As more and more businesses are realizing the benefits of social media and their online presence, community management is starting to gain traction, and fast. In our rapidly changing digital world community management is transitioning from a buzz word to something much more substantial and foundational. So what’s the key to a thriving community? Your community manager.

Businesses: Look for someone that can implement the following steps.
Community Managers: Take heed and develop your skills relating to these steps.

1. Build relationships

Marketing campaigns are no longer one-way messages conveyed towards your target market. Through social media consumers now have the opportunity to interact and converse with you as well as provide you with valuable feedback. All of the following steps really find their roots in the idea that community management is all about building relationships. After all, what good is a community if it isn’t built on developing mutually beneficial relationships?

2. Be a Brand Ambassador

If you don’t love the product, being the voice of the company on the Internet is probably not the best fit for you. The community manager plays a big role for setting the tone of the community. Your excitement is an important element in making your community a vibrant place where consumers enjoy spending time.

3. Customer Advocate

As stated in #2, you love the product. That’s great! But, that’s not the only hat you wear. Seize the opportunity to be an advocate for your customer by sharing their concerns, compliments, and ideas with the rest of your company. Fight for what they are asking for and let them know that you heard them! Responding to your customers and engaging in a conversation will put them on the fast track to becoming advocates of your brand and company. Tactfulness and timeliness will go a long way when it comes to building relationships with your customers.

4. Develop Your Voice

Your brand could have the most exciting marketing campaign in the industry but, if you aren’t able to develop a voice that reflects that personality, you will be hard pressed to gain and keep a social following. Consumers want to interact with a person, not a brand. Let your fun individuality shine through your community interaction rather than making up (and having to maintain) a fake persona.

5. Prioritize Communities

You very likely have more than one community that you are managing (your corporate blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.). Analyze these communities to determine where they fall on the list of priorities. On what platforms do you have the best response? Is your Facebook page more active than your blog and Twitter account? Your time is limited so spend it wisely on the community that will benefit your company the most. Think opportunity cost.

If you’re an experienced community manager, what other tips do you have for cultivating a vibrant community?

Image credit: Dru Bloomfield

You’re on the road a lot, you have a million things on your mind or maybe you just are not a fan of tracking expenses – whatever your situation may be, tracking expenses, while very important, can be a big headache. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. Actually, there are several apps for that; the following list, however, are apps that have exceeded expectations and provide a great multi-faceted experience.

Expensify (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm)

Highlights:

• Easily tracks mileage for accurate travel expenses
• Create graphs and charts to see a breakdown of spending
• Set up your company and establish rules and requirements for expense reports
• Syncs with QuickBooks

ConCur (iPhone, Android, Blackberry)

Highlights:

• Photograph receipts for easy attachment
• Includes travel features
• Manage all expenses via your smart phone

BizXpense Tracker (iPhone)

Highlights:

• Includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
• Sync your reports with Dropbox
• Includes a time tracker EasyMoney (Android)

EasyMoney (Android)

Highlights:

• Bill reminder/notification
• Interactive graphs/analytics
• Set budgets and monitor status

Jot (iPhone and Android)

Highlights:

• For Chase Ink Customers Only
• Receive real time alerts for every purchase with the option to sort them into custom categories (client, trip, employee, etc.).

Did we miss any of the top financial apps that you swear by? We’d love for you to share it!

“You can create a multimillion dollar empire overnight on a shoestring budget” said Matt Barrie, CEO of Australian crowdsourcing platform Freelancer.com.

Crowdsourcing is rapidly becoming the “Future of Business” with hundreds of individuals and organizations jumping on the bandwagon daily. You can build great relationships with many talented people worldwide and create an online “team” that you can constantly revert back to when you need them. To outsource your tasks to a freelancer on the other side of the world and to have that task completed and in your inbox the next morning with next to no hassle must be high on many small business owners lists. The next step is signing up to a crowd platform and engaging.

Here are 5 reasons why every small business should jump aboard.

1. Tap worldwide talent. You might work and live in whoop whoop where there are no web designers or scientists. Sign up to a platform, post your job, build a relationship and get your work completed.

2. Build relationships with many different aspects of the workforce. Crowdsourcing doesn’t just stop at designing, programming and admin. You can outsource ANYTHING!

3. Hate that Task? Give it to someone else! All those things that you dislike doing. Pay someone else that is qualified and ready to do it.

4. You can outsource those time consuming tasks. Why waste your precious time on the tasks that someone else can do?

5. Save Coin. You only pay for work when you need it. You pay your outsourced employees only for the hours they work! Like a casual, but better.

Image Source: Eclipse Source

Here are 5 free options to share your files online

4Shared
Free, easy to use and includes an option to download the “Desktop” manager which allows you to easily upload and download files straight to/from your desktop.

10GB of storage space goes a long way and 4Shared makes it so easy to use. Your online file system looks just like a Google account and you have a “Message” box in which 4Shared sends you information about recent updates and add ons.

ADRIVE
On their “Basic Plan” you are offered 50GB of online storage space enabling you to share, file transfer and access your files from anywhere in the world. You upload your documents to their server and are required to sign in to access and share your documents in the cloud. If you require more space and no ads you can pay up to $139.50 per year for up to 10TB of storage.

DropBox
What I love about Dropbox is that it acts just like a document folder on your computer. You are required to download the program to your hard drive and from there you can create folders, edit files and save them straight from the program you are using to the specified folder on your dropbox account. Anyone that has shared access to that folder automatically had access to your file. You can also access all of your documents online by logging into dropbox.com

Initially you receive 2gb of free space on their “Basic Plan”. But by referring other people to their site, and them downloading and installing Dropbox you can receive up to 8GB Free.

Google Docs
Google supply their customers with so much, that it is not surprising it has its own file management system in Google Docs.

Although there are many restrictions on formatting and there is not as much flexibility as what you get from the original Office programs, Google Docs is a fantastic way to share your files. It offers Live Updating (you can see what other people are doing, when they are doing it) You can share entire folders, you can individually choose who sees specific files and there are many productive “gadgets” to add to excel files.

Webcity
Webcity provides you with 10GB of data storage space on an Australian based server.  Your files are available online and you can access them anywhere with your log in details. You can upgrade your plan to the “Pro Storage Plan” for $89 per year for 100GB of Storage.

Do you or your organization use an alternative online file management accounts? Share with us any systems you use that can help us to share our files online

Indiana based Email Marketing Services provider Delivra have unveiled a easy, more convenient feature to allow your customers to mangage their subscription to your emails with Text-2-Subscribe.

By simply sending an SMS with a codeword, your customers can subscribe to your list with next to no hassle. Another great aspect is that once they send the mesage, they will recieve a confirmation to enter their email address – this is fantastic news for those that manually type their subscribers into their system

Neil Berman, president and CEO of Delivra says

“Subscribers are able to act on their interest when they are eager to get information, such as at an event, trade show or convention. Email marketers benefit by having the email automatically added to their list without the additional work of entering email addresses into the system.”

Working alongside Delivra to make all of this possible is Connective Mobile, a leading provider in mobile marketing.

Adam Small, president of Connective Mobile says:

“Delivra is the first email service provider offering our Text-to-Subscribe function to their clients. Until now we have worked with companies and brands directly, and have seen thousands of email addresses added to lists in a matter of hours. This is a very powerful feature.”

Would your small business benefit from this feature?

Image Credit: pouwerkerk

Loic Le Meur held an interview with Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos.com – Tony shares with us the highs, the lows, the joys and the stress that comes with starting up a business.

Tony goes onto explain some essential processes when starting up a business:

• - Culture: Commit to Core Values – Company and Personal Values are most important
• - Customer Service: Focus on this area, employees and vendors are more passionate about the product when customer service is strong.
• - Its not about the Money: Its about the vision – if we have this higher purpose, money will follow.

Its a great interview with many helpful insights. I find Tony very inspirational and he has some great advice on this topic.

There are many ways to promote your website – one being Affiliate Marketing.

Here are 6 things to consider when you begin looking for the right advertisements to promote your site

1. Audience
Every site has an audience, you build you website for a reason – either for your community, for your workplace or for your clients. The most critical thing to remember when choosing your advertisements is – your audience, these are your potential clients.

2. Products
There are many advertisers out there – and they want to be on your website. The last thing you want to be doing is sending your site visitors to a product that is faulty or not worth buying. Always research the product you are advertising.

3. Affiliate Programs
Advertisers – they’re all over the net. Affiliate marketplaces are a great resource .The best thing to do, is to sign up to one and have a browse through the variety of programs that are available to you. Here are a few places to locate links:

• – Commission Junction is a awesome starting point, they have a great deal of advertisers – which means more variety for you.
• – Google Affiliates along with Google AdSense are both a great resource, with some topadvertisers.
• – Bidvertiser is a marketplace where all of the links are on a pay per click basis. For every 100 clicks on the link – you get paid.

If you know of a product you’d like to promote and cannot find a program – you can search their site for a “Webmaster” or “Affiliate” link, if you cannot find a link – email them. Often it is difficult to find advertisers affiliate programs.

4. Revenue
Generating revenue can sometimes be easier said than done. You can have great advertisers, but you’re not getting much cash. Always look at how your commission is earned – here are a few definitions of the most common earnings:

• - CPA (Cost per action) – The advertiser pays you if a visitor clicks on your affiliate link and makes a specific action on their site such as sign up to a newsletter or make a product inquiry – these differ from each advertiser.
• - EPC (Earnings per click) – For every 100 clicks on the link on your site – you will be paid the agreed rate
• - CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) – You receive a flat rate every 1,000 impressions. (Definition of Impressions – Visitor viewing an advertisement, product or link)

Here is a full list of affiliate definitions.

5. Relevance
When you built your website, you would have had in mind what type of site it was going to be. Now that you want to place some advertisers on there you should be searching for advertisers that are relevant to your site – your audience are your customers, find out what things they are finding interesting on your site through a tool such as Google Analytics and go from there.

6. Style and Size
Your advertisements will ultimately be a part of your website design. This is important to remember when searching for your links. Think: image or text, color or not, animated or static, placement & size and avoid flashing banners with stars and contrasting colors. No one likes them.

I hope this article has helped some of you that are not familiar with affiliate marketing. Will you be taking the step toward monetizing your website? Or are you already there?

The launch of Apple’s iPad last year has had massive impact on how you connect with customers, promote your business and generally think about your next marketing strategy. Many other companies have released similar tablets including Samsung, HP, Dell and LG….just to name a few. Here are 4 great examples of how your business can benefit from tablet technology.

Point of Sale

At Londons Fashion week in September 2010, Burberry were the first fashion label to enable their customers to purchase the products straight from the catwalk! The products were delivered within 6-8weeks (which is approx 6 months less then other major fashion labels) This is increasing the competition within this industry, which will more than likely result in more apps being produced by more labels

Customer Service

In June 2010 Malaysia airlines launched the iPad MHkiosk in Kuala Lumpur – this is a self-service kiosk using the MHmobile interface, allowing passengers to check-in, book and pay, all being completly secure over SSL. For those that are comfortable this technology, this minimises time spent in lines and gets you on your way faster – which is perfectly fine by me.

Product Search

A great example for using the iPad for product search is that of North Sydney Restaurant: Mundo Global Tapas, located beneath Rydges Hotel have had an iPad application made to display their menus. They replaced their menus with iPads… a fantastic idea to be part what is growing at a rapid pace.

Catalogues

Many major organizations are using the iPad as a means of promoting their catalogue. The iPad has not yet replaced the printed catalogue, marketers are just given another option to reach their audience. Some great examples of iPad catalogues are: IKEA, Gourmet Traveller, Virgin holidays and even car dealer Honda have released a catalouge.

What’s next for Tablet technology? Has your small company got an iPad app? or one in the making?

Image Source: ichibod

All of us have a million and one things to do in our day and will spend valuable time trying to find a solution to help us organise our work (and indeed personal) lives more effectively.

That’s where we can help: we have done the running around for you and have reviewed some of the top online productivity tools available:

Ta-da Lists:

Created by 37 Signals, who pride themselves on creating ‘A better way to work’, Ta-da Lists work on the ‘less is more’ principle and as such have designed a productivity tool which is simple to use, uncluttered in design and uses larger fonts to make lists easier to read.

The online organiser works across a number of web browsers including IE 6 and 7, Firefox 2 and Safari 2 and is compatible with Macs and PCs. Furthermore the tool can be used on the iPhone making it completely mobile and allowing users to tick off items on the move.

A handy feature on Ta-da Lists is the ability for users to share their ‘to do’ lists with other people whether this is work colleagues, friends or family.  From a work perspective this allows complete collaboration between employees and indeed employers making a working day far more productive.

Remember The Milk:

Launched in 2005, Remember The Milk claims to make managing tasks an enjoyable experience and it is certainly one of the more interactive productivity tools on the market.

Users can use a multitude of platforms including iPhone, iPad, Twitter, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Google Calendars to access their ‘to do’ lists making this service a truly accessible solution.

Moreover, users can take advantage of the useful map feature which enables them to locate tasks providing a practical time management attribute to the service. Further features include the ability to share lists with others, adding dates with the helpful ‘Quick List’ feature and valuable keyboard shortcuts meaning less time is spent actually creating the list.

The Online CEO (also known as Rough Underbelly):

Based on a reward system, The Online CEO is a productivity tool centred on motivating the user.

The tool is based entirely on the Printable CEO which was created by David Seah  and works by weighting different tasks based on their level of importance.

Users of The Online CEO assess each item on their ‘to do’ list and then adds a number of points to that item. The idea is that the user gains a sense of positive reinforcement once the item is completed and the points collected and thus will strive to complete the tasks that carry more points and ultimately are more important.

To date the service is only available through its website.

Todoist:

Simple and easy to use, Todoist is another example of an online productivity tool. It provides users with an uncomplicated system which consists of a list of projects and a list of items to do.

Users can colour code their items to find them easier whilst the reordering function enables lists to be kept up to date if priorities change. The system is also praised for its extensive keyboard shortcuts which speed up productivity for the user.

To date Todoist can be integrated with Gmail, can be accessed through a Firefox sidebar and viewed on a mobile device.

What productivity tools do you use? Let us know your thoughts!

Image Credit: John Schultz

As I look out at what is happening in social media in the past 3-5 years, it seems to me that very little of what is going on in social media can ever be accused of is being disciplined, structured, focused, or otherwise planned and programmed in any way.

Proponents would argue that it is exactly what makes social media dynamic, exciting and vibrant. They say this is precisely where traditional advertising falls short and fails by comparison. There is truth to this assessment. No doubt social media’s free form nature makes it possible for a different kind of energy to take place. But this doesn’t obviate the need for some rigor. That is, if what you’re aiming for is a professional, marketing or some kind of revenue result.

You would never run traditional media without a plan, both based on timing, audience, frequency and other similar levers that would be useful to control and focus your energies. There is really no good reason why many of those same principles cannot be applied to social media. Why wouldn’t you start with a few key questions:

• - Who is your audience?
• - Who are the competing voices reaching out to that audience?
• - What is that audience looking for?
• - Who are you trying to connect with?
  • - Are they very busy people?
  • - Are they college students?
  • - Are they Senior Executives?
  • - Are they other people like you?

All too often we find that venues like twitter are only connecting people with the hope of connecting. They are basing their success on a body count and not on delivery or processing any cogent or relevant content that might be useful to a specific target audience. The thought seems to be to have more followers even if it is just you following 10,000 people to get 10,000 people to follow you. What is more important is to have followers who actually look forward to and connect with you via your tweets.

In the broader area of Linked-in and Facebook updates, those venues allow for a more structured approach than Twitter and lend themselves to more planning. By planning I don’t mean in the way you’d plan a radio, newspaper or other traditional media campaigns, or even a PPC campaign – but more planning around what you want to connect and who you want to connect it too. Of course, blogging is a more direct approach – allowing you to directly say what and to whom you want to say it to.

But what is often lacking in all this is message clarity or more specifically a messaging plan of some kind.

What is the one core message, theme, or things you most want to be identified with? This allows people to associate your blog, your tweetstream, your Facebook and LinkedIn updates with “Oh, that’s Jason Wentworth! He’s the guy all things Apple” or maybe “Mary Jones really understands what is happening in fashion” or some other domain expertise because you have message clarity.

Message Clarity: When you’ve laid out your value proposition in such a way that all your various connections point to your target audience, address it and bring it home in a significant way.

Ask yourself

• - Do I have a clear view of who my target audience is?
• - Or if you’re doing social media for a larger company- do we have a really good idea of who we are aiming this particular initiative towards?
• - Do we know what they are looking for and where they are looking?
• - And do we know why our content in its various forms is most relevant, urgent, or important to them?

Photo Credit: Hiking Artist

Bio: Jose Palomino

Jose Palomino is President of g2m Group, Inc, and author of Value Prop; he blogs at StrategicPropositions.com. Jose helps business leaders take their ideas, products and services to market with greater consistency, speed and impact. He has worked extensively with industry leaders including IBM, SAP, Accenture, Chase and Citicorp. A proven strategist, dealmaker and presenter, Jose makes strategic marketing practical and immediately usable. With an MBA from Villanova University, he serves as President of the Executive MBA Alumni Association and is also a Vistage International Speaker.