Editor’s Note: Annie Mueller provides value-filled, relevant content to help small businesses build an effective online presence. In over 6 years of freelance writing, she’s never had an unhappy client.

Networking is about meeting and building relationships with people for a purpose. It’s that last part that counts in the definition, the purposeful part. Otherwise we’re all just socializing, which is what much of it amounts to anyway because if you don’t know your purpose, it’s pretty difficult to achieve it. That’s fine if you just enjoy socializing for the sake of socializing (and, actually, the best social networkers are people like that usually). However, if you’re spending marketing dollars and the prosperity of your business depends on the success of your social networking, you’d better do a bit more than socialize.

1. The Question You’d Better Answer First

Why are you interested in social networking? To build your business? How, exactly?Do you sell online or just promote online? Are you locally, nationally, or internationally focused? Do you want people to talk about your business online, share your links, spread the word about you, learn more about you, recommend you, sign up for a program, get a free sample, get your e-newsletter, read your blog, interact with you, ask questions, get a membership, order a product, pay for a service, refer you to their friends? If social networking works for you just the way you want it to, what will the results be? Get that pinned down first; don’t tweet a single character or start a Facebook page or write a blog post until you know the answer to this question:What do you hope to accomplish from your social networking? What are your ideal results? Be very specific; don’t say, “I want my business to grow.” Say, “I want 75 members in my exclusive coaching clubs,” or “I want to sell 6,000 widgets online next year,” or “I want 100,000 readers so I can sell pricey ads on my site,” or “I want 250+ people in my referral program,” or “I want 100 customers to sign up for my gold-level service club.”

2. Believe in what you have to offer.

Billy Mays. Everybody wished he would be a little bit quieter but nobody doubted he really loved that OxiClean. And he sold it. Bob Ross. He was all calm and light and happy trees and you just knew you could paint that way, too, if you listened to him. He believed it, and he sold it. Tyler Florence. A gourmet chef singing the praises of a packaged salad dressing? Er. Something’s screechy and wrong here. If what you are trying to sell violates the principles you have already defined for yourself and your business, don’t waste your time trying to sell it. You either have to find a new product or service which fits with the way you’ve defined yourself, or you have to redefine yourself and your business. If you can’t convince yourself that what you have to offer is genuinely worthy, then you cannot convince anyone else. Believe in your business, first. If you’re in one of those slog points, revisit the notes you made on top of the mountain. Remember your strengths. Think about your unique offer. Define the value and make sure it’s something you believe in.

3. Find the right people: the ones who actually need and will benefit from what you offer.

Target your online audience as (or more) carefully as you target your target market. Who will be interested in what you have to offer? Don’t waste your time trying to interest “everybody.” NOTHING (except maybe toilet paper) has universal appeal. Focus on the people who will love, adore, and build small shrines to the solution you bring them. They will become your secondary marketers and will talk a whole bunch of other (fringe) people into trying your business, too. They will be passionate, enthusiastic, and committed customers. Get these people. Focus on them. Pour your attention onto them. Quit trying to convince a huge crowd of slightly disinterested folks to get interested in you, and instead, start talking to the people who are already into your field. Your job is half-done.

4. Find a (free) preliminary way to solve problems.

Before you sell, give. This is a basic idea of permission marketing, education-based marketing, and Golden Rule marketing, which are all pretty much the same thing. So pick a name and then apply the concept by giving first. Offer genuine value. Don’t try to cheap out at this point. People will flee and never return.

5. Find and focus on 1 to 3 social outlets.

Even if you have a full-time, salaried social networker plugging away for your business, focusing on a few social outlets rather than trying to have a presence on all of them will get you better results. Of course Facebook and Twitter are the big daddies, but if you know your target audience well (and you should) go where they are, whether that’s Facebook, Twitter, ZombieLandForums.com, or somewhere else entirely. Go to the people you want to reach and focus on a few of the places where they hang out online.

6. Be enthusiastic.

Because if you don’t really care or even like it that much, why should anybody else? Introverts, break out of your personality a bit and show some emotion. If that’s utterly impossible for you, delegate or hire out so you get a voice out there with some enthusiasm in it. Otherwise you waste your time.

7. Offer value, help, and attention.

First, offer free items of value. This could be content (your blog, your resources) or samples (don’t be cheap) or trials or digital products (ebooks, podcasts) or giveaways or clubs or services.Second, offer help when you see a need and, definitely, whenever people ask for it. Don’t hesitate. Don’t count up the loss of billable hours. Help.Third, offer attention when people start interacting with you. Don’t work to get people to notice you and then ignore them when they do. Follow up. Listen, Respond. Interact. Be real. Give your attention.

8. Be consistent.

Give people familiarity and reliability. They tend to like that sort of thing.

• Consistent message: say one thing, say it clearly, and repeat it often.
• Consistent value: don’t create one great product and then cheap out on the next. Your customers will feel betrayed.
• Consistent method: if you blog, post on the same days and follow the same format; if you tweet, offer the same kind of helpful info all the time; whatever you do, set up a format that works for your goal and stick with it. Sure, some variation and creativity is great; just work within some basic boundaries so people know what you offer and aren’t disappointed. It only takes one visit to a blog without a recent post for a visitor to strike you off the “live” list.

9. Be ready to sell what you have to offer.

If you follow the steps as outlined, eventually (maybe much sooner than you think) people will ask, “What else?” You’ve offered value, you’ve been sincere, you’re enthusiastic and likeable, you’ve been helpful, you’ve been consistent. You’ve won them over. They like you. They want to give back. They are eager to invest back in you the way you have invested in them. So give them a way to do just that!

• Make it obvious. Obvious doesn’t mean obnoxious. No flashing signs or neon arrows necessary, but a nice big button that says, “Order XYZ Product Here” could do the trick.
• Make it easy. Purchasing should be a simple, one or two step process.
• Make it sincere. Any sales material you have needs to reflect the heart and vision of your business. Go back to step 1: do you still believe in your business? Put that belief into words. Be real. You can always get an editor.
• Make it subordinate. Yes, this is your business; but your first goal must remain – always – to help the people in your network. If you know that they would be better helped by another product or service, or that your product/service will NOT help them, then it is your responsibility to say so. You may lose a sale, but you will gain a reputation that is worth many more sales in the future.

10. Follow up with even more value after the sale.

Repeat steps #7 and #8 with everyone who buys from you. Sound like hard work? It is. That’s the thing with social networking: it isn’t a magic button or an automatic cash cow. There is no keyword strategy that can build a business without any real value any it. So build a good foundation. Put the work in. And here’s the good news: the initial work will pay off exponentially. That’s the magic part of the social networking model, and it does work. Once you put in the work, the time, the belief, the energy, the effort, the attention, and the value, you win over a few people who love you like you love your business: maybe 10, maybe 100, maybe 1000. Then they network for you. The 10 becomes 100, the 100 becomes 1000, the 1000 becomes 10,000. And it keeps growing. You keep giving, of course. So yes: social networking, done right, is 1) hard work which 2) requires time and effort and 3) takes time before it pays off. But it also 4) does pay off and 5) the returns can be quite great and often 6) will take off and continue to grow far beyond the original investment you made.

Photo Credit: Intersection Consulting

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Tom Beck, owner and commercial photographer extraordinaire, at Beck Photographic for sharing his thoughts with us… Tom is the best in the business, check out his web site or connect with him on Twitter to get to know him better.

Why would you want your brand (advertising) photography to not look professional?  What purpose does it serve, except to make your business look unprofessional.

A good portrait photographer is not necessarily a good commercial photographer, and vice versa.   Photographers tend to have specialties, and just because one shoots great portraits doesn’t mean they can shoot products, or food.  Research who you’re hiring, and notice what photos of theirs stand out.

What does a “good enough” photo mean to your business and your ad?  If it looks blah, then it’ll get lost and forgotten in all the other ads out there.  And even if you do see results, how much better would the results be if you actually had a GREAT photo in your advertising?

When you hire a pro photographer, you’re insuring that you’re going to get great results.  Does the person you hired for $100 off of Craigslist have pro equipment?  Backup equipment?  A certificate of insurance in case they break your merchandise?  Are they going to behave professionally on the shoot?  Do they know the technical specs of what you need delivered, and will they deliver in a timely manner?  These aren’t (usually) a concern when you hire a true professional.

If you (or your graphic designer) is purchasing microstock photography (iStockphoto, Shutterstock, etc.), then your competition can too.  How embarrassing will it be to see the image you’re using being used by your competitor (and yes, it HAS happened, more times than you know)?  Also, is that image “good enough”, or does it stand out?  If the image is just “OK”, even if you didn’t pay much for it, how much is it costing you in business you COULD have had? In other words, are you getting the biggest bang for your buck?

What say you? What is your experience with good enough vs. great photography?

Guest post by Mandy Becker, owner of Swagger in Cary, North Carolina

Do your sales slump a little during the summer months?  Maybe since “no one is around” you slack off on your marketing efforts.  Sound familiar?

I used to do this. I was a major summer slacker. We would be having such great May sales numbers, but I would be depressed, because I knew June, July and August were right around the corner, and our sales would slow down.

Thank goodness I finally kicked myself in the rear and said “you, Mandy, are in control of your own destiny.” Well, it went kind of like that, but you catch my drift.

I realized that our summer sales were slow, because I made them slow.  How did I make them slow?  Well…

1. I wasn’t sending out our store newsletter as often during the summer. Why bother – people weren’t around to read them anyway – right?
2. I didn’t order as much “new” stuff to come in during the summer months. Why bother – people weren’t around to buy the items – right?

Um – WRONG!  Yes, people do go on vacation, but not (usually) for the entire summer!

I finally realized that:

1. Our customers still had friends and family who had summer birthdays.
2. Our customers still needed summer hostess gifts for parties or gifts for the people they were visiting on vacation.
3. Our customers still “needed” little summer pick me ups for themselves!

So I changed my entire attitude. Summer was going to be a time for new items, new promotions, and new energy in my business!

First off – new product!

Keeping new product rolling in all summer long is key. Even if it is new colors or patterns in best sellers – that’s NEW to your customers. New merchandise gives your employees fresh stuff to talk about with customers and reasons for the customers to come back. Think about your busy seasons. Do you tell your customers “Ooh – come in next week too – we will have these really awesome new things coming in”? It works in December and it will work in July – you’ll see. People love new, and they LOVE to be in the know! Entice them and they will come back.

Your monthly (e-mail or print) newsletter is a great way to “get the word out” about your new items and store events, so is your Facebook Page or your blog. And the latter two can be done so easily! New product comes in, picture is taken, picture is posted to Facebook with witty saying and VOILA – 30 minutes later the world knows you have “new stuff”! I am a big fan of Photo Albums on Facebook. Create them for new product lines or do a “snapshot of your store right now” album. We have sold a lot of products out of photo albums!

New promotions

This one is my favorite because it’s fun! There are lots of ways to promote your store – giveaways, contests, and more – be creative! Your customers will love it! This year, we decided to do a summer Facebook photo contest “Where have you Swaggered lately?”  We believe it will help us reach our goal of 2000 fans by November and our customers are basically promoting our products to other customers! I’ll let you guys know how it goes, but we have already created quite the buzz in our store and online! Just yesterday a customer wanted the “baby mat” from the photo contest!

And finally – New Energy!

Our new energy comes in the form of cause-related marketing events during the summer.  We team up with local charities and have trunk shows or other types of events that are promoted to our customers and the charity’s supporters. We give back to the community, and we get exposure to new people – it is a win-win for both parties involved!  Be sure to promote the events both online and off.

I hope this helped get you motivated for a great Summer Selling Season! What are some of your summer promotion ideas? I know we would all love to hear them!

Thanks!

Mandy

When Andy and Marianna asked me to be a guest blogger on Results Revolution I was super psyched, but also a little nervous! I’m just a small business owner that likes to blog – not an expert on blogging! But then I think that was the point – right guys? If I can do it, you can definitely do it!

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Mandy, and I own Swagger Gifts in Cary, NC. I have been blogging for my gift shop since February 2008. I love to blog, and I do the best I can. But I KNOW I’m not the best blogger out there. I think when I finally realized that, I actually became a better blogger! The fear of “am I doing this right?” is gone, because there is no right or wrong! I know there are a bunch of people out there giving advice on blogging – and I try really hard to follow some of it – but the best advice I received was – JUST DO IT! And in turn it is the advice I am handing out to you today!

Creating your blog (which you can do for FREE – just Google “free blogs”) and then writing a post are the first two steps. I promise it is easy and basically painless! Then commit yourself to the blog. It only works if you are consistent!

Marianna asked me to answer two questions for you:

1. How often do I blog? Of course my goal is to blog every day, but sometimes I can only make it happen twice a week (you know all the other stuff that comes with owning a small business gets “in the way”). However I do strive for twice a week – remember consistency is key – it gets your readers in the habit of coming to see what is going on at your business and the search engines love it!
2. What type of content do I put on my blog? I guess “a little bit of everything” would be the answer here!

One thing that we do to get people visiting the Swagger Gifts’ blog on a regular basis is to do a weekly giveaway. It is a lot of fun to interact with our customers in this way and it showcases a specific item that generally customers come in and purchase (which of course is the goal!). Our blog also feeds into our Facebook page, so people will share the giveaway on their pages which also increases our “fan” numbers (more people to market to – yeah!). The weekly giveaway has been very beneficial financially for Swagger Gifts!

I also blog about “new stuff” that has come into the store. I have done posts on 23 boxes just arrived to Hot New Trends to Baby Gifts under $40. I think pictures are worth a thousands words, so I always attach a picture to our posts! One of our most popular posts was about how a new oversized flower could be used in the Front Door Idea blog post. I know it was popular because the flowers sold out almost immediately, and we had a “people to call” list waiting when our next shipment came in. Most people said they saw it on Facebook!

Blogging about community events and charity events that we are doing in the store or ones that our customers are involved in is great for goodwill! It also shows that you are involved with the local community!

A while ago, Marianna wrote a blog post about sharing “Behind the Scenes” info with your customers. I have posted Behind the Scenes info a couple times and our customers seem to love it! We live in such a “social” society that people love reading about what your life as a business owner is really like! I should do this more often – thanks Marianna for the tip!

This also leads me to writing about going to tradeshows or other places you visit for your type of business. I have been writing about our market trips for two years now and our “sneak peak” blog posts get customers excited and coming into the store asking “when is so and so going to arrive!”

There are so many other things to post about, and I would love to hear what you do on your blog to generate traffic for your business! Please comment below – I’m sure all of us who read the Results Revolution blog would love some new ideas!

For those of you who don’t have a blog (yet) – go out there and start one! Then come back here and comment on how easy it was!

Thanks for reading and for sharing your tips below!

Mandy

Whether you are a startup business owner, a seasoned veteran, a designer, a wedding planner, or a theatre director, chances are you have the occasional basic spreadsheet that needs to be put together or sometimes a more technical analysis that you may need done as well.

In this economy and with a lean small biz budget, we do not always have the necessary funds to purchase or license fancy software. The bottom line is that most people have Microsoft Excel on their home and/or work computer and much of the analytical work that needs to be done for your business can be accomplished in Excel!

The 411 on Excel

Some of the valuable tasks a business owner can accomplish with Excel include:

• Perform basic and/or complex formulas
• Place to create and store a database
• Cleanse and organize information
• Create charts & graphs
• Create company reports: Excel is often used for Monthly reporting. Whether your data dump comes from another system and is exported into an Excel File (xls or csv), users can create standardized professional reports that merely need to be updated with the new data as it becomes available (weekly, monthly, quarterly etc). These reports can serve as a great template for reporting and ensuring consistency.

Excel and then SUM

In addition to some of the fundamental tasks that can be done in Excel, Excel can also be used to house some more advanced items. Below are listed some sample cases of companies who have used Excel to house some fancy spreadsheets.

Wage Performance/Tracking and Reports: Many small businesses do not have the budget for a fancy payroll system like ADP, or their needs are too specific to use a generalized system solution. That being said, everyone needs to monitor employee pay. Custom databases can be created to track employee payroll that will allow small businesses to easily calculate and keep track of employee hours, payroll and benefits.

Data Management/CRM: Lots of small businesses have databases full of useful data, like customer lists, inventory items, or sales leads, but they don’t always have ways to effectively utilize that data. Often times, it is hard to organize this data in a useful and productive manner. By creating a clean database in Excel, that will house all of this info, you can:

• track each customer call made
• use simple filtering techniques that will allow you to see quick lists of customers based on criteria like Location, Customer Rating and past purchases
• get rid of all of the paper cluttering your home office
• create fancy (well kind of… we are still just talking about a spreadsheet) reports

Financial Analysis: Plenty of business owners, from finance novices to econ experts, use Excel as their go-to place for financial forecasting or budget planning.

Get your spreadsheet on!

So check out Excel, it can be simple and fun. Store your data here… maybe you will become obsessed and use Excel forever. Maybe Excel is just a band-aid till you can afford something else. If this is the case, you will easily be able to import your Excel Spreadsheets to other software when the time comes.

Happy Spreadsheeting!

This guest post was written by Jen Portland. Around the Results Revolution, we also love spreadsheets as a dashboard for keeping up with small business marketing metrics. We export our stats from Google Analytics or our e-mail marketing software and manipulate them to help us reach our customers better and to learn how to market smarter from our data. Excel is definitely a friend to small business owners, so if you want to get more from your spreadsheets, chat with Jen Portland, founder & spreadsheeter at Excel Rain Man, an Excel outsourcing and training service. Check them out at www.excelrainman.com.

There seems to be a “post video and people will watch (by osmosis)” mentality floating around in web world these days. Video is a key element of a solid on-line marketing program, but to assume the best by using the “post and forget” approach is a terrible mistake. Instead, as a small business owner, you should optimize your video posts to benefit YOUR business (and get YOUR web site more traffic), not the business of the video provider.

Search engine submission for video can be a complex and rapidly-changing process, and many sites may wish to turn to their video platform provider to assist them in achieving maximum results. This doesn’t have to break the bank. But if you DO wish to take your video marketing to the next level through search engine optimization, here are a few questions you should definitely ask your search professional before engaging their services:

• Will you index both my video permalink pages and the videos themselves?
• Will links point back to my site, or will they drive traffic to pages hosted by the video platform provider?
• How often will feeds be updated?
• In which search engines will my results appear?
• How will I be able to track click-through and ROI?

Guest Post by Benjamin Wayne. Around the Results Revolution we LOVE video, but we also know we don’t know it all. That’s why folks like Benjamin and his company, Fliqz, are a superb asset to businesses and projects like ours. This list of questions made us really think, and I hope they make you think, too. Any way you look at it, video is a good thing – and on-line video is here to stay. So, hopefully you’re making video. Check out Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz, a company that helps businesses of all sizes optimize their videos at www.fliqz.com.