Blogging, Social Media, and Relationship Skills: Small Business Triple Threat

What excites me about Ann-Mary is how convinced she already is of the power of blogging and social media in today’s small business culture. Because she’s also a Public Relations professional, she knows how vital relationship skills are in driving a business’s marketing efforts. Ann-Mary is exactly the kind of woman I wrote about in “Generation and Gender Gaps: Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing” — the fact that she’s from an older generation that’s accustomed to traditional forms of marketing and advertising doesn’t hold her back from jumping into the realm of social media and blogging, because she’s already attuned to the importance of building and nurturing relationships simply by virtue of her gender (I hope this doesn’t get me branded as sexist!).

New England Multimedia uses social media and blogging to build reciprocal relationships and educate prospects

Still, even without using every tool at my disposal, and spending too much time on one thing and not enough on another, the impact blogging and social media have had on New England Multimedia has been dramatic, most notably for the relationships we’re building with people in our target market. We’re seeing relationships become leads, and leads become conversions, in ways that simply aren’t possible without these platforms.

How about you? How are you seeing relationship skills, social media and blogging change the landscape of marketing and PR?

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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.

Since Search Engine Optimization is vital for web marketing, I started researching SEO plugins for Chrome, and then decided to ask SEO pros, web designers, and web developers, “What SEO plugins do you use?”

I’m especially interested in SEO plugins for Google Chrome, but don’t let that stop you from answering one or more of the following questions. I want to hear about the best tools out there, and I know you do, too. SEO developers are welcome to trumpet their work for us to check out.

I’ll post results in a separate blog one week from today.

1) What’s your favorite SEO plugin? What browser is the plugin designed for?

2) What makes your favorite stand out from the crowd?

3) What feature(s) do you rely on most?

Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!

Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.

Laura Roeder, "Your Backstage Pass To Twitter"

Yesterday I blogged about someone else for the first time — Laura Roeder, she of “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter” fame, among other endeavors. Her story is inspiring for those of you who want to build businesses that reflect your passions, who want to work for yourselves instead of being beholden by other people’s schedules and whims, and who want to hear that because of the power of social media and the incredible reach of the internet, regular people just like you can make it happen with some knowledge and ingenuity.

Read yesterday’s blog, “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter, Pt 1″ to get the beginning of the story and hear about Laura’s promotional webinar “The True Story of How a ‘Waste of Time Tool’ Launched My Six-Figure Business in Less Than 12 Months.” Don’t let the title mislead you into thinking this is another one of those “Get Rich Quick” schemes. It’s not. It takes work. It takes thought. It takes planning. But it’s work anyone can do, and best of all, harnesses the power of the internet and social media using free and inexpensive tools available to anyone.

More of Laura’s Story and A Few More Takeaways For You:

As promised, here are some more inspiring nuggets from Laura’s story about using Twitter to change direction and get the life she wanted:

1) Laura knew that networking is important, but she didn’t want to go to face-to-face networking events anymore, chasing down contracts. She saw and sees Twitter as one big networking event, and used it as such to build relationships with her followers. She gave very valuable tips on how to network, tips I’ve seen for face-to-face networking. Her point: Don’t be too “salesy”! Be interested in people!

2) Echoing something I’ve been saying to everyone, your online reputation is so important! Be encouraging. Be kind. Don’t criticize. Don’t start fights, and don’t take part in them. Relationship skills will go far in the social media world!

3) Leveraging her social reputation and her contact and follower lists, Laura decided to launch her first Online Training Program, “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter,” using a live video webinar format. She tweeted about a free promotional webinar she was going to host, which she did on February 12, 2009, with a launch date for the paid Online Training Program on February 19th. Excitedly, Laura shared that in that very first promo webinar, she made $3,000 in sales of “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter.” In case that’s not impressive, she shared that it would sometimes take her months to land a web design contract of that size (we know what that’s like). She made this in one live webinar.

4) Here’s where Twitter really worked for Laura. As she hosted her online video classes for “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter,” she would tweet about them, and her students would tweet as well — to each other and the world! The Twitter followers her webinar attendees had on their own lists were now hearing all about Laura and her training program. Free advertising for Laura and her brand!

Get People Talking!

By the way, at this point in Laura’s inspiring story, she didn’t even have a blog yet! A couple of months in, she built that blog using a generic, free template, nothing fancy, nothing embedded into another website. She said she hated to write, and the thought of having to put down her thoughts regularly in a blog was intimidating. Undaunted, Laura decided to use video to blog, and I’m sure that’s part of her success — video captures her personality and the “You can do this!” quality she has when she shares her knowledge and experience. Video blogging is the best way to make a human connection with your followers (note to self!). Of course, it helps if you have Laura’s infectious smile and her passion for what she does!

The best part of all? You can see that she’s one of us.

Everything Laura teaches is working for her: she’s building buzz. Here I am blogging about a total stranger, with no strings attached, no compensation, no reward other than I find her and her story amazing and inspiring. In a time when so many have lost their jobs, or have dreams of starting their own businesses but feel ill-equipped, she makes her viewer feel like everything will work out with ingenuity, relationship skills and a little hard work. My blogging about her is social proof enough for me.

The free webinar Laura gave yesterday was, in all honesty, to promote her online training program “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter” at the end. But that’s how she got the life she wanted, and got out of the career she was tired of. The way she talked about her paid online training program is so honest and refreshing, and she gave so much rich, useful content for free, that I walked away feeling like I just spent an hour with a girlfriend who’s made it and who shared her secrets with me.

Laura gave away much more valuable information that I’ve given you here. If you want to know how you can use Twitter to build the kind of reputation she’s built (and is still building), check out “Your Backstage Pass To Twitter.”

UPDATE: I just got word that Laura is offering her free webinar again this Friday, April 9, 2010, under the title “How I Built a 6 Figure Business From Scratch in Less Than One Year.” Do it!

Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!

Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.