Ideas for Business

You are likely no stranger to Facebook. Almost everyone uses it these days and the company boasts 150 million users on mobile phones alone. The local Groups feature has been a popular Facebook offering since the beginning of the social service and it allows users to connect with people in their local areas. But Facebook Places takes local social networking a bit further.

Enter real time location-based social networking.

Facebook Places allows you to let your friends know exactly where you are located right now. For instance, you’re sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth and Main. If someone you know is approaching that intersection and sees you sitting there, she could just pop in and say hi. The courtesy of a heads up would be her choice, of course.

The biggest downside seems to be a loss of privacy, but you can change who sees and who can interact with your Facebook Places settings through the service’s privacy settings.

This puts Facebook on the forefront of location-based networking and close to the leading edge on location-based advertising, which is sure to follow. It’s interesting that other location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla see Facebook as friendly to their services rather than a competitor.

(Source) Appearing at Facebook’s announcement, some initial partners, including Foursquare and Gowalla, said they thought Facebook would be an enabler—not a competitor—by introducing a lot of new users to the world of sharing their locations.

Foursquare beat Facebook to the location-based networking space by a year and a half. Gowalla arrived on the scene somewhat earlier but doesn’t have as many users as Foursquare.

Of course, these are not the only location-based networking services online. Facebook Places does have its competition, including Google. Google’s service is called Latitude, which allows you to see where your friends are on Google Maps.

I have a feeling that location-based social networking is just getting started. According to JiWire, more than half of mobile users want to see location-based advertising. That means Facebook Places has a unique opportunity to capitalize and being that Facebook is the most trafficked website online, it has the market clout needed to rival Google in paid advertising services. Places could just be its ticket to the big leagues.

Matt McGee does it again.

Just when you thought everyone you know would be starting a blog soon, statistics show otherwise. Only 1/3 of U.S. companies have a blog. And only 43% will have one by 2010. These estimates are from a report by eMarketer.

But even more startling are the growth of business blogs in the past five years and Matt McGee’s bold, bold statement:

I won’t provide consultation services to companies that don’t blog.

That’s a pretty strong statement. If a small business Internet marketing consultant won’t provide consulting services to businesses that don’t blog, doesn’t that say something about how important these little marketing tools are? It should.

In 2007 only 16% of U.S. businesses had a blog. Now, just three years later, a little more than twice that many do. But it makes you wonder why more businesses aren’t blogging when the benefits are so clear. There is probably no online marketing tool that delivers as much targeted search traffic as fast and that can achieve greater search engine rankings so well. But I guess not everyone knows that.

One of the difficulties that many small businesses face is that of competing with larger businesses, especially when it comes to PPC advertising. Larger businesses often work on smaller margins so they can afford to bid a little higher for keywords. This can see smaller businesses priced out of the popular PPC markets. Social media advertising could well be an option worth exploring.

Facebook is a prime example where advertising can be targeted based on demographics rather than keywords. You will often find that social media advertising is also less restrictive when it comes to issues such as quality scores and the tight rules that search engines like Google often apply.

If you are struggling with PPC campaigns through traditional outlets like Google, then a little research in what social media sites require is definitely worth considering. StumbleUpon, while not always delivering traffic that converts, can deliver traffic at just five cents per click.  Facebook traffic will be a little more expensive, but often far cheaper than Adwords for example.

There are a lot of coupons around at present offering $50 or even $75 trials of Facebook ads. If you haven’t trialled Facebook yet, or any of the other social media sites, check them out; give them a trial run (especially if you can find one of those free coupons); and compere them to your current campaigns. There are many businesses that are now reporting much better conversions and a much higher ROI when compared to traditional PPC.

We are in period where the online world has become extremely competitive. As a small business, you need to find every opportunity available to gain that edge on your competitors. While they are bashing their heads with Adwords campaigns, you could be cleaning up through social media advertising.

Google have introduced a special area in their Adwords forum specifically targeted towards small business. Appropriately named ‘Small Business Corner’, it allows small businesses that use Google Adwords to come together to discuss what works, what doesn’t work, and how to get the best out of their ad campaigns. PPC for small business can be difficult as business owners tend to manage their own campaigns rather than employing professionals.

The Google small business blog best sums up the forums intentions stating:

The Small Business Corner is designed to give those of you who are running your own AdWords accounts the opportunity to share best practices in discussions with your peers so that you can make sure your AdWords account is doing all it can to support your business goals.

Areas of interest that small business owners can share include tools used to help with PPC campaigns and measuring results, and how to craft winning ads.  In the offline world, small businesses have regularly come together to form associations where they can discuss and share business ideas. Google’s Small Business Corner is only one of a number of small business forums, however, as it’s directly related to Adwords, it may make for an interesting place to share ideas.

There is one aspect of small business that is generally not promoted often enough online. That aspect? The fact that they are small; they can be personal; and that the person you are talking too is most likely the owner.  If it is the owner you are dealing with, you know it’s in their best interest to provide a good service. When it comes to big business, the person you are talking to is a wage earner and their vested interest is in their paycheck each week – not necessarily you.

Small businesses have capitalized on this in the bricks and mortar world for decades. I am somewhat surprised that  online businesses are not also promoting their size as being a benefit to customers. Trust is always an issue for many customers and small businesses have access to a  tool that can quickly resolve some of these trust issues and that tool is video.

All it takes is a short video in which the small business owner introduces themselves, their produces or services and perhaps what their web site has to offer customers. The one thing missing from the online world is that face to face contact. While video is only one way, it certainly provides a means to communicate with customers, and for customers to see and hear who they are dealing with.

Short videos like this can do wonders for an online business’s trust factors. Of course, it is important that you come across in the video as being trusting – but that’s something that you will need to work on. Video marketing doesn’t have to promote a product,  it can be used to simply build trust,  and for small businesses, it can serve them much better than large businesses.