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It’s funny to me when I talk to entrepreneurs about how they’re marketing their products.  They might mention online ads, but for the most part, they’re looking at print advertisement or even radio ads.  When I mention social media, they almost recoil.  EVERY TIME.  It’s just very odd to see that reaction when I’ve been so immersed for so long, but the stigma?  Definitely there.

I don’t know about that FaceSpace thing.  I don’t have time to be a tweeter.  LinkedIn to what?

I’ve heard ‘em all.

But the truth is, when I actually sit them down and explain the social media front to them, and show them some shortcuts and pointers?  They usually let go a huge sigh of relief and dive in headfirst.  Social media may seem overwhelming because .. admittedly .. there’s a lot of noise out there.  But when you put on some noise-canceling headphones and start listening .. really listening .. you realize what a huge impact a little effort can have on your bottom line.

Here’s some good tips about how to grow your social media circles.  These can apply to any social media forum, be it Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

1. You naturally have an audience.  Figure out how to get their attention. If you’re running a business, you’ve already got a captive audience.  And if you are selling something people want to buy, you have an unknown potential audience too.  Figure out where they are.  Are they on Twitter already?  Are they on Facebook?  If you need help, there’s a lot of free engines out there that will help you connect to your “community”.   Twellow and Tweeps are two good ones for Twitter that suggest friends on the Twitter platform based on your common interests.  And don’t be afraid to follow them if you don’t know them or know of them.. that’s what social media is all about!

2. Hold your Facebook Friends close, and your competition closer. Sure, it’s great to have a million Facebook friends, and just think of the sales potential there!  But don’t be afraid to connect to your competitors, too.  Friending a competitor not only shows that you’re .. friendly (I’m seeing an overuse of this word now), it also keeps you in the loop of your industry.  So read their blogs .. and comment on them, if you have something worthwhile to say! .. and stay close to them.  You’d be amazed at what you’ll learn and how invaluable that information can be to your business.

3. Connect.  Connect Connect Connect. Reach out and touch everyone.  Having 200 Twitter followers is great, but you’ll make much more worthy connections if you listen as well as broadcast to them.  Some Twitter engines like FollowCost give you a percentage of how often a Twitter user actually responds to its audience, allowing you to realize how the great (and productive!) users actually respond and talk to their audience.  It’s the difference between being a radio signal and a chat room.  People want to engage.  So talk to them.  Hit that @ as often as you have time to.

4. Stack your deck.  A little, anyway. You have friends and family that are already on these social forums.  Ask ‘em to help you out.  Watch any social experiment with human nature, and it will state the plain and simple truth: people like to follow a crowd.  If there’s a long line for something, people want to get in line without knowing what they’re standing there for .. simply because they don’t want to miss out on something great.  And it must be great if all of these people like it!  So ask your friends to do you a solid and join your cause.  If you can get your theatre half-full, the other half will follow without much effort.

NOW.  Having said all of that, make sure that you’re following us on Facebook and Twitter.  I think we’re pretty awesome to follow.

I thought it was odd; I can’t tell you how many “Sex & the City” related articles I found the week of the release.

And I’m not talking gossip articles, or fashion articles, or even movie reviews.  I’m talking BUSINESS ARTICLES.

About how you can identify your business brand with one of the four characters.  About how you can adapt Carrie’s weekly columns to how you direct your business plan.  About how women’s support of this movie should make you want to get on-board and say, “Yeah!  Us too!  Look, we watch that movie!”

.. I’m not sure I whole-heartedly agree.

Okay, let’s cut to the quick.  I know why those articles were written.  You do too.  It’s so that when someone types in Sex & the City into Google, there’s a chance that their article will come up.  And hey, maybe some extra views.. which might lead to some extra revenue of some sort .. or even free advertising .. and maybe a lead or two?

But what DAMAGE are you doing?

I’m all about upping your SEO, but should you do it at the risk of alienating some or most of your customers or audience?  For instance, at SimpleHelix, a lot of our customers (not all, but a lot) are male.  Would they feel comfortable with this article?  Would they feel like their business is in capable hands because we’ve adapted Miranda’s Type A attitude?  More importantly: WOULD THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANT?

No, of course they wouldn’t.  I watched a few seasons of the show and even I think it’s stupid.

So what should you take from trends?

Well, let’s use this one as an example.  From this “trend”, we can see that money may be flowing a little more openly in the marketplace.  SaTC is known for its lavish lifestyle, and if people are going to spend money to watch a flick, and they pick this one?  We all must have a little more financial cushion than we did last year at this time.  We can also see that maybe there’s a growing trend of women as business owners.  Why else would so many business sites develop strategies around a movie proclaiming “girl power!”?  Also, it may show that there’s a lack of original ideas out there: this is a sequel, with a very Three Stooges plotline.  There’s not much new meat here.  In fact, if you check the box office right now for more trends, you’ll see that the top grossing movies are sequels.  There’s safety in repetition.

So while noticing and acknowledging overarching trends can help steer your business, it may prove more harmful than helpful to align yourselves with them.

(Because you always run the risk of what happened with Sex & the City 2 .. it bombed at the box office.  What does THAT say about your SaTC business strategy?)

“Play nicely with others” is as important as “don’t run with scissors” in the grand scheme of integrating with other people.  Let’s face it; we’re all business people, and the largest part of business is playing nicely with others.  That’s just the greater part of it.

And it’s not even a fundamental rule because it’s good advice; in a lot of cases, it’s because everyone’s actions play a significant part in creating the “greater good” environment.

Let’s talk this on a shared server example.

Most business owners just starting out in the online world aren’t going to want to invest a whole lot of dough into a technology until they’ve seen some return on investment.  Understood.  So roughly about 65% of online shopkeepers are going to want to try a shared server environment initially.

While there’s plenty of good to a shared server .. low cost, easy maintenance .. there’s a few risks.  One of the greatest risks is that if a playmate in your shared server sandbox goes rogue and starts flinging sand, there’s no where else to go.  If that playmate invites his bully friends to come over and they’re too rough, you’re stuck.  You’re at the mercy of your playmates in that shared environment.

That’s where we come in.  Our 24/7 tech support is always monitoring a huge screen of blinking lights to let us know which servers are most active, and in a worst case scenario, which servers are being taken offline because someone isn’t playing nicely in the sandbox.  Our techs are certified at what they do, and they work closely with our bi-coastal data centers to isolate any problems so that (hopefully) there’s little to no downtime for everyone else.

And like all good caregivers, we try and give every player in the sandbox one or two warnings to play nicely.  Hopefully, the message hits home and day goes smoothly from then on out.  But occasionally, we’re forced to send someone to a timeout.

DDoS attacks (explained here by our System Admin, a master of words) are part of a shared server environment.  Put simply, it’s that bully inviting a thousand of his friends into an already occupied sandbox.  We do what we can to resolve the issue quickly, but there is no guarantee that we can keep these from happening.

If you are overly concerned with DDoS attacks affecting your business, consider upgrading to a semi-dedicated or dedicated VPS server, i.e. your very own sandbox.  We’ve seen far fewer DDoS attacks on these servers (dedicated servers have not suffered a DDoS attack in our history with SimpleHelix!), so it might be worth the cost.

As always, if you have ANY questions, you can find help online, by phone, or by Twitter.  We’re always here to help; it’s what we love to do.