Yesterday evening, WomenonBusiness.com published my first guest post. Thank you, Susan, for having me as a guest writer! Here’s a small excerpt to give you a taste!

For most women running a small business, constantly growing it also means cutting all unnecessary costs and trying to save whenever possible. If a fee seems a bit much for a certain service they might want to contract, they turn to the Do it Yourself/DIY approach. In most cases, doing anything yourself is not that difficult. There must be someone in your office with the skill set needed to learn how to and then do a good job at it!

While true, in most cases, this approach is counterproductive, unless you’re choosing the DIY option for services you are already offering. If you run a design agency, it would be crazy to hire someone else to design your corporate website.

I warmly invite you to head over to WomenonBusiness.com and read the entire article - DIY, the Small Business Mirage.

When trying to reach a global market, many companies (with enough relevant examples in the IT&C industry) rely on strategic and local partners and resellers to place and sell their products and services. What they sometimes tend to overlook is that promoting the product or service is as important and can become a shared task. While initially new partners might need guidance to understand the overall strategy, your product’s top selling benefits and the type of customers you are targeting, over time then can turn into strong regional allies.

Think of a big release of a new product or service. You might draft the communication plan, have the new literature, press and blogger pitches, press release and special offers ready and then share them in due time with your partner network. They might, in turn, reach out to their customer base, press contacts and enthusiastic evangelists, boosting your promotion effort.

Of course, some will be more savvy when it comes to PR and Marketing, others might need some ongoing guidance. You could suggest how they can reach out to media outlets, how they can identify where the potential customers who need to be informed about the product or service are. If they need convincing, you need to focus on their benefits: properly communicating with customers, audiences, the press means more business coming their way. That does also mean a share of the income goes to you, but the main beneficiaries are the partners.

When considering a successful partnership, businesses need to stop thinking in terms of sales alone. Yes, how much a partner makes by selling your product is important. But can you also collaborate on increasing brand awareness, spreading the word about your product and getting more revenue for yourself and the partner in question? Can you collaborate on getting feedback from their customers to help improve your products and services and subsequently sell more, maybe even for a better price?

Guest post by Lauren Horn

Twitter presents the opportunity for you to connect with leaders in your industry, your peers and your target audience, while generating exposure and making connections. You have not only created your account, updated information, customized the look and feel of your page, but also begun tweeting up a storm. At this point, your following base should be through the roof, but you’re not seeing the results you anticipated, so now what?

So now, it’s important to remember that your page is just another marketing tool which ultimately needs to be promoted. Step back and first reassess your content and your purpose. Are you only tweeting about your product and services? Is your messaging consistent? How involved are you in the community? Are you following your target audience? Do you engage with your current followers? Are you listed? Do you utilize hashtags? These are just some things to consider. However, there are several ways to actually build a following. Below are some tips and tricks of the trade.

Network with Other Platforms

Where else are you present on the web? I’m sure you have a corporate website, but do you have Facebook and a blog? It’s important to integrate these mediums so they work together. Include the Twitter logo or a widget on your website in a location that’s visible to your audience. Utilize your Twitter handle (URL) on Facebook. Consider writing a blog post about your Twitter account and what value you bring and how it benefits your audience.

Invite Your Email Subscribers

I hope over the years you have captured an opt-in email list. If so, great! If not, please do! This list is critical and a great way to send an invitation and/or announcement to your subscribers via email. Simply write an encouraging message about why they should follow you, much like your blog post. Also, make sure to include the logo in your HTML newsletters. If you’re a cell phone provider, consider writing something such as “tweet us your favorite app!” instead of “follow us,” in hopes that your subscribers go directory to your page, tweet, and follow.

Add to Your E-mail Signature

Consider updating your email signature to include a link to your social media page(s) and website(s) in every email you send. Wisestamp signature add-on is used for web-based email accounts and is simple to download and create a customized stamp.

Update Your Press Release Boiler Plate

The boiler plate is the last paragraph in your press release, containing valuable company and product information and web address, where the editor or reader can go for further information. Perhaps yours currently states, “For more information, please visit www.companyname.com.” Update that portion to read, “For more information please visit www.companyname.com, www.Twitter.com/username, www.facebook.com/username.” This too, will also be helpful if you submit your press releases through online distribution services, greater optimizing web presence.

Perform Specialized Searches

Execute a search within Twitter using your company’s keyword and/or product or service category, preceded with a hashtag (#) to group users. As you review the results, consider following or replying to other users’ tweets so they know you exist and may offer further information regarding that topic in the future. Also perform searches for target media outlets and target authority spokespersons, etc. to follow. In doing so, they will receive an alert and hopefully reciprocate the follow.

Interact

Be actively engaging with other Twitter users. Perhaps you want to ask someone a question, comment on their latest tweet, or provide advice. In doing so, make sure when responding to another user to include the symbol, @, preceding the username, i.e. @Username, so they receive a notification. Hashtag anything you feel a majority of people would be discussing, such as #interiordesign, #marketing, #products, etc.

Try these tips and I’m sure you’ll see an increase in followers before you know it!

About the author

Lauren Horn serves as a Digital PR Specialist at ProspectMX, an internet marketing company in Lancaster, PA. Her professional background also includes several years as a traditional publicist with some concentration on social media for residential and commercial clients at another marketing communications agency. Lauren is highly interested in the latest trends both online and on the runway, exhibiting a passion for anything related to fashion, including everything from styles and colors to accessories.

Among 2010 predictions, plans and strategies, I ran across a very interesting and explicit definition of what marketing is, what it does and what a marketing team is expected to do. It belongs to Linda Smith, one of the authors of Women on Business. I just loved her idea of explaining what her plans and predictions are all about. It helps put things into perspective, reconnect with your thoughts and values and only then act.

Her take on marketing will shortly follow. After reading it, please make sure you read her post to find out what she thinks 2010 will bring in this line of business.

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere:

• what your business is, where it is, how to find it
• what your product/service is, what it can do for the consumer, why they need it, why they want it
• how your business differs from others that are similar – what your uniqueness’s are, what makes your business so very special
• why the consumer should/ought to exchange their precious dollars and cents for your product/service

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere in every way that people can and do receive information:

• newspapers, magazines and direct mailers – the hard copy kind, the newsprint ink that smears on your fingers and the flyers, brochures and sales letters that come in the snail mail; AND the online versions: newspapers online, magazines online and email ads that come both solicited and unsolicited
• television ads, radio ads – both via traditional tv and radio vehicles and online versions
• internet banner ads, classified ad sites, display ad boxes on social media sites
• social media relationship building
• weblogs and forums and other self-publishing arenas where messages about anything and everything under the sun, moon and stars can be shared

A business’ marketing department is usually tasked with:

• designing the message
• crafting the message delivery system
• delivering the message
• measuring the results of both the message and the delivery system

I have a confession to make… I am extremely harsh when it comes to customer support. I’ve spent quite a while being a tech support engineer, I know how much it matters in building a great relationship with customers. So when I make my decisions about certain products or services, the quality of tech support backing them up is extremely important.  Why? It is simple. Anything can crash. No one should look for guarantees they will have no problems, they should make sure they will have help solving them when they appear. And based on my fare share of customer support talks, chats, email exchanges, I thought I’d make a top of the best ways to drive customers away.

1. Don’t pick up when they call

Definitely, this is the fastest and never dethroned method to make sure your customers will switch you for any of your competitors quicker then lightning.

2. Ignore the problems!

Have your customers report the same problem a few times and then make sure you constantly ignore it when you reply. This is bound to drive them nuts! So you’ll have a lot less of them to worry about!

3. Be nice, but completely unhelpful!

Make sure you explain in the nicest manner out there that nothing of what the customer needs will ever be possible. Remember, smile and keep being inflexible and unwilling to adapt or change! That should scare them off!

4. Don’t get your message straight before sending it!

Confuse them and then rule them all! The moment they get  a bit upset, send them a quick email promising something, to then have it contradicted by another representative of your company.

5. Be completely inconsiderate when it comes to their needs or issues

When you make major changes that affect the way their business works, don’t ever ask them if they’re OK with it! Just go ahead and if it’s in the middle of the week, even better!

What would you add to the top? I’m curious to find out what your experiences have been.

Need to increase the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers and turn them into evangelists through effective communication? Our marketing and PR agency can help!

Sometimes we are reminded of the big secrets in the business world by what appears to be the most unrelated situation. My house is fairly new, some of the residential complex is still being built and it’s quite empty most of the time. As it happens to any construction site, stray dogs come and never leave. No one is working right now, because of the weather, so no one can feed these dogs. They are starving and one of them keeps visiting me.

So what could I do? Feed her (I discovered it’s a girl), of course. But real and quite a lots of dog food was required; luckily I had help . She kept coming and then other dogs showed up. I now have three that come by at least once a day. And my friends pointed out how word spread when the dogs started enjoying a good meal.

And then it hit me. When building a WOM strategy, we think of engaging customers, of enabling them to better spread the word, reach the online communities and help them discover our products or services. This is wrong because we should always start with a question: Is our client satisfied? If it’s yes, spreading the word will be easy.

Customer satisfaction should always be the number one priority. Making what they have to say known always comes second. Simply because you really don’t want your customers to say „Oh, well, they’re ok, most of the times!” You want them to say awesome, great, or legendary when they speak of you. Don’t you?

While businesses are rushing to adopt Twitter, some fail to plan ahead. They just get the account, because it’s trendy and someone told them it works. And then they start wondering about a purpose, about whose responsibility it is, about what they should expect. When thinking about giving Twitter a try, think of what you want to get in return, who can do the task best and what you’re going to give that you’re not already giving on different channels.

So if you decide your support team should have a Twitter account to monitor issues reported by customers on Twitter because you want to make sure their problems are solved and they’re still happy with your product or service, I’d call that a good plan. It’s not the same thing as tweeting back a link to your knowledge base or saying the same thing the email reply asking for more info said, is it? If your support guy playing with Twitter is nice, knowledgeable and doesn’t mind providing support for something that’s not really caused by your product/service, I call that brilliant

I also have an example: when I switched to GoDaddy, I ran into some issues and had to talk to the support team. I also sent out tweet saying my travel blog is not working, but GoDaddy support was helping me with it. The tweetsupport of GoDaddy offered to help, even with WordPress and database issues if I needed it. I didn’t, but knowing they were there for me for something that wasn’t their fault when they could have said it wasn’t a GoDaddy related issue made me love them forever.

In conclusion, Twitter is as good of a medium as any to broadcast. But actually connecting with people, listeining to them, understanding their problems and helping them solve those problems is the right way to go if you want to take your microblogging efforts to a higher level.

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

Today is that very special day when Mirror Communications, PR and Marketing Agency, officially opens doors online. I’ve shared my plans earlier this year and it finally happened! There’s still plenty of work o be done, but we’re finally out of the construction site

But now that there’s a new PR and Marketing agency on the market, some people my stop to wonder: is there room for another one on the market?

Well, for a good one, there always is. And when it comes to PR strategies and effective marketing, these troubled economic plans do not require them, they strongly demand such services. For a million reasons: starting with the possibility of gaining quite some market share rather easy and finishing with the fact that employees, clients and partners need to know your company is doing OK, you’re there for them and you will provide the same excellent products and services, regardless of where the economy is headed.

But if these reasons are not enough, consider the following:

• Companies still don’t know how to focus on benefits, not features;
• Some people still believe scaring customers into buying what they sell is a good strategy;
• Having no PR at all is as bad as having some really bad PR;
• When you’re building your company’s image, taking breaks is out of the questions;
• Individuals, companies and entire countries still have big marketing and PR problems;
• Customers are lost every day due to poor post sales services;
• And there are still plenty of so-called marketers or PR experts that give the whole industry a bad name.

If you want your true identity to be reflected, your unique voice heard and to engage in wonderful and profitable conversations, take a look at the Mirror Communications website, read some PR and marketing post on your blog and then contact me. Let’s talk about how we can work together to make your company shine!

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

This week’s edition is short and sweet. Not because I didn’t find enough interesting articles (there were about 9), but yoursturly has yet to learn that leaving 60 tabs open in Firefox is not the safest way to keep said interesting articles and not lose them if FF was to, say, crash…

So I give you the three articles I actually saved in this post’s draft

You might have already seen this one, I’ve certainly ran into it a few times, but just in case: John Jantsch entry on how to raise the price of free. Must read, so use your bookmarks, learn from my mistakes

If you’re interested in learning more about search engine marketing, Josh Klein’s entry on process and framework is also a must read. It will help you better understand what SEM it’s all about and build your very first strategy.

With the jobs market in a full recession, here are some findings that might help: what recent hires recommend to job seekers. This is only a part of a larger survey published on Web Strategy, find out more on Jeremiah Owyang’s full list of posts.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks short version of the monday roundup. As I did miss a lot, please share your interesting reads in the comment box