If you are blogging, you have to do it regularly. So set a schedule and hit that 300-350 word quota.

Here’s what’s happening: the old forms of media are being displaced in our mobile, ADD, sound-byte world.

People can’t sit still to watch news on TV and reading a book, a magazine or a newspaper is for old timers.

What does this mean? That marketing is changing. FAST! It means that companies have to become a media company. I know. Relax. Breathe.

Social networks are a platform to do 2 things: communicate with your marketplace and tell your story.

Communication with the marketplace means that you get to listen in as people talk about your company, employees, services and your competitors! Social networks become a tool for Reputation Management. These applications also are a way to sell and respond. For example, Comcast uses twitter to fix problems one and a time.

The other side of the coin is that it’s easy to tell your story. What you don’t have a story?

Seth Godin asks What’s your Super Power?

Many ISP’s tell me that it’s about their employees, that they are local, that they answer the phone. Well, tell that story. Talk about your employees. Discuss customers and cases. People do business with people not companies. Social media let’s you make that connection to your marketplace.

Need help?

Social Media Strategy for Service Providers on Friday, June 04, 2010 from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (ET) – Register here.

Linkshare is presenting What Not to Do on Facebook for Business on Thursday May 27 at 2 PM. Register here.

What does that mean?

The idea of job security is ended. The responsibility for job security, income, benefits and retirement will be solely in the hands of the workers from now on.

Whether you intended to be a Freelancer or not, you will need to make decisions and embrace the path of a freelancer to find some success.

Register for the Lunch 2.0 talk on March 10 here.

Why blog?

A bunch of reasons including to demonstrate your subject matter expertise; for publicity (PR); to become a Trusted Advisor; for reputation; or to just be heard.

In general, you blog for marketing.

A side effect of blogging (and other social networking) is SEO (search engine optimization) – or at the very least, search engine results. If you create enough organic, genuine content around your subject or topic (or keyword), the search engines will ikely find it (eventually). The more content and the more frequent you create content, the better your search results. So blog often.

That idea can be a service, product, a goal or an actual idea.

It only spreads if it is worth talking about. To spread it, you have to tell a story. You only get to tell the story to people who are listening to you.

Who is actually listening to you? Why are they listening? What story are you telling them?

Seth Godin talks about ideas that spread at TED Talks.

Maggie Fox is the keynote at Social Fresh Tampa today. And she is talking about ways to broadcast. Big Brands only understand advertising, so social media becomes another vehicle for advertising. Her formula is to combine Earned PR with Paid Advertising and syndicate it through the Brand’s channels.

It’s not a big concept. It’s just using an Earned piece of publicity and re-purposing it over and over. Syndication means that your company – every company – is now a media organization. You have a chance to control the message — in a way. (On social networks, you only have the illusion of control.)

Best quote from one panel: “Advertising is the tax your business pays for being unremarkable.”

The other way to use social networks is to engage your marketplace. Listening is the important first step. The second step is to create compelling content. The final step is to engage your audience. Interact with them.

My rule of thumb is re-tweet two tweets; tweet two interesting(and hopefully original) items; and reply to two things daily.

The number of followers is irrelevant (unless you are a Big Brand). It’s the number of listeners that you have that is significant.

Give them something to listen to. Give them something to repeat.

Tell them a story about you, your product or service, your employees, your charity, your customers. That’s human interest.

You need to be a story-teller and a good listener.

If you are a small business, you probably want the second way. If you are a big Brand, you are probably trying to figure out how to capitalize on the first way (Earned+Paid+Syndication). It boils down to advertising versus WOM. Word-of-Mouth is the friend of small business.

Like a TV commercial, you need to grab the audience in the first 3 to 5 seconds. But it’s more than just the attention grabbing. Your message has to be powerful, memorable, and concise.

The rule of marketing is the same for online video, offline media or social media. These vehicles only work if the marketing works. [The marketing being that you have a powerful, concise, easy to share message. The more memorable or emotional it is the better it can resonate with your audience.]

At the AMA Tampa Bay meeting on Online Video, there were some good examples of video messaging. One was Julia Gorzka’s use of video to get the story out about Tampa’s own tortilla factory (savethetortillas.com).

Another example was Ken Donaldson, who is a relationship counselor. He spoke about the ease of video to get the message out and how he has built his practice through video and blogging.

Like any medium, if the message is boring, you won’t get a response. In today’s frenetic attention deficit society, you not only need your marketing to be ON, but your video better be on some fast servers and load quick!

“”I believe that one of the key things that keep small businesses small is that the owners maintain a small business mindset. For many, being small is just fine. They don’t ever want to be anything more than a mom and pop operation. But others dream big and want to see big goal accomplished but continue to struggle to “make it big.” They can’t ever seem to get over that hump that propels them out of small-time territory.”

“If you don’t want to be a mom and pop operation, or you want to be more than the small business you are, then it’s time to start thinking not like the small business you are but like the bigger business you want to be.”

The author then goes on to talk about Online Marketing. (I am bringing in a team to present on that in-depth in Orlando in March, 2010).

What it doesn’t talk about is even more important: Marketing 101. It all starts with the Goal. What is the goal of your marketing?

Be specific. To get sales is way to general.

1. What are you selling?
2. Who are you selling it to?
3. Why should they buy it from you?
4. How can I reach my target market?
5. What will I say to them to get them to buy/contact us?

Doesn’t matter if this is online or offline marketing. The same questions apply. The answers should be all about the Customer Experience, not about some feature.

Think about how restaurants advertise. Carrabba’s radio ads describe a recipe of a delicious main course that is available for a limited time. It paints a picture. It tells a story. It has a call to action (go to Carrabba’s soon before it’s gone). McDonald’s uses a similar ad for McRib. Limited time. People love them. Come get it.

The hype with Online Marketing is that it is easy and instant. Not really. It is certainly trackable and measurable. But easy and instant notsomuch. (Nothing is).

Back to the opening paragraph, what is your Goal, your vision for your company? It’s November with December fast approaching. I will be spending a day reviewing 2009 and planning my goals for 2010. How much revenue do I want to make? How will I make that revenue? Where will I find my customers? Where do I want to speak? What will the follow-up look like?

I suggest that you take the time to review your year and plan for 2010. If you need help, call our office at 813-496-2122. Thank you.

UTB Social Media Seminar from Zack Koczanski on Vimeo.

From the Upper Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce and BOSS Social Media seminar: Does Your Business Belong in the Game?

One: know what you want your website to be. Is it a static brochure? Will it be a sales tool? Will it be a knowledge dump? Hint: It can’t be all 3.

Like all marketing materials, it has to have a clear message, a call to action, and a flow. By flow, I mean that like a one page microsite that has copy then a call to action followed by more copy and another call to action (ad nauseum), you website should have similar flow: some copy, a call to action, and a next button or More Info link.

That call to action can be: call now; email us; sign up; buy now; or other actions.

Too many choices for the visitor is not a good thing. If you feel you need to do more than one thing with your website, make it obvious. For instance, buttons like Customers click here or Members login make it easy to segment your visitors.

Your landing page is where people arrive on your website (usually the front page). With search, links or a Google Adwords campaign, people can land on any page of your website.  The landing page has less than 7 seconds to load and capture the visitor’s attention.  Headline, content, call to action.

The content has to be relevant, clear, concise, to the point, informative, and in plain English.

My website is not a good example because there are way too many tabs, but that’s left over from the original website developer who disappeared on me. There is no call to action on most pages.