Marketing Strategy Blog - Small Business Marketing - Page 8

Social media has hit a new high. It no longer is something that businesses can think about including as part of their marketing strategy. It now is something NO BUSINESS can afford to not include.

During the week, I had a conversation with another provider for one of our clients. They are basically graphic designers who have done the odd website development. From my conversations with them, I am almost certain that the website developer is either a freelancer or a graphic designer who has learned to use Wordpress. There are some things that are really obvious in the work they have just completed.

In light of the past week whereby a person who is on television on occasion has been admitted to hospital after reportedly trying to take her life, the question of managing social media profiles is now on everyone's lips.

Cyber bullying exists but often its the ones that cry that they have been bullied, that have infact in some shape or form contributed to the situation. There is a social media protocol and simple solution to most things. "Block" exists and if you ever want to not read something being said, it simply takes you a few seconds. Secondly, never feed the situation - and that goes online or offline.

In the case of Charlotte Dawson, it was her blatant put down of New Zealand, her place of birth, that started the ball rolling.

Yesterday at a breakfast hosted by Business Chicks, hundreds of women tweeted quotes from guest speaker Ita Buttrose.

The hashtag was #businesschicks and #itabuttrose. It's impact was for all to see, as the event was trending somewhere in the social media sphere and people who had never heard of Ita Buttrose from all over the world, were joining the 'trend' and retweeting tweets related to her speech. Such is the power of a #hashtag and of course, my favourite social media platform, Twitter.

What is a hashtag?

A #hashtag is a symbol or a metadata tag used on microblogging social networking sites Twitter, identi.ca and Google that is followed by a keyword phrase without spaces. It ties the conversations of different users into one stream, which you can find by searching the hashtag in Twitter search or by using a third-party monitoring tool like HootSuite.

All tags are case insensitive and can become trending topics if enough people start using it and virally spending the 'word'.

When trending goes viral

A hashtag can go viral very fast. Take for instance the re-launch of Big Brother. The tweeting went ballistic on Twitter and many popular tweets were displayed during the show. The hashtag #BB trended through the entire episode. Just like when #thevoiceau was on. It trended as did all of the judges. Who didn't tweet something about #joelmadden #keithurban #seal ?

What can small businesses do to get their messages across on Twitter with hashtags

It's hard to judge, but popular hashtags for small businesses are: #smallbusiness #entrepreneur #inspiration #success - make up your own one but make sure it is clever and you never know where it may go.

The reality is that on Twitter or any other medium it is not critical to 'trend' on a topic. What is important is the information that communicate and the story that those 160 characters tell.

Daunted by the prospect of another year clicking over, yet excited by the adventures ahead of me and what presents itself as opportunities and fulfilment of lifelong dreams. A birthday they say is to be celebrated, yet I am not sure that many feel the same way year after year once we pass our age-old milestones.

Yes, I will be considered a year older in a matter of days and it is reason for reflection.

There is absolutely no rest for the wicked!

An action packed weekend, filled with laughter, good friends, great food and a few bottles of french Bordeaux, it is fair to say, I am ready to get my teeth sunk in to the week ahead.

While it may seem all fun and games, it isn't always and is definately dependent on how you look at it.