I finally got around to reading some old RSS subscriptions and I came across the following article: Real Life Examples of Business Owners Using Social Media from Small Business Trends and I was intrigued. I really wish I could have gone to the event. It would have been nice to have learn and listen to everyone who had attended. I love the fact that this article discusses the positive ways of using Social Media and also how so many people question it.

One thing that I do agree with is that you should definitely pick a few outlets and focus on them. Make sure they fit your target market. Also, the time aspect can be a problem. You can always outsource to people who know what they’re doing, or you can make it a company project and have everyone contribute (this works really well for Blogs). The main reason why I personally love Social Media is that the company no longer is just a company, but its something more personable and approachable regardless of the medium someone would find them through.

Twitter, my new personal favorite medium, is a great tool that I find that a lot of companies are under-utilizing. There are a lot of users, and although its fairly new (not really, about a year plus old), everyone is still learning the best techniques.

@37signals is a provider for a lot of the online applications that Border7 uses. I believe that everyone of their staff is also on Twitter (I am following quite a few of them). They use their Twitter account to notify their users of any downtime on their various products, and I am notified by at least 4-5 tweets telling me so.

@LessAccounting created a website (We All Hate QuickBooks) that displays a live feed of all Tweets that mention Quickbooks. The website is unfiltered, so it shows positive and (mostly) negative comments that people are making of one of LessAccounting’s competitors. Its a genius marketing strategy in my opinion. Also, I would never have found them if it wasn’t for Twitter. I was looking for other accounting providers, and they started a discussion with me (Twitter can be a great sales tool).

Which brings me to my next point. @Freshbooks saw that I was looking at other providers, and they used Twitter as a retention tool and talked me into staying with them as well. Fortunately, I needed something from both companies that only each uniquely provided.

@Zappos (I do not follow them since I’m afraid I’ll waste my entire paychecks shopping with them) is also a prime example of how to make your company personable. Almost everyone who works for them utilizes Twitter and they are encouraged to discuss what they’re doing, what is working for them, and what is not. The CEO is the one who runs the main Twitter account (I believe, so don’t hold me to this) and they respond to people, plug products or blog posts, and all in all, just make the company that much more approachable.

And with that, if you’re a Twitter user, I would suggest following @Border7 for all the Border7 news. If you want to get to know me (do so at your own risk) you can follow me @kamylynn.

Also, if you just want to read some general demographics, refer to the recent Time’s article on Twitter.

Hype is a mixture of direct marketing, advertising, buzz, and just word of mouth. Hype is a fun marketing technique that, when used on something that is worth the hype, is amazing.

The Good

In this day and age it seems that hype is really a part of our culture. Everything is hyped to be something great, amazing, or the next big thing. The Dark Knight had a lot of hype. Because of that hype, I went into it with really high expectations. Did it live up to my expectations? Oh boy, did it! It not only fulfilled my Batman love, but it made me ALMOST consider it better than Iron Man — I would like to take this moment to explain that I consider Iron Man to be the better movie for three reasons. One, I like that superhero better so I am automatically biased towards him. Two, its Marvel, and again, I am biased towards any of their work over anything DC related. And three, Iron Man did not have a love story or a leading lady completely make or break the plot line — but as it stands, they are at a tie for my love and affection.

The Bad

Now, another good example of hype would be the Hulk movies. The one from 2004 was heavily hyped and did not live to anyones expectations. Granted, if it wasn’t so hyped, maybe our expectations would not have been so high and we would not have been so rudely disappointed? No one will know for sure, but one thing that it do was ensure that the following one would have very low expectations coming into it. Because of that, I actually liked the movie. I did not expect it to be an amazing movie but I left it content and somewhat all right with spending some money on movie tickets.

The Ugly

Every day something new comes to market. The people behind these products and services are hoping to create a buzz that looks like unpaid hype. Great examples of where this went wrong: Speed Racer, the Zune, Star Wars III, and possibly other things, but they disappointed me so much that I can’t even remember what they were. All had a crazy amount of hype to build them up to be something they weren’t: Amazing.

Just remember that if you are going to start hype about something, make sure that you can follow it up with one 100% surefire bonafide kick-ass thing.

Duct Tape Marketing just posted about the book “How to Demonstrate Word of Mouth” and Dave Balter of BuzzAgent. We just got a copy of the PDF and are going to be buying a copy from Amazon.

It was really good timing because yesterday during a staff meeting we were discussing some Marketing techniques that we should employ to help get our business, and all our side projects out there.

One technique that we currently use is a referral bonus for our existing clients. For each new client they refer to us that results in a project, we give our client a coupon for 20% of the project total. Some people may think this crazy, but its a cheap way to drive new business. Not only are you getting a new client, but your giving your old clients a reason to use you again.

We’re going to read this and see if we can get more ideas. What techniques do you use to drive word of mouth?

I read Copyblogger almost religiously and I recently stumbled on his “10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers” post. I agree with everything has there but there are 3 that really hit a base with me

1. Make it Easy and Obvious

The easiest way to keep people from subscribing is to make it difficult. When I finally decided to subscribe to all the sites I would read, it was a tad frustrating. Each page had the RSS link in multiple locations. It could be the word RSS on the top of the site, or on the bottom. Some had the actual image at the top of their navigation or at the end of each post. The fact that it wasn’t consistent bothered me. But all in all, I decided the RSS image in the navigation and then the word RSS at the bottom called out to me. If you only do the image, and its not in an obvious place, you just made it impossible for me to subscribe. No one wants to spend time looking for something that should be painfully obvious. You want people to subscribe to you, make it easy for them.

2. Networking

Networking is always important. Not only in blogging, but in business, and even in life. People do not realize it, but when you speak to a new person and you start talking about your interests, you are networking. Everyone has interests, and other people may have the same interests that you have. In the blog world, it is the same. You don’t want to sell yourself to everyone, but you want to show that you are a valuable resource. The best way to do that is to assist others in whatever haphazard they need assistance with. By showing that you are helpful and give value, they will want to see what else you have to offer. Networking builds communities and groups that allow you to spread the word easily and quickly. And remember, each person you network with, has their own network to spread the word.

3. Give them something

People are more inclined to do something if you are giving them something for it. If you want more people to come to your site, or more people to subscribe, give them a reason to. You can offer them a free e-book, a free subscription to somewhere else that you are affiliated to, or even a gas card (if you end up offering this, let me know because I want in). By offering a reward, people are more inclined to do something. But make sure its something that you can keep track of, in regards to the reward and what needs to be attained to achieve the reward.