While world-wide car manufacturers don’t fit the profile of most Toronto small business (especially when it comes to social media marketing resources), I found this article instructive in showing several ways how investing time in social media actually has business payback:
Kia redesigned the seats for their Optima SX sedan after noticing complaints from consumers and automotive writers on the Internet.
Ford invites consumers to submit their vehicle improvement ideas directly to the automaker via a website called thefordstory.com.
Nissan (with three Twitter streams and Facebook pages for each of its vehicle brands) social media is becoming the de facto process to receive and resolve customer-service issues.
As small business owners bravely move into social media, creating content on blogs and social networks like Facebook and Linked In, it’s clear that search engines are promoting optimized videos, especially Google (who owns YouTube) – Videos can help you leapfrog up the Google Search Rankings. So in the spirit of walking the talk, here’s the first in a series of educational videos to help Turn Your Website into a Sales Rep.
A Canadian-based survey of media users suggests that most value Internet access over their newspaper, cellphone and TV subscriptions. And if forced to choose one, they would stay online.
The Canadian Media Research Consortium commissioned the online survey and found:
42 % of respondents said the Internet would be the last service they would cut
24 % would keep their cable TV
17 % would keep their cellphone service or newspaper subscription.
Overall, the survey really speaks to how Canadians get their information – important news for business seeking to find customers.
Here’s an article from the Toronto Globe and Mail that supports the business maxim “easier to maintain an client than find a new one”.
Ryan Caligiuri, a Winnipeg-based marketing specialist, references several good examples of what to do and what not to do, plus shares an instance of effective social media marketing that works for one small business.
Restaurants Use Social Media to Reach Out to Customers
January 20th, 2011
Restaurants and bars count on repeat business, with customers increasingly expecting more than service, food and drinks. They want to be engaged as well, and major food restaurant chains are turning to location-based social media to help keep customers happy and loyal.
Internet users now spend more time on Facebook than Google
September 13th, 2010
Associated Press: U.S. Web surfers are spending more time on Facebook than searching with Google
According to new data from researchers at comScore Inc., people spent a total of 41.1 million minutes on Facebook — or about 9.9 per cent of their Web-surfing minutes for the month, surpassing the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 per cent, people spent on all Google sites combined, including YouTube and Gmail e-mail.
U.S. Web users spent 37.7 million minutes on Yahoo sites, or 9.1 per cent of their time, putting Yahoo third in terms of time spent browsing.
In August 2009, U.S. web surfers spent about five per cent of their online time on both Facebook and Google and almost 12 per cent on Yahoo.
ComScore bases its findings on a combination of reports from a panel of two million users around the world and data from websites’ servers.
The time spent posting photos, updating status messages and scrolling through news from friends has at least grown to rival just about everything else people do online.
TD Small Business Happiness Index reveals benefits of business ownership
TORONTO, July 26 /CNW/ – Ninety-eight per cent of Toronto business owners say owning their own business gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that they are a happy group:
Two-thirds would describe themselves as ‘very happy’
87% say they are happier owning and running their own business.
These are findings from the TD Small Business Happiness Index, which examined the attitudes and behaviours of North American small business owners in a dozen urban centres.
Google uses Caffeine to move into real time indexing for search engine
June 12th, 2010
Google is changing the way it indexes web pages – not only to improve its search results, but also to compete effectively with the large social networking sites that users use for information.
The move to a new indexing system, called Caffiene, is aimed at keeping Google’s traditional search engine relevant in a world of real-time information – from Tweets to status updates.
When a user enters a search query, Google doesn’t search the Web directly – it searches its own index of information about the Web. The more closely Google’s index mirrors the Internet, the better the search results.
Caffeine is designed to update Google’s index more quickly than previously, something the company must do in order to provide relevant search results about items such as breaking news events.
The new indexing method will also impact small businesses that depend on traffic from Google. Google’s move to a faster indexing system means keeping a site updated and regularly adding new content via blogs will be more important than ever in qualifying for a higher page rank and related improved traffic.
