Do You Have "Stealth" Accounts?

Stealth may be good for military purposes, but for social media, it just means that your profile can't be seen. It's not really a desirable trait.

Maybe it’s a Facebook business page that hasn’t seen any love or attention over the last six months. Maybe it’s a LinkedIn profile that hasn’t been updated since you quit your last job. Or are you neglecting your tweeple?

It takes ten minutes and a fleeting whim to create a social media account. Very little effort is involved. If you are using social media for business reasons, accounts that are created and neglected may be doing you more harm than good.

I recently read an interesting Biznik.com article on this subject referring to these as “stealth” profiles. You find them, they may pique your interest for one reason or another, and the person behind the profile is nowhere to be found.

The reaction of the person potentially interested in your service is not a favorable one. They are more likely to move on to your competitor’s page or profile than to contact you for your services. Customer lost.

So, be thorough. Don’t post information you are not comfortable with, but make sure you are aren’t leaving pertinent information blank. Try to keep up with your tweets. Maintain your presence. It will only help in the long run.

Most of us have been on the flip side of this at some point or another. We get excited, thinking “there’s a bookstore in my town I didn’t know about,” or something to that effect.

You didn’t know about it because maybe the business has been closed for years, and they dropped their social media midstream. Worse, maybe the business is still open and they just didn’t see the value in the social media experiment. Again, customer lost.

So, don’t go into social media half hearted. Stay vigilant, stay active, and hopefully see the results. Neglected accounts detract from your business’s goals.

Your Business Needs A Copywriter

Remember when consumers checked the phone book when they wanted to know about a business? Remember when they checked newspapers for the ads? Remember direct mail?

Time marches on. At times these components may make sense for a percentage of your advertising budget, but you need to reach customers where they are—and for 99 percent of businesses in today’s day and age, that means finding them online.

Businesses are starting to recognize the importance in their web site, and set aside money for an advertising budget. Now, you have web sites beautifully designed with a message that begins with “Welcome to my new web site!!!” or something to that effect. If you don’t see anything wrong with this, or have done it yourself, you need to hire a copywriter to help with commercial writing.

As a business owner, you may love to write. You may think you’re good at it, and you may see doing it yourself as a way to cut costs. This is such a crucial part of bringing business in, that you don’t want to leave it to yourself anymore.

When someone wants to know about a type of business they don’t reach for a huge thick book. They take their phone out, or go to their tablet or laptop. They Google it, and receive the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. If they don’t find information about your business in this process, you lose.

An experienced copywriter will make sure that all the pieces are in place for your business to rank well in the search engines. This is the equivalent of a big expensive ad buy. It’s the way that mom and pops can compete with big boxes.

Ranking in the search engines alone is no longer enough, either. People can’t go to your web site and see grammatical or spelling mistakes. They can’t see a whole bunch of half-cooked thoughts. They need a story. They need a message.

While “Welcome to my new web site!!!” may get you an “A” for manners, it does little to pull people in. You have only a few seconds to grab someone’s attention. You need to tell them why they need what you sell, and you need to do it in a way that’s not overtly pushy. It’s a tall task, and a copywriter can help.

A good copywriter should know how to make sure your copy will help the site rank higher in the search engine. They should be able to recommend keywords, and why they will help you. They should be able to dance along the line between writing for readers and writing for the search engines, landing on the appropriate side at the appropriate times.

A good copywriter can make suggestions for your web site that will make it better. Say you sell cheese. A good copywriter may suggest a page on your web site devoted to cheese and wine pairings. Bonus points if he suggests QR codes on the bottle so that people may find those pairings from the dinner table.

Simply put, a good copywriter will help you reach your audience, and bring you business—something as a small business owner you can no longer afford to overlook.

If You Love Something, Give It Away

On Monday, I plan on attending a free concert in Chicago from a band more than established enough to play a big show in one of the city’s music clubs.

The band Iron and Wine has staked their claim in the indie rock world, and could probably fill any of the popular clubs in the city. So why play for free? The simple answer is people talk. When people are hooked into social media networks, their conversations reach a lot further.

By playing this show, they will increase their fan base by playing to a crowd larger than the one that would pay to see them in the clubs. Those who hear them for the first time Monday may buy their latest album on Tuesday.

It’s a smart business move. A high profile give away can do as much for you as traditional advertising. When people talk (positively, of course) the word of mouth can become an effective advertising tool.

You may take an immediate loss on the giveaway, like Iron and Wine will on ticket sales. Think of all the pictures that will pop up around Facebook from those at the show.

Now chances are, your business may be a little more low profile. But if you are in the restaurant business, a drink every once in a while to make one of your regulars feel at home should be nothing.

I regularly work out of a neighborhood Starbucks. There’s a manager there who occasionally gives me a drink or bakery item without charging me. I always tip, and it gives me a cozy, intimate feeling from a big-time chain. Translation—I keep coming back. The money I spend there next month will far outweigh the handful of breaks they give, so we both win.

What can your business do to reign people in? Social networking adds a new and interesting dimension to this. It allows thousands to find out about one small act of kindness. So try something creative and let me know how it works.