The solution I am proposing is to use social media to reestablish trust by allowing your raving fans to do the selling for you! Who do consumers trust? Each other! We naturally trust our neighbor’s referral over any type of formal advertising. Traditionally this has been called “word-of -mouth” marketing.

Here is the GREAT news. Social media is word-of-mouth networking on steriods. And, this is no longer just my supposition. Today eMarketer.com published a study that confirms online advertising trust is on the rise worldwide. “According to the “Global Online Consumer Survey” by Nielsen, 41% of worldwide Internet users trusted online advertising.” In fact, the study reveals the number one advertising tactic trusted by consumers is “recommendations from people I know”. You should definitely check out this fantastic article by eMarketer.com.

This strategy will require risk on your part. What if the reverse happens? What if someone says something negative? Can negative comments destroy all the trust you’ve worked to build up? Yes, if you don’t have a service recovery plan in place. You need a step by step plan in place to handle any negative posts. The plan should answer the following questions:

• How fast will you respond?
• What will your message be?
• How will reassure your other online followers?

With a plan a place you can effectively handle negative posts. AND, get this….you can actually earn MORE trust by allowing an honest dialogue to take place, showing that you have a plan in place and that you take your customer’s concerns seriously. This is the mark of a trustworthy company.

But, let me quell your concerns about negative posts. I monitor a lot of “business” social media sites. I don’t see a lot of negative posts EXCEPT for the big “corporation” type companies. Why? No one wants to fire the first shot across the bow. I believe we are all thinking “If I start the negative avalanche it will eventually catch up to me!” We are afraid to say something negative about another business in fear someone else will do it to our business. Make sense? In fact, I mostly find social media pages for small businesses to be a sickening love fest of unrealistic proportions!

Start allowing your past, current and future customers to talk to each. They can sell you better than you ever will. Open up the dialogue and reap the rewards.

We practice what we preach! Please post a comment below and we invite you to disagree! And, we invite you to become a fan of the Internet Marketing Hotline on Facebook!

Need help with social media? Sign-up for Meredith’s Social Media Boot Camp, Aug. 11, 18 & 25 at the HBA of Metro Orlando.

I shared with them my ”fab five”…my five favorite FREE online tools. As a busy power mom, I use these tools on a daily basis. I believe technology should make our lives easier not harder! If a technology tool doesn’t save me time and/or money it is off the list! Enjoy my list and I hope they make your life easier as well!

1. Enter www.google.com (or try Bing, Yahoo, Ask…) in your address bar. Click Go.

2. In the search bar, type in some key words in your industry. How would people find you?

3. Where do you rank?

If you’re not on the first page of results, it’s time to re-evaluate your web content for keywords, metatags and possibly invest in a serious SEO program.  I don’t want to get in to anything too technical for the purpose of this blog – but I did want to cover some of the basics and why these things are critical to the success of your company.

If you have visited before, you’ll notice a lot of new features and services.

Three great ways to take advantage of the Internet Marketing Hotline’s services:

 1. Sign up for a FREE membership! This entitles you to participate in our Forums where you can ask any burning Internet marketing question for free.

2. Sign up for a PAID membership! This entitles you to access our LIVE network of experts who will give you one-on-one LIVE phone support to solve any Internet marketing problem you might have.

3. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and/or sign up for our eNewsletter. We would love to be “friends” with you!

Thank you for your interest in the Internet Marketing Hotline. We know you have Internet Marketing questions. We have the answers!

Are you having trouble keeping all of those little status updates current? I mean, really – there’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace… and it never ends! By the time you update your third website, the first one is already outdated!

There have been a lot of new widgets and applications that you can add to your blog, website and other social media places that will feed directly from your twitter account – but some are still incompatible, like LinkedIn.

So what’s a gal to do? Check out ping.fm! Ping is a free service which allows users to post to multiple social sites simultaneously.

As social media grows in popularity, more of these “hybrid” sites are popping up, allowing us to pull all of our other websites together with one simple interface. Ping is one of the most inclusive sites, with the easiest level of usage and broadest range of coverage.

Facebook Is Exhausting!

Are you as overwhelmed as I am with social media? Whew! It’s exhausting. And, I’m a supposed expert on the Internet. I can only imagine how most of you feel. Some of you just figured out how to text your kids or turn on your iPhone…(but we love you just the same).

If you are like me, you already have tons of phone calls and emails to keep up with. Just the thought of adding more online to-do tasks like updating LinkedIn and remembering to “tweet” routinely on Twitter is mind blowing!

Here is the good news. It gets easier. Several months ago I made a dedicated effort to be more active with social networks and here is the secret; using social media is just like any other habit you want to cultivate, make it part of your daily routine and it happens.

Save Clicks!

Remember “save the cheerleader, save the world”…a phrase made popular during the first season of the television show Heroes? 

In this post, I am going to teach you how to save yourself repetitive clicks and maximize your time. Okay so saving clicks may not save the world, but you just might find yourself less frazzled and more productive!

If you are like most people I know, you are short on both money and time these days. You are working harder and longer than ever before and making less money doing it. Sound familiar?

Don't Be A Jurassic Adaptor!

If you are really interested in the topic of Web site design, I highly recommend Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think.” I read the first edition several years ago and it became my bible for good Web site layout and design. I recently re-read the second edition and recommitted our team to developing sites that never ever make visitors “think”!

eMarketing research indicates visitors spend less than 27 seconds per page and they leave in less than two minutes if the Web site makes them think.

A good benchmark for your site is a five minute visit length with seven to eight page views. Of course, the larger the site (number of pages) the longer the visit length should be and the more pages they should view.

Twitter Icon

Wondering where to get the social media icons to proudly proclaim you are now on Twitter, Facebook or Wordpress? Look no further! I found a great source at http://www.iconspedia.com/. This site offers more free icons than you can possibly download! I found the categories in the left side navigation difficult to use and not particularly intuitive, but the search feature works very well. From Facebook, Google to Twitter,  just type the name of the icon you are looking for in the search field and it comes right up. For the purpose of posting icons on a Website or in an email signature, I recommend downloading the PNG file type and either the 32 X 32 or 64 X 64 size. The icon in this post is the 128 X 128 size so you can get a feel for that size. Click on the size you wish and then click save. The download will start and either automatically save to My Documents/My Pictures or to a file you designate manually. Make a note where you saved the image so you can find it later when you upload it to your site. I hate it when I forget where a file is!