Nina Anthony, SEO Consultant for WESST

Social media give businesses the opportunity to share knowledge and influence customers like never before. Unlike traditional, outbound marketing, in which businesses buy space in newspapers or airtime on television, the social Web offers an almost infinite number of free or low-cost distribution channels to directly reach and influence consumers.

Small businesses can participate in this increasingly social world of consumer-business mass collaboration in several ways.

Networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter let people connect with peers, customers and “influencers,” people who win a strong following of friends, fans and supporters by regularly submitting high-quality content to social media sites. Company-sponsored fan pages on Facebook allow businesses to stay current with customers and get instant feedback about products or services.

Blogs can create and maintain personal bonds with customers. Blogs with interesting content and regular updates attract inbound links, which draws search engines. A blog syndicated with an RSS feed automatically sends new posts to subscribers.

Writing and publishing original articles and online press releases optimized to attract search engines allows a company to share news about a service or product. It can be submitted to a free or subscription-based online newswire service to help build links and traffic to a business’s Web site. (Find article directories by googling “submit article.”)

Establishing a reputation on social news and bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious can generate business for consultants and other professionals. These sites cater to a narrower topic- or industry-focused audience. Network members can submit original articles or share links to articles they think will resonate with the social community, but before they can promote their services, they must earn credibility in the community as “thought leaders.”

Videos are another vehicle for disseminating marketing messages online. According to February search engine numbers from comScore, video searches on YouTube now represent 25 percent of all Google search queries in the U.S. Businesses should weigh the benefits of hosting videos exclusively on their own sites to attract the most direct traffic versus uploading the videos on third-party sites like YouTube and MetaCafe where they might be seen by more people but divert traffic (and potential links) away from one’s Web site.

Every business should have a social media strategy based on the needs and interests of its customers. Success in social media and search engine optimization requires a long-term commitment to continually publish high-quality, relevant content that draws Internet attention.

WESST offers various low-cost workshops (as well as one-on-one consulting) to help small businesses leverage these powerful inbound marketing tactics.

Learn more about WESST

Download 94_How to Use Social Media in Business PDF

Todd Hand, Managing Partner at Talent Capital Group and Board Member of Coronado Ventures Forum

Recruiting top-drawer employees doesn’t stop just because hiring slows or freezes. The recession, however bad, isn’t permanent, and forward-looking executives realize that the most ambitious and productive workers — the ones they hope to attract — remain alert to opportunities from companies that market themselves vigorously and confidently no matter what the economic climate.

The following are some trends that will affect hiring as the economy rebounds:

Don’t expect the best candidates to accept a smaller salary in return for additional stock options. Given the stock market’s performance over the past year, most employees would rather have a dependable source of income than gamble on stock options that might prove worthless. They also value their personal time and will likely negotiate for more vacation.

The Internet has made it possible for job seekers to be more connected than ever through social- and professional-networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and various blogs. It’s also offered ways for job hunters to dig up all sorts of information about companies that interest them. An employer can use this as a qualifying tool: Given all the information that’s available online and elsewhere about most businesses, a candidate has no excuse for coming ill-prepared to an interview.
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Bruce R. Kohl, Director, New Mexico Securities Division

While billion-dollar swindles like Bernard Madoff’s make the national news, most investment fraud is a local crime committed close to home. In most cases, the victims are friends, business acquaintances and relatives of the perpetrator.

Such was the case with Henry Rivera, a Taos con artist who scammed more than 50 New Mexicans out of millions of dollars before he was indicted on more than two dozen counts of securities fraud in 1994. Rivera fled to Mexico before his trial and lived under an assumed name for nearly a decade before he was recaptured. His 2006 fraud conviction resulted in the longest prison sentence ever handed down for a white-collar crime in New Mexico.

The Rivera case is the subject of Betrayal of Trust, an 18-minute documentary produced by the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department’s Securities Division to raise public awareness of the risk posed by financial predators in our communities. The documentary is being distributed in DVD format at no charge to libraries, churches, senior centers and civic groups statewide. For a free copy of Betrayal of Trust, e-mail InvestorInfo@state.nm.us or call the Securities Division toll-free at 800-704-5533
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Betsy Gillette, Director of Market Research & Planning, TVC

Intelligence gathering isn’t just for international spies and private detectives. It’s also a way to identify one’s business rivals and compile information about them in order to gain a competitive advantage.

In many cases, the information is easy and inexpensive to obtain. Competitors can be found in industry directories, many of which list members online. Articles and advertisements in trade journals offer competitors’ names, as do conversations with business owners in the same industry or even their customers. A public or specialized library can be a source of names beyond what’s available through industry directories on the Internet.

The business researcher can start with some of these resources:

10-K reports: The 10-K report is a publicly traded company’s annual performance report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Found at  www.sec.gov or any publicly traded company’s Web site, these reports include information about a company’s financial statements, organizational structure, equity, market risks and pending litigation.  A researcher might even discover a rival’s market shares and future plans.
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