• Case studies
• Testimonials
• Referrals

You could also look at allowing your customers to start to earn for their loyalty and support. Think about introducing:

• A loyalty scheme
• Affiliate schemes
• Party plan and other direct sales
• Drop shipping

Your task for this week:

Pick one activity from the list above. Will you ask your customers to share their story and explain the benefits they have had from your business so you can tell others? Or do you think that people would like to start selling your products for you as part of an affiliate scheme or by drop shipping?

I have more secrets to help you use telemarketing to market your business in next week’s post. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

Join Twitter

Set up your blog

Link your blog to Twitter with Twitterfeed

Link your blog your Facebook page with Networked Blogs

Add your Twitter page link and your blogs to your email sig

Join Linked In, Ecademy and Bttradespace if you offer B2B products or services

Join relevant forums and include details of your business, facebook account, twitter name or blogs in your sig if allowed by forum rules. Post on the forums every day or two and offer helpful advice.

Pick one or two time slots each day to tweet

Use a tool like Su.pr to see which of your links shared through social media get most clicked on. Do this for a few weeks to see if certain times of day get better reponses that others

Join Social Oomph (or Hootsuite) and set up recurring and scheduled tweets. Set aside an evening each month to do the tweets for the month to come

Always reply to people who tweet you and thank those who RT your messages.

For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

I’ve linked up my profiles on Linked In, Ecademy, various Ning sites, the Women’s Marketing Forum and Facebook to Twitter too, so I can send updates from any of these sites, and all my Twitter updates appear on each profile too.

I use Friendfeed to link my tweets through to my Facebook account and pages. And remember to use Networked Blogs to link your blog to your Facebook page or group.

Your task for this week:

What will you do this week? How can you use technology to link your social media together and save work? It won’t take you long to sign up to Twitterfeed, Friendfeed and Networked Blogs to maximise all your social media marketing.

I have more secrets to help you use social media in next week’s post. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

This week we’re looking at using Facebook as part of your marketing strategy.

If you’re using Facebook socially, it is an easy step to turn it into another way people can find out about your business news. Go to ‘groups’ and click the ‘set up a group’ button or click on the link at the bottom of any ‘page’ to set up a page. A group is ideal if you want to promote a membership organisation or club, while a page is more appropriate for most businesses.

• http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php

Once you have entered the details asked for, add some content. If you have a blog use Networked Blogs to add your blog to your page so that the content feds through automatically. Send messages about your page to your friends and ask them to highlight it to people who they think might be interested.

Once you have a few fans of your page, your messages will be seen by them and, more importantly, by their friends who visit their profiles. The word can spread about your business to people who are contacts of your contacts.

Add in the occasional exclusive offer for Facebook fans of your page and people will have even more reason to sign up. Use Twitter to tweet out to people and ask them to join your group. Asking them to help you find 100 followers, 500 followers, or offer a prize draw for those who like your page once you reach your target.

Your task for the week:

Do you need to create a Facebook Page for your business?

Or if you have a page already think of three ways to attract new fans

AND

Think of three ways to add value for people who are fans already. Could you include them in a draw, make a special offer or limited discount for this group? Implement one idea each week for the next 3 weeks.

For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

This week we’re looking at using Twitter tools as part of your marketing strategy.

Twitter isn’t hard to use, but there are some handy tools to make it much easier. Try:

Tweetdeck: helps you divide the people you are following into columns – much easier to see at a glance who’s saying what. You can add in search columns to make it easier to follow topics of interest to you. It also allows you to link Twitter up with Linked in and Facebook

Hootsuite: Does all of the above and allows you to schedule tweets in advance; very helpful if you are planning marketing messages for the month ahead.

Twitterfeed: A helpful tool to automate linking up Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Check out Friendfeed too.

Social Oomph: Allows you to vet followers, send automated replies and schedule tweets in advance.

Twitbacks: Customise the way your Twitter page appears so that you showcase your business in the space on the left side.

Twibes: join groups to help you find like minded tweeters, or start your own group.

Your Task for the week:

Which tool will you try out this week?

We’ll look at how Facebook can boost your business marketing next in this series. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

It is really important to make the most of social media for your business so over the next few weeks your emails will all be about social media. You wouldn’t turn down someone offering you a handful of tenners would you? Nor would you walk on by if someone came up to you in the street and said, “I’ve heard about your business and it sounds right up my street – can you tell me more?” If you aren’t  tweeting, you are actually turning away potential sales and missing the chance to tell customers all about your business and why it is just what they need.

Twitter is a simple concept, but it can seem hard to work out how best to use it. The sign up page is easy, and writing 140 character messages takes next to no time. What can seem tricky, though, is to get the right balance of messages that motivate people to buy and interesting items to attract followers. Plus, should you be tweeting about personal matters as well as business? Read on for some guidance.

Twitter is great because it is another way to build relationships, and relationships help people to know you, to trust you and to buy from you whether you run a tiny business or have your sights set on becoming an international enterprise. It allows you to respond rapidly to people’s enquiries, find those who want to know about what you offer and spread the word about sales and promotions.

The way to make Twitter work for you is to have a strategy. Think of 12 promotions and offers that you will be running this year – that’s one for each month. Then, plan your month’s marketing activities around that promotion, and tie your tweets in too. Use a service like SocialOomph.com to schedule in tweets highlighting that month’s promotion. I find a countdown like ‘just 3 days left for this month’s offer’ works to add an incentive for people to click through to your site.

Your Task for this week:

Decide on 12 promotions you will offer this year.

Sign up to Twitter if you’re not already registered.

Sign up to Social Oomph or Hootsuite and start planning in tweets about your promotion.

Try out different times of day and frequency of posts and see what works well for your business.

Next week find out about some tools to help you use Twitter.

This week we’re looking at using blogs as part of your marketing strategy. There are lots of good reasons to start a blog for your business. You can use your blog to build a relationship with your customers and potential customers. A blog is a great way to help your business rise up the search engine rankings and get picked up for keywords that lead people to make purchases. But a blog also provides fuel for your tweets. I’m fortunate that blogging is a key part of my business, so I have two or three good articles going up each day.

If you want to blog but are worried that you won’t be able to think up or create enough content for one, here’s an exercise from top mummy blogger, Erica Douglas of www.littlemummy.com.

Take a (large!) piece of paper, draw a circle and write ‘Blog’ in the centre, draw four (or more) ‘arms’ and put the following titles, and any more you can think of:

Me and my history
What I know about what I make, do or sell
My customers
Frequently Asked Questions

Under these headings write everything you can think of about the topic using shorthand or just one or two words. Every one of these is a blog post.  You only really need to post once a week to make having a blog worthwhile (although 3 times a week is probably optimum).  I’m guessing you have at least 40 potential topics to write about, so that’s 40 weeks of blog posts already! For example let’s say I run a pottery business making and selling jugs and condiment dishes.  My list of topics would look something like this;
About me/ About my staff
How I started making pottery
Where and how long it’s taken me to learn
My studio (photos, a video)
How I design my pieces
History of pottery in my area
What raw materials and equipment I use
What it takes to be a good potter
My ten favourite things about being a potter
A video of me at work making a jug/dish/bowl
About my customers (customer of the week?)
Answering FAQs (one a week?)
Featured piece of pottery (once a week)
Where I take my inspiration for new pieces
Difficult aspects of being a potter
New techniques in pottery
News about pottery related topics
Reviews of pottery fairs etc..

Erica says, “It took me under five minutes to make that list and I’ve never made a pot in my life!  Which I hope demonstrates that this can be done for absolutely any business.  No piece of information is too basic or mundane, provenance is big business and blogging helps your customers learn about you and your business, helping to build that old style sense of loyalty that will keep them coming back.”

Your task for the week:

Can you create a great list of ideas for you blog and schedule them in?

I hope this has given you some good ideas about using blogs to market your business. We’ll look at how Twitter can boost your business marketing next in this series. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

This week we’re looking at using social media as part of your marketing strategy. Which of these are you using already?

1. Facebook
2. You Tube
3. Linked In
4. MySpace
5. Twitter (and tools Tweetdeck, Twitterfeed, Hootsuite, Social Oomph)
6. Friendfeed
7. Bebo

This is a hard one to fit into a blog post! I’ve written lots on social media and I’d suggest you nip over to the Mumpreneur Guide to download the Mumpreneur’s Guide to Online Business Success, a free e-book about getting started on Twitter, with Facebook and Blogging. It is only going to be freely available for one more week, though, so download it before 6th June.

Make sure that writing and sending press releases and quick updates about your business is a regular part of your business promotion. And to make it easier, use the Wedding Media Contacts database, which puts details for all the leading national and regional wedding magazines and websites at your fingertips.

The database is usually £150, but for today only get it for £97. Offer expired Midnight 27 May 2010. Click here to buy the Wedding Media Contacts database now.

1. What’s new? Choose a new product or service, ideally something that’s unique to your business.

2. Pick Your Media. Think about which media your business might appear in. Read the baby magazines and check out parenting websites. For a quick way to get lists of parenting publications, check the contacts in the Online Parenting Media Database.

3. Find the right contact. If you are unsure who you need to contact, look for the editorial assistant’s contact details. Send her a quick email, explaining, “I have a great new (describe your products or service). Who would be the best person to send information about it to?”

4. Get in touch. Write an email describing what’s new and unique about your product or service, and why it is just right for readers of the magazine. Send this email to your contact.

5. Follow up. Use the Online Parenting Media Database to pull out the relevant phone number and make a call to your contact to offer samples or images.

6. Do It Again. Make 1 or 2 calls or send 1 or 2 emails each day. You will soon be getting great coverage for your business, plus clippings and quotes you can refer to on your website.