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What the heck is a brand evangelist? 

The name sounds like it describes some sort of crazy-eyed, obsessed person, doesn’t it? It does, but honestly, this person is your company’s best friend.

Have you thought about starting a blog for your website?  Do you know how to spell the word B-L-O-G but you don’t know what to actually put in one?  Well, you’ve come to the right place because today we’re talking about branded content! 

No, silly.

We’re not talking about calamari or Buffalo wings.  While delicious, they have almost nothing to do with smart phones.

We’re talking about cell phone applications or “apps” because, well, everyone is! Apps are so popular, in fact, that on January 8th of this year, the word “app” was voted the 2010 word of the year by the American Dialect Society!  Cool, right?  The truth is that the world of mobile devices is a veritable smorgasbord of apps right now, and creating one for your business is something you might want to consider. 

When people first discover they’re having a baby, it’s a very exciting time full of possibilities and expectation. It’s so hard to wait all those long months to finally meet the little one who’s going to change everything forever and make life richer, but if you ask any loving mom or dad, they’ll tell you that it ‘s worth the wait and all the hard work.

That’s exactly like what it’s like to launch a social media campaign, except it’s hopefully not going to leave you with drool on your sweater.  If it does, you may need a nanny, or an ad agency, or…both?

It seems like everyone and their ad agency is talking about “mobile marketing” these days, but what is it and why should a small business owner care?  After all, isn’t this kind of thing meant for BIG business?

Nay, nay, my good friends.

It’s for the rest of us, too.

Lots of businesses are choosing to jump on the mobile marketing bandwagon. With this new advertising strategy, small companies can earn huge profits without spending a ton of extra money.  Sure, multinational companies are pursuing mobile marketing too, but really, it’s a great option for any business, big or small.

LinkedIn is the world’s biggest professional network with roughly 1 million new members joining every week! 

Currently, it boasts over 100 million members and it’s obviously growing strong.  LinkedIn connects you to trusted contacts and helps you exchange ideas, knowledge, and opportunities with a wide network of professionals who are just like you.

You realize this post is gonna be epic because we mentioned Wolverine in the title, right?

BAM! 

We don't mess around over here, obviously. 

We like to go big.

Anyway, what about Facebook?  It’s all anyone ever talks about these days, isn’t it?  People all over the place are connecting with long lost loves and high school bffs (that means “Best Friends Forever” for those of us over thirty).  Facebook is on the news and in your face all the time. 

But what is it, really, and why, oh why, are WE talking about it too?

Yeah. That title is lame and obvious, but we just couldn’t help ourselves.  It was our day to channel Abe Lincoln.

Sorry.

So, last week we talked about how Twitter is a great tool to use to promote your contests and give-aways, stay in touch with your customers, etc., and this week we’ll explore how Foursquare can be used to drive traffic to your business literally right off the street.

Last week we said that Social Media is a great way to help businesses grow by helping them get new customers, increase brand awareness, and stay connected with both customers and competitors alike.This week we'll start our discussion of each specific social media site and what each can do for your business.

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows users to answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages, or “tweets,” of 140 characters or less. People “follow” each other and are thereby exposed to one another’s tweets.

Perhaps the best way to explain Social Media is to break it down a little bit.  Printed media like a newspaper is a one-way communication—you read it but you don’t tell it what you thought of the article. Maybe you call a friend and tell them about it, but you don’t sit there talking directly to your newspaper. 

If you do talk to your newspaper, we’ll just back away slowly and let you continue…

Ahem.