Constant Commentary

Ever wonder if you should try Facebook ads? Looks like now would be a great time.

Experts agree that it’s time to start thinking long-term and move beyond just "Likes" and followers.

Could your online reputation hurt your business? A new report says yes!

All this and more in this week’s hot topics. 

Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe has been around for 24 years, but President Martin Horowitz explains that the process his business uses to hand-craft each frame dates back to the Renaissance.

“We start everything from scratch here,” he says. That means carving basswood to make a frame that’s just the right fit, to carefully mixing gesso from rabbit-skin glue, calcium carbonate, and warm water, before sanding it and applying it to clay coats that are generally yellow, but have highlights ranging from red to blue to black.

The process is known as water gilding. “We basically do it the same way they did it in the 15th century, except we use spray guns,” Martin says. The frames themselves are crafted to resemble a different period, from 16th-century Italian frames to 19th-century impressionist frames, all the way to the modernist frames of the 1930s and 1940s, and the contemporary ones showed today.

Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe may be incorporating centuries-worth of styles in each frame, but that doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has stood still, either. After hearing from his friend Noberto Zamudio of Peyton-Wright Gallery that Constant Contact set the “gold” standard for email marketing,  Martin decided to try it to better reach his growing client base - and in the process, became Constant Contact’s 500,000th customer.

When you’re trying to promote your own business, people often say that it’s all about connections.

Unfortunately, the advice tends to stop there. How do you meet people? Networking opportunities come in all shapes and sizes, from the workshop to the convention, but the most frustrating part can be keeping track of who you talk to and what those people do.

This is precisely the problem with which Jill Singer, founder of Jill Singer Graphics, recently wrestled.

“I’m involved with so much networking, and many people I meet are also networking all the time,” she explains. “It’s a continuous challenge to stay on top of it all. Meeting and staying connected with people can be tough, too.”

Her graphic design firm, based out of White Plains, N.Y., has been helping clients to create professional-looking promotional materials for almost 30 years. And, as a one-woman show, she has had to mostly rely on networking and self-promotion to get the word out about her services.

At the end of a hard day of networking, Jill would always have business cards scattered in the bureau, a few in her wallet, and some contact information in her iPhone. It was overwhelming to remember who was interested in her business. This past August, that all changed when a client asked her to help with his Constant Contact Email Marketing campaign.

“He was really tricking me,” she laughs, “because he knew that it would be a great tool for me to use, too. And he was right.”

New tools to help with social media marketing are popping up everywhere. But many small businesses and nonprofits just don’t have the time to keep up and research all the options. Don’t you wish you had someone to tell you about the tools that are proven to be really easy and useful? We get it! That's why last week we asked our Facebook fans, “What tool(s) do you use to help with your social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?” Now, the results are in.

Ever get tired of just "Liking" something on Facebook? You may be in luck — the social network is developing “Actions,” buttons that let users do all sorts of things other than Like, from clicking “Own” on a product page to “Read” on a book’s Facebook Page.

As Facebook unrolled these new features, anyone looking to brush up on an obscure fact, learn a history lesson, or read a biography on Wednesday suddenly found that Wikipedia greeted them with a foreboding black screen. Fortunately, food was unaffected. Foursquare users who wanted to know the location and cost of all nearby tacos — or any other kind of food — discovered they could now use the “Explore” feature of the popular mobile service. 

Read on to find out more about these topics and more in this week’s news roundup.

For many small businesses, there’s a post-holiday-season lull when shoppers tighten their belts and the flow of in-store and online traffic slows to a halt. These dark days of winter don’t have to be that dark. In fact, using this time wisely may yield far greater returns despite the sales slowdowns.

Here are seven ways to make the most of the post-holiday shopping rush and still drive customers to your business.

A few weeks ago, I got a friend request on Facebook. I recognized the name and clicked on the person’s profile to check out his information. He was pretty well-connected in his career and we had a few friends in common. I had a problem though: I had spoken with him only once on the phone — for a project I was putting together at a place I haven’t worked at for three years. I’ve never met him in real life and really know nothing about him.

I declined the request. But that’s just me. Someone else might have accepted it. Our interpretations of what’s personal, what’s professional, what we share, and who we let into our worlds have gotten fuzzy because of social media. Millennial Branding found that Generation Y is happy to blur those lines — they use Facebook as an extension of their professional life. For some people, that can cause problems when you’re sharing information about your personal life and forget that the colleague in the next cubicle is watching every social move you make.

I present Constant Contact’s social media webinars and frequently get questions from attendees on how to separate the personal from the professional in this public space. One solution is to create a personal social media policy for each of your profiles. Look at your social networks and decide: What do you use this space for? Who do you want to let in? Think about the things you talk about on each social network — do you really want your potential new friends or followers to know those details? Do you want to know theirs? Here’s my personal social media policy.

Small businesses are challenged by two things: Getting new customers, and making the most of the relationships they have with existing customers.

With social media and word of mouth marketing on the rise, it's become clear that the greatest source of new customers is your current customers. The more you treat your loyal, current customers like VIPs, the more they will come back. And, those customers will interact with you and about talk about you on their social networks, opening up the door to new customers. Your current customers are your most important marketing asset.

Now combine that with mobile. If 2011 was the year small businesses began to take advantage of social media, then 2012 will almost certainly be the year of mobile. Consumers will soon be able to do everything right from the palm of their hand, and many of them already are:

• According to Nielsen, 43% of all mobile users own a smartphone. Among those under 45, the number is more than 50%.
• A related Pew Internet study found that 87% of smartphone users access the internet or email on their device, including two-thirds who do it daily to look for deals and information.

The point is, consumers these days are "always on," and are connecting with businesses and each other wherever they are. Making the most of mobile technologies to engage those customers and encourage their loyalty and advocacy is the natural next step.

With this in mind, I'm so happy to announce that Constant Contact has acquired CardStar, which helps shoppers stay connected with their favorite merchants through a mobile app. This free mobile loyalty app consolidates membership and rewards cards on smartphones, letting consumers use a single application rather than a series of physical cards. The app currently has more than 2 million active users and is available on major mobile platforms such as iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

It breaks my heart every time I see a question posted to a business or organization’s Facebook Page that goes unanswered, with that lonely question mark dangling, doomed to be ignored. Around 95% of Facebook posts on brand pages suffer a similar fate. Some businesses and organizations may be unsure of what to post, some may not know how to post, and the vast majority certainly don’t have the time to reply to every comment that comes their way.

A Facebook Page that's been abandoned by its creator isn’t a pretty thing, and it certainly won’t attract any new fans. In fact, it can give people the impression that the entire organization is lagging behind the times. So, what do you do? What’s the key to consistently posting good, engaging content?

The truth is that any small business or organization can be successful at Facebook marketing. You just have to ask yourself one question: “What are my fans and I both passionate about?”

Hooray! Someone wants to join your email list. Having someone sign up for your email list is a fantastic first step in engaging your customers and building a relationship with them. And that's a very important step because it's your chance to set expectations for why this person should want to be on your list — and stay there. Accordingly, you want to make a good first impression.

With that in mind, here are three best practices to remember when you're deciding what to put on your registration form.