eMarketSouth Central

It seems each week in Savannah there is a business networking opportunity of some sort, and many on the same day. As a business executive or entrepreneur, how can you possibly attend each and every one? You just can’t. Instead, you have to pick and choose which events to attend that will give you the largest ROI. You spend your evening passing out and receiving business cards, taking mental notes of those to call back later. After a couple hours, it can be quite tiring, especially if you go to one or two a day as I normally find myself.

But what you may find after a few meetings is that you are meeting the same people over and over. While it is always great to be able to have people recognize your face for when you call on them, you really want to be able to reach as many leads as possible. Here is where social networking sites can help.

Most of us are familiar with MySpace, possibly more so for negative reasons exploited by the media than positive ones. But many businesses have created MySpace profiles to allow them to directly market their demographic. Businesses have a full range of options from blogs to special announcements (bulletins) to photo galleries, all for free. All it takes is someone with enough web savy to make regular updates (or someone with a 14-year-old).

If MySpace isn’t for you, perhaps you’d like to try Facebook. Recent Apple iPhone commercials showcase the phone’s ability to keep Facebook users updated of activity related to their Facebook pages. Think of Facebook as a reunion assistant; when you register, it immediately asks you for your location, high school and college and will help you locate other Facebook members who have the same listings for their profiles.

But if you want to keep things strictly business, then get registered at LinkedIn. You can sign up to connect with your current business contacts including co-workers and clients, but also get introduced to their business contacts. People who have done business with you may also leave recommendations of your work or services, and you can use your profile page as your personal sales tool. Additionally, the site offers informative articles related to careers and networking and even allows for user submitted questions and answers. And as an added bonus, LinkedIn profiles are often returned in search engine results, helping you to boost your SEO.

In a time of economic uncertainty, make the time to put online business networking tools to work. You just never know who you might reach.

List of Social Networking Sites by Wikipedia

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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Well, maybe that’s not completely true, but read a number of blogs and you might start to see the power they hold. In a lunch lecture I attended yesterday, the speaker, who owns her own PR firm, admitted that bloggers are evil creatures, often causing havoc for her clients. In her examples, the content related to bloggers who obtained privileged information and made speculations or started rumors on their blogs. But therein is why she has a job in the first place.

If you are concerned about your company’s information leaking to the public, you should be sure to guard it and have complete trust in those who share such information. On the other hand, using your blog to purposefully share information to the public in a timely manner can be a very proactive measure.

At the recent BlogSavannah UnCon, speaker Josh Hallett spoke about the problem Sony had by creating a fake blog where two of its team members pretended to be game players that started a blog to convince family and friends to give them a new PSP for Christmas. The public quickly caught on and called them out, as did the media. Sony came back with a revamped blog, under Hallett’s direction, which now provides communication directly between Sony and its PlayStation fans.

But what is it about bloggers that make them so evil? Well, maybe evil isn’t the right word… perhaps they simply require that companies be more accountable for their actions. Information via the Internet is viral, and while you may not always see comments on a specific blog, you can bet people have read them. (Feel free to review my post from November about Spirit Airlines - the ultimate “OOPS” case study.)

So what are people saying about you? Make Google your best friend. Type in your company name and take a look. Spend some time on Technorati. If something strikes you, see what you could do that might make the situation better. Then take a look at what people are saying about your competition. Those are probably issues to you as well. Don’t start your blog to be a PR response - it needs to be a conversation with your customers, and they will be able to immediately notice if you have someone else writing or some ulterior purposes behind your posts.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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I can remember when my mom and dad and their friends would call me for computer help on a regular basis. My favorite story was my junior year of college when my mom called me to come home to Tybee because the sound was broken. I drove over an hour from my apartment in Statesboro just to turn on the speaker. But they have evolved and now each have their own laptop. Mom doesn’t call me as much for help, but I still wish I could get her to give up AOL.

My parents aren’t the only Internet users on Social Security (but let’s hope Mom’s not reading this blog today or I’m in trouble for revealing her age). This afternoon, as I sat down to check out my favorite sites, I found I had a new friend request on my MySpace page, with a message: “Hi Lisa. I know your mom and dad from the Shrine.” Yes, MySpace has managed to rake in other generations into their world. In fact, an article from late 2006 revealed that more than half of MySpace users are over 35, and about 11% were over 55.

But MySpace isn’t the only area of the net attracting Golden Agers. Photosharing websites such as Flickr and Picasa are becoming favorites, allowing travelers to share in the adventures from the road. While my parents were traveling this winter, I received a weekly email to their photo galleries to show off the fun they were having in the Florida Keys and Everglades.

So as more web-based social networking sites develop and evolve, we can expect the 55+ demographics to increase. Now, if I could just get my aunt to add Snopes.com to her favorite sites to visit, maybe I could reduce my inbox waste by 50%.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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