News For Local Businesses: This Week In Social Media
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week?
Facebook Deals Go Local: Businesses can now offer discounts to their local markets through Facebook Deals. And Facebook will be publishing these Deals stories in the Facebook feeds of your customers. This new service puts Facebook into direct competition with Groupon. 
10 Reasons Why You Should Upgrade Your LinkedIn Account
Do you have a free LinkedIn account? Have you considered upgrading to a paid account? Wondering if it’s worth it?
There are several options to choose from. Which one would be right for you?
In this article, we cover what you actually get for your money and how you might use some of the enhanced features.
Let’s take each area of the business upgrade in turn and run through it.
How to Gain Competitive Insight With Social Media
Are you looking for that competitive edge? Want to know what your peers are up to?
Using social media to research competitors can provide useful information for any business looking to create a smart strategy. Learning about your competitors’ activities can give you insight into what works and what doesn’t.
The beauty of social media is that there’s a ton of information about your competitors that is public. And not only is their strategy public, but the reaction to that strategy is public as well. Let’s take a look at some of the things you can learn about your competitors through different social networks, search engines and other outlets.
3 Ways to Close the Gap Between Social Media and Direct Response
Does the phrase direct marketer conjure up sleazy images? If you thought yes, you’re not alone.
Both social media marketing and direct response marketing place a focused pitch on the right list (prospects) and understanding what they want in order to engage them with relevant information that will get them to buy from you.
So why are social media and direct response considered mutually exclusive?
Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade, put a stake into the hearts of social media “purists” when he said, “Those making the most money with social media marketing today are doing so by turning it into direct-response 2.0.”
5 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Outstanding
Are your blog posts just “okay”? Want to make them great? If so, keep reading.
A great blog post respects the needs of three distinct entities. It educates and informs your audience (your subscribers and visitors), optimizes for the search engines and sufficiently energizes you so that you do a good job creating it.
Every blog post should address the following five components to ensure it hits the mark for your audience, the search engines and you.
22% of Online Time Spent With Social Media
Is social media taking over the web?
Just in the last year, the number of social media users has continued to climb at record speed and the audience demographics have widened. And marketers have noticed the trend.
For proof of social media’s steep rise, take a look at the number of statistics that surfaced in the last month. These findings further support what most of us already believe: Social media is only getting bigger.
2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Have any of these questions crossed your mind? “How much time do my peers invest in social media marketing? What benefits are they achieving? Where will they focus their efforts in the future?”
If you’ve pondered any of these thoughts, look no further. All the answers are right here in this free report.
Watch the above video for a quick summary.
NOTE: Click here to see the 2011 version of this report.
5 Twitter Tips for Building Your Business
Twitter is a great tool for conversations, building community, finding brand advocates and reading the latest news. That’s why celebrities, athletes, your competitors—and hopefully you—are on Twitter.
The growth and usage of Twitter is not surprising. Compete.com estimates approximately 21 million unique monthly visitors, and a quick search on Twitter yields a variety of conversations from music, sports, politics, events and products.
Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business With LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most powerful social networking site to help you grow your business. It makes Twitter, Facebook and YouTube seem like social networking sites for kids.
If you want to hang with the big players—a place where connections are made, leads are generated, and deals go down—then you need to spend more of your time on LinkedIn.
Although other sites have their purpose in the business world and many people utilize multiple social networking sites, LinkedIn is still the number-one place to market your business. Here are ways to use LinkedIn and get results:
3 New Studies Show Value of Social Media & Businesses Slow Response
There are some interesting studies surfacing lately in the world of social media. Here’s a summary of three recent research findings covering the benefits of social media marketing, how forums help brands and how businesses are employing social media marketing.
#1: 50% of Small Businesses Say Lead Generation is Biggest Benefit of Social Networking
According to the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” from Ad-ology, lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking for U.S. small businesses.
