BroadVision Marketing Blog

I really enjoy using Twitter as a platform for social media inbound marketing; but I know that many business owners, especially baby boomers, don't. So I began looking for a way to help you write the perfect tweet. I found a perfect one that was similar to those ghastly sentence diagrams we had in school. The writer is Garry Moran, the head of social media in North American for SAP, a German software multinational that is one of the biggest companies in the world. I was impressed. Next I found an article that was totally opposed to the blueprint idea. My person opinion is that using a blueprint like Moran suggests is a good place to start if you are a Twitter novice, but afterwards you want to being to vary what you tweet and see what works for you using analytics.

Topics: internet marketing tip, Inbound marketing agency in CA, internet marketing tips, BroadVision Marketing Petaluma CA, Twitter, Tweet

Have you counted the number of social media networks you are on? How many computers, tablets, netbooks, laptops, smartphones, etc., do you use to connect to these social media networks? How many times have you given “permission” to access your data to those networks? Do you know how many friends, not-so-close friends and work friends you have circled, grouped and filtered?

With Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, FourSquare, SlideShare and new social media growing and changing—do you ever wonder how anyone gets anything done all day? It eats into everyone’s day in a frantic, addictive time press.  What are we doing with our time?

Cui Bono

Topics: Inbound marketing agency in CA, Jaco Grobbelaar BroadVision Marketing Petaluma CA, Facebook, Social Media, LinkedIn, Twitter, social media networks, SlideShare

Social media has come to mean an array of activities from your website to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond. But the foundation of all social media is your website and your blog.

With the infinitely vast ways your website can stand out which you can do yourself or spend anywhere from a small amount of money to the big bucks, there is no excuse to not to have the best website you can afford. WordPress is the going concern for the bottom layer of the site. On top of a basic WordPress foundation, you can add different skins that will change the look without changing the computer language at the foundation.

Furthermore, when the foundation gets a makeover, you can safely download the new version without losing what is on the skin above. This way you can keep up with the latest and greatest improvements.

Topics: Using Different Media, Petaluma California, Web search engine, WordPress foundation, WordPress, Marketing in Petaluma CA, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

I thought I was finished with the idea of do it yourself social media work, but apparently I am not. There are some other things that you need to know to find yourself on the top page of many search engines.

Last week we totaled up the amount of time you could take doing social media marketing, without LinkedIn and some other places. We saw how you could spend over half of a 40-hour work week. If you were worth $30 an hour, it would have cost you $2888.00 a month to pay yourself. Your time and your worth are your value added when you do it yourself.

Topics: BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, social media marketing, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

I am still on a kick about what it really costs to work on your social media marketing. We are assuming right here that you are going to do all the work on your social media yourself rather than have someone in your office or having an external marketing firm do this for you.

We have determined that writing your blog yourself, if you are worth $30 an hour, is going to cost you $720 a month with a time cost of around 24 hours.

Topics: marketing, Pinterest, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, social media marketing, Blogging, Twitter

Have you ever gone fishing and taken several poles?  Business blogging and other platforms like Facebook and Twitter are like having several poles in the water to hook a client into coming to your website and using your products or services. These platforms are not hard sell platforms. People won’t come visit you if all you do is bombard them with why they need your product or service. They want to learn something or be entertained. What you tell them is the bait on your hook.

Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter, Marketing strategy

A business blog is the anchor to which all your other social media platforms are tied. It’s your blog that goes on your Facebook Fan Page and you tweet about. These in turn get passed around by others who in turn come to your website to read that blog. Furthermore when the search engines are aware of the information in your blog, strangers will search for some keywords and find themselves on your business blog. That’s powerful stuff.

Topics: Google, WordPress, Corporate blog, Business Blogging, blog, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Being Social"] [/caption]

Do you see yourself as Mr. or Ms. Business Blogger, along the same lines as the  “Cherry Ames, Companion Nurse” stories by Helen Wells? Writing a business blog is a good step in the right direction, but if no one reads your blog, you have just wasted a lot of time.

How do you get that great article you wrote out there? Blogging and social networking are both parts of the same strategy. You have to go out and promote your blog by being social. There are many different ways you can use to get your word out. We are just going to look at four.

• Twitter is a quick way to let people know that you are in business and that you have a live website, as opposed to one that is static where nothing new is ever going on. You can tweet about your new post in such a way that people will be interested in reading about it. Remember that no one wants to be sold on social network. They do want to learn things and be entertained. If you are offering information, make that obvious in your tweet. Oh yes, it’s a good idea to put out around 10 tweets on various subjects a day and then spend some time actually on Twitter to show that you are a real person.

Topics: Using Different Media, Google, Corporate blog, Social network, Helen Wells, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Blogging, Twitter

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="Image via CrunchBase"] [/caption]

What is the ultimate purpose of social media? You want to use it to get good solid leads that will convert into customers. Basically, social media tells you your leads are getting interested in you and your company.

You use social media as a business process, which means that you develop a process in writing that you follow and test regularly to hone it. The sales department and the marketing department, as two very different entities, need to sit down together and discuss what criteria a lead must meet before being passed from marketing to sales. Furthermore, marketing needs to follow-up after the lead is passed on in order to find out if the sale occurred. Also in order to keep the customer for life, the marketing department needs to stay in touch with the client for future sales.

Topics: marketing, Company, Squeeze page, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, Twitter

A cook starts with a recipe. A tourist starts with a map. So why do many small business owners think they can run their business without a marketing plan?

Many small business owners think marketing equals expensive advertising. Some advertising is costly, but marketing also includes less costly ways to engage prospective customers, thanks to the internet. With some research, planning and execution, business owners can market successfully without enormous spending.

Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, Small business, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Business, Branding, Twitter, Marketing strategy