Although a large number of SMBs have signed up, many are still unfamiliar with how to get the most out of it. The following are a few ways business owners can leverage Twitter in their social media marketing campaigns.

Show some personality

Twitter can be a powerful way to show your company’s unique culture and strengthen your brand.  Posting    interesting and entertaining things will make your company seem more friendly and accessible to your customers and prospects. Try sharing humorous stories, or links to interesting articles that relate to your industry. You can even customize your Twitter background to reflect your personality even more.

Twitter background inspiration

Offer people something

Give people a reason to follow you. Give free advice, answer questions, conduct a contest where the 20th reply gets something for free, give a discount, etc.  The key is not to talk AT people, but to talk WITH them.  Using Twitter Search (link to search.twitter.com), you can search keywords related to your industry, and engage with people asking questions.  They will see you as an expert, and are more likely to refer others to you.

Moonfruit case study: Laptop giveaway boosts Twitter traffic by 1000 percent

Drive traffic

Make sure to provide links in your tweets back to your website, blog, online store, press releases, or whatever else you want people to click on. Problogger.net’s Darren Rowse has had success driving blog traffic by tweeting a question and including a link to his blog. “Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you’ve published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you’ve covered,” says Rowse. “Asking a question engages your Twitter followers and solicits their experience.” The more followers you have, the more likely it is that at least some of them will click through. Additionally, the more followers you have, the better the odds are that your tweet will get re-tweeted, giving you even more exposure.

Follow relevant users

A big mistake that many users make is trying for quantity over quality when it comes to who they follow. While it might not matter for the average user, savvy business owners should concentrate on targeting who they follow. You want to build relationships with people in your target area that are likely to purchase your products/services. An event marketing company in Denver is not very likely to receive business from a 9-year-old in New York who is tweeting about his favorite video games.  Again, the search feature is a great way to find quality connections.

Make sure people know of your profile outside of Twitter

You can’t efficiently build a Twitter following if nobody knows about your profile. Post links to your Twitter page on your Facebook profile, your website, your blog, your email signature, or anywhere else where people outside of Twitter might see it. Post your Twitter handle in your storefront window, or your promotional flyers. The more creative you can get, the more people will remember you.

Simply put, social media is all about interacting and building relationships.  Combining the above five simple techniques while making your tweets interesting, relevant, and friendly, will go a long way to improve the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaigns.

Follow Kutenda on Twitter @kutenda

We are officially launching our Local Accelerator program to the Colorado public. Designed to accelerate online lead generation and sales for Colorado small businesses, this program promises to offer a complete Internet marketing makeover to one lucky local business every month!

The program combines fulfillment services with access to Kutenda’s Internet marketing tool-set and training to get your company successfully marketing online. We’ll be choosing one lucky company every month … Selected companies will receive over $9,000 in services at no cost and 3 months of free Kutenda access.

If you’re based in CO, submit your company here: http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html

According to new projections from Outsell, Inc., digital/online marketing will overtake print in 2010. Companies are projected to spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies. For small businesses, marketing online is a known challenge due to the intense learning curve, budgetary constrictions and the lack of available software. Kutenda has set out to change that with it’s Internet marketing tool-set for small businesses and the Local Accelerator program is making the extra leap locally by offering tools, services and training for free.

The Local Accelerator program includes all of the foundations for a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy that will drive leads and sales. We begin by creating a website or optimizing your existing website for lead generation and search engine rankings. Companies walk away with a list of campaigns, content and the tools, training and support to pick up where Kutenda’s fulfillment process ends.

Specifics include:

• Promotional landing pages with automated response emails
• A prospect-focused email marketing campaign designed to convert
• Customizable email templates
• A search advertising pay-per-click campaign
• Live local search listing
• Optimized keyword list for specific products / services
• A knowledge base of Internet marketing best practices

In order to qualify, companies must be based in Colorado. We’re accepting submissions at http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html via a short form. Each monthly winner will be contacted directly by Kutenda’s director of training, Alex Ross. We are allowing companies to resubmit monthly for another chance to win.

Submit your business today!

Suggestions for increasing your chances of being chosen:

1) cross your fingers

2) grab your rabbit-foot key chain

3)  send your intern on a hunt for the perfect four leaf clover

4) maybe eat a bowl of Lucky Charms… whatever it takes…

GOOD LUCK!

That’s why you should click here and watch these online marketing videos.

They’re short and packed with practical Internet marketing tips that you can use today to improve your business.

The videos were shot in Kutenda’s very own recording studio. OK, perhaps ‘studio’ is a bit of a misnomer. Michael’s basement is more accurate…

The harried SMB’s shortcut to online marketing savvy

You already know that online marketing—web site development, search engine advertising, email marketing, etc.—is more targeted and more cost-effective than traditional marketing.

But let’s face it: You’ve got a million things to do today just to keep up with your business’s most basic needs, so finding the time to learn about new and more technical types of marketing is a tall order, to put it mildly.

You’ve done some research online, but there’s so much information out there, and how does one sort the wheat from the chaff?

(Plus, if you have a halfway operational bullshit detector, you know that there are a lot of people out there peddling wooden nickels and snake oil.)

So before you buy anything or give up on online marketing altogether, invest ten minutes watching these informational videos.

Here are some of the topic areas, covered by Kutenda’s own James Omdahl and Michael Schmaedecke:

• Conversion Funnels
• Web Site Forms
• Email Auto Responders
• Email Deliverability
• Email Campaign Optimization

If those terms sound strange and exotic, they won’t for long. And don’t be fooled by James and Michael’s professorial demeanor on screen: these videos are not abstract or academic in nature. They’re designed to equip you with practical information in a short period of time—info you can use today to make your business more profitable.

Click here to watch and learn.

A search engine results page, or SERP, in Google.

My first forays into online marketing left me asking a lot of questions. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Luckily, for people like us, there is a wealth of resources and expert knowledge available on the Internet to help even the greenest of online marketers get started.

My first step was to get a working definition of SEO. I quickly learned that SEO stands for search engine optimization, the process of optimizing your web site so it is easier for the search engines to find it, thus driving more visitors to your site. More visitor traffic means more chances to communicate, and more communication can provide opportunities to produce more sales.

As a beginning SEO, there were a few resources that helped me immensely in charting these new waters. This particular one is a great guide to search engine optimization that starts right at the beginning:

Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

I highly recommend reading the entire thing (it’s several pages) if you really want to further your knowledge and give yourself an edge. This guide covers just about every key topic including:

• How search engines work to gather information, and some simple steps you can follow to take advantage of these processes.
• Keyword research: What words/phrases people are using to search for your information and how to incorporate those keywords into your site.
• Great tips on how to make your site accessible and create content that is valuable to your customers.
• (And much, much more including links to other helpful resources.)

Here’s another great resource, courtesy of the web site Search Engine Watch:

SEM Basics: A Guide for Webmasters and Search Engine Marketers

They offer great tips, and several “101” articles to help beginners get started.

A great way to learn is to periodically check some expert SEO and online marketing blogs. In addition to our own blog (blog.kutenda.com), the following sites have excellent insights into the world of Internet marketing, as well as SEO-specific tips, techniques and news:

• Seomoz.org
• Searchengineland.com
• Seobook.com

Here are a few tips for developing a foundation in SEO:

1. Learn in manageable sections. When you have some time devoted to this, sit down and work on a couple of topics. Maybe play with some different content ideas, or spend an hour learning about Pay-Per-Click advertising and what it can do for your business.
2. Use the guides above or an interesting article to help you decide what topic to learn about.
3. Be sure to bookmark this blog and return for a regular dose of practical tips and helpful explanations.
4. Consider using a free RSS reader (we recommend Google Reader) so you can subscribe to numerous SEO-focused web sites and read them all from one place—a huge time-saver.

No one can expect to become an expert over night, but with some practice and the right tools—such as the Kutenda Online Marketing Suite—you too can be using Internet acronyms with the best of ‘em!

It’s a great question.

Chances are good that a sizable chunk of your potential customers are participating in one social networking site or another, and you want to capture their attention. This is where social networking search engines come into play. There are a ton of networking sites on the web and most have a way of searching the content within the network, or ‘vertical.’

Now here is where the rubber meets the road. Did you know that on average over 25 percent of searches conducted on social media sites are used to research a future purchase of a product or service? Social networks are where you can create relationships with potential customers that are in the research stage of the purchase process and to make you their trusted provider. Sounds great, right? Now the question becomes, How do I get in front of them to create this relationship?

Here’s an overview:

Step 1: Define the type of networks that suit your business
The first step is to always find the ones that apply to your business. If you are a wedding photographer, Flickr and Photobucket would be great, relevant search verticals to explore, but for an IT business these would offer substantially less value. The IT business might be best suited to start a blog with posts with tips about how to optimize or troubleshoot your technology. Another option would be to create a Twitter account and offer quick bits of advice to those who “tweet” you with questions.

The ultimate goal is to ensure that people searching for your product/service in these verticals will discover the content you have created, find it useful and approach your business.

Step 2: Prioritize
Remember: In the world of internet marketing, it is about maximizing your existing marketing channels. So prioritize your efforts toward the channels that are most likely to perform the best for you and execute one or two at a time. A scattershot approach to all social networks will only leave you with a ton of un-optimized listings that will probably not ever drive any value.

Always keep blended search in mind: The major search engines now incorporate a greater blend of media in their results. For example, Bing and Google now display blog posts, videos, images and even single Twitter entries (tweets) in their search results. The more social media you can optimize (photos in Flickr, videos in YouTube, tweets in Twitter, posts on your blog, etc.), the better off you’ll be in both vertical search engines and ‘hozizontal’ search engines (i.e., Google and Bing).

Step 3: Be Deliberate
Do your keyword research! Before engaging in any search optimization task, always identify the keywords you would like to attack upfront. This helps you sculpt what your need to include in your presence as you are creating it. Completeness is one of the key items to calculate when utilizing internet marketing tactics in social media. If you’re an average user of social networking sites, chances are your profile is not very complete. In addition to filling out your profile, be sure to add relevant data (e.g., tags, descriptions) whenever possible. The more keyword-rich content you provide, the more visible you’ll become.

Step 4: Optimize and Engage!
Let’s face it, a social marketing strategy is only as good as your interaction within each network. So make sure that you stay regularly engaged. It doesn’t need to be all day every day, but ongoing interaction is key to consistent placement within the search results in each social network. This is true because within each social network’s internal search engine, placement typically has an algorithmic link to how recently the content was created or interacted with.

Monitor your terms! Consistently check how you are ranking for the terms you have targeted. Based on how you are doing, you should optimize any under-performing pieces of content and adjust your strategy moving forward.

Good luck! And be sure to come back and tell us how you’re doing.

Kutenda Has Your Back
Part of the value that Kutenda brings to our partners is to act as a source of ongoing education about Internet marketing trends that you and your clients should be aware of. In that spirit, I’d like to let you know how we believe the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership will impact you, our Kutenda partners, and your customers.

Google: No Longer the Only Act in Town
As you know, Google has completely dominated the search engine marketplace—accumulating nearly 70 percent market share. While the company has done a great job of making it easy to find information and market products and services online, the result of their domination is a lack of competition. When it comes to online marketing, Google is the 800-pound gorilla, and you have no choice but to play by their rules and pay their prices.

Enter the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership.

An Industry Shake Up
This deal will have major repercussions for the online advertising industry. Currently, Yahoo and Microsoft rank second and third to Google, respectively. But combined they carry a lot of industry weight. Their roles will be divided. Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will eventually be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process. This won’t be happening for at least a year after the deal closes, so don’t worry about it now.

The Impact on Small Business
Advertisers, publishers and, I believe, small businesses with limited budgets in particular stand to benefit significantly from a unified search and advertising platform, combined sales and marketing resources, and the promise of more competitive prices that increased competition brings. Bottom line: These companies are putting a lot of cash and manpower into taking market share away from Google.

But while this new partnership will result in more competitive Pay-Per-Click advertising prices (a big win for businesses), it will also require online marketing service providers to learn how to use Microsoft and Yahoo effectively—something most haven’t had to consider because Google was the one place to go.

Kutenda Can Help You Navigate the Confusion
The net result is that you’re going to have more to manage … unless you use Kutenda. (You’re so smart you should pat yourself on the back for partnering with us!) With Kutenda, you have one tool that allows you to:

• Optimize every web site you manage for strong organic results in all three search engines.
• Create, manage and track pay-per-click campaigns for all three search engines in Kutenda.
• Submit your clients’ business info to all three search engines’ local directories from inside Kutenda.

So, while the search world just got more complicated for everyone else, your world just got better. As the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft is fully realized over the next couple of years, you’ll be in the perfect position to take advantage of the new opportunities created for you and your clients by partnering with Kutenda.

The current rage—the whiz-bang, change-the-world way to market your business—is social media.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, you could spend your entire day being lured into it all. And there are many bloggers and business consultants out there touting the big benefits to social media. They’ll tell you that if you’re not using social media, you’re missing the boat.

There certainly are benefits to social media, but let’s be clear—its not the big solution to the problem that is paramount in your mind—How the heck do I drive more traffic, close more deals and make my business thrive?

That’s not to say that some small businesses aren’t successful using social media tools to help market their businesses. The New York Times recently published a story about a few small businesses using Twitter to alert people about deals, specials, etc. And, I know of a few small businesses here in Colorado that are using Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with customers. Here’s the thing though: All of them have a web site where they are hoping to drive traffic to. They use social media as one way to drive that traffic.

Here at Kutenda, we do that too. In fact, we get a good amount of traffic from Twitter to our blog.  I say good amount, not fantastic. It’s consistently just under 5 percent as a referral source. Contrast that to traffic coming from Google, Yahoo and Bing—the result of searches on our key terms—that’s over 30 percent of our visitor volume.

What does that tell you? Still the #1 way for people to find you is using search.  So, if you have limited resources—both money and your time—the biggest bang for your marketing dollar is still search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising (PPC).

Should you try a social channel? Sure. But if you’re going to do it, think about what you want to achieve first. Ask yourself some questions to steer your strategy about what might work for you:

• Is your audience far and wide, or do you just want to touch your local market?
• Do you have the time to dedicate to daily interaction, or are you more likely to do something once or twice a week?
• Do you have a good way to make connections online that will delight people and not make you look like a spammer?
• Do you have interesting things to communicate?
• Are you naturally helpful?

If there is a Social Media Club or Social Media Breakfast in your area, check it out. You’ll meet other people who are experimenting and find our what is and isn’t working for them.

–

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

To small businesses, the benefit of dabbling in local search is clear: Get found by a geographically relevant group of customers who are in search of the product and/or service you offer. What a concept—real-time interaction and a high conversion rate to boot!

However, the process by which you properly establish your small business in the local search world can be confusing to some, downright maddening to others. Take Angelo’s mom for instance. If you can ignore the talk of the devil and the image of her spitting down her own shirt, you might be able to relate to the frustrations here. Like a desktop PC for technologically hesitant parents over 55, online marketing is a mysterious world that few small businesses have mastered on their own. So before getting stubborn and rejecting the process, read on for some simple insights into getting your business successfully integrated into local search …

Maybe you’ve got a web site and managed to get it listed on Internet yellow page sites. While you’re a step ahead of many, you can’t stop there. People search for products and services in plethora of ways online and the value of receiving incoming leads from multiple sites far outweighs the effort it takes to get listed. TMP Direction Marketing states that 62 percent of consumers will use either a search engine or a local search site to find a local business. Yellow page sites are used 19 percent of them time.

Additionally, chances are your competitors are listed on local search sites so what’s to stop a customer from purchasing from them if your information isn’t even available for viewing? Strategizing your listings according to your competition’s ad placements and local search listings can be vital to your success online.

Worried about brand building and personal interaction? Have no fear. Local search allows your business to get found by people expecting geographically relevant results. Like the yellow pages, consumers are often looking for a business’ physical location. TMP Direction Marketing’s recent local search usage study reported that 71 percent of consumers follow up online local searches with an in-store visit or phone call.

Don’t forget to establish your local search cred. With all the businesses out there looking to get found, Google and other sites have to take action in order to weed out the bad and provide valuable results to their users (i.e., your potential customers).  However, you have the power to help take the guesswork out for your site and increase the level at which Google trusts your listing. The following steps will help your listing gain credibility and raise your chances of being found:

1. Provide concise / relevant business descriptions and keywords so its clear what your business offers and how it should be categorized.
2. Increase brand credibility by listing your business on consumer review sites such as CitySearch, Yelp.com, YellowPages.com and InsiderPages.com, and encourage satisfied customers to post reviews.
3. Acquire citations. In the world of local search, citations are mentions of your business’ name that exist near a listing of your address and/or phone number. Citations give Google et al. the confidence to trust your listing and give you a better chance of being displayed as a result. Search engines will look for your citations across the entire web so make sure to be accurately listed in as many locations as possible including your web site, business listings, industry blogs, etc.

Local search is extremely fragmented. While there are a few key players, it’s a different game than traditional organic search. Pay attention to vertical local search and get your business listed on web sites that segment search according to industry. This, however, means more than getting listed. Vertical local search sites require you to be part of the conversation. Pay attention to how people rate your listings and respond to their feedback. It’s a much more personal setting than traditional search – consumers communicate with each other and a vote of confidence from one customer to another certainly can’t hurt! Plus, all those new listings you’ll create double as awesome citations. So go on—Take action and succeed online!

About a month ago, my wife and I welcomed our fourth child into the world and the team at Kutenda presented us with a gift certificate to a restaurant near my house. Needless to say, our hands were full, so ordering in seemed like the perfect option.

It was a surprise to me when I did a Google search and couldn’t find a web site for the place. This was a bit frustrating, as it’s tough to order for delivery when you don’t know what is on the menu. Fortunately, the place was only a 6-minute drive, so I went there to find out.

I entered the restaurant and asked for a takeout menu. The hostess said their takeout menus were located in the Yellow Pages. Wow.

Since it was a small business, I asked if the owner was around and she introduced me. We had a nice chat about her place and then I asked why she didn’t have a web site. She told me that she didn’t need one because everyone already knows about their small business or could find them in the Yellow Pages. I told her that I don’t keep a phone book because it takes up too much space and showed her how I could find it all on my iPhone. Again, she said that people just call and place an order. Confused, I said, “but I don’t know what’s on your menu.” We ended the conversation back at the Yellow Pages.

It was clear she was marooned on Phone Book Island. (Well, it was more of a self-imposed exile.)

This experience showed me how vital it is that small local businesses understand changes in consumer behavior and the importance of having a web presence. To cling to the phone book is to isolate your business on an island with a rapidly declining population. The phone book now trails the Internet as the most popular source for local business information, and the proliferation of smart phones will add to the web’s lead.

Just creating a profile on Google Local Search would dramatically improve this restaurant’s chances of being found. The amount of revenue being lost by this small-business owner could be substantial.

As with many small proprietors, she probably does not know where to start with online marketing. According to a 2009 Opus/AllBusiness.com survey, a plurality of small businesses, 25 percent, chose “confusion” as the reason they do not market themselves online. “Lack of budget” was close behind at 24 percent.

Though web marketing may seem daunting and expensive, there are three easy and affordable steps businesses can take to get started:

1. Create a web site
2. Submit to Google Local Search
3. Build an email list

Just starting with these three steps—none of which is harder than setting up a free email account—would allow a small business to be found online. If this restaurant had a web site with a menu, more people would be able to order for delivery and decide if it’s a place they want to go to eat.

What did we think of the food? It was excellent. I would send you a link, but you’ll have to paddle out to Phone Book Island to have a look at the menu …

Most people find companies to do business with using search engines — even when searching for a local business. When I talk to people about this, they generally agree that its easier and faster to look online.

When was the last time you used a printed phone book, anyway? I can’t remember the last time I did. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I brought one into my house (usually, they go right to the recycling bin).

But, since we are really into community service, we thought we’d let you know how we’re using our phone books over here at Kutenda:

Phone book use #1: prop open the door

What do you use your phone books for?