Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Week 12: Blog 1 – Four additional online marketing tools


 

Well besides using Facebook and my blog, the other social media sites that might work for my business are Pinterest, Google+, Yelp and FlipBoard (also a possibility). 

Pinterest would work because the photographs that people pin include the link to the site where found.  I would create a business Pinterest board and I could direct my blog readers and Facebook followers to look at my board. 

I have a personal Google+ account but it is fairly recent and I have not had a chance to play with it yet.  However, according to your lecture, I can create a business Google+ page off of that and keep them separate.  In Google+ I can join communities with similar products as mine, or maybe suppliers.  I can create Circles to separate fans, customers, family and others.

Yelp will be helpful, more so after the business gets up and running.  I’m not sure having only 1 or 2 positives is very helpful.  A concern of mine is that there is no real “control” over the likes and dislikes.  I recently watched a TV program where a well know hotelier would assist other hotels/motels that were closed to failing.  In this show it was a family hotel and it was a bit dated in looks, but he was able to assist with the updating and other parts of running the hotel to keep it from going bankrupt – from the kitchen, the housekeeping staff, the hotel staff and the owners.  One thing that came up was some reviews on Yelp that really denigrated the hotel and even stated things that were not true about the hotel.  He made the owner contact Yelp and have them deleted.  I did not know that was possible until this show. 

FlipBoard is referred to as your personal magazine.  First I would need to come up with a creative name, something that would come up when prospective customers do searches.  I can have a “window” or page related to useful sewing or fabric information, e.g. care and handling of various fabrics.  I can add my Twitter timeline to Flipboard and flag tweets that I feel are most appropriate.  I can link YouTube channels to my flip board that I also think would fit with my business.  I read where a good rule of thumb is:  “if it interests you as it relates to your specialty, chances are good it will interest your intended audience” and also I could use it to promote the work of other folks (and hope it might bring more business to my site).  Once you have created it, you need to hit the Share button so you can promote it via any account you’ve added to Flipboard, such as LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Since I don’t have a storefront, Google Maps is not an option at this time.  However, I was thinking that if I was able to get some of our products in a store on Consignment or maybe they purchased it for resale, I could use Google Maps to let people know where they could find our products. 

I do not think GroupOn or Living Social are good for my business or for the type of products we sell.

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