Ideas for Business

If you are doing business online then you’ll want to make sure that you are doing certain things to promote your business. At any time during Internet history there were certain websites that were absolutely essential to doing business online. I think there are three websites that most small businesses should join right now in order to position themselves for their absolute necessity in marketing online in the future.

• Facebook – Facebook has grown into one of the largest and most trafficked websites online. Its diversity is so rich that no matter what niche you are in you are sure to find an audience. Blatant in-your-face marketing isn’t the game. But developing relationships is. And if you want to do business in the future, Facebook will be essential marketing.
• Twitter – There are still people who aren’t sure how to use Twitter. And some of them are using it now. In the future, Twitter will become an essential marketing tool. Small business owners who learn how to use Twitter for marketing will see volumes of success.
• LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the quiet giant. It isn’t as hyped as Facebook and Twitter, but it’s just as important. The tools you have to building relationships and finding prospects are a bit more sophisticated, but they’re simple as pie. LinkedIn will be one of those sites you won’t want to miss out on.

This isn’t to say that you’ll want to abandon old mainstays like search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. On the contrary, you’ll just want to make sure you incorporate these three social media sites into your marketing plan as well.

Advertising Age says Bill Gates should follow Eric Schmidt (Google CEO). Why? Because they’re competitors.

The article goes on to say that many businesses are afraid to follow their competition. They don’t want the world to know they follow their rivals because it might give the competition a boost. It might, but then it might not. Practically speaking, it’s a great way to keep up with your competitors to see what they are up to. In the words of one marketer, “How else can I stay ahead of them?”

Let’s see: You follow the competition so you can stay ahead of them? Now that’s a novel idea!

And it’s a pretty wise one too. If your competitors are on Twitter then you should be too. And you should be following them so you can keep up with what they are doing. Another reason to follow your competitors is so you can gain access to their followers. You can make an offer to followers of your competition if you see that they are fans of a particular brand. If you have a similar brand then offer a discount for trying yours.

So who else should you follow on Twitter? I’d recommend, besides your competition, industry peers, your employees, journalists that cover your industry, bloggers in your niche, and your customers. Follow anyone who has anything to do with your industry. And engage with them as well.

According to a report by Chitika, Bing has passed Yahoo! as the No. 2 search provider in the U.S. Google still holds No. 1 with more than 80% of all searches.

This isn’t really that a big a deal. Since Bing is taking over Yahoo!s search technology anyway, and that move should be finished by the end of this month, it really just means that Bing can count more searches in its share than it could before. With Bing holding onto 11% of the searches made in July and Yahoo! at 6%, that means the No. 2 search engine has the lion’s share of the 19% of search share that Google doesn’t have with a total of 17% of the complete pie.

Bing really passed Yahoo! in January of this year when it garnered more than 7% of search and Yahoo had just over 6%. Google at that time had 83.59%. Since then, it seems, Bing has taken a couple of percentage points away from Google. Now the question remains: Can Bing take any more search share from Google?

It will be a long road uphill for Bing, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. What do you think?

It’s interesting watching developments in emerging markets like search and social media. For the past decade Google has dominated search and has just grown its market share more and more while its competition has declined. It just hasn’t seemed possible that anyone could catch up. Then, enter Facebook.

Facebook and Google have not exactly been competitors. But, technically, they are.

Google is a search engine. Facebook is a social media platform. Its growth into one of the largest and most trafficked websites online is itself an extraordinary success story. As is Google’s. Even though these two companies appeal to their respective users in very different ways, they can be considered competitors in one very important respect. They compete for traffic.

You could also say they compete for advertisers. After all, advertisers want to spend their money where the greatest hope of success is. Generally, that means where the people are. Traffic.

In Facebook’s case, however, that hasn’t exactly proven to be a huge feather in the cap. Google AdWords is still the No. 1 choice for online advertisers, which makes Facebook’s recent acquisition of Chai Labs an extraordinary event.

Google has had so many acquisitions that not many people even notice them any more. And no acquisition has taken the company from its emphasis on search, which is a good thing. But Facebook has not made a habit of adding new companies to its portfolio. The fact that one of its first acquisitions is a search technology provider means that Facebook is planning to enter into Google’s domain – and it’s just as well since Google has entered into Facebook’s a number of times. The question before Facebook today is whether it can take a purchase like Chai Labs and churn it into a public offering that will help it to rival Google in the one area where Google has excelled better than anyone else? Can Facebook become a search monolith without compromising its ability to provide a social platform?

Dennis Yu has some good ideas on using Facebook for advertising. Specifically, some of the things that I like about his approach include:

• If you’re a small business then you can use these strategies to move in on your larger competitors
• Advertising on Facebook using these methods is direct targeting in ways that you can’t do off line
• It’s easy to sneak up on your competition
• You can give the impression that you are bigger than you are just by advertising
• I particularly like the “Switcher Campaign” model

Facebook has been criticized for not being as effective as PPC, but I think we may be seeing some evidence of change in how Facebook rolls out its advertising. If they can prove that Facebook advertising is as effective as PPC advertising with Google AdWords then we might see some legitimate competition in the online advertising space. At any rate, Facebook advertising looks like it could be worth a look-see.