a strong relationship with prominent online authorities. Generate more comprehensive and impressing contents. After all, they are possible catalysts of spreading your business throughout the market.

The Commandment of Appreciation

Keep your doors open for those people who may come and reach out to you. Learning to appreciate them will help nourish possible relationships that can be an undoubting asset to your social media marketing success.

The Commandment of Availability

Circulating your contents and then vanishing will definitely violate the ethics of professionalism. Always be consistent and receptive with your audience. Continually publish your contents and partake with communication. Losing your valuable followers will eventually take its toll on you.

The Commandment of Mutuality

Both parties mutually benefitting from each other—this is the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocating by sharing and discussing other’s published content is a way of helping to disseminate your own content across the Web. The golden rule supplements this law when you “do unto others what you want others to do unto you”.

Any Publicity Is Good Publicity. Or Is It?

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Today, do you think that majority of the publicists and experts in public relations still believe in the saying that goes “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”? Well, many of them still have this sign placed on their desks.

Most of them take the aggressive resolution for publishing press releases. The same thing goes for some business owners. And their fundamental hope is to win the many hearts of the public. It upholds acquiring of the approval from the possible consumers on some ambiguous webpage, even with only a small amount of hope, that it will in a way build and expand their existence as body of business. That is the reality business owners are biting into.

It will not always be on the unsatisfactory side though. There are some who come out as victorious. If you want to announce a grand launching of a business through every forms of media outlet, then spreading the good news to your local neighborhood and nearby, adjacent communities and possibly beyond can be as compelling. What are the chances if you came up with your new and good book? Then you may have an interest in offering your business to some Web portals to quote a passage lifted from your book. To be more distinct however, it is more persuasive and striking to take a targeted approach.

Covering the general public with press releases and other advertisements can have four aspects to potentially backfire. Namely, these are:

Endorsing your own news to uninterested consumers attempting them to patronize your goods and services can just result to financial resource, time and effort wastage. It is just as awful as having an unreturned attention and income.
Possessing a substandard public relations and connection with the target audience subjects a website to slow down the traffic, or worse, drive the traffic off of the site.
When the overall appeal of the media outlet you have appointed for your news does not have the quality reputation, is just plain boring, is just jam packed with disrupted layout of cheap pay-per-click advertisements and worse, the website’s contents are unedited and are full of erroneous information, expect that it will do your reputation more harm than good.
Not putting worth on the contents and not including essential information does not put a competitive edge in your brand or business. That does not at all give justice to it.

Content marketing and public relations have more important purposes. One of which is to create a focus of your proposals to writers, bloggers, editors, reporters and other public influencers and advertisers who exercise similar enthusiasm to broadcast your announcements and thoughts that you generate. Centering your attention to media outlets which have consumers that are interested in your products and services can escalate the chances of you winning over their favors.

Through the ability of the reputable content marketing and public relations, rest assured that out of the billion people worldwide, there are those consumers who will give value to what you are trading them. Through the mentioned aspects, there are no questions about the quality and relevance of the site where your business contents will appear.

So, you already know the proposition that there is such an existence of bad publicity. And worse, there are other ambiguous media outlets which will just produce and publicize anything creating a scramble of ideas headed toward nothing. It devalues your business and reputation hence driving your potential consumers away and navigating you towards no accomplishment. Bad publicity or good publicity, you are always prompted with a choice.

Self-Assessment on One’s Readiness to Work for One ’s Self

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Are you in love or just in love with the feeling of being in love?

Starting a business is much like falling in love – you finally get to do what you love doing, earn a living from it and get the chance to actually contribute to the betterment of the market you are targeting. But like falling in love, one has to do an honest self-assessment prior to starting a business to make sure, for one’s own sake and sanity, that the urge is indeed genuine and will thus be sturdy enough to withstand the tests surely to come.

Self-Assessment 1: Uncover the Real Objectives Why You Wish to Work for Yourself

If you are currently employed, what is moving you to drop your position for a business of your own? Determine if it is simply frustration from your current work. Is it the colleagues around you, the superiors handling you, the company culture misaligned from your own or the present compensation package? If it is the pay, is it the dream to earn a better living the motivating force that is driving you to start your own enterprise? Is it independence that you wish? Or is it all because of your gut feel that you have a head for business so you think you’ll be good at it?

Take heed in these guide questions because they form the very thin line between victory and downfall.

One blogger once shared that her friend and neighbor, who goes by the name of Brian, knew she worked at home and had been doing it for quite some time by then. Because Brian had had enough of his then boss, he called it quits and decided to make it on his own. Having experienced human relations management for some years then, Brian thought he’d try his hand on real estate selling using the skills he has acquired. Passing qualifications and becoming an agent was easy. But as Brian realized, it did not end there.

It became a chore for Brian to have to wake up each day to get property listings because without those leads, one will not be able to make a sale. Because it is only after work that potential clients have free time to actually discuss business, Brian’s phone rang nonstop most evenings which caught him unawares and horrified.

Last she saw him, he was a wreck, ready to place himself back in the employment market again to find another job. Brian realized there is more to self-employment than not having to undergo daily travelling to and from your office.

Self-Assessment 2: Instill Self Discipline to Work for Yourself

Understand that being your own boss does not immediately spell freedom to do whatever you want and when you want it. Throwing all caution in the wind will only lead to disaster. If you dream of success for your own business, you must understand that with it comes self discipline. Prepare yourself to spend long hours especially at the onset of your start-up company. Excite yourself with opportunities every day such as gaining new skills like marketing or developing improving habits like waking up early every morning to make things work.

Your support system must also be brought up to speed on your new venture. They must understand that although you will be more or less handling your own time, this does not necessarily mean they can simply butt in any second and expect you to drop everything just to focus on them.

Self-Assessment 3: Cash Management

Once started, keep in mind that there are two types of capital in business: your start-up and your working capital. Once the first few deals are sealed and paid, be cautious not to feel like a one-day millionaire and surprise the town on a spending spree thus draining you of cash needed to keep your business operations going from day to day. If at the moment money for you feels like an exhilarating opportunity to spend for something – no matter what it is, it is recommended you take a quick course on money management.

Self-Assessment 4: The Importance of Perseverance

When you start a business, ensure that what you invest into is really your passion. There will come a time when things will turn rough and stormy, that is a fact. If you are not passionate of your business, you will not have the will to continue and simply give up. Perseverance is one of the best traits of successful entrepreneurs. Just like a flower seed newly planted in your garden, you cannot expect to sow it today, water it later and enjoy its bloom the next day. Remember, easy come, easy go. Once you start your trade, invest time and patience in it long enough to see it grow to eventually give you the rewards you’ve been dreaming of.

Good reasons of the effectiveness of publicity

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Publicity could really make an impact in marketing your business, but sometimes it is overlooked for some reasons. But no matter what, experience shows that publicity works, and it works really great.

Anatomy of PR

PR is an effective tool of marketing your business through a handful of its various components, the reasons of which are converged into a single goal, to create an image that is strong and successful. PR is a combination of strategies in channelling your message about your products and services, and publicity is just one of its many components. Publicity is created through using the powerful influence of the media.

What does a PR do?

PR introduces great opportunities for a business to grow in great proportions. That is the reason why various companies make good use of its power for marketing. The following are a few of its many uses:

It generates a number of customers
It increases the business’ capacity
It is a great tool to shave off competition
It builds your profile to make it stronger;
It gets the works done in half the cost, or no cost at all.

How does free publicity work

Free publicity definitely holds a lot greater credibility than paid advertisements, but you will have no assurance that your piece of work will even get noticed. When you submit an article, there is no way of telling whether it gets to be published or not because it is the editor’s call whose and what articles are newsworthy to be posted or printed.

You may hire a PR consultant to do your job for you in this stage. You may outsource the task of building your profile to ensure regular admission and approval of your marketing materials.

Making your media release work

Think of a significant thing about you and your business, and turn that into a statement as your standard slogan
Use impressive and unique titles
Make a one liner selling statement
Create a relevant and comprehensive content
Place nice-sounding quotes
Include important details in your media release
Do not be lengthy in your approach, keep your release in not more than one page
Create your data base
Suggest a photo session

Synchronised techniques

A successful marketing could be the result of your comprehensive marketing efforts. It is not a direct result of a single method, but rather a collaborative effect of all the other essential techniques. If everything is done according to the planned scheme, then public relations will most likely produce great results for the business. Publicity may not necessarily produce dramatic increase in sales, but it helps build the profile of a business which could be beneficial in achieving a long term goal.

Benefits of Media Releases

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Media release is a very powerful tool that you could utilise to enhance the performance and the standing of your business. It positions your business for greater attention and publicity without any required cost. Make good use of its benefits.

As long as you can provide an interesting content, one that captures the interests of the masses, the media might chase after your story for publication. The media people are always on the run looking for great story, and your job is to provide that story. When your story runs, it affords you to gain the much needed recognition to build your business name or brand until you build upon yourself a solid reputation. The following are some of the various benefits of sending media releases:

1. Recognition

When you send a media release to any media outfit and then it hits the airwaves, it will definitely enhance your chances of being recognized. It lets people know the nature of your business and how it works which in the long run will be beneficial to your business

2. Unquestionable credibility

Your story gets a greater credibility when it is embedded in both TV and print news. It makes people view it as an objective story, thus, affording it with much credibility than usual.

3. Financially viable and rewarding

It does not cost much, or it does not even cost at all. You get your publicity by capitalizing on the worth and the credibility of your story. It is very feasible indeed. In fact, in could even be financially rewarding to some.

4. Consistency and constancy

Through your media releases, you keep your clients and customers informed of your relevant activities. It sends them a message of deep connection thus gaining their loyalty in the process. You could even go a mile farther by personally letting them know about your media releases.

5. Brevity and clarity

Every time you write a media release, it helps you improve on crafting your message with the required brevity but with much needed clarity. A brief and clear message is better understood by the clients and customers which is supposedly the goal of every media release.

6. Image projection

A media release is a great avenue for you to form your image that you want to project to your clients and your customers. You should be able to communicate your vision and goals, and as to how you could impact their lives in various relevant ways.

7. Profile building

Once you start getting the right amount of attention, you also start getting recognized for your capacity and capability. You get to establish your expertise in certain fields thus giving a boost to your profile.

Tips on How you can Ensure the Sale of your Business

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As a business owner, you may have the mindset of starting a business that will be profitable for you in the long run. Some business owners though, prefer to start a business with the possibility of selling it in the future. There is nothing really wrong with this type of mindset, but you just need to remember that there is no generic formula when it comes to this. As a business owner with this type of mindset, you must need to know a few things in order for this venture to come out successful.

Putting up a business for sale might sound easy enough like starting it up and then putting up a ‘for sale’ sign then expecting potential buyers to come knocking at your door and offer you a big wad of cash. If it was that easy, then everyone else would have done it. Honestly, it takes more than that to sell your business; it also involves a lot of planning and patience.

Here are some tips on how to make that business more sellable.

Don’t Start a Business that’s only Set for Short-Term Hauls

Starting a business with only the notion of making short-term, quick money is a no-no. This business strategy of quick expansion and then quick selling often exhibits weak business fundamentals as sustainability is often disregarded. Always keep in mind that business buyers will always look at strategic reasons to acquire your business. No business buyer wants to get something that goes stale given a few months or years.

Don’t Start a Business that’s Highly Dependent on Your Skills

Business buyers often look at the stability of the process instead of dependability on key personnel. You can get a higher premium if you have documented processes that are not dependent on certain skills of personnel; like yourself, for example. Having a ‘plug-and-play’ type of business makes it even more attractive to a buyer. To ensure salability of your business, make sure that it will still operate even though you’ve already walked away from it.

Take your Time

Like what was mentioned above, selling a business requires patience. It may take years to make sure that your business has as much of the factors that potential buyers are looking for. Some of these factors include sustainability, protected intellectual properties, profitable client contracts, patented processes or technology, and solid infrastructures. You cannot get these things in your business overnight. Moreover, these are the goals that each business, whether it will be for sale or not, tries to attain.

Involve a Broker or an Investment Banker

Even though selling your own business is doable, you might want to let the brokers handle the negotiations. These negotiations can be distracting, tiresome, and even emotionally draining. With these distractions in play, it will be easy to lose focus of running your business. Losing your focus would then equate to a struggling business. As an end result, a struggling business is not very attractive to potential business buyers. Given their expertise, brokers can handle the negotiations well for you and can even give you more favorable terms from the potential buyers.

Always Get Multiple Bidders

In selling your business, always make sure to get different bidders. These bidders, depending on their interest in your business, would likely wage a bidding war against each other. If this is the case, you would always be the winner as you can get a higher final price for the business.

Funding your Business without a Loan from a Bank

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Most of the time, applying for a small business from banks require a collateral; and this has been proven quite a challenge to small business owners. Due to a lot of requirements, most small business owners have already factored out getting loans from banks. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that you cannot find other creative ways in funding your business. Here are some things to try, and their pros and cons, in order to get that additional funding for your business.

The Factoring Method

The factoring method allows you to sell your business’ accounts receivable to a third party entity in exchange for immediate cash. Factoring can be quite expensive though. With mark-ups of up to fifteen percent, factoring might work for expansion; but this method might not be best for a company that’s downsizing or losing money.

Use your IRA or 401(k)

You can also consider borrowing money from your retirement funds. First thing you might want to consider in doing this is taking a sixty-day interest-free loan from your 401(k); there are also no fees involved if the loan was paid back on the time specified. One important thing to take note of though is that these funds are for your retirement. It is usually risky and might even be devastating to lose this money in business.

Try to Secure a Government Grant

Government grants require extensive research at the local, state, and federal government levels. One important consideration though is that these grants are very technical in nature. Moreover, they usually require some very strict reporting in the progress of the research being conducted.

Get a P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Loan

You can find some online organizations that offer peer-to-peer loans. These peer-to-peer loan companies have people who you don’t know offer you to loan money from them. Your possible loan amount depends on your credit score, the economy, the period of the loan, and your business’ story. On the other hand, peer-to-peer loans are hard to acquire and the interest is quite high.

Use Global Crowd Funding

Very much like P2P funding, crowdfunding allows you to get people to invest in your particular organization. But unlike, P2P, crowdfunding donors do not expect to receive money back. You can, in turn, provide them with rewards of receiving your products first, or having products named after them.

Engage in Microfinancing

Microfinancing is relatively new. Microfinancing organizations provide small loans that are based on your business’ experience, marketability, and sales.

Get Financing Options from Wholesalers or Suppliers

Doing this method helps you work more closely with your supply chain to get the financing that you need to further fund your business. This method works best with a local supplier who has really shown great interest in your products or services and is willing to work with you. As a side note, always remember not to personally guarantee these types of loans.

Join Business Plan Contests

Another creative way to get your business funded is to win the money through competitions. There are numerous business plan writing competitions that are awarding a good amount of money, or funding, to the winners. Just make sure that your business writing and presentation skills are tip-top because you will be competing with the best in the country.

Find Organizations that are ‘Business Incubators’

New businesses can get money, mentorship, and other similar support from organizations that are business incubators. Business incubators usually have great track records of success on the businesses that they’re nurturing. Just be mindful that there is a lot of competition for small businesses that want to be part of these organizations.

Barter Goods or Services

You can also look at exchanging products or services instead of money. Moreover, bartering can save you money and move some unused resources. This can be done directly with another business or through barter exchange organizations. Do take note though that you only need to barter a few select products and services; bartering without cash cannot pay employees or rent.

Important Considerations in Subleasing Your Unused Office Space

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Need to relocate, but having some issues getting out of your lease? Is your business downsizing because of the current environment and you need to share some of the rent? If this is so, you might want to consider subleasing your unused space to other businesses. Engaging in a sublease agreement will definitely be a big help in your business’ cash flow. But before that, there are three important things that you need to know before doing a sublease.

First thing that you need to do is to find out if you are able to sublet. You can do this by checking your current lease agreement. Usually, there are specific clauses in the contract that do allow you to sublet; like twenty-five percent, for example. Just be mindful about the maximum allowable space that the contract allows. Subleasing more than the allowed limit allows the landlord to exercise his or her “right of recapture.” This means that the landlord can take back the unused space and have other businesses lease it directly from him or her. The commercial realty market also determines the landlord’s tendency to exercise this right. In a recent study conducted by U.S. realty market expert, Cushman and Wakefield, they have found that the office vacancy rates in major markets have decreased by around seventy-one percent within the last four years. It will also be a good idea to check with your landlord regarding options on the space that you don’t need.

Transferring out of a leased space is an entirely different deal. If you are moving out of leased space due to business decisions like cutting overhead costs, relocation, or even closing shop, your lease agreement may or may not allow you to do so. In these situations, it might always be better to have your landlord exercise his or her right to recapture the space. Doing so will avoid you the obligation of collecting rent from subtenants.

Second important consideration in doing a sublease is deciding on how much to charge. One very important consideration is that you might charge lower than your actual rent. This is because subtenants are always looking for the best bargains around. Moreover, in markets where commercial space is at a premium, charging higher than the landlord’s rent might see you splitting the lease with your landlord. It is always best to check your lease to see if there are clauses that specify any sharing of rental amount; if you plan on renting out higher than your current lease.

The last consideration is finalizing an arrangement with your tenant. If you need to have some structural changes to accommodate a tenant would, of course, merit a higher rate. Also take note that any structural changes you plan to do must always adhere to the building code. Likewise, you also need to craft a contract for the tenant. Most of the time, the contract includes the percentage of the sublease of your space. Furthermore, some contracts also can alternately offer a “seat lease.” What this means is that instead of renting space, the subtenant rents a specific work station in your office. Always make sure that the contract includes other services that you offer like inclusion of internet access, receptionist services, use of the pantry, and use office equipment, to name a few.

As a final note, you don’t really have to create a sublease on your own. You can work with real estate agents who can ensure that the facilities and services you offer conforms to your current lease and whatever provisions you have in mind work to your and your subtenants’ best interests.

How Dollar Depreciation Affects Business Owners

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The decline of the purchasing power of the dollar generally had an adverse effect; in the immediate sense, for dollar purchasing countries and for businesses that uses dollar a currency in transactions. Compared to other foreign currencies, the dollar has been declining at a relatively steady rate. The purchasing power based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the exchange rate relative to other foreign currencies such as Yen and Euro had shown that there is a decline since August of 2000.

The effect of this on businesses that buy goods and source services to other countries with a relatively more stable currency is that the prices for a fixed amount of goods and services are rising. Compared to the prices back in 2000, the goods now may cost five to ten percent higher in terms of the local currency. This added cost directly translates to a five to ten percent decrease in profit.

The problem is further aggravated by the quasi-recession of the American economy. This results to companies increasing the prices to make up for losses because consumers now have less purchasing power compared to a decade ago.

The same is true for companies that sell their goods on foreign countries using dollar as currency for the prices of their goods. For every deal with a foreign buyer with a relatively stable currency, you are giving a five to ten percent discount per deal in dollar. This now poses the question of will it be safer to adopt a new currency that is more stable than the dollar.

This pricing strategy can be effectively employed; given that you have already established a price-listing catalogue in different foreign currencies. The task does not stop there, of course. You also need to have an up-to-date price listing so that the rate of fluctuation loss for each of the currency can be minimized. Furthermore, you must maintain a balance of value so that you could see if the effort of pricing in foreign currency benefits your business at all.

You must be ready to train your staff on the changes in the management of money in your accounts. Be ready for complaints and necessary adjustments if foreign buyers do not see your prices to be realistic. Also, you need to set up the payment methods and even the Local Fund Transfer system of each of the currencies that you will use. Using multi-currency software on online marketing is easy; but the LFT for each country will be tricky at first.

On the bright side, the declining purchasing power of the dollar can boost purchases from abroad. So what you lack in percentage of cost per unit is compensated by the volume of units that you will be selling to foreigners with a more stable foreign currency. This, in turn, can very well replace the loss margin by making up for profit with the increased volume. Just make sure that in the process, a five to ten percent decline would not substantiate the profit per unit. If this is the case, there will be a general capital loss for every unit sold; and that will be bad for your business.

Knowing Your Limitations In Your Business

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Often times, we are a little bit of hesitant about spending money for our business; and we should be. After all, the money that we spend is good, well-earned money. However, as business owners, it is our task to disburse our well-kept funds in order to make our business grow. A growing business is a surviving business in this cutthroat competition-driven market.

Money is not being grown on some money tree; it is being earned through hard work instead. We must be vigilant in spending our money not because we are stingy, but rather, there are things that we could avoid spending too much on with the right outlook on things.

Public relations, for example, does not need to be overly-funded. However, we stress that the advice of experts in the field will be a great help. One way of overspending in the PR field is if you are trying to sell a bad story. If you do not have a good lead or an interesting pitch to your sales call, then definitely no one will buy it. The public will rather see it as a nuisance and will just put it back in the shelf where they have stumbled upon it. So, no matter how much money you spend trying to boost your PR, if the public does not want it, the media will not even bother to look at it.

What you need here is a good lead; a great story. If you have something worthwhile, worth talking about, and worth repeating, even if you have an understaffed PR unit, the media will take it. This is because the public wants it.

Another important thing for business owners like us to remember is the fact that we have limitations. These are not just economic limitations, but social limitations as well. We must not take this as something bad or unnatural; but this is something that we should always take into consideration.

Here’s an example. Even if you do have a logistical capability and all the resources that you need to undergo long and expeditious trips, always remember that you have a family and you have a home. Those entrepreneurs that can afford long trips are those who are not attached, unmarried or just free-spirits who hunger for adventure and new knowledge.

For us home-lovers, we should take care of our marriage, wife and kids. After all, we undergo business not to just earn money, but to provide a better future for those that we love. This is a central philosophy that we should always take into our minds and hearts as we go along doing our daily routine.

The battle of the cutthroat competition of the free market will make us stronger business owners, but we do not want yourself to be distracted by issues of domestic concerns. We should always set our priorities and goals and always take into account the scope and limitations of our abilities. In the end we will know what and what not to do.