Last Wednesday I had the privilege of being on the LinkedIn Lady radio show. While regular host Carol McManus (@linkedinlady) was away at a conference, a friend and former colleague, Ken Herron (@KenHerron), was the guest host. I couldn’t turn down Ken’s request that I be his special guest on the show.

Ken and I talked in lengths about how small businesses need to incorporate social media as part of their integrated marketing mix, and I’m writing this blog post as a summation of the conversation we had during the show.

Ken opened the discussion by asking me which social media platform a small business should be on. Unfortunately, there is no right answer. Social media is not about you or your business, it’s about your customers, audience, and whoever you are trying to reach. Simply put, you go where your customers are. If your customers are on Facebook, you should be on Facebook. If they’re on Twitter or Pinterest, you should be as well.

Communicate with your customers to find out which networks they are on, as well as the type of content they want from you on social media. This will enhance engagement, a process critical to your success on social media.

The next portion of the show focused on standing out from the competition on social media. While one can go the route of focusing on the ‘trends’ (YouTube or other video platforms) or on ‘conventional’ social media platforms by going with Facebook and Twitter, my professional recommendation is to be on multiple platforms and simultaneously utilize video. Part of video’s appeal for social media is that it lets your potential customers see, hear, and “touch/feel” your business. These are all important ways that people can learn about you and your business. From there, you can take your videos and cross-promote these videos on other social media platforms. It’s essentially about tying all the social media platforms together while maximizing the tangible components of your brand.

With your presence on social media, it is always important to measure success. My definition of success is not measured by the number of followers I have. Instead, it’s how many people I engage with on a daily basis. It’s how many people are retweeting what I’m saying or responding to a tweet I’ve sent out.

Success on social media does not come overnight, instead, it’s a process that requires commitment and dedication to the craft, at least fifteen minutes twice a day to grow your business by interacting with your customers online. Small business owners are their own brand, and they should share their expertise with customers regardless of the social media platform they are on.

One way to measure impact on social media is by looking at one’s Klout score – Klout basically takes different components of your digital influence and tells you how much of an influence you have on your audiences. There’s a lot of back and forth between supporters and naysayers, but the algorithms Klout uses provides insight into your online presence.

While there are no magic tricks to improving your Klout score, there are a number of ways small business owners can be effective on social media. The first is to take their time to learn the different platforms. Take whatever time you need to learn a given social network before worrying about being on multiple sites. The savvy will come, just be patient and learn all the different ways to maximize the effectiveness of the network.

This experience can be enhanced by joining Twitter chats and reading blogs to learn from social media experts. Twitter chats are beneficial to users worldwide as they are a two-way street: either you learn or strut your stuff by sharing what you know. Twitter chats are essentially what you make out of them, and can help increase your company’s visibility. Here’s a list of 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers: http://mashable.com/2012/04/11/twitter-chats-social-media-marketers/. Continuing on with the train of thought of learning, reading blogs are another critical component of being successful on social media. Below is a link to a list of some of my favorite social media blogs: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-10-social-media-blogs-the-2012-winners/.

Before we concluded, Ken and I quickly touched on GM pulling their advertising money from Facebook and the implications this has on online advertising from here on out. The one important nugget I’ve taken away from all of this is that you need to ask yourself the question of whether paid advertising will work for your business to reach your customers, regardless of whether it is through Facebook, Google AdWords, etc. You cannot answer this question without trying, and it is worth your time, money, and effort to determine if paid advertising is worthwhile for your business. GM determined that it was best not to pay the $10 million towards Facebook and instead continue to grow the presence of their branded pages on Facebook, an initiative they’ve poured more than $30 million into during the last year. GM found something that worked better for them and it’s important that you do the analysis and allocate monies/time towards something that will maximize the effectiveness of every dollar invested.

To listen to the free LinkedIn Lady Show podcast featuring Ken Herron and Corey Axelrod, visit iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-linkedin-lady-show/id433664232.

The post LinkedIn Lady Show Guest Appearance: Streamline Small Business with Social Media first appeared on Corey Axelrod.

PPC advertising on search engines work.

If you have an online marketing strategy, there’s a good chance Google AdWords or other search engine advertising initiatives are an important part of it. You’re probably carefully monitoring, and hopefully optimizing, your performance.

The advantages with search engine advertising are aplenty as campaigns can be adjusted immediately, ads can be tailored based on keywords, and  ads can drive immediate action. Another advantage is that search engine advertising is cost friendly – only you can set the budget for what you’re willing to pay.

While there are numerous advantages, search engine advertising isn’t for everyone. Just because it’s hot doesn’t mean that it will make business sense for you. A number of companies dabble in Google AdWords and shortly after, throw in the towel. The reason? They don’t believe they get the return on investment they think they should.

In order to decide if Google AdWords or other search engine advertising initiative is for you, consider the following criteria.

Set aside a budget

In order to really benefit from a search engine advertising initiative, you need to be prepared to spend spend what it will take to get the clicks.

In Google’s latest search engine marketing study, Google revealed one of the benefits associated with increasing a budget for search ads is that websites achieved approximately 78% of an increase in average clicks. This increase in clicks may be beneficial to your business, only if the benefits outweigh the cost.

This analysis includes an in-depth analysis of your competitors to evaluate what they are doing with PPC advertising. This is because your competitors may have bigger ad spends, and price you out of your ballpark. On the flip side, it is possible that you may be a first mover in the advertising space. This is beneficial for you as you can build a reputation with search engines by maximizing your ads’ quality scores – this is a direct indication of how Google assesses the relevancy of your ads, keywords, and landing pages to a person seeing your score. Higher quality scores typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions.

Make the time to track performance

The catch 22 associated with search engine advertising is that these initiatives have an unmatched ability to adjust to market conditions. You can adjust most pay per click campaigns and your changes are rendered almost immediately. The other side of the coin is that you need to commit the time to continuously measure the success of your search engine advertising campaign(s) and make changes when appropriate.

Think like a customer

Your customers are probably using search engines to find you or companies that provide similar products and services. In order for customers to find you, you need to place keywords that they are typing when doing a search. One of my favorite places to find popular keywords that are searched is Google’s AdWords: Keyword Tool. There you can find keywords to further optimize your search engine advertising campaign(s).

Is it for you?

As I wrote previously, advertising on search engines isn’t for everyone. If you decide to utilize this initiative as a part of your online marketing strategy, you may reap the associated benefits. It is important, however, to remember one thing – don’t throw in the towel if things aren’t going the right way. Evaluate consistently and adjust accordingly, and then repeat.

The post Search Engine Advertising Works first appeared on Corey Axelrod.