Not long ago, it was announced that the President of the United States would be opening up an official Twitter account, making him probably the last mega-famous personality on the planet to sign up for one.
Along with being an interesting factoid on the growing importance of social media and the effect it has on public opinion, the move also raises another issue that’s closer to home for most of us: You no longer have an excuse not to keep up on social media marketing.

Let’s face it: If the Commander-in-Chief of the United States can find time to send 140 characters now and again – or at least delegate it to someone else – then can you really claim you don’t have the time to do the same? After all, he’s got state dinners, economic crises, military strategies, and even a reelection campaign to contend with… and he’s doing it all on a government salary. Most of us aren’t having to make time for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn under those kinds of constraints.

Of course, we are being a little bit silly with this idea, but the point is that saying you don’t have time for social media marketing is similar to saying you can’t spare a few minutes to send out invoices, or have time to talk your best customer. It’s very likely that you are incredibly busy, but you make time in your day’s activities because they’re the ones that will keep money coming into your business every month, not to mention growing and successful for years to come.

With more than 700 million people regularly logging into Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, social networking sites represent a market that no business that’s bigger than a man and a donkey selling fruit on the side of the road can afford to ignore. They don’t just allow you to reach more people, but also to forge better relationships with the customers you already have, and encourage them to send referrals your way. How could anyone be too busy for that?

Take our advice, and the President’s example, and get started with social media marketing if you haven’t already. It is another habit you’ll have to add to your daily routine, but one that could ultimately pay you back several times over.

It can be easy to get the itch to imitate something you’ve seen a competitor do online, especially when they’re sitting well ahead of you in the search engine rankings, or expanding their company at a time when you’re treading water and are struggling to get by. In fact, we meet with small business owners every day who are motivated to make a change in their website or online marketing plan simply because they’ve seen someone else do the same.

There are times when a competitor’s move can inspire or necessitate doing something different, but take care that you don’t choose a losing Internet marketing strategy.

Why do we point this out? Because not everything is as it appears from the outside. Unless you have a great deal of personal insight into your competitor’s books, there’s nothing to say that they aren’t pouring a lot of time and money into the wrong things. Or, it could be that they’re drastically increasing their Internet marketing budget simply because the rest of their business is doing so badly. It’s surprisingly common for struggling companies to turn their efforts to find new customers after it’s already way too late.

To keep you from copying someone else’s mistakes, here are a few quick things to look for when examining a competitor’s website or online marketing campaign:

Run the numbers. Take a hard look at what the other company is doing and try to make an educated guess at what kind of return they’re likely to be seeing from it. You won’t have all the figures, naturally, but by talking to your web design team in thinking about prices and percentages, you might be able to come closer than you think.

Imagine what a similar activity will cost you. If you were to try the same thing, or something similar, what would the cost be? Compare that to a conservative estimate of what you think it’s earning them, and then try to decide whether it’s an idea that’s even worth considering.

See if there’s a better or more efficient way. Often times, the first business to try something isn’t the one that gets it right. See if there isn’t some way to improve on your competitor site or idea, and you might just make the breakthrough that they weren’t able to find.

Effective online marketing takes a lot more than a small business website. Contact eKzact – One of Calgary’s best web design teams – today to find out what we can do for you.

Amazing as it seems now, there was a time not so many years ago when no one, except the most tech-savvy small businesses, had regular access to a webmaster or IT professional. Granted, those people were around, but you generally called on them when you needed something fixed, not because you wanted one on staff. Now, of course, nearly everyone has an internal or contracted team to keep their small business site up and running and their technology online – to go without would quickly put your company at risk.

That’s how I’m starting to feel about community managers – men and women whose job it is to keep your online content and social profiles up to date and moving forward.

Why? Because as with all things on the Internet, change is coming faster than most of us had anticipated. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter aren’t just gaining steam – they are bulldozing any previous notions we had about how customers find us and communicate with us. The profiles you have on these websites affect everything from your repeat business to your online reputation, and even search engine optimization. To go without them means to give up valuable ground to other companies who would love to take new accounts away from you.

The way a community manager fits into this mix is by making sure your posts and profiles are all up to date, on point, and keeping your online marketing efforts in sync with one another. That’s why, here at eKzact, we’ve made our community manager a big part of our ongoing work, and invite you to take advantage of this service. The web (and especially social network marketing) has simply gotten too big, and too important, for most of us to keep our hands around while still running our companies – why not let a professional help us keep things moving in the right direction?