Social media is an essential marketing tool for any business these days, and as of recently a new Google-powered social network has entered the scene.

Google+, which recently became available to Google Apps users, allows businesses to create pages. Through this social network, your business can easily promote itself, share content with others, and track your social media progress. The ability to improve your communication and collaboration with customers sets Google+ apart as the premier social network for businesses.

There are a number of easy ways to promote your business, and have others do some promotion too, on Google+. The first of these promotional tools involves notifying visitors to your company website of your presence on Google+. You can accomplish this with one of two tools: the Google+ badge or Google+ icon. With the Google+ badge, people can add your business’ Google+ page to their circles without having to leave your website. On the other hand, when people click on the Google+ icon they will be taken directly to your Google+ page. And for those who are already aware of your presence on Google+, the new direct connect tool on Google makes finding your business’ page simple. Beyond these self promotional tools, Google+ has features in place that help customers do some marketing for you, as well. This mainly comes into play when people +1 your business. Now, you can connect all of the +1s your business receives for its Google+ page, website, and advertisements. This connection is an important promotional tool because when people do a Google search for your business they will be able to see all of your +1s, including exactly who and how many people have +1’d your business. This +1 presence is a great word-of-mouth promotional tool because it allows potential customers to see the number and type of people who support your business. Thus, the +1 visual serves as a recommendation for your business to potential customers.

Once you bring people into your business’ Google+ page, it’s important to keep them there. You can accomplish this through sharing with the stream, circles, and hangouts. The stream on Google+ enables your business to share a variety of content with your followers. This content, which can be videos, text, or photos, can be shared publicly or with designated circles. Circles is a feature that is unique to the Google+ social network. With circles, your business can group people into specific categories. Such grouping can be useful when you have a message you don’t want to share with everyone, but rather with only a certain demographic or type of customer. Examples of how businesses can use the circles tool is to group customers by location or by the products or services they have previously purchased. Yet another sharing tool on Google+ is hangouts. This feature will not only help your business communicate with others, but also improve on your collaboration capabilities. With hangouts, your business can hold a video chat with multiple people on Google+, share screens, and collaborate in real-time with Google Docs. This tool allows you to communicate with people remotely but gives the feeling as though you are all in the same room.

Another important part of marketing your business through a social media platform is tracking your progress. When your business has a Google+ page, this tracking can be done through ripples and analytics. Ripples is a tool that allows you to follow the progress of the information your business shares on Google+. Specifically, you can track where it is going and the impact it is making by viewing who is sharing this content and who is paying attention. This tool is useful in deciding how to best market your business through Google+. By keeping track of information on ripples, you can discern the best type of information to share with customers and with whom to share it to improve your business’ reach on the social network. In addition to ripples, your business can use analytics to keep track of the activity on your Google+ page and the +1s for your business.

The wide variety of promotional tools and sharing features, along with the ease of tracking the progress of your efforts, makes Google+ a key social media platform for any business looking to market itself on a social network.

This blog post was written by Sharon Shapiro from Cloud Sherpas. Cloud Sherpas is a leading Google Apps cloud service provider. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and Google Enterprise partner, we have migrated over one million users across all major industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. Get to know our company by checking out our Google+ page at cloudsherpas.com/plus.

Image by ChethStudios

In this presentation Mike Volpe from Dreamforce, CMO of HubSpot, discusses the negative aspects of marketing automation and makes a case for inbound marketing. You can learn more from Mike Volpe by following him on Twitter at @mvolpe or checking out his weekly marketing show Marketing Update.

Here are some of my takeaways from the presentation:

A couple of weeks ago, I was in stop and go traffic on a busy street. At a red light I could hear a horn blaring behind me and after glancing in the rearview mirror, I realized it was the guy behind me. I couldn’t hear a word he was saying but the combination of the horn, his mouth moving quickly, and the interesting gestures he was throwing up, I imagined he was upset about the pace of traffic. I ignored it – really, what was I going to do? I couldn’t drive over the top of the five cars in front of me. The light turned green, I put on my signal to make a turn up ahead, and this angry man flew around me. He slammed on his horn a few times and I saw the one fingered salute he gave me. I was shocked – and when he floored it in the other lane, I saw the white markings on the back of his window.

Steve’s Law Firm.

And it had a phone number. I considered calling the number and leaving him a voicemail that his angry gestures and horn honks wouldn’t quite get across. Instead, I didn’t – instead, I just laughed to myself and realized that if he acts like this while he drives, he’ll be out of business soon enough.

Why?

Because he forgot in the hustle and bustle of getting to his next meeting that he was driving around in his marketing machine.

One thing I think we forget is that we carry our brand around with us everywhere we go, whether we realize it or not. It’s easy to think that once we walk out of the office, we aren’t attached to our business anymore.

For the social media marketer this is never true. In some way, shape, or form our name is connected to our business whether we are at the office or not. When I first started Tweeting for AccuConference, running a Google search on my name would pull up MySpace, my personal Facebook, and even this ancient article where I was quoted in my college paper.

Three years later and when you Google my name, it’s all business. There’s my picture, my LinkedIn profile, and my company blog. Imagine if I wandered around the Internet acting like a jerk under my name. A simple search would connect me to my company and render my company a jerk as well. Here are some things you can do to at least help ease yourself back and forth.

• Privatize your personal Twitter / Facebook account.
• For public accounts – never say anything you wouldn’t want your mom to read.
• Keep private jokes private. We all have them, but it you want to make a friend chuckle, send it DM or private message.
• Run at least one search a month on your name to see what your results are. If things look positive, you’re doing a great job, if not, you may want to see what you’re doing wrong.
• Finally – don’t be a troll. It is easy to hide behind your shield online, but with your name out there, things are bound to somehow loop back around to you and your company. If you have an opinion, that’s great, but share it in a responsible and mature way.

I tend to be very careful what I say or do because I never know if a client might run a search to find out more about me or my company. Being a social media marketer means that my name and company is always on the windshield and I always have to remember that – do you?

Maranda Gibson lives in Arlington, Texas and began blogging for AccuConference three years ago. Maranda writes about public speaking and making great presentations and you can check out her tips on the AccuConference blog. She can also be spotted on Twitter sharing her musical tastes and expressing her love for baseball and cooking.

Photo by Johan Larsson

More and more companies are using social media to promote their business and connect with customers – it is now an essential part of the marketing mix for most businesses.

Social media platforms, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, forums and more, have a number of advantages for companies, and are fast overtaking traditional media formats such as print and TV ads, brochures, flyers and email campaigns. Here’s why…

Low cost

Traditional media can be extremely expensive, especially for small businesses. However, most social media is completely free to use and the only cost to businesses is the time staff need to spend updating profiles and interacting with customers and contacts.

Businesses can use social media to create and distribute articles, videos, audio and more for a fraction of what it would cost for this content to appear in traditional media.

Access for all

In many ways, social media levels the playing field for businesses, as it is accessible to anyone, regardless of the size of their company, its turnover, or their contacts. Social media tools can be accessed by anyone, whereas access to traditional media can require a lot of money and a good network of media industry contacts.

Simplicity

Traditional media production can require a high level of skill, training and specialist equipment. However, social media channels are extremely simple to use, even for people with basic IT experience, and only a computer and internet connection are required.

Global reach

It’s true that traditional media can reach a global audience too, but this is extremely costly in most cases. Through social media, businesses can instantly reach a global audience as easily as they can reach customers based locally. It’s easy to tailor your content for each market segment, too.

If you happen to hit the jackpot and produce a piece of content that does go viral, as well, there’s no limit to the amount of people you can reach at no extra cost – the trick is in hitting that sweet spot that makes content eminently shareable.

Get to know your customers

Social media offers unprecedented opportunities to build relationships with your customers, largely due to its real-time and participatory nature. Companies can source feedback, test ideas and manage customer services quickly and directly, in a way that they can’t with traditional media.

Traditional media marketing is one-way, but with social media customers can choose the messages they receive and seek out. The proximity that social media offers between businesses and their customers also offers opportunities to really communicate, rather than simply push out sales messages.

Flexibility

With social media, companies can be extremely flexible and adapt instantly. Information can be updated, altered, added to and commented upon in a way that’s impossible in a printed advertisement or article, or a TV or radio ad. Since information can be published in seconds, you can ensure it’s always current and up to date.

Measurable

Feedback with social media is immediate, whereas traditional media often needs to be monitored and evaluated over a long period of time. With social media, businesses can experiment and test marketing messages and approaches, gauge user feedback and tweak the messages accordingly.

There are an ever-growing number of easy-to-use social media measurement tools, many of which are free and provide fascinating and valuable insights for businesses.

Although many businesses are getting on board with social media, others are still wary of it and reluctant to make a break away from traditional media. However, with its low cost, immediacy and interactivity, can your company really afford to ignore social media?

If you’re intimidated by the world of social media, you can dip your toe in slowly. Get online, listen, get a feel for the different platforms, and start experimenting with content and interaction. You’ll soon see how much more social media can offer than traditional media.

Christian Arno is the founder of professional translation services provider Lingo24, experts in the foreign language internet. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over forty million words for businesses in every industry sector, including the likes of MTV and World Bank. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

Image source: William Hook

According to the book “Most organizations don’t feel they can trust employees to use social media at all in the workplace. A survey by Robert Half Technology of 1,400 CIOs of U.S. companies reported that 54 percent of them block use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace in the workplace.”

This demonstrates that many companies still view social media as a time waster and counter to their business goals. However there are many ways that an open strategy can help a company be more effective and profitable.

“I’ve spoken with hundreds of leaders about their desire to tap into the power of social technologies to transform their businesses. They like the idea of being able to hear instantly what their customers are saying about them. They’re curious about the ability to obtain new ideas from customers or to lower their support costs by having customers solve each others’ problems.”

Social media can help develop deeper relationships with customers by showing that there are real people behind the corporation.

Charlene Li writes: “At the core, marketing and communications is about building relationships, but the key is knowing how to do it in a way that feels relevant and “authentic” to someone.”

The book also gives a good argument against focusing too much the ROI of social media which inevitably comes up at large organizations.

She writes: “An undue emphasis on hard ROI does no one any good…Inevitably, we base many of our decisions on just the thinnest sliver of information and evidence or, even more likely, our gut feeling…what’s the ROI of a handshake?…companies invest an inordinate amount of money on relationships…In most cases more than half of a company’s operating expenses are likely to be spent on activities that have an indirect impact on the bottom line. We may not be able to link the ROI of these expenses to direct sales, but we know there’s some incremental benefit that makes them worthwhile.”

However to convince leaders who still need ROI justification, there are some great cost/benefit breakdowns with ROI estimates.

Li also goes beyond theory and provides action plans for an initial openness audit, creating social media guidelines, executing the open strategy, and preparing for failures. She explains different models that organizations can adopt such as organic, centralized, and coordinated because the level of openness will depend on the organization. I would encourage any business leader to read this book, especially if you are a leader at a medium or large organization.

Full Disclosure: I received a review copy

I think a company that really understands the new digital marketing landscape is Best Buy. The CMO has a blog and twitter (@bestbuycmo) where he talks and learns from customers. Greg Verdino discusses engaging consumers with digital media and how Best Buy is building credibility for social media marketing.

The importance of listening, and engaging with customers directly in an open and honest way. The growing importance of the mobile web and the ways it can empower consumers throughout the buying process. The fact that everything is going digital and what this means for the products and services companies offer. The realizations that a great customer experience is the best marketing money can’t buy, and that brands are inherently social.

Heard it all before? Of course. But somehow it sounds more credible when spoken by the CMO of a large corporation, even more so when that CMO works for a company that actually practices what he preaches.

Check out this video of Best Buy CMO Barry Judge, talking about the future of marketing. Judge offers a nice overview of how Best Buy’s marketing approach has evolved from old school tell-n-sell, where it is now, and where it’s headed tomorrow.

This article was originally posted at Greg Verdino’s Blog, and is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 license.

If you are a marketer of small to medium businesses, John Jantsch is someone you ought to be paying close attention to. Jantsch practices what he preaches and has built one of the strongest brands in small business marketing. In this podcast he goes into depth on how small businesses can utilize Twitter to market better and grow their business.

Duct Tape Marketing Podcast website

Comcastcares on Twitter is managed by Frank Eliason, a Comcast employee who experimented with Twitter and discovered a very passionate response from Comcast customers. Anyone can send a direct message to Frank by beginning their twitter update with “d Comcastcares” followed by their message. Frank currently has 1,752 people who are following his Twitter feed, which is pretty remarkable. Almost 2,000 people care enough about Comcast that they are willing to receive updates whenever Frank has something to say.

A majority of Comcastcare’s 3,800 Twitter updates thus far consist of Frank simply responding to people who have issues with their service. Frank often goes above and beyond to solve customer issues such as giving out his email or tracking down the someone in the company who can help. You can read some of Frank’s twitter conversations over at quotably.com. Frank has won over many fans with his empathy and warmness, even when he takes heat from angry customers. Using Twitter has put a human face to a huge telecom company, which has demonstrated that maybe Comcast really does care.