Business owners and employees are becoming more socially active, and more visibly active through using the platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Slowly but surely, this is also catching up to the corporate website too.

No longer are websites just static pages of information, they need to be as engaging and interactive as the other social networking systems. Visitors to websites are now looking for something more than just how to find you and what you do – they want to find out about you.

One way of doing this, is to use blogging. These do not just have to be text blogs, they can be video blogs, audio podcasts – whichever medium you feel the most comfortable with providing.

What is blogging? They are short posts and can be about anything that is related (most of the time) to your business product, service or community. The difference between a blog post and a website page, is that the blog posts are more frequently posted. Think of them if you will as diary entries.

So, you have your website either created from scratch, or tweaked to include a blog section, you sit down to write, and are hit with the stick that is known as the “Empty Page Syndrome”. The screen is blank, in your head as well as on screen. The words are just not there, or even beginning to flow, in fact, now you can’t even remember what it was you wanted to blog about in the first place!

Blog posts needn’t be essays, they can be as little as a question you would like to pose to your subscribers, or a little longer! The main point is, to have an intent – what would you like a reader of your post to think about? Is it a call to action for them?

Visitors or prospective clients to your site like frequent and active content. Could you post every day? Could you post every other day if every day is too much? Once you’ve done this, then you can get on and make a blogging schedule.

If you think that blogging could soon take up all of your energy and time resources, it can. However, below is a simple guide to keeping things easy and efficient.

1) Decide frequency of posting (daily, every other day…)

2) Make, buy or print a calendar and highlight those days.

3) Decide on your blog topics. If you are a Personal Trainer, Monday could be “Exercise at work day”, Wednesday could be “How to vary your routine” Friday could be “Diet and Nutrition.” This gives you a structure and the start point for ideas for your blog posts.

4) Write down ideas for blog post titles. “How to exercise at work” or “Do you get bored with the same old routine at the gym?” You will increase people’s curiosity if you post a question or problem that they may well be experiencing. If you find it difficult to come up with blog titles, ask yourself what some of the problems are with the topic for the day that people face, and use that as your blog title.

5) Set aside half a day once a week and write the posts for the week. Most website blog interfaces will let you “publish later”, so you can input the post and set it to automatically publish.

Follow these 5 guidelines and see just how quickly you can actually create a week’s worth of blog posts!

(As also posted at GoArticles and Zoe Godfrey’s Posterous).

Many business owners take out some form of advertising as most realise the only way to get your potential customers to come to you is first of all to let people know you are there. The question is though, how much do you spend on advertising for what return? What is your cost per lead? Through using the tools and techniques that make up social media you could reach potentially hundreds more people, for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods by turning to use social media for business.

There are ways to automate this process with tools and programmes you can buy online. Some of them are what is known as “White Hat”, or those that follow the rules set out. Others may be “Black Hat” which may not technically break any of those rules but do take advantage of perhaps one or two grey areas.

Whichever method they purport themselves to be though, you will soon find that if you do use them that social media for business will not be as effective or efficient as you may have been told can be.

The key is in the name. First of all it’s “social”, part of a society and you can only be part of a society if you interact with that society! This means taking part in conversations, commenting, and replying. Businesses are using social media to spread their message, but they need also to listen to what the society and community is saying.

Have you heard the saying that people have two ears and only one mouth? Therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak? If this ratio is applied to the social media messages it means that for every two replies, mentions, likes or retweets, you can then promote 1 message about your service, business or product.

There are ways to be clever and savvy about this though as there is nothing stopping you from legitimately commenting on a message through the social media problem, if your service or product actually assists another persons ‘problem’!

There are so many different pressures business owners face today without another one to think about, but here we are at the beginning of another rise in the wave of popular technology and if business owners are not careful, they will find themselves left behind.

Have you heard of this phenomenon called “Social Media”? Do you know how it could help your business gain visibility, client base and an increase in referred customers?

Companies are actually all Sales and Marketing businesses. It doesn’t matter if what you sell is windows and conservatories, bespoke furniture solutions, massage or reiki therapy, if you cannot sell and promote your business through marketing, you may find you are soon left wondering where the hordes of clients are that so desperately need your services?

Many business owners we have spoken are not seeing the bigger picture yet, the view is that Facebook, Twitter and such websites are toys used by their kids to keep in touch with their friends when they should be doing homework.

Maybe the real question is when is a toy not a toy? This is the danger with social media, many businesses will view it as a toy and only when Pandora’s box has been opened and it is too late will they see the opportunities that lay before them – now.

It does not need to cost you thousands of pounds to get someone to run your social media network for you. Would you trust the copyrighting of your website to someone who didn’t understand your ethics, your business – you? Anyone can easily learn to use the social media tools for business effectively; all you need is to be shown the best way to go about it for you.

There is no “right way” to participate in social media for business; each solution is as unique as the business and the people within that business. In this case, whilst certain guidelines are applicable it is definitely a case of “one size does not fit all”!

As with any new technology that comes in there is always a period of time where the majority of businesses will “wait and see”.

• Wait and see if the idea becomes popular.
• Wait and see if it flops and save wasting time in getting to grips with it.
• Wait and see if it actually does more damage than brings benefits.

We have seen this countless times in the past, will VHS video or Betamax video win out? Remember the time when CDs first came out? We couldn’t imagine a time without records – big black vinyl disks, or cassette tapes. And if we follow the cassette tape back, just what was it that replaced? The 8-track?

How about the internet? What were our business lives like before internet, before email even? Email has become such an integral part of business life, that if we suffer a power-cut or computer failure our working lives become so much more difficult.

There is a fear of the unknown and a compulsion to remain with that which is familiar to us, yet at what point do we have to acknowledge that there is something new going on out there?

A new generation is about to enter the workplace who are used to Facebooking, Twittering, who will not only accept but expect this in their adult working lives. They have grown up now with computers, they use Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Gravity to keep in touch with their friends on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

When these children grow in a few years to decision making, resource searching adults, where will they look first for what they seek? They will go straight to the internet, to their peers, their community they are online and interacting with. Will the Yellow Pages still be in existence, or will it have been used as a doorstop for the last time?

By that time though, will it be too late to take action and join in with those brave enough to take the step now? There is an element of courage needed in taking this step, but with the right guidance and help, it need not be a blind leap of faith, more a guided walk in the park!

As the effect of social media permeates the substance that is the internet, brave companies have embraced it very quickly and for most of them it is working amazingly well with incredible results.

However there are also companies who make the news headlines not because they embraced it and got it right, but who unfortunately got it very wrong. If you want to prove just how bad social media can be for your business just follow these 2 simple rules.

1) Shout.

Every opportunity you get, on every network site you join, do nothing but blatantly promote your own stuff. Isn’t that the point of networking anyway? It’s all about YOUR product, YOUR business isn’t it? If you say the same message loud enough for long enough, people will start to hear you won’t they?

True, they will. However there is one advantage these social media sites have over other forms of traditional marketing where this tactic does work, which is the fact that on Facebook, Twitter, Gravity, Posterous – you can and ultimately will be unfollowed, unfriended and blocked at lightning speed if you aren’t taking part in the conversation, which means listening to other people too!

2) Don’t Look!

Do not ever go onto Gravity, Facebook or Twitter to see what people are saying about your business. After all, if there were problems they’d come direct to you wouldn’t they?

How often do we experience ‘bad service’ from a company? We feel irked at best, and blazingly annoyed at worst.

A friend of ours said that they had a bad experience with a telecommunications provider and instantly had to vent her rage. Did she choose to sit down and construct a letter or email direct to the company? No. She went to Twitter and had a 140 character explosion directly mentioning the company name and the fact that she couldn’t find a telephone number to contact them on. An employee of the company happened to be watching the Twitterfeed at the time, and within 10 minutes she was on the phone to them after they called her!

There’s a saying that bad news spreads like wildfire – why wouldn’t you be there to spot where possible smoke was arising?

Warning: Please only follow these 2 rules if you do not wish to grow your business or expand your client base. Following these rules could seriously damage your social media health!

NetWorth

Since so many people in business are risking being left behind in the social media revolution, we decided to bring it to them instead. We interview local businesses who come into contact with us via our daily work or who we meet at events.

We called this hub NetWorth to enable people to see just how much “The Net”, social media marketing and networking is worth to their business.

So often the social media tools are considered “toys” and that “thing the kids are glued to”. But if you look at the ripples that have already begun with the companies that are already making the most of this technology, can you afford not to be aware of how much the net is worth to you and your business before the wave peaks?

Hop on over to NetWorth now and have a look. Leave us a comment and let us know if you’d like to appear in a short interview on this page!

Why not contact PCM Creative in Nottingham to find out when they are running the next one? It was a great day, full of energy, ideas and really good people.