Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Marketing’

Engage Customers through Social Media While In-Store

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

As Location Marketing gains steam through tools like Foursquare, SCVNGR, and Facebook Places small business owners would be wise to begin developing marketing tactics designed to engage customers while in-store. When customers are in your store you have them at Peak Attention in terms of their interest in your business. With most customers being able to access the internet from anywhere with their mobile smart phones, small business owners can engage customers through Social Media while they are at Peak Attention in-store. Now, this doesn’t mean your sales associates should ignore customers while in-store, it simply means a combined approach is now possible at a time when customers are most likely to make a purchase… By engaging customers through Social Media while they are in your store you have the ability to make a big-time impact on their purchase decision.

In-Store Social Media Promotion Ideas

In-Store Peak Customer AttentionWhen it comes to developing ideas for creative social media marketing promotions many small business owners struggle. The biggest things to keep in mind when trying to come up with creative ideas for in-store social media promotions are to keep the tactics relevant to your audience, be creative, and offer something of value in exchange for a desired action from you customers. By keeping these three things in mind, it will be much easier to come up with creative in-store social media promotions for your small business.

Here are a few in-store social media promotion ideas to get you started (these are generic ideas, which should be tailored to your small business and can even be “kicked up a notch” if you so desire):

  • Twitter Picture Contest: With mobile applications like TweetDeck, combined with mobile smart phones, customers now have the ability to instantly snap pictures with their phone & tweet them to their followers. Small businesses should leverage tools like mobile smart phones, Twitter, & TweetDeck to create a Twitter Picture Contest where customers can snap a picture of their favorite product in-store, tweet it, and receive a discount on their purchase.

  • Leave a foursquare Tip: We have written about the power of foursquare Tips for small business owners on the Catalyst blog in the past. Foursquare is a great tool for capturing customers attention while in-store. You can run a contest where every customer who checks-in at your venue on foursquare and leaves a tip will be entered into a weekly or monthly drawing for a gift certificate or another great prize. Although this promotion isn’t directly geared towards influencing a sale, it will engage customers and help you build brand loyalty. If the winner receives a $25 gift certificate, it’s likely that he or she will spend more than that the next time they come in, so it actually may indirectly impact sales.

  • Video Record Your Shopping Experience: Just like most of us have the ability to take pictures with our mobile smart phones, many have the ability to record video as well. Small business owners should leverage this by developing an in-store video marketing promotion. Small Business owners can ask customers to record their entire shopping experience and publish the video to their small business Facebook page. Each customer who participates will receive a coupon towards their purchase.

Benefits to Running In-Store Social Media Promotions

By taking advantage of one of the in-store social media promotion ideas above, or by coming up with your own in-store social media promotion, your small business will benefit a few ways:

  • In-store social media promotions can positively influence purchase decisions, which can lead to increased sales.

  • In-store social media promotions engage customers while they are at Peak Attention, which should increase the number of customers who participate. This activity is great for your social media presence and may entice more prospects to connect with you when they see how many others are actively engaged.

  • In-store social media promotions can build brand loyalty if customers see that you’re trying to provide them with value in a way that’s convenient for them.

2011 Social Media Trend: More In-Store Social Media Promotions

Being that it’s the new year, everyone is seemingly weighing in with their predictions for the upcoming year. Since a wealth of information on social media predictions for 2011 already exists, we’ll keep ours to just this one. Here at Catalyst we are currently working with small business clients on their in-store social media promotions, and we think you’re going to start to see a lot more of it as 2011 presses on. If you’re a small business owner, definitely take some time to consider developing an in-store social media promotion for your small business. We think it will help you drive sales in what looks to be another tough year for the economy.

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Posted in New Social Business, Online Marketing | 2 Comments »

WTF! Social Media Marketing Isn’t Working for My Small Business

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Are you not seeing any results from your Social Media Marketing efforts? If that’s the case then something is wrong and we need to dissect your Social Media Marketing Plan in order to find out what. What’s that? You don’t have a Social Media Marketing Plan? Hmm… That’s definitely part of the problem, but there may be other contributing factors.

Within the online communities that we frequent here at Catalyst, we often hear stories from small business owners who are not seeing a return-on-social-media. After a little investigation, the problems that these organizations face usually result from similar missteps. In this article we will review a few critical mistakes that many small business owners make when getting started with Social Media Marketing. If you feel like you’re not getting the most out of your Social Media efforts be sure to read this article carefully to determine if you have fallen into any of these traps. If you have, don’t be ashamed or give up on Social Media. Social Media Marketing can be an extremely powerful marketing strategy for your small business. The following mistakes can be overcome and you’ll be happy that you spent the time to understand what you’re doing wrong and what you can do to fix it.

No Social Media Marketing Plan

Social Media Not WorkingIn anything that you do, planning is a critical first step. You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, right? You wouldn’t travel across the country without a map and a planned route (well, hopefully you wouldn’t), right? You wouldn’t purchase a print ad in a local magazine without first having a plan for what the creative will look like, what the message will be, etc., right? Then there is no reason why you should jump into Social Media Marketing without first developing a Social Media Marketing Plan.

A proper Social Media Marketing Plan lays out your Goals, Strategic Imperatives, and Marketing Tactics. The Marketing Tactics should alight to your Strategic Imperatives and your Strategic Imperatives should be designed to achieve your Goals. All of your Social Media Marketing efforts should be carefully planned. You want to know where your target audience is spending their time online so that you can choose the proper online tools to use. You want to develop your content marketing strategy. You also want to consider how you will promote your content to your audience. The planning process will allow you to think through all of this and the result should be a Social Media Marketing Plan that will provide you with the best opportunity to succeed in your Social Media Marketing efforts.

How Do You Determine ROI for Social Media Marketing?

As part of your Social Media Marketing Plan, did you setup performance measures for each of your Social Media Marketing Tactics? Part of planning is setting clear objectives so that you’re able to measure success 3 months, 6 months, 12 months down the road. Without setting proper performance measures you’re unable to determine your return-on-investment for Social Media Marketing.

If one of your goals is to increase your mobile presence and your strategy is to utilize geo-location tools to drive mobile use then a possible marketing tactic might be to use foursquare to create a foursquare mayor special for your small business. With this being your plan, a reasonable performance measure might be:

  • Drive 10 sales using the foursquare Mayor special discount within the first 3 months after the tactic launches

By setting up a performance measure prior to launching your Social Media Marketing tactic you’re now able to check your sales data 1 month, 2 months, and 3 months from launch to see how you’re tracking against your performance measure. At set times throughout the year (quarterly is usually recommended), you should come back to your Social Media Marketing Plan and see how you’re tracking against the performance measures that you setup. Based on your data, you may want to alter your performance measures moving forward (ie. if you’ve exceeded your yearly goals in 6 months, then ramp up your goals for the next six months).

If you have questions about how to properly setup performance measures for your Social Media Marketing tactics, please feel free to contact us.

The Number of Followers You Have Doesn’t Matter

Many small business owners are receiving the wrong advice when it comes to marketing automation tools and the importance of how many followers you have on Twitter and/or Facebook –> This Quantity over Quality approach is DEAD WRONG. In order to be successful with Social Media Marketing there are few shortcuts, and the quality of your relationships matter much more than the quantity (in most cases).

At first it seems to make sense that the more followers you have the better, but what does it matter if you have 100,000 followers if none of those followers are engaged in what you’re doing online? What if you have 0 comments on your Facebook wall or 0 retweets on Twitter? I guess those 100,000 followers don’t mean much then, right?

So there you go, if you’ve been using tools that automatically post Twitter tweets to Facebook or create content by collecting articles around the web and posting them to your blog then you’re not doing your small business any good. What you should be doing is taking time to create quality content for your blog… original content. You should be interacting with your followers. Getting to know them and their interests. This way you can have relevant discussions with them and create valuable and relevant content for them. By taking the QUALITY over quantity approach you’ll notice a HUGE difference in the success you have with Social Media Marketing.

Where’s the Engagement?

We briefly touched on engagement above, but it’s so critical that we need to dig deeper. Even if you have a Social Media Marketing Plan and you’re creating relevant content on your blog or YouTube channel, if you’re not engaging your audience around that content, then you’re not seeing the full positive effects of Social Media Marketing. Have you ever been to a Facebook page where all that’s posted are blog articles or links to a website? There’s no discussion going on, no comments or Likes, no contests or questions being asked… Those pages are almost worse than having no Social Media presence at all. For you to be successful with Social Media you must engage your audience in conversations.

Using your Facebook status to ask questions or having a ReTweet contest are great ways to drive engagement for your small business on Social Media. Simply thanking people who ReTweet your articles or leave comments on your blog is a great way to start building a relationship with a prospect. In order to keep your online community engaged, you first must be engaged in your Social Media efforts. That’s why many marketing automation tools don’t work. They allow you to be lazy with Social Media. You have to be active and you have to engage your audience. If you take the time to build real relationships with your online community you’ll see much better results from your Social Media Marketing efforts.

WTF! Social Media Marketing Isn’t Working for My Small Business

If you’ve been questioning the return-on-social-media lately hopefully this post was helpful. The majority of the time, the issues that small business owners have with Social Media Marketing can be summed up within the four categories above. If you’re doing everything that you’re supposed to be doing, but still aren’t having success, please feel free to reach out to us and we’ll provide you with our thoughts on how you can get more results from your Social Media Marketing.

Oh, and if you’re looking to find out what ‘WTF’ means then go ahead and Google “wtf wikipedia”…

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Posted in Small Business | 10 Comments »

Round Up: Past Posts Providing Creative Social Media Marketing Ideas

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

Are you looking for creative Social Media Marketing ideas to help drive sales for your small business? We have written extensively on the topic of small business and Online Marketing. We understand that small business owners are pressed for time and can’t make it to our blog on a daily basis. We also have new small business owners each day coming to our blog for the first time. We wanted to come up with a way to get our best articles in front of all of you in one convenient format.

This post will hopefully be the first of many ‘Round Up’ articles whereby we take some of our best articles within a given topic (today’s topic is Creative Social Media Marketing ideas) and link them from one article. This way you can skim through these Round Up posts to find the articles of interest to you, click the links, and read about a creative Social Media Marketing idea. We hope you find the information valuable as we think that by implementing just one of the many ideas below will help you reach more customers & prospects, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately drive sales from them.

Social Media Marketing Agency Catalyst Marketers

Christmas Promotion with Foursquare for Small Business: Holidays are a great reason to run creative marketing promotions at your small business. When new customers & prospects come into your store, instruct them to check-in on foursquare and let them know that by doing so enters them into your foursquare Christmas promotion. Each night you will select one winner from the day’s check-ins. The person will be notified to come in and pick out a gift from under your Christmas tree (thus driving them BACK into your store).

Does Your Restaurant Run a Local Chef Sweepstakes?: Are you looking for ways to get more people into your restaurant (especially on those slow days/nights), build buzz for your brand, create local community advocates for the quality of your service, and come up with new menu items that your customers love? Gather a group of local residents (who enjoy cooking) in your area to come into your restaurant one night a month (make it the least active night of the week), each bringing their best-cooked dish to share with everyone. The most well-liked dish will win a prize… but that’s not all, click the link above to see just how this idea can GENERATE EXTRA REVENUE FOR YOUR RESTAURANT!

Retail Clothing Boutiques Host Their Own Local Fashion Shows by Using Online Social Tools: Do you own or operate a small retail clothing business? If so, do you find it difficult to compete with some of the larger retail chains out there? Do you ever find yourself watching those celebrity-filled fashion shows on TV saying, “our clothes are so much nicer than that”. If that’s the case, then perhaps you should consider hosting your own local fashion show for your retail clothing boutique.

Run a Twitter ReTweet Contest to Drive New Twitter Followers: Running a ReTweet Contest for your small business can be a great way to promote your content, drive action from current followers, and accumulate new Twitter followers.

Run a Yelp Campaign to Promote Your Small Business: Yelp is a great online tool that all businesses should be taking advantage of. You can use Yelp as a way to generate positive customer feedback about your business. Then, when other potential customers are searching for products and services within your industry on Yelp, you have a better chance of driving those customers to your store or website. Yelp amplifies the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Create a Social Media Card: It’s a good idea to always be looking for new, and creative, ways to drive traffic to Social Media. The concept for the Connect with Us Card is simple. It’s like a business card for the organization’s online presence. Add all of your Social Media links & icons to the card. Then pass it out to everyone you meet who may be part of your target audience.

What’s your favorite Social Media Marketing idea from the list above? Why? Leave your feedback below. We appreciate it!

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Posted in Small Business | No Comments »

Social Media Elixir: 2 Parts Social, 1 Part Media

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I don’t know if it was the need for a cocktail or if it was just a random creative thought, but in thinking about Social Media Marketing, and more specifically the term Social Media, the idea of the perfect Social Media Elixir came to mind. The first part of the term Social Media is “Social”, which means a consistent presence online mixed with continual content production and engagement of your audience. The second part of the term Social Media is “Media”. Media is used to describe all of the online tools available. Once you understand how the two words fit together you begin to understand Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing is nothing more than a combination of the right online tools and a social approach to using those tools to connect & build relationships with your target audience. Now, where it gets tricky is determining what the right combination of “Social” and “Media” is for your small business –> ie. the perfect Social Media Elixir! ;)

Social Media Marketing Agency PhiladelphiaEvery business should have a unique Social Media Elixir, almost like all people have unique fingerprints. There is a special Social Media sauce out there just for your business and it’s up to you to capture it… Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t have some help. Let’s continue to breakdown the two words that make up the term Social Media to help give you a better understanding of how to come up with the right Social Media Elixir for your business.

Put the “Social” in “Social Media”

As we indicated earlier, “Media” are the tools or vehicles that businesses use to promote their products & services. “Social” is how you use the tools. All businesses use online tools a little differently, but two underlining constants with all successful Social Media Marketing campaigns are consistent activity and creative engagement. You must be active on your “Media” in order to build trust over time with your audience. In order to entice new prospects to follow you and to keep current customers and prospects coming back, you must find creative ways to engage your audience. Now there are a lot of other things that go into building successful Social Media Marketing campaigns, but you can’t be successful at some of those other things if you aren’t successful in these first two parts.

To put all of the jargon and theory from the above paragraph into more practical terms, in order to be successful in the “Social” part of “Social Media” you should have a plan to check each of your online tools each day or every other day. By being active on your “Media” you are able to quickly respond to your customers and prospects if they reach out to you or comment on something. Hopefully you can post new content to your “Media” sites every time you visit them. This helps let your connections know that they can rely on you.

The next most important part of being “Social” is to develop creative promotions designed to get your connections actively involved in what you’re doing online. You can run a foursquare Mayor contest, host an online fashion show, or implement a Twitter ReTweet promotion. Whatever you do be sure that it makes sense for your business, make sure you offer something of value to your online community for participating, and don’t forget your call-to-action –> this is the engagement piece. Get your community to do something in order to be eligible to receive your offer.

When you’re coming up with the perfect Social Media Elixir for your small business be sure to include at least these two “Social” activities when managing your online “Media”.

“M” is for “Online Social Tools”

“Media” in “Social Media” means online social tools. “Media” is used to refer to all of the tools available to us online, tools which we can use for promoting our businesses. If you’re an active reader of this blog then you have probably heard us talk about “selecting the right online tools for your business”. Just because the entire world is on Facebook doesn’t mean you HAVE to be. Now, for most business owners Facebook probably makes sense, but what if you’re a B2B company selling raw materials to manufacturers? There’s a high probability that your customers and prospects are not spending much time on Facebook. It may be that having a blog and being on LinkedIn are the best tools for a business like the one described above.

In order to be successful in the “Media” component of “Social Media” you must know your business, know your audience, and know the tools available to you online. Once you understand these three things you will be in a better position to choose the “Media” that you want to use in your Social Media Marketing campaigns.

What makes up your Social Media Elixir?

It’s critical that you select the right tools or should I say “Media” for your Social Media Marketing campaigns. With that said, selecting the right online tools to use for your business is only one part of the equation. The other 2 parts come from the “Social” side of things and they are consistent activity and creative engagement. When you combine these 2 Parts “Social” with 1 Part “Media” you have a strong foundation for your perfect Social Media Elixir.

For Catalyst, we use our Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Places, Squidoo, and a few other online tools to make up the “Media” component of our Social Media Elixir. As for the “Social” component we are active daily on our “Media” like Facebook and Twitter. We write new content here on the Catalyst blog at least twice a week. We engage the small business owners who follow us in discussions around marketing ideas for their business. We try to get you thinking about your business while also providing you with creative ideas for promoting your products and services. This combination of social activity and the right online tools has been very successful for us. With that said, we are always evolving how we do things, so our Social Media Elixir continues to be tweaked as we continue search for our perfect recipe.

What makes up your Social Media Elixir?

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Social Media Marketing for Business is ALL About Discipline

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Do you have what it takes to stay on task, achieve your objectives, and be consistent in your approach when using online tools to promote your business? Hopefully at this point, almost everyone can agree that Social Media Marketing benefits businesses. With that said, there are still a large number of organizations who are not seeing results from their Social Media Marketing efforts.

There are many reasons why some business owners still are not seeing their Social Media Marketing efforts pay off. One of the main reasons might be that they lack discipline in one or many areas of their Social Media Marketing efforts. You see, Social Media Marketing is ALL about DISCIPLINE. This post dives into the subject of how being disciplined in your Social Media Marketing efforts helps you achieve your Online Marketing goals.

Create a Online Marketing PlanSocial Media Marketing takes time. Success doesn’t happen over night. Business owners who jump into Social Media Marketing without a plan lack discipline. Business owners who use online tools that are not relevant to their business lack discipline. Business owners who do not consistently use those online tools to engage their target audience lack discipline. Business owners who spend time discussing topics that are not relevant to their business or to their target audience lack discipline. Business owners who do not take a step back (at least quarterly) to analyze how they are tracking against their performance measures (which should be set within your Online Marketing Plan) lack discipline…and the list goes on. All business owners who act in the ways mentioned above are going to find it hard to achieve success with Social Media Marketing. For Catalyst Marketers, it all comes back to discipline. So let’s discuss how you can ensure that you do not get stuck in the traps above, get disciplined in your Social Media Marketing efforts, and achieve success with Online Marketing.

  1. Just like a shiny new toy, Social Media Marketing gets business owners excited. Sometimes you just jump right in without a plan. As a business owner, I’m sure you can appreciate the importance of having a solid plan for almost everything you do. A plan allows you to set objectives, figure out ways to achieve those objectives, and set performance measures. Before starting that Facebook business page, or tweeting on Twitter, be sure to take time and build your Online Marketing Plan. This will allow you to stay focused while executing on your plan, as well as, provide you with direction, and allow you to measure your results.
  2. When creating your Online Marketing Plan, be sure to determine who your target audience is, and then spend some time doing a little research on what online tools they use. Once you determine where your target audience is spending their time online, you can setup profiles on those online tools & begin engaging with your audience. It takes discipline to say, I’m going to use LinkedIn to promote my business or I’m not going to use Facebook. If LinkedIn makes sense for your businesss, then that’s where you need to be. If your target audience isn’t on Facebook, then don’t waste your time on that channel.
  3. Be focused in your messaging. Inject personality into you content, but DO NOT talk about topics that are not relevant to your business or your audience. Your customers and prospects don’t care that you’re “taking a shower” or “headed to the gym”. Separate your personal messages from your professional messages, BUT AGAIN, be sure to infuse your personality into your messages.
  4. Set time aside every month or every quarter to analyze your Social Media Marketing against the performance measures you setup in your Online Marketing Plan. You can do this by utilizing reporting tools like Google Analytics, Facebook & foursquare Reports, Feedburner, etc. Tracking your results on a regular basis against how you thought you would perform in certain areas allows you to understand return-on-investment. It also allows you to capitalize on marketing tactics that are working and improve marketing tactics that are not working. With time always lacking in a business owners schedule, it takes discipline to sit down for a few hours every quarter and truly analyze how things are going. Those who do make time for this CRUCIAL activity will see many more benefits than those who do not.

Here at Catalyst Marketers, we know that Social Media Marketing works. Two of our largest clients have been a direct result of using online tools to reach prospects, build relationships with them, and ultimately convert them into customers. The two tools that were of most use to us in attracting those two clients were LinkedIn and Squidoo. We setup our Online Marketing Plan, understood what online tools made sense for our business, used the tools consistently, and ultimately achieved success. You can do the same for your small business. All it takes is a little discipline.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 2 Comments »

4 More Inbound Marketing Ideas for Hotels

Monday, May 10th, 2010

We recently published a blog article entitled, 5 Inbound Marketing Ideas for Hotels. Being that there are so many creative ways that hotels can leverage the power of Inbound Marketing, we wanted to add a few more ideas to the list. Below are four more Inbound Marketing ideas for hotels.

BlogTalkRadio Show – Local Events Program

BlogTalkRadio is a free online tool that allows anyone to host their own radio show. You can have guest callers or just broadcast the show yourself. Each radio show is archived, so that those who cannot listen live, can listen to the archived version. It’s really a great tool for small businesses. Hosting your own radio show is a great way to produce audio-based content for your business. Hotels can certainly take advantage of a free radio show.

Content Marketing for HotelsHotels can start out with with a weekly Blog Talk Radio show, whereby you can discuss upcoming events in and around your local hotel. Each week there are a ton of local events in every community. Many times, local residents don’t even know about these events, which means there are even fewer travelers who know about local events. With that said, when people are traveling to a destination, either on business or for fun, they are always looking to find out what’s going on in the local area. Your radio show can help your guests understand just what’s happening in the area while they’re in town. Even if they can’t catch the live show, you can point them to a recent archive that discusses events that are happening during their stay. Guests will find this information extremely valuable, which will entice them to spread the word about your hotel AND continue to use your services each time they are in town. Hosting a Blog Talk Radio show for your hotel is a great way to produce relevant and valuable content for your guests. Be sure to promote your radio shows in your hotel and through all of your online social tools.

(more…)

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Posted in Inbound Marketing | 3 Comments »

5 Inbound Marketing Ideas for Hotels

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

The travel industry has been hit particularly hard over the past few years. With less discretionary income, families are traveling less or simply staying local. Businesses are starting to use tools like Skype, for video chats, instead of flying to clients for in-person meetings. These two factors have forced hotels to evolve or die. Many forward-thinking hotels are looking to the Internet as a way to better market their their offerings to customers and prospects. Inbound Marketing, a new-age marketing activity that allows customers to find you online, can be hugely beneficial for hotels.

Inbound Marketing for HotelsIn this post, we will explore 5 separate Inbound Marketing ideas for Hotels. Each idea revolves around the use of a specific online tool, such as YouTube, Twitter, foursquare, etc. With that said, many of the ideas below can be implemented using numerous tools. I simply chose the tools that I thought made the most sense for each idea. Before implementing any of these ideas, it’s best to create a Strategic Marketing Plan that lists your goals, strategies, and tactics. This way you’ll have a guide for implementing these ideas, and you’ll also have something to look back at in 3, 6, 9 months to see how you’re tracking against your goals. Without a plan, it’s easy to get lost in all of these Inbound Marketing tactics, and it’s hard to determine your level of success (or failure) if you don’t have a plan, with goals and performance measures, to look back at.

YouTube Customer Testimonial Series

Customer testimonials are one of the biggest drivers of trust between prospective customer and a business. Video is the most powerful medium for communicating with customers and prospects besides face-to-face meetings. By combining customer testimonials with video, you can create a powerful YouTube Video Series full of great customer testimonials.

Hotels have the ability to produce high quality customer testimonial videos. Upon check-in let each customer know that if they are willing to take 10 minutes, at some point during their stay, to answer a few questions about their stay, you will provide them with some sort of incentive (free drink at the bar, free breakfast, 5% off of room service, etc). Hotels have ample space to record customer testimonial videos. Ask customers to schedule their interview and then take 30 minutes prior to shoot time to setup an empty hotel room or banquet room with your video equipment. Then have your hotel guest come in and talk about his or her stay so far at your hotel. Take that video, edit it, and publish it to your YouTube Channel. Hotels have so many guests on any given day that you should be able to produce a few quality videos each month.

These videos have the potential to entice a prospective customer to stay at your hotel, instead of the hotel down the street that he was considering. The reason, he now has another person’s perspective on the accommodations at your hotel. Reading a print ad or watching a TV commercial gives the customer an idea that you’re out there, but it doesn’t give him an unbiased opinion of the accommodations. These videos do that. Be sure to capture the opinions of different guest types (ie. family travelers, echo boomers who are traveling with friends, business travelers, etc). This will allow each prospective guest-type to see videos from individuals who they can relate with.

Foursquare Swarm Badge Party

A few weeks ago, we wrote about running a foursquare Swarm Badge Promotion for businesses. The Swarm Badge is unlocked when 50 or more people check-in at the same location, all within a short time of one another. Hotels can absolutely take advantage of this foursquare badge. Hotels can throw a foursquare Swarm Badge party at their bar. You can invite people from the local area AND guests. This promotion doesn’t just have to be geared towards guests, which is one of the biggest reasons why you should run it at your hotel. Hotel managers usually only think about their guests when it comes to revenue sources, but the local community can also be a revenue source when it comes to coming in to have dinner or drinks at your hotel.

UPDATE: Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

Host an event, whereby you invite anyone who wants to come, to have a free drink at your bar. Explain that you’re hoping to unlock the foursquare Swarm Badge for all participants. Let participants know that in order to get their free drink, they must check-in at your hotel or hotel bar on foursquare. Once 50 people check-in, the foursquare Swarm Badge is released to all participants. Participants then get a free drink and the highly coveted Swarm Badge. Hotels running this promotion build awareness for your hotel and hotel bar and you will generate revenue from participants (people are going to have more than one drink and some will buy food). You may be thinking that foursquare isn’t all that big yet, but they already have over 1 million users and they are growing at a fast rate. By the time you plan out this event, those numbers might be very different. Foursquare is here to stay, so it’s time to start incorporating it as a go-to platform in your hotel marketing activities.

Free Food for Facebook Fans

Hotels can reward Facebook fans with free food or drinks at their hotel restaurants and bars. This promotion is geared towards enticing guests to be active Facebook fans. Upon check-in, ask guests if they “Like” the Hotel Facebook fan page. If they say they do, ask them to pull up their Facebook account, show the front desk staff that they ‘Like’ the hotel’s fan page, and finally show that they’ve recently engaged in some fan page activity (ie. wrote a wall post, posted a comment, posted an image, participated in a discussion, etc).

In exchange for being an active Facebook fan, hotel management can provide guests with a free appetizer from the bar or room service. The offer could be a discount on your entire meal or even a free drink. There are many ways that hotel management can offer value here, it simply comes down to putting the right offer in front of the right people. Nobody should know your customers better than you, so I’m sure there are a few offers popping into your head now that might make sense for your clientele. Whatever offer you decide to go with, be sure to establish your goals for this program before you go live, and then start promoting it through your social tools (not just Facebook) and inside your hotel. This way, customers know about the program and how they can participate.

Start a Travel Group on LinkedIn

Start a LinkedIn Group around your geo-location and the hotel industry. You can connect with business travelers and engage them in conversations around travel and staying in hotels. You can learn a TON about common interests, needs, and desires, straight from your target audience. You can also use your LinkedIn Group to start discussions around your blog articles or promote new specials. When it comes to using LinkedIn, it’s best to be a lot more educational than promotional. People don’t want to read discussions solely about your promotions. Figure out an educational tie-in and lead with that. Somewhere, where it makes sense, fit in your promotional copy and a link to wherever you’re looking to drive traffic (your blog, your YouTube Channel, etc). In an earlier post on the Catalyst Marketers Blog, we wrote about how LinkedIn Discussions Can Generate Sales for Your Small Business – check it out if you’re unfamiliar with LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Discussions.

Blog, Blog, Blog

Blog about all of it. Use your blog as your main content platform. New blog posts can be written about all of the marketing ideas above. Blog posts can be written to generate buzz for upcoming programs, but posts can also be written at the conclusion of programs. For example, you can create blog posts leading up to your Foursquare Swarm Badge party, which should help drive traffic to your hotel on the night of the event. You can then write a blog post, and even create a Flickr Slide Show (which should then be linked to the blog post), post-event. This blog article will share information about how the event went down, how fun it was, include any sound bites from participants, etc. Sometimes Management wonders what they will write about on their blog, but once they create one, they realize that there’s never a shortage of content. There are a ton of relevant content stories just knocking up against the walls of your hotel, it’s just a matter of creating a plan for how you will share those stories with the world. A hotel blog can do that for you.

We hope these 5 Inbound Marketing ideas help you market your hotel accommodations to both customers and prospects. Be on the lookout for a future post with a few more Inbound Marketing ideas for hotels. Feel free to subscribe to the Catalyst Marketers Blog if you want to receive an email each time we publish a new article.

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Posted in Inbound Marketing | 6 Comments »

Every Blog Post is an Opportunity to LOSE Followers

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Are you currently using online social tools to connect and communicate with your audience? If so, BRAVO! If you’re a Catalyst Marketers Blog subscriber, then you know we are all about using free online tools to reach more people, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately drive sales.

With that being said, this post is a cautionary tale about understanding the power of online communication and the impact it could have on your small business. This post isn’t meant to deter you from using online social tools, and specifically, blogging. It’s simply a reminder to be sure that EVERY time you produce something, you should try to make it your best work to date.

Blog for my small businessEach and every time you produce a new blog post, a new video, or audio program, there may be some followers who find the content so off-target that they actually stop following your business online. The other day I was on Twitter and clicked on a link that was tweeted by one of my followers. The link brought me to his blog and I read the post. The post was riddled with assumptions, had spelling and grammar mistakes, and was simply uninformative. Just like that, I stopped following this individual on Twitter. If I had been subscribed to his blog, I would have unsubscribed.

See the thing is that in an online world that is becoming saturated with content, yours has to stand out. If nothing else, it has to be mistake free and it must demonstrate that you actually took time crafting the message. Here are a few things that you may want to ask yourself as you’re crafting a new piece of online content:

  • Are there any grammatical errors in my new blog post?
  • Is the information relevant and educational for MY audience?
  • Are my stats and data accurate?
  • Have I included images and/or links to other relevant content in my blog post?

If you answer the above questions each time you create a new piece of online content, then you limit the chance that someone who you’d consider to be part of your target audience, will unsubscribe from your blog or stop following your small business online.

I hope that this post doesn’t scare people away from producing online content and writing in their business blog. Sometimes we can all get caught up and we may skip a few steps here and there. This post should remind us all that each time you create something online, it stays there forever (or at least a very long time). You want to make sure that your content stands out and continues to attract new followers, as opposed to losing current followers.

One last thing, don’t lose your personality and become too vanilla, as that’s the fastest way to lose followers. You must be confident in the content that you’re producing. If you want to be controversial, be controversial. If you want to take a stand on an issue, take a stand. With that said, be sure that you understand that every piece of content you produce online, can and will have some sort of impact on your business. Hopefully the majority of your content is sought after by your followers. You have to remember that you cannot please everyone and you should focus on pleasing and educating the individuals that make sense for your small business. Each time you go to hit that “publish” button, just be sure you re-read your content and ask yourself a few simple questions. Once you’re pleased with the answers, then go ahead and publish that great new educational blog content to the world.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 10 Comments »

How Social Media Marketing Can Help Promote Your Salon

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Check out my interview with Glen Andrews on Blog Talk Radio. Simply click the Blog Talk Radio image below. We discussed how Salon owners can use social media and other online tools to reach more people, build relationships with customers & prospects, and drive sales. Please leave me some feedback on how you think the interview went.

During the recording, Blog Talk Radio experienced technical difficulties, so Glen couldn’t hear me at first. We aren’t able to alter the file, so you may want to listen to the 1st minute and then mute it until 2 minutes & 45 seconds in (or just wait, but definitely don’t leave the page – I do come on).

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Posted in Online Marketing | 4 Comments »

From Google Profile to Possible Partnership

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

How can a Google Profile help your small business? Well, let me share a story of mine with you…

Two days ago I created my Google Profile. It took me about 15 to 20 minutes because I wanted to make sure I filled it out as completely as possible. I added links to all of my social media profiles, as well as, a link to the Catalyst Marketers home page. Once it was complete, I saved everything and then promoted it on the Catalyst Marketers Facebook Fan Page and on the Catalyst Marketers Twitter account. I was hoping that my prospects and customers would discover my profile and use it to get in touch with me. Well, it worked…

Jeff Sheehan, of Atlanta, Georgia saw my tweet, checked out my Twitter profile, and began following me. It ends up that he is also a Bentley College alum, like myself. He then linked out from my tweet to my Google Profile to read more about me and Catalyst Marketers. After Jeff determined that my company was relevant to what he’s trying to accomplish, he then sent me an email message from my Google Profile. His unaltered message is above, to the left (thanks for letting me include it Jeff).

Now, I’m not posting the message to toot my own horn. I posted it to show you the power of social tools. Within 24 hours of creating my Google Profile, it had already helped me connect with Jeff. Now, less than 48 hours later, Jeff and I are connected on Twitter, email, on LinkedIn, and Skype. I also just got off the phone with him. From social relationship to real world relationship in less than 24 hours…pretty remarkable, huh?

If you don’t already have a Google Profile, I’d suggest you take the time to create one. It may not generate results as quickly as the story above, but it will generate results. Be sure to include information about you and your business, as well as, links to all of the sites associated with your business.

Have you experienced any successes similar to my story? If so, please share them with us in the comments section of this blog.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 1 Comment »