Social Media | Render Perfect

Just a few months ago buried away in the pages of Facebook, you might have stumbled upon a link showing you the way to create a Facebook page for your business. It was difficult to find and business pages were few and far between. Now the link is available right on the front page . Business pages are popping up everywhere.
If you sell Brand X Boring Widgets, you might be asking yourself “Why does my company need a Facebook page?” This is sort of like asking why Aflac needs a duck screaming “Aflac!” A non-buzzworthy business still benefits from using social media.

Here’s why:

Your employee Jill sells widgets for you. All of Jill’s friends knows that she sells widgets for you. However, Jill doesn’t feel like talking about selling widgets for you when she is around her friends. In fact, she would probably like to talk about almost anything else. It’s not that Jill is ashamed of where she works; she just has other interests. The funny thing is that three of Jill’s close friends work for companies that could really use your widgets.

Here is how you can speak to Jill’s friends:

• Set Up Your Audience

Create a page for your Facebook and have a meeting with your employees. Tell them what you are doing and encourage them to become fans of your business. For most, this will come natural. Facebook is a self-promotion tool and people enjoy adding as much content about themselves as they can.

Create incentive to get your employees talking to their friends about becoming fans of your business. This is whom you want to be speaking to.

•Publish Your Blog’s RSS feed To Your Company’s Facebook Page

This is your core content. Your company probably already has a blog. Use this content to fuel your Facebook page on autopilot. This is an option for your Wall right out of the gate and is very simple to do. Each time a new post is published it will now appear on your Wall.

•Systematically Post Your Content (Videos, Announcements, Etc.) To Your Page

Now you just need their attention. The key here is timing. Resist the urge to post everything you have all at once only to then forget about your page forever. Create a time-line to release your product videos, your company announcements and anything else you have created or are about to create. Similar to your company blog, Facebook is organic and needs updates to thrive.

Congratulations! Your “boring company” is now techy and social. Better yet, you now have a brand-new (free) web presence with an entirely unique and personal audience.

It’s tough out there.

You have heard it from every media outlet. And as much as you’d like to believe that it’s more hype than fact, the truth is that few companies have been left unaffected by the economic downturn.

In times of indecisiveness, what many find out is that the best way to move forward is to move outward. Expand upon the things that you have already spent money on to get the most value out of your investment. Being in the video advertising business I have personally seen this shift, with more and more businesses requesting to produce web content instead of broadcast content.

For the New Year, here’s a reminder of the ways Web Video can help any company survive and even flourish in this downturn economy:

1) Web Video can help your company refocus its sales and marketing efforts. It clearly communicates the core benefits of doing business with your company

Creating a web video, or video or any kind properly, takes planning, analysis, and creativity. The planning and analysis needs to be done by your staff and the creativity can be outsourced.

Companies are routinely too busy or lazy to take the time needed to communicate the various key benefits of doing business with them. If you take the time to produce a well planned web video to communicate these benefits you will be essentially killing two birds with one stone.

This group planning and strategizing can help clearly define the value-added benefits that your company should be selling and you will have created a valuable piece of web video promotion.

2) Creating a Web Video can help bond your team, who may be worried or stressed by increased workloads

For a company that cares about its image and wants to create an effective communication tool creating a web video is a team-effort. It can be a very rewarding and creative experience that can provide a sense of team building and company pride.

In a time of financial struggle, it is good practice to look back on past accomplishments and rally around those accomplishments with your staff. Blow your own horn. Get pumped up about your success in the past and motivated to make more in the future.

3) Creating a Web Video can be a solid step towards maximizing the true SEO effectiveness of your company’s website

You spent a ton of money on that website, right? So why not maximize it to broadcast your image? While many businesses gain a lot of momentum when their new website goes live, a lot of that momentum falls off after a few short months.

What they neglect to consider is that websites are driven by content. Failing to update your business’s website with new and innovative content will drop you in search engine results and ultimately leave you with less viewers.

Using a web video on your site makes a lasting impression on your potential customers and gives your business instant credibility. Share your video with the world by submitting it to the free video sharing websites like YouTube, Viddler, Yahoo Video etc. The proper use of web video can greatly influence your website’s page ranking on the major search engines and help drive traffic and sales.