Look – size matters for some things in life, but not social media. Much like a website, and other things in life, if you don’t do anything with it or don’t know how to do anything with it, it’s worthless.

Here are three instances where size does not matter:

Size of blog – I get this one all the time. “How long does my blog have to be?” I refer to the social media rule: Content is King. If you have great content, people will keep coming back. So forget about word count in your blog. Think of content and deliver it with link attribution.

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Size of friends or fans – Bragging about number of friends or fans is like bragging about the number of kids that went to your high school – it means nothing unless you’ve reached out and networked with each and every one of them. Contacts are one thing, but what you do with them is totally another. If you have no foundation and no plan for what to do with them when you acquire them, you’ve wasted your time gathering the friends.

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Number of networks – Having an expanded online presence is fantastic. Having so many online accounts that you can’t keep up with them is ridiculous. Pick and choose the ones you can handle and the ones you can outsource. Stick with those and watch your social media family flourish into sales leads and an awesome tool for feedback.

Keep your social media plan under control and out of your hands. Outsource it to us!

I want to hear in what instances size doesn’t matter for your social media efforts. Comment below!

Feel the burn as the commitment you made to your health starts to kick in! Happy 2010!

As many of you begin a regiment aimed at achieving that perfect six pack stomach, you must also keep in mind the excess fat your business is carrying around – an overstuffed advertising and marketing budget. Now is the perfect time to whip your company back into shape!

Awareness

Visuals on flickr, videos on Facebook, a new product promotion on Twitter or a special on Facebook are a variety of ways social media can make your customers and potential customers aware of your business and brand. Social media is the most affordable way to do so since word of mouth.

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Repetition

Top of Mind Awareness has been around for years and the traditional route is to put your business in front of your customers and potential customers about seven times a year. My how things have changed. At this very minute, customers are deciding how to spend their money. Will they spend it with you – someone who simply has a website – or with your competitor whose presence online is solid and whose reputation is backed by customers through a variety of channels? I think the answer is pretty clear.

Innovation

People love creativity. They also love new things. Combine those two with social media and you’ve captivated them. Think outside of the normal way you do things when implementing your social media. After all, social media and inbound marketing are new ways to approach your current and new customers.

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Incentive

Why should anyone follow you on Facebook or Twitter? Do you have an incentive to offer them? Maybe it’s a special that is released to your online communities before it’s offered to your storefront customers. Either way, find a way to offer an incentive to those who follow you and watch your following grow!

Engagement

This is the biggest part of social media. Forget the surveys you used to send to customers via snail mail. Question them online. Engage with them in front of other customers. The attention you pay to them will solidify your relationship with your customers and impress those considering hiring you or purchasing from you.

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Education

At least twice a month, we get a call from someone with a great new concept or idea. More times than not, it requires education of customers and changing the way they do things. Social media can help train the mind to visit websites on a more regular basis and create a Top of Mind Awareness for your customers, which is what all business owners want, now don’t we?

Be sure to leave some of your business’ best practices of whipping your word of mouth marketing into shape through social media in the comments below.

Don’t have the time to properly implement social media for your brand or business? To achieve higher rankings in search engines, begin or promote your blog, create a video and more, contact JayRodChicago today!

The debate on hiring and outsourcing public relations, or any position for that matter, is eternal. The cost of benefits is ever increasing and the field of under qualified professionals seems to grow daily as well.

I put a call out to people who have had experience in outsourcing and in-house PR/social media. Below is a blend of my ideas, thoughts and research as well as those of respected professionals throughout the nation (with proper attribution). I would love to hear from more professionals as well, so leave comments below on what your experiences have been with outsourcing or hiring PR/social media professionals.

What type of time commitment can you give your brand? Some businesses are so busy with day-to-day customers and orders that promotions take a back seat. It never should. What’s here today could be gone tomorrow and planning for growth is always mandatory. Do you have a staff member available to run your blog, link building, press release distribution, direct mail campaign and more? Or is it something that a secretary can do on an as-needed basis? Promotions, public relations and especially social media take time if done right.

Who will be accountable for your promotions? Will it be Suzy the Secretary or an experienced public relations firm? Accountability is something that many business owners get caught up with. After spending so much money on launching my business, do I want promotions to be in the hands of a PR firm or must they be someone who works for me that knows the daily obstacles we face?

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How cost effective would it be in-house versus outsourced? Health insurance, office space, a full-time salary and other added perks need to be taken into account when deciding which is best for your company.

“Your time and resources are limited,” says Lindsay Hansen, founder of Phoenix-based LDH Consulting, a public relations and marketing firm. “In today’s economy, many companies have been forced to lay off staff and cut marketing/communications budgets.  Now, more than ever, companies need to maximize their marketing dollars and working with a PR consultant can be beneficial.  Most independent contractors have the ability to work within your budget and not require large monthly retainers.”

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“You want better access and coverage in the media,” she adds. “Most experienced PR consultants have the same access to journalists that large agencies do. They work with local, national and trade media on a regular basis and have the tools, software and programs to find reporters and editors at any media outlet in the world. Additionally, they have established relationships with members of the media and are considered a trusted source.”

“Consistency is key,” Hansen adds. “Often times, companies make the mistake of having different in-house staffers or interns write basic press releases, update web site copy or pitch a story to the media. While some companies view this as a cost savings measure, they quickly learn the smallest projects can impact their image and messaging.  The last thing you want to do is have mixed messages going out to staff, board members, the public or media. It can end up hurting your credibility and that is much more costly than just hiring a communications consultant to work with your business and maintain consistent branding.”

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When Song Division, a company that specializes in teambuilding, conference energizing and experiential marketing, moved to the United States from Australia shortly before 2008, it outsourced its public relations.

“The results were good but in a very specific field of HR press,” said Marsha Sharpe of Song Division. “At the end of 2008, we took that back and in 2009 we've done our own with great results in industry magazines such as EVENT MARKETER and BIZBASH.

“The questions we asked ourselves were could we do a good job of PR without the contacts or knowledge of the industry? Of course money was a concern as well, making sure that we had some type of return on investment. To be honest, we find doing our own public relations better, as we can communicate what we do best... We also know how much time is going into getting PR and what works and doesn't so it’s of benefit in the future.”

Rodger Roeser, founder and president of Eisen Marketing Group, wrote an article on this very topic titled “Agency or In House: The Fiscal and Pragmatic Truth.” Check it out here.

The Voice of Your Customer is a marketing firm that assists clients to penetrate niche markets using surveys, focus groups, secret shopping, customer service training and media campaigns.

“Although we are a marketing and PR firm, in 2009, we consulted with a graduate intern to manage our social media presence and contracted with another PR expert to manage external communications for our firm,” said Crystal L Kendrick, president of The Voice of Your Customer. “As the President, I realized that our area of expertise is in the area of reaching niche and underserved populations. As our business grew, I wanted a person who was experienced in managing communications of small businesses in our region. The PR expert has well established relationships in the local media and was experienced in using blogs, articles, news wires, philanthropy and awards to increase awareness about our firm among our target customers. Additionally, we did not have the capacity to manage our external communications.  We weighed the total cost of contracting with a PR expert against having a less than stellar external communications program.

“The decision was a no brainer,” she said. “We hired the PR expert as a consultant and never looked back.  In the past six months, exposure in the local, national and niche media has been nothing less than phenomenal.”

Come back to our blog Dec. 28 for our End-of-Decade Viral Review and Jan. 4 to kick start a healthy approach to your business’ well-being in 2010 with a Social Media Six-Pack.

I want to hear from you! Which is better and why? Outsourcing PR/social media work or in-house? Leave me your comments below and be sure to share this on your favorite social media sites by using the “Share Article” button below!

Jason M. Rodriguez is creator of JayRodChicago.com, which specializes in social media, PR, marketing, business writing and more. He can give social media presentations to large groups, analyze your website’s SEO and social media efforts and, most importantly, provide promotion for your brand with a variety of different tools.

Get your social media campaign started today! (312) 515-9459

When asked what I do for a living, I generally say, “Internet marketing” to those who aren’t tech savvy. To those who know a thing or two about computers, I tell them “social media” and they think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

For those who know better, I include link building, forum posts, keyword-rich press releases and blogging.

I say all that to get to this: A mere 2 percent of my unofficial survey think of reputation management as social media. It plays an integral part of social media in business – almost as integral as engagement – and it is often overlooked.

Here are four ways businesses can get their reputation management under control via social media channels:

1)      Know where disgruntled customers would go to complain online. Sites like personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp! and Google come to mind as the more popular avenues that people use to complain about service.

2)      Find out your industry sites and monitor. For the hospitality business, it could be TripAdvisor, Qype or Travelocity. For home improvement, it could be ServiceMagic. Either way, you need to know where disgruntled customers may go before they even think about coming to you.

3)      Get yourself an account on each of these. Trust me, it’ll be worth it. You not only need to monitor these sites, but you need to be prepared with answers. I don’t advise airing all of your dirty laundry or getting into a full-fledged fight with customers on these, but your satisfied customers and (equally as important) your potential customers need to know that you handle discrepencies in a timely and professional manner.

4)      Set a review date and stick to it. Yes, of course this is going to take your time away, but the reputation of your brand is worth it!

Jason M. Rodriguez is creator of JayRodChicago.com, which specializes in social media, PR, marketing, business writing and more. He can give social media presentations to large groups, analyze your website’s SEO and social media efforts and, most importantly, provide promotion for your brand with a variety of different tools.

Get your social media campaign started today! (312) 515-9459

Many, if not all, of us have heard the word “blog.” If you don’t know what it means, think of a diary. But instead of telling your diary what you did today, tell your customers different aspects of the knowledge you have about your business or industry.

People blog for fun (for instance, about TV shows) and others have created a rather lucrative living blogging (do a Google search for Perez Hilton). But did you know that a blog for your site can mean more business in more ways than one?

A recent WAVE3 report, a leading web company, states that 34 percent of active web users blog about their opinions on products and brands and 36 percent think more positively about companies that have blogs.

So here is a list of ways a blog can mean more business for you: 

1)      First off, blog for advice and not promotion. You have a wealth of knowledge. Share it with your customers and potential customers. For those of you who read this blog every Monday [plug], you may remember I talked about this here.

2)      Your blogging can lead to better search engine results. Keyword-rich blogs will help customers who search on search engines find you better. For instance, if you own a plant nursery in Michigan, you may offer tips on what to plant and during what season. You’re not selling your product directly to the reader, but you are offering advice that has brought the reader who searched “when to plant in Michigan” to your site.

3)      New material = More to promote = Happy search engine. It all goes back to content is king. Bring in new material on a consistent basis, promote it on sites like digg, reddit, StumbleUpon and more, and get people of like minds to read your material and promote it to their friends. When a search engine comes across your site, it looks to see if there is new material and it looks to see if your material has been linked to social media sites.

4)      Blogging leads to engagement. You engage your readers and encourage feedback or their thoughts by blogging. Interaction and engagement are two large pieces associated with social media.

5)      Blogging lends well to a Call to Action. Oh great, blogging is fun. But it sure doesn’t pay the bills because I’m not Perez Hilton or Mike Drudge! Blogs lead to business if done properly. At the end of each blog, as you’ll see shortly : ), have a call to action. Something that will tell the reader: “I’ve given you this information. Are you convinced you need my services or product?” This is where the direct sales comes in!

As promised, we have a call to action here. In fact, we’re offering a Ghost Blogging special (we interview you, we write, you approve, you post and we promote) from now until the end of October. There’s more information here.

For all of your social media, public relations, marketing and writing needs, look no further than JayRodChicago. We serve companies across the globe. Call us today at 312-515-9459.