Henry Lopez and David Begin discuss Online and Social Media Marketing and how they have used it to promote their small businesses.

• Why does it matter to us? Because online and on social media sites are where our customers are. It’s where they are interacting and where they are “listening”. To reach them, we need to be there also.
• You need to identify the social media platforms that make sense for your business. You start by having a good understanding of who your target customer(s) is, and then deciphering where they are online. If you are reaching moms, for example, the best sites to reach them may include Facebook and Pinterest.
• It usually starts with a website. There are information websites and commercial sites (pages where you sell something), or a combination of both. Your website must be effective – meaning that it’s easy for the visitor for find the information/product/service they are searching for. The look and feel, as well as the content, makes an important first impression.
• It’s also important to create and maintain the information that Google displays when someone searches for your business.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is a complex moving target and small business owners often overpay for services in this area.
• If you have a commercial website, and you don’t have the expertise in-house to build a website and manage SEO, then you need to hire help.
• We discuss different tools to build a website including SquareSpace.
• Google AdWords. These are pay-per-click (PPC) ads that appear on the Google search results pages. It’s easy to get started, and you can control your daily budget as you learn what works for your business.
• For a small business getting started, we recommend your have a good website, and then start diving traffic to that site (using AdWords and other techniques).
• We only begin to address the broad and important topic of Online and Social Media Marketing on this episode, and we will continue this conversation on future episodes.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:

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• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
  

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