Small Businesses Set to Excel with Social Media in 2012
Do you own a small business? Are you tired of hearing how big businesses are succeeding with social media?
If so, Social Media Examiner has some exciting news…
But first, much has been said about big companies such as Red Bull and Cisco, and how they harness social media to drive massive traffic to their sites and generate enormous sales.
But when small business owners are asked about social media, many have no idea how to use it in a practical way that can impact their business goals. 
Win Tickets to BlogWorld: The Mega-Conference for Social Media
**UPDATE: We have announced our two winners. The winner of the comment/blog portion of the contest, receiving one ticket to the BlogWorld Expo is Denise Skinner, read her comment here. The winner of the Twitter contest is Margie Arnett. Thanks to everyone who participated in the event. We hope to see many of you at BlogWorld!**
Want to win a free ticket to BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2011 in Los Angeles?
The entire Social Media Examiner team will be there! Keep reading to learn two ways you can win a full-access pass to this mega-social media conference.
What Is BlogWorld?
The best way to learn about BlogWorld is directly from one of its co-founders.
In this video, Michael Stelzner interviews Rick Calvert, CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld during their 2010 event.
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BlogWorld & New Media Expo is the largest conference, tradeshow and media event dedicated to blogging, podcasting, social media, social networking, online video, music, Internet TV and radio. With more than 120 educational sessions, this is THE event to attend for blogging and social media knowledge.
How Can You Win Tickets?
7 Tips for Selling Executives on Social Media
Are you a marketer who’s trying to juggle social media with the rest of your team’s activities? Do you think social media should be at the top of your priorities, but you’re having a hard time proving it?
Don’t worry. You aren’t alone.
I fought this battle also, and in the end I realized that I needed to drop terms like followers, retweets and status updates from my discussions in executive meetings. It was a tough conclusion, but I realized those metrics didn’t tell executives what they wanted to know.
This article will share 7 tips for getting executive buy-in for social media.
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.
The Art of Enchantment: How Guy Kawasaki Will Change Your Business
I recently interviewed Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com and the author of the bestselling book, The Art of the Start. His latest masterpiece is called Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
In this interview we talk about what makes for great content, how he came up with the title of his latest book, what Enchantment means for business, why businesses need to embrace nobodies and how he promoted his book. (Be sure to listen to the MP3 of this interview below.)
Mike: Most of our readers are marketers and business owners. Can you explain what Alltop does for them and why they might find it useful?
Guy: One of the functions of marketers, PR people and social media people is they need to keep on top of things.
The vision of Alltop was that we should aggregate RSS feeds for people by topic and create essentially an online magazine rack so that you could go to one place and say, “Okay, these are all the social media blogs and websites aggregated in one place.” It’s the five most recent stories from each source, and we give you a preview of the first paragraph of each story so you can see if you really want to click through.
Social Media Has Changed: Are You Ready?
When Michael Stelzner started Social Media Examiner in October 2009, he never dreamed it would become so successful so quickly.
As of March 2011, Social Media Examiner has 59,000 email subscribers, 33,000 Facebook fans, over 60 writers and half a million page views per month.
In addition, the site has generated almost $2 million in sales; ranks among the top 12 websites on two Technorati lists – business and small business; and ranks among the top 1,500 websites in the entire United States, according to Alexa.
“We didn’t do anything unique,” Stelzner said. “We simply employed great content with smart social media marketing and our community did the rest. And any business can achieve great results.”
More Facebook Changes: 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 Upgrades Comments Plugin for Websites: Did you know Facebook allows you to add comments to any web page using its platform? Facebook now allows readers to have their comments published in their Facebook news feeds. And when friends comment back in Facebook, the reply will show up on your site. This is something all bloggers should check out.
This is how the comment I left on a recent TechCrunch blog (with the new Facebook Comment plugin) is published on my Facebook Profile wall.
Getting Social Media Right: Insights From the Social Media Club
In this video I interview Chris Heuer, founder of the Social Media Club, a popular social media network with local support groups in more than 240 cities around the world.
Chris shares the story of how he took advantage of cheap airplane tickets to hold roundtables in various cities to start the Social Media Club and how it has evolved since then.
You’ll also find out what businesses are doing wrong in social media today and hear how Chris sees human nature impacting the future of social media.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
How to Create Compelling Blog Content
In this video I interview Chris Garrett, co-author of the best-selling book Problogger and the popular blog ChrisG.com.
Chris shares the foundation pieces you need to build a successful business blog and explains how to create killer content to engage your audience and get the results you want from blogging. Chris also talks about the role blogs play within a good social media ecosystem and how this helps you connect with your audience.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
Should You Use Radian6 for Social Media Monitoring?
Are you befuddled by all the social media tools out there? Are you wondering if Radian6 is a good choice for your organization? Do you need a way to compare different vendors? Keep reading for a comprehensive review…
If you’re looking for a social media monitoring tool, you’ve probably noticed that it’s quickly becoming a confusing landscape. For those who are new to social media and looking for tools to manage their presence, it’s difficult to know how to compare one vendor to the next. Here’s the skinny on where Radian6 fits into the picture.
