The Internet Merchants Association and its sponsors recently presented eight educational sessions to the ASD trade show attendees. The bi-annual sourcing show was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center with over 30.000 visitors in attendance.
Platinum and Diamond level sponsors including Vendio, Alibaba and MIVA Merchant were among the featured speakers on topics ranging from integrating social media to building effective web sites and search engine optimization.
Most of the speakers have provided their slide decks so that session attendees can review them and download them. The slide presentations are available at slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/imamerchants
The Internet Merchants Association is now accepting applications for the March, 2011 educational sessions. Speaking preference is given to all IMA Platinum and Diamond level sponsors. Interested parties can learn more about the speaking and membership opportunities by contacting Pat Pepe. She can be reached by email at pat@imamerchants.org.
E-commerce moves so swiftly. Seems like just the other day we were talking about Google Checkout, and now we’ve got to figure out whether or not we’re going to use Facebook’s social plugins. And the list goes on, doesn’t it?
Because we at IMA are serious about the benefits we provide to ecommerce practitioners, we’re now offering etailers a unique opportunity to join the association and reap the full benefits of being a member—including access to the IMA’s private member forum, where you can engage with and learn from other members, gaining insight into e-commerce best practices you won’t find anywhere else.
Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond members can also avail additional amenities depending on their membership level, including a dedicated company platform within IMA’s member-only forum, speaking opportunities, and discounted rates to the IMA’s annual conference held every March in conjunction with the annual ASD/AMD trade show.
Effective immediately etailers can join the IMA at the Bronze level (a US $99 value) for one year. Just select the “Bronze Plan” on our registration page here, and you’ll be in.
I budget a lot of money on seminars every year, I feel my education is important to me and my business. Although IMA is fairly a new trade association, I continue to be impressed with the conferences that is put on. This year’s conference, which I’m still thinking about, was no exception.
I didn’t have the opportunity to go to all of the ASD & IMA seminars (this photo by IMA president Fred Neff is of just one of the well-attended seminars).
Because I’m familiar with videos and blogging, the rest of the social media venues and networks intrigue me most. So I found this video extremely powerful, and I hope you’ll take the time to watch it.
I keep remembering what Rick Wilson of Miva Merchant (an IMA diamond member) said: social media is a “circle of life.” It’s about the three C’s: connections, then conversation, and then conversations. So if we can build a community of supporters for our businesses and give them good content, they can help us tremendously with our marketing.
Here are some free tools I learned about at the conference:
Backtype.com, which is a real-time tool for you to keep tabs of what people are saying about your business
Alterian has a freemium version of its monitoring service for you to monitor your social media venues
Here is a free tool that helps you with documents, www.docstoc.com
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions, who will be speaking at the 2010 IMA Conference next month. If you haven’t already, sign up here.
Whether it is jungle drums or smoke signals, humans have always improvised methods of communications and connections to each other. Village gatherings formed early social circles and networks. Communications have always been evolving – messengers carrying messages on horseback to the pony express to railroads to today’s USPS, UPS and Fed Ex all satisfy the need of communications.
Have you noticed some of these communications means have survived? Even though we do not use the telegraph, we use the Internet to communicate with short messages today called microblogging.
For a business it is both a challenge and a necessity to find new ways to increase the efficiency of your business.
In the past businesses could make the changes and expect the customers to adapt. In the new millennium, media is now more often in the hands of the users and businesses are beginning to adapt. The Internet, websites and social networks are now replacing village gatherings and spanning users across the globe communing together to discuss common interests, discuss products and companies.
The speed at which conversation spreads has changed the pattern of how movie reviews worked. In an August 2009 article Michael Sragow wrote in the Washington Post, “Although word of mouth could always make or break a movie, it usually took days to affect the box office. But the rise of social networking tools such as Twitter might be narrowing that time frame to hours. And that has Hollywood on edge.”
As a business owner wouldn’t you like to know what your customers are talking about when it comes to your products and your business? These new media tools also give business the same power to learn feedback almost instantaneously.
The 3-step process you could use to shape your strategy is:
1. Listen
2. Engage
3. Create
Listen
Think of the listening phase as an extension of your existing communication and feedback mechanism. The main difference is that feedback through email, phone calls, web forms and maybe even snail mail is mainly directly to you – social networks offer an opportunity to listen in on to public conversations about you. Here’s what you do:
1. Set up Google Alerts
2. Search for your brand /product or your company or your geographical area on http://search.twitter.com
3. Use a tool like Backtype to monitor comment conversations on blog posts.
Engage
In the listening phase, you have identified where the conversations relating to your business are taking place. Now, you can participate by showcasing your knowledge and thought leadership or even asking for feedback:
1. Setup profiles in at least 3 social networks which you have identified as helpful for your business (Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter could be the three)
2. Identify 3 blogs on your particular field or industry to follow. Comment when you have a opinion. In case you are mentioned in any blog post head over the blog and thank the author
3. Look at the questions on networks like Linkedin to add your expertise
Create
This is the phase where you will have learned enough about the conversations about your business and your products to be able to begin creating valuable content that is not about you but your customers and the community:
1. Make sure you have a website. You can get one for free at Network Solutions
2. Start a Facebook Page and encourage your customers to become fans of your page. Create special offers for your Facebook Fans
3. Reinforce your web presence with a blog. Make the blog personal along with writing useful tips for your customers. It does not always have to be about your products., Invite your customers to tell their stories.
You should measure the success of your efforts in terms of increased brand mentions, foot traffic or online traffic, increase in customer satisfaction or higher product awareness leading to higher customer uptake.
Remember all these tools are making human connections so you should show the personality behind your business. And make sure you remember your goals for engaging in social media for your business, since these tools can also be distracting if not used diligently.
When I speak at conferences the best reward is the communication or Twitter messages I get from the audience, sometimes even after a year, with some good news about using social tools for great success. I am hoping the same thing will happen when I speak more on the topic at the IMA conference in March. If there are some topics you would like to hear about specifically please let me know.
Recommended reading:
Israel, Shel, Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods. Portfolio Hardcover (September 3, 2009)
Scott, David Meerman, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. WILEY, (June 4, 2007)
Campbell, Anita Online publication for small business owners,entrepreneurs: http://smallbiztrends.com
Shashi Bellamkonda is Director – Social Media & Social Media Swami of Network Solutions, a company that works together to help small business succeed online with web hosting, do-it-yourself website builder software, online marketing tools and domain names. Visit his blog here. Shashi is a regular contributor to the DC Examiner and Tech Cocktail. This article contains the opinions and observations of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of Network Solutions or its clients or partners. Connect with Shashi on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or BizSugar.
Remember how, in the “old” days, folks would “call on” others and, if they weren’t at home, they’d leave their calling card behind? I haven’t been able to find an academic reference to it, but it makes sense that the modern-day practice of exchanging business cards stems from there. And even in this highly electronic day and age, there’s still room for business cards, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
But are you maximizing the use of your most basic calling card? And that’s nothing more than your email signature.
We all suffer from email overload – I’ve long since stopped counting how many emails I get in a day. Even when I’m not working or on vacation, I use my BlackBerry to delete unnecessary emails from my inbox, in an effort to keep on top of the traffic (sigh, it never stops!).
But I also know that when I send an email out, it’s a unique way to remind others of what I do, particular affiliations I have and things that are important to me.
Here are three tips to maximize your email signature as a marketing tool:
1. Proclaim yourself.
You normally include your contact information in your e-signature, right? Why not include hyperlinks to all the relevant data you think people should have access to? For example, these could be your website, blog or Twitter handle. How about your Etsy site or another storefront? If it’s in your signature, it’s right there for the recipients to click through to, yet you’re not hitting them over the head with it.
2. Add a visual touch.
Go one step further and add some visual pizazz to your e-signature; and a terrific way of doing this is by using a program such as WiseStamp. What’s cool about this is that you can actually embed the hyperlinks rather than simply include them, and you can also include select social profiles such as Twitter, SlideShare, etc. at the bottom of your signature. Here’s a screenshot from their site:
3. Put a shortening service to work for you.
Working on a special promotion? Use a URL-shortening service such as tr.im, bit.ly, ow.ly (or several others) to draw attention to it just above your signature block. For example, I used this as a way to raise funds around my birthday: “Why I’d like you to know how old I am: http://tr.im/K6Yi.”
Granted, it’s not often that a woman is proclaiming her age for all and sundry to hear, but if you use short but sweet copy and a dedicated URL, it’s an easy way to add to your marketing mix with almost no effort.
What other ways do you use your e-signature “real estate” to market yourself? Please share by leaving a comment below.
Here is a preview of just one session from the 2010 IMA Conference….
Have you ever shopped on a website and couldn’t find the checkout link? Have you wanted to add another product and couldn’t figure out how to do it? Were you required to fill out a lengthy registration form that seemed to never end? And then you finally got to the end only to find out that the products were out of stock? Does this describe YOUR checkout process?
Customers want to buy your products and they want the process to be quick and easy without any hassles. Rick Wilson, MIVA Merchant will be presenting “Top 10 Tips for Designing a Great Checkout Process” at the Internet Merchants Association Conference in Las Vegas, March 2-3, 2010. This is just one topic that you don’t want to miss!
