More and more brick-and-mortar business owners are starting to see that social networking helps business: it increases your public profile, helps you create a recognizable brand, and helps you reach people you might not otherwise reach.

But what about the benefits of social networking for reaching out locally? Can you use social networking not to “expand” into a new target market but to get more business from where you already are?

In short, absolutely. Social networking can become a huge boost and help you increase local business. Here’s how to go about it:

Create a Local Presence Online
Maybe you have a website or business blog, or you’re building up your Facebook business page and learning your way around Twitter. Use your time online to create more contact with other local folks. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Get your profile on geo-social sites like Foursquare and Facebook Places.

These social sites are places that map local areas and then allow users to interact with those local places online. Create an account, and then claim your local business on the map; you’ll go through a brief confirmation procedure, and then you can start interacting with users on the social site. (Look for more on this in an upcoming post. We’ll walk you through it step-by-step.)

2. Find local groups and local business pages on Facebook and get involved with them.

Use Facebook’s search tool to find groups and pages from your area, then join the groups and become a fan of the pages. Interact; respond to posts, ask questions, answer questions, be friendly, and contribute. All you’re doing is expanding your local presence from the street front and physical community to the virtual street front and online community.

3. Connect with local news and review sites.

There are some national websites, such as Examiner.com, Citysearch.com, and Yelp.com, which have local branches. Browse through these and you’ll find reviews of area restaurants, articles on local events, and more. Get in touch with the news writers and offer an interview or story idea relating to your business; most of the time these folks are looking for good material, so they’ll jump on your offer. For the review sites, make sure your business is on the site, then respond to good reviews with thank you and any negative comments with an offer to help and resolve the problem. No feedback from you will come across as negative, so be proactive here.

Promote Your Social Networking Offline
Once you’ve got a Facebook page, website, blog, or other networking method in place, start telling people about it! Put a link on your business cards. Create and print a simple flyer telling people to find you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Put a sign in the window, a sign on your bulletin board, a link on your email signature, and a reference on any other material that goes out of your business.Local folks will not just automatically find you online; you have to tell them. And sometimes you have to tell them a few times so, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Use Social Networking to Promote Your Local Community
Now that you’ve established a local presence online and started getting local people to connect with you online, it’s time to leverage all that work into more local business. Do this by using your social network and online storefront to promote local events and provide special locally based offers. Sponsor the next charity 5K run and talk about it online. Put a local community calendar on your website. Put an events tab on your Facebook page and highlight local events as well as events as your own business.

What you’re doing is becoming a local resource, both online and offline. Expand your local value by offering special discounts, deals, and coupons to local folks but do it online. Send a special message to your Facebook followers, an email to your subscribers, or tweet out a message offering 1/2 off an item for the next 24 hours. Make your discounts significant and time-limited and offer them frequently; this motivates your local fans to follow you online so they don’t miss a special deal, and it also motivates them to share your great deal with other local folks.

The key in this strategy is to keep the focus on the local folks. What gets them excited and makes them want to come back? Figure out what that is, translate it into something you can offer or talk about online, and you’ve found the key to leverage social networking for more local business.

Photo Credit: philcampbell

On Friday, I had the privilege of meeting with a favorite client of ours who is about one year deep in his social media marketing journey. He gives bold testimonial that new media and social media are his number one marketing tools – and he can say that confidently because his businesses are thriving like never before.

Last week, another client of ours closed a deal that had been in the works through social media channels for nearly four months. But what a doozey of a good deal it was – a key influencer purchased and is telling everyone about his purchase. Gold.

We get asked all the time: How quickly can social media move the needle?

There are a lot of answers to the question. Here are a few thoughts I have in the “how long does it take to move the needle” category.

1. Once you have built an engaged social media community and are providing valuable information to them through other new media channels as well (such as e-mail and website or blog), if you ring the dinner bell on social media (most typically Facebook Pages or Twitter), they’ll come. Sometimes in less than an hour. That’s quick needle-moving.

2. Rome wasn’t built in a day. That community that makes some businesses look like an overnight success – it isn’t. Sure, you can build NUMBERS in a matter of days if you know what you’re doing – but trust and engagement that lead to sales (and isn’t that what we’re after: selling more stuff) – that’s a slower hill to climb. Sales will start increasing or at least stabilize in fairly short order, but the real benefit is gained by building long-term trust and engagement with your community of customers and prospects online. That trust that makes them feel like insiders will have a mushroom effect on your business success – when that level of trust reaches critical mass you are staged for record sales numbers, massive amounts of PR, and recommendations from key influentials in your target market – regardless of the economy. The needle moving sales success that happens at this stage of the game happens after deliberate, strategic, and consistent relationship building over a series of months (but not years).

3. Social media doesn’t move the needle. Solid marketing strategy integrated throughout your business, including a wise understanding of your customers and how to use and market via new media and social media tools is what moves the needle.

4. The needle will never move if you don’t make what’s happening online and off-line cohesive and consistent. Inconsistency will leave you dead in the water. You’ll also be dead in the water if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

5. The needle will move the wrong direction if you fail to make good on the promises you make online. If the pizza is burned, and you don’t make me happy again – the needle will undoubtedly move the wrong direction for you – probably sooner than later.

6. The needle is moving all the time whether you want it to you or not. We visited with a local restaurant manager last night that had no idea what was happening on Twitter in his area. Just because your head is in the sand, doesn’t mean that the world isn’t going on around you. The majority of brick and mortar buying decisions are made before the customer ever pulls into your parking lot – they’re looking online first. If you aren’t there – they’ll go somewhere else – and you’ll wonder where your sales are going. You will miss opportunities to grow your business.

The needle is moving, people are talking – are you listening, learning and engaging in an effort to move YOUR needle in the profitable direction – even if it takes a few months to hit one out of the park?

Photo Credit: Unhindered by Talent

Chatting with my BFF the other day about how best to convince small business owners and restaurateurs that online marketing was worth paying money for. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Well, I dunno… perhaps that over a year ago 63% of all American consumers across every demographic looked online first before making a brick and mortar buying decision. Most of the folks we’re talking to are targeting a higher end demographic, and it’s a year later, so that number has to be much higher………

BFF: I didn’t ask you why they should be online. I’m talking about how to convince them within their existing worldview why this is worth spending money on.

Me: The money is online.

BFF: But are they going to see value in spending money online?

Me: (insert scream of frustration)

It’s seriously this bad. In small businesses and restaurants and boutique hotels across America, folks have their heads stuck in the proverbial sand.

I hear things like the following:

“I know we’ve got to do it, but I just don’t have time.”

“I just don’t see the value in it.”

“Well, I just spent $90,000 on new merchandise, so that website upgrade to allow me to make my own frequent updates to my website…that sounds good, but it will have to wait until next year… I just don’t have the money for that right now.”

“Well, I’m in a contract with the local lifestyle magazine, and I’m running some cable advertisements and sales have been really down lately, so I just don’t have the money to invest in online. I know it would work, but I just can’t afford it right now.”

How about this, Mr. small business owner? What if you could spend half per month what you spend for an ad in the local lifestyle magazine, and you could track feedback, gain market intelligence – and oh yeah, sell more stuff and know that it was a direct result of this marketing effort? Would you do it?

Would you spend the same amount if you could get that kind of measurable results?

If you wouldn’t – then why are you in business? Because it seems like you’re only there to support the dinosaurs. As for me, I’m going to stay in business by selling more stuff. Online.

Photo Credit: blakeimeson

Amber Brockett, founder of Cowgirl Dirt has done an amazing job building her business using Facebook. Amber launched a Facebook Page for Cowgirl Dirt in early February 2010. Since then, Amber has grown the number of “likes” to well over 5,000. Amber testifies that nearly 90% of her sales come from Facebook. NINETY PERCENT!

Amber has a simple and straightforward trick for growing her business on Facebook: she offers limited time promotions like coupon codes or free shipping. She says, “These tactics definitely drive business because people love a deal.”

Here at the Results Revolution, we noticed right away that her fans were highly engaged and that her following has grown nearly 500 people since early May. That’s a pretty aggressive growth curve. A healthy Facebook Page has a LOT of customer interaction – comments and wall posts. This Page definitely has that – and it seems to be translating into a huge sales volume. We also love the “Shop Now” tab on their Page.

But we wonder… How much would sales increase if they used more photos and video on their Facebook Page?

What about you? What kind of results are you seeing from Facebook? What is working? What is NOT working? Post comments and let us know.

MyScoop is an entirely online magazine with editions in three markets, Birmingham, Mississippi and Nashville. MyScoop caters to Southern fashionistas and tries to capture the flavor of the south as well as let our readers know what’s going on in other parts of the world. MyScoop focuses on locally made or owned products that are sold nationally or internationally OR national trends that are sold locally.

If you are a fashion retailer in these markets, you want to know MyScoop as a media outlet. If you’re any other business owner, well, I’m here to tell you… Elizabeth Fowler is one of the smartest business women I’ve encountered in a long time, and she has some business scoop to share.

Marianna – How have you used the power of referrals in your business?

Elizabeth – When we expanded to Mississippi we used a referral program so our current readers in the state could tell their friends about us. We gained tons of readers through that web community. It is important to have a consistently email database and utilize Facebook so that readers are interacting with us and each other. My Scoop is the beginning of a very branded community. We have grown through Facebook and Twitter. We are currently growing by about 1,000 each month. All of the advertisements on our site are linked to that local business and we do the same with emails so there is constant exposure to My Scoop and the businesses.

Marianna – As a member of the media, how does a business get your attention?

As the media you can send out press releases. If business owners can promote a category as a whole and promote a trend and not just their store/product, we are much more likely to use that. Example: A boutique owner wrote an article for me on a summer fashion trend. She wrote about the trend as a whole, not just her business. She will gain attention to her business because of the article, but people are more likely to read it instead of just writing it off as advertising. Small business owners should remember that once you reach out you should continue to stay in touch. There are some business owners who will send me reports of new merchandise that they have just gotten in. That is very helpful because they have just saved me a lot of work in finding out what has come in.

To get in touch with the media, introduce yourself at networking events. Email them and follow-up with a phone call. Ask for a media outlets editorial calendar. Most owners don’t think to do that or don’t know that you can. You can learn what they are going to be featuring each month. For example, if you see that the October issue is going to have an article on pumpkin carving and your store sells a pumpkin carving knife you can let the magazine know that and advertise more specifically.

If the media calls you, invite them to come into your business! Make sure you have the owner or manager there – someone who knows the business well and can answer questions. Show them your products and ask how you can help them.

The biggest faux pas when dealing with the media is easily that business owners aren’t responsive enough and miss opportunities.

Marianna – Partnerships are a critical part of what you do and what you sell to clients. How do you view partnerships in business?

I have a great quote that I took from a local business owner, “In today’s world there is no competition; there is only collaboration.” These are the business that will continue to be successful. You should be thinking, “How can we leverage each other’s strengths?”

Marianna – In your opinion, what’s next in new media/social media for businesses? What will they have to do to maintain an edge?

I think we are going to see more creative concepts coming out of media outlets. I think owners should let the media help create their advertisements. That way the ads are more targeted toward the audience of the publication. We need to see partnering with advertisers to create campaigns for a specific market. As a business owner, you have to know what you are trying to accomplish. You’ll use it differently depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

Catch up with Elizabeth at http://www.myscoop.us, Facebook, or Twitter (@myscoopus).