Social Media, Technology & Small Businesses @regeshansen-blog - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Week 2 CSA box has arrived! Included this time: peanuts, salad mix, romaine lettuce, cabbage, beets, swiss chard, carrots, golden potatoes, spring onions and yellow onions. (at Claremont Circle Store)

What a gorgeous morning right here in Claremont! (at Claremont Circle Store)

Barbecue chicken wings at the Claremont Circle Store!

My tomato plant from Farmer Joe's already has several green ones on it. Bring on the fresh tomatoes!!

I finally have the solution for what to do with all of the lettuces I have collected from both Deerehaven and Bottle Tree farms! It's lettuce soup (much yummier than it sounds). Very easy recipe! Chop and wilt your lettuce and spring onions on medium heat with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Add chicken or vegetable stock and simmer for about an hour. Run it all through a blender. Then serve! I topped mine with jalapeño cream cheese and cilantro.

I think the green and purple ended up being the perfect combo! (at Johnson Brothers, Inc.)

Thank you Farmer Joe for the beautiful tomato plant and other goodies! (at Farmer Joe's Greenhouse and Florist)

Happy Earth Day! Here is our latest addition of a Butterfly Bush, planted with the hopes for the return of the monarchs. (at Claremont, Virginia)

Here is the before picture of my gardening efforts. Tomorrow I hope to have a beautiful after photo, and then a spring and summer filled with yummy produce and flowers! (at Claremont, Virginia)

How has social media and technology changed how small businesses interact with their customer base?

This page has been created for my Introduction to New Media Technologies class that I am taking at Old Dominion University. In this class, we have been asked to choose a subject relating to new technologies and their impact on the world.

When I read about this project, I really wanted to find a subject that I both wanted to know about and had a real world application for. I am a small business owner (a small country store), and I have been doing my best to have an "online" presence. With the storm that we have recently had in January of this year, I found that most people were keeping track of the road conditions in Claremont as well as other news via facebook, and that some were even using my Claremont Circle Store page to find out this information. Our page has also been useful for organizing events and letting people know about sales. So, I am very excited to see what other businesses are doing, and what other sites they are using (other than Facebook).

As the title of this post suggests, my research questions is “How has social media and technology changed how small businesses interact with their customer base?”. This is an important topic, because the answer is an actively evolving one.

Here are five sites that I have singled out to start my research.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/small+businesses+and+social+mediahttp://smallbiztrends.com/

http://www.quicksprout.com/

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/getlisted-and-seomoz/

http://www.copyblogger.com/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-guide-small-businesses/

#school project #odu #smallbusiness #social media #372T

regeshansen-blog

Here is a picture taken from the Claremont Circle Store with my many helpers.

Follow this seven-step social media guide to help you get started with social media and learn how to use it to promote your products and services.

This is a great article from Megan Conley, the founder and CEO of Social Tribe. She breaks down social media for small businesses into seven steps. The first step is research! Who are you customers? What kinds of things interest them? The second step is coordinate your content between your different channels. They need to work together to bring more people to your website. The third step is to make sure you aren’t biting off more than you can chew. You don’t have to start off with an account on every site. Fourth step is an important, often forgotten one. People like interaction. Respond to comments and customer posts. Fifth, you have to regularly post content or your customers will lose interest. Sixth, free is awesome, but to really expand your audience, you will have to pay sometimes. Seventh, once you have an audience, you need to keep at it. Do not stop! You don’t want all of your past work to be for naught. This is a great article that highlights what small businesses need to do to have successful social media campaigns. Megan seems to understand the biggest issues for small business owners (time and money, or lack there of).

#advertising #social media #small business #school project #comm372t

Do you need to streamline your daily tasks? Discover 23 of the top tools and tips shared on the Social Media Marketing podcast.

As the title of this article suggests, this is a great list for anyone looking for useful social media marketing tools and tips. Some of the suggestions are ones that I have already looked at like Trello, but there were some new ones such as Sumo Rank, that gives you some added information about how your content is doing on Facebook. (Unfortunately, this site did not have any useful data about my facebook.com/claremontcirclestore page, so I cannot use it for my business.)

This article also suggests apps such as Opera Mini, that dims the edges of your screens late at night, so that the blue light emitted does not keep you up. A good night’s rest is indeed very important!

Another interesting suggestion, was a site called countdown monkey. Countdowns are a great way for customers to know exactly when an event is happening. It also creates a sense of urgency. The down side to using this site is the annual fee of $79.

“ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Michael Stelzner

Michael Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, and host of the Social Media Marketing podcast. He also authored the books Launch and Writing White Papers.”

#social media #advertising #marketing #curator project #tello #countdown #michael stelzner

This is a video from Rip Tide Results. What they are talking about are the steps involved in using social media as a research process, how these steps are done and why you are doing each of these things. These steps are not ranked sequentially, but rather they are things you ALWAYS need to do. Having great content is obviously important. When someone looks up your company there needs to be content out there that is interesting to them and defines what kind of company you are and what you do or sell. You can do this by constantly doing research on topics that are relevant to your business. Another step is ID prospects. You need to know who is interested in what you provide. This ties into the step of qualifying prospects. Not only are you looking for people who are interested in your business, but they should be able to afford your service/product. If they don’t have the ability to purchase your products/service, then there is no reason to reach out and try and sell them. Your time could be better used elsewhere. Another important step is organize. You don’t want to duplicate work or lose vital information. Organizing prospective customers and creating lists are ways to avoid doing those things. The last one is a bit interesting. They use the term “stalk”, but what they are referring to is staying on top of what interests your customers the most. This helps you to be relevant and interesting when you contact them. It also helps you to build trust and a report. The gist of this video is to tell you the things that must happen to effectively use social media to research and build your customers base. They have simplified it and explained why each step is important, so that you actually do these things.

#social media #small business #advertising #content #ID Prospects #Qualify #organize #stalk

Do you develop multiple pieces of content at once? Looking for a better way to organize and manage content? Discover how to manage your content with Trello.

What is Trello? Well it is a site that is devoted to making the creation and organization of content for marketing easier to organize. There are so many different social media sites and ways to advertise online, so keeping it all straight is essential.

This site also seems to understand that the needs of medium and large businesses is different from the needs of small businesses, so it allows the user to adjust their account to fit the needs of their business. One of the biggest considerations for small businesses is the need for “free” programs and sites which Trello is (at least the basic program is).

#trello #social media #small business #advertising #organization #curator project

It's one thing to publish posts on Facebook. Anyone with a PC and an internet connection can do that. But if you want people on Facebook to actually engage with

This is a very useful article about how to increase engagement with your Facebook Fans. The suggestions are all free ways to increase engagement (which in this case is measured by the numbers of clicks and likes), but more importantly it also makes your page more interesting from a viewers standpoint. One of the best suggestions from this site was to leave some mystery in your post. Something that peaks the viewers interest and makes them want to actually click on the link and read the content. Another great suggestion from this site was to reuse old material from a year or more ago. The content has already been created, so it’s a quick an easy post. Also, there will be many viewers who have never seen the material, and those that saw it over a year ago probably don’t remember it.

#facebook #smallbusines #marketing #engagement #ingenius

By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

This is something that I have often thought about with my own business. Like the author of this article, I have wondered why would someone want to receive regular newsletters and why would they would want to read them. What made this writer reconsider her hard-line anti-newsletter stance was a lull in her career. Small businesses have that same issue. What causes that lull is the downtime needed between new and exciting products. This is where newsletters come in. They help to bridge that time gap in-between.

#newsletters #marketing #generating interest #advice #small business #writing

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Social Media, Technology & Small Businesses