Merchant Guide

Facebook and its community is growing every day. When we can trust the numbers of Facebook´s statistics, there are more than 400 million active users on Facebook.What a great place for companies to interact with customers and to promote corporate/product branding.

In this arctile we want to show, how easy it is to create a Fan Page for your company and brand. So, let´s get started!

Common Mistakes

Many companies want to use Facebook for branding, that´s great, if you do it right! A very common mistake is to create a group or a private profile for your company.

Facebook has designed Fan Pages exactly for companies, so why not use them? There are many advantages we can extract from Fan Pages, which you’ll find outlined below.

How to create a Facebook Page

If you´re currently logged in to Facebook, log out now. Go to facebook.com, at the bottom on the right you can see “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.“. Click on it or use the link given here. Now you can select the category of your page and also the name of your page. If you select “Do not make Page publicly visible at this time.” no one can see your page now, you can design it and publish it, when you think you´re ready.

Info, Picture, Tabs and more

Info

Logo

To show your fans who you are, create an amazing logo, you can also add your phone number and your website to the picture. Not to small, but: your images should not be larger than  600px (height) x 200px (width).

Tabs

Beyond the standard tabs, like Wall and Info, you can create your own Tabs and also create your own content for this Tabs. Use this feature to build a well-designed landing page! Here´s a how-to guide which will help you with this steps: Mashable: Build a Facebook Landing Page

Share your content

So everythings fine, but your Wall looks like the Sahara dessert. If you have running a Business Blog or a Twitter account, connect them your Facebook Page to fill your Wall with great blog posts and tweets. To share your blog content add the app NetworkedBlogs and click on “Register a new Blog” and fill out required fields. To add your Twitter account to your page, use this link and click “Link to Twitter”.

You need Fans

First rule: Ask all your friends! Why not? It´s  your business which you want to promote. Also add a Facebook-Badge to your Blog, so every blog reader can also become your Faceook Fan. Some Forums also have groups called  “Facebook Fan Exchange”. That´s another way to get friend on you Facebook Fan Page.

And if you share high quality content, your Fan group will grow constantly.

Another hint: When you have reached 25 Fans you can create your own Facebook Fan Page URL. Goto http://facebook.com/username and click on “Set a username for your Pages“, but be careful, once created you can never change this name.

Here you can see the Social Business Bank Fan Page, hop on the link and become a fan now.

Good Luck!

For startups and established companies alike viral marketing is a highly recommended way to boost brands and generate the sales. But what exactly is Viral Marketing?

Viral Marketing is a marketing technique where companies and organisations use social networks and other media resources like TV or Radio to broadcast an extraordinary or profound message. With this message, companies call attention to a product or a service they offer or promote brand recognition. It´s called “viral marketing” or “viral advertising” because the marketing campaign is designed to be forwarded from one viewer to the next. Viral campaigns can be spread out via many services, the most common services being Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, E-Mail and word of mouth.

Sounds great? Finding a unique and amazing – often humerous – message which triggers so much attention that viewers republish it takes some thinking “outside the box”. In many viral marketing campaigns the product or brand is harldy mentioned at all. We have collected some great campaigns for you to give you some ideas how to create your own amazing viral marketing campaign.

Guys Backflipping Into Jeans – Levi’s

“This video gets major points in the “wow, that’s mad” department, which is a tactic that seems to consistently go well with viral videos. Plus, Levi’s understood the importance of being understated in this video. Try to be subtle, if that’s hard on you – try to be a bit more british in your viral ad campaign. People really dislike the shill.”

Million Dollar Homepage: Pixels for sale on an “online billboard.”

“This campaign offered advertisers the unique chance to buy a spot on the MillionDollarHomepage at $1 per pixel. You could buy as many pixels as you want, and once all 1,000,000 pixels were sold the site would stay like that forever. Well this 21 year old college student quickly sold every pixel, earning a million dollars to comfortably live the student way of life.”

Blendtec: Will it blend?

“This series of online videos were made to demonstrate how powerful these Blendtec blenders really are. They would take common objects we all can relate to, such as an iPhone, and throw them in the blender to show you, well poor iPhone… Many of their videos have gotten millions of views, taking them from a brand most people didn’t know about to an established leader in their industry.”

Nike: A Touch of Gold

“A Nike rep was dispatched to give Ronaldinho his new Nike soccer cleats, with a camera man covering the whole thing. Ronaldinho proceeds to put the cleats on, and perform some amazing tricks with the soccer ball and his new Nikes. Ronaldinho’s performance is the touch of gold, and the people who were smart enough to decide to use this as a campaign made a really smart move. This has become one of the most viewed sports related viral videos online.”

Sheep LED

“Samsung goes extraordinary lengths to show the power of LEDs in one of the most genuine and breathtaking pieces of choreography you are ever likely to see – sheer brilliance (pun intended).”

1. Your Website Goals

Define the goals of your website. Make sure you have a clear understanding of the website’s purpose. If you don’t have a clear picture what your website is about, how should your customers? Do you want to sell producs, provide information or use it for marketing purposes?

2. Your Domain Name

Choose an easy to remember domain name that’s easy to spell. People should associate your domain name with your company. That doesn’t mean creativity is a no-no. Here´s an example:

If your company’s name is Tony Miller Shirts and you sell T-Shirts online, tonymiller.com might not be the best of all domain names for you. Unless you have a strong brand associated with “Tony Miller”, nobody will care about tonymiller.com and domain names like millertshirts.com or tonysshirts.com could be a much stronger asset for your company.

3. Your Design

Desiging a website by oneself is possible, though unless you really know what you’re doing, give this job to someone who actually earns a living creating brilliantly designed websites. It’ll pay off in the long run. Make sure your designer understands what your business is about and communicate your ideas. Most importantly, let them do what they can do best: handle the designing part of your website. You will get a great design and will save time and troubles.

A great source for good and competitively-priced designers is Sortfolio.com.

4. Your Logo

In most instances you web designer will also be able to create an awesome looking logo for your company. Again, make sure to communicate your ideas and possibly send him self-made drafts until you have the feeling he truly understands what you’re looking for. Be careful, a logo is like your domain name. Your customers should identify your business with the logo every time they see it. Your logo should be uniform across all your marketing material, may it be your website or business cards, be sure it has exactly the same design and colours. Why? Take a look at CI.

5. Your Content

Tell your customers not what you want to sell. Tell them why they should buy your products and why you are better than your competitors. Be sure that all your content is easy to understand. Give you customers as many information as you can provide. Don’t forget to list your phone number, email address and also you business address for more credibility you may want to get a Better Business Bureau online seal as well.

6. Testing

Test your website. How long does it take to load? Are your pages W3C valid? You can test it here. Be vary about too many images. They may look great, but no visitor has the patience to wait until they’re all loaded. If you want to get fancy, be sure to think about visitors that do not have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player installed, and the folks that didn’t even download it in the first place.

7. Social Media

Integrate widgets in your website. Use Facebook, Twitter and co. to promote you website. If you have running a blog, connect it with Twitter and Facebook. Social Media is an ongoing project. Read the messages from your twitter friends and the wall posts of your Facebook page. Social Media means to communicate and to communicate regularly.

8. Feedback

Do you have a contact form on your website? Give your customers the chance to contact you without calling you. Why? Many people are interested in your products but are shy to ask their questions via phone.

9. Search Engines and SEO

Add your website to all popular search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google. Give every page of your website a specific title and add your keywords in headers and in your content. Use Bing Webmasters, Yahoo SiteExplore and Google Webmaster Tools. This tools will show you how “visible” (aka search engine friendly) your website is.

10. Analyse your website

Add an analysis software like Google Analytics or Piwik to your website. They’re both free. So you can control the visits on your site. These reports provide you with essential information like page views and visits per day, the countries of your visitors, the time and location of your visitors and much more.

If you want to know more about Social Business Bank visit http://www.socialbusinessbank.com.

Merchant Guide Entrepreneurs, hosting, Small Business, startup, webdesign, website

In a recent blogpost we talked about partnerships and their importance for small businesses. Today we will talk about business goals,  and if you don´t  have them yet, how to set up a plan that works.

1. Goals: Define what’s Important

Every business starts with an idea, how else could it be. Regardless if you offer a product or service, no matter which industry or your personal business-growing stage, a great business idea is essential.

Now where you have that, take piece of paper and a pencil and take a moment. Picture yourself in a year, 5 years and in 10 yeas. Call it near-term, mid-term and long-term planning. Be sure that your goals are realistic, but also foresighted. Don´t write down unimportant steps you have to do anyway. Try to avoid your day-for-day workflow tasks. Ongoing tasks are important, but it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. Once finished, you should list no more than 5-10 goals on you paper. Your gloals should be in a chronologic order, so it´s easier to get a feeling for what’s next.

2. Your own Masterplan

Now take another piece of paper and write down your first goal as working title. Think about this goal and how you want to accomplish it. Figure out the exact steps necessary and bring them to paper. You can call them milestones. If you want, also add a date by which you’ll have completed the milestone. Repeat this steps for every goal on your list.

Later you can add details to every milestone and goal reached: Were there problems? In retrospect, what worked and how would you do it differently the next time? What can you learn out of the project or milestone for upcoming projects? Have you reached your goals in time?

With those two simple steps you’ve just created your very own masterplan, a full-fledged action plan for your business to keep you on track and you focused on what’s really important.

Entrepreneurs, Start Ups Entrepreneurs, goals, masterplan, small business goals

We all know that starting a business means a lot of hard work. A one-man show business isn’t much different. Acquiring new customers, bookkeeping, sales,  organizing a merchant account, design a  website, keeping the burn-rate low and balancing a tight budget while expanding the business.

That´s hard work and a lot of new stuff to most entrepreneurs. You can only be an expert in a few fields, a jack of all trades hardly ever is a true expert on any subject. What can we do, to make an entrepreneur´s life a bit easiser?

1. Be social!

Tell your friends your ideas ask them what they think and what they would change. That´s cost-free feedback.
If you’re one of those people who’s afraid that somone could steal your precious ideas, how much is your idea worth if you can’t monetize on it? Good feedback is essential for business success, embrace it. And by the way, never mind competitors – watch them closely and study them – and they will help you to become better at what you do, too.

Ask your friends and business partners when you have an issue at hand. Ask if they may know someone who can help out. Use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. Post your questions to all of your friends, post your services and products as well. People want to know about your business and which services or products you have to offer. A sure-fire way to get help is to provide help. Connect with your circle of acquaintances and help them wherever you can. This creates trust and trust is one of the most important parameters in marketing.

You will meet heaps of new people, keep in touch with the long standing contacts and eventually the one or other business partnership will develop. There are many new customer in the social business cloud waiting for you!

2. Outsourcing is a must!

Another way to redurce your “every day overhead” that prevents you from aquiring new customers or whatever you have to do to keep your business running is to source out some parts of you business. Many start-up entrepreneurs think nothing can be done properly without them. Mistake. Big Mistake.

Why do practically all businesses outsource parts of their business? You have friends and partners they are also experts in some fields. Take the chance and unclutter your every day overhead so that you have time to focus on the really important things: to grow your business.

• If you are NOT an expert in webdesign and SEO, hire experts in those fields. They can do the task at hand faster, better and more often than not, cheaper than you. Meanwhile you have time to do more important things for your business.

• If you are NOT an expert in merchat accounts, do your research and ask as many providers as you can. Ask them all questions you’re interested in, write down the answers and re-read the answers; if necessary give them repeated calls until you find a provider you can trust.

Carefully choose the parts  of your business you consider strategic, source out the parts where you´re the layman. Be social every day, every minute and you will see, life will become easier by the day.

Kind Regards,

Social Business Bank

Entrepreneurs, Start Ups Entrepreneurs, Outsourcing, Partnerships, Small Business, startups