The Flip Video Camera

Hello there, it’s Kristen Weaver, your Roving Reporter back on duty!

School is back in session, and I was fired up for this morning’s Social Media seminar “Flip over the Flip and YouTube”, presented by Meredith and sponsored by WOAMTEC.

We started off the morning just getting everyone logged in and fed (because what’s a good day at school without a hearty breakfast?). I grabbed a blueberry bagel, banana and Orange Joice. Breakfast of champions, no?

Meredith begins our session talking about all the ways that using YouTube will help with your organic search optimization. So fascinating to me. I’ve used YouTube before, but only for videos of my cat (who wobbles). I was very excited to get it started for my photography business and open a new “channel” – but I had no idea how much it can help your ranking! Basically, Google owns YouTube, which means that when you tag your videos, Google will start to search and rank them as part of your business. We also got to hear a great testimonial of how this worked for a local company! I’m sooo on this!

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.