Thanks to Megan Walker of Market Savvy and to Amy Bent of Mirador Creative for emailing me the idea for this one!

Megan’s Market Savvy website is an example of our new Website-in-a-Day package!

By the way, with over 100 million DAILY users, Facebook is potentially a great marketing resource for your small business.  For example, it is great for promoting events.  If you’re running a social event or a workshop or a seminar and you’re not promoting it using Facebook Events (a free service within the Facebook system), you ARE missing out on attendees…

Check out some interesting Facebook Statistics.

Here are five reasons why your businses should be on Facebook:

1. Extreme Targeting and Testing of your Market

Facebook Ads allow you to target the audience of your ad campaigns down to: city, gender, age, occuptation, interests, relationship status, education level and workplace. Where else do you have that degree of targeting online?  You pay per click – with a daily limit that you’ve set  – and you can access reports that help you determine what’s working and what’s not.  Set up multiple campaigns and evaluate which specific demographics are clicking and/or which are buying.

2. Facebook is GREAT for promoting events

Use Facebook Events to promote your next event.  Once you’ve filled in the details for the event it’s a click of your mouse to invite your ‘Facebook Friends’ and to monitor their replies and RSVPs.  As a latin dancer I am invited to dance events every week and the smart latin dance event promoters are milking it for all its worth.

3. Friends of Friends – the viral effect

When someone RSVPs to one of your events, their friends can see this.  There have been many occasions on which I have decided to attend an event (even a 3-day seminar in another city!) on the basis of a seeing a friend sign up to it.  You can even set up your Event so that your invitees can invite THEIR friends.

4. People want to do business with…?

Facebook allows you to re-connect with people you’ve met and discover others with similar or complimentary interests.  Online networking works for the same reason that offline networking works: people want to do business with their friends.

5. Facebook helps you demonstrate that you’re good

Facebook allows you to set up a ‘Facebook Page’ for your business(es) and people can become ‘fans’ of your business.  A ‘fan’ can be a friend or a happy client or someone who simply thinks you do good work.  I have a Facebook Page for my photography, for example, and I have attracted ‘fans’ whom I’ve never met or known before.  Again, when someone becomes a fan of your business, their friends can see that and might be inclined to check it out.  If what you’ve got on offer is interesting enough, it can potentially spread through the friend networks virally.

Your action items

1. Sign up to Facebook and import your address book – look me up, too!
2. Look up old friends with whom you’ve lost contact
3. Set up a Facebook Page for your business
4. Set up a Facebook Ad as a trial to see how it works
5. Participate and play… experiment and see what works for you

That photo, entitled “Kid Tested, Kid Approved” appeared on my Facebook page when I next logged in and, being the die-hard fan that I am, I immediately copied and pasted it into the BrisbanePhotography.com community forum.

Whereever the photo was shared and copied the photo drew discussion about where and how the plush toy could be bought.  It was usually in the form of an excited exclamation-point-emphasised sentence that clearly conveyed just how excited that particular fan was about the prospect of purchasing yet another novelty item to add to the bookcase.

About a week later, as a subscriber of the free What the Duck newsletter, I received an email telling me, and the other email subscribers, exactly how we could order our WTD plush toys online before anyone else could.  Did I feel spesh’?  You betcha!

What were the two very clever things that Aaron did?

First, he created buzz by releasing a simple teaser photo but no “how to buy” info.  Would he have generated as much enthusiastic chatter around the various social networking sites if we could simply click through to make our purchase and then immediately return to making efficient use of company time?  Not a chance!

Second, he rewarded his biggest fans for subscribing and staying subscribed to his mailing list.

Clever, huh?

Get your What the Duck fix

The What the Duck comic strip follows the day-to-day encounters of a cartoon duck who happens to be a professional photographer.  The insightful and dry dialogue between our hero and his various colleagues and clients is hilarious – and anyone who has ever freelanced in the creative industries will surely relate.

Check it out at www.whattheduck.net

The following is a list of ten of the coolest E-Commerce sites that I’ve seen, some have been introduced to me just this year by some of my students. In sharing these with you I imagine that perhaps you will discover something new that is useful to you and/or something that will spark some thinking about what you could do to leverage the Web to streamline your business processes and/or to make more money!

Animoto (animoto.com)

Upload photos, select one of the songs from the library (or upload your own) and hit the button. It will do the rest. Using some clever analysis and randomising algorithms it will create a video clip using your photos and the music selected.

How they make money: You can play with Animoto for free and produce 15 second video clips. To get full-length video clips you have to pay a small annual membership fee. DVD quality costs a little more again. Commercial usage requires purchasing a commercial license.

Basecamp (basecamphq.com)

Basecamp is an online project management and collaboration tool. The company that created it, 37 Signals, has a philosophy of keeping software and interfaces as simple as possible.

How they make money: There is a free 30-day trial that will allow you a taste of the service. After that you can choose from three different monthly plans.

Blurb (blurb.com)

Download Blurb’s book-designing software and you’ll be designing your first photography/keep-sake book in minutes

How they make money: Once you’ve designed your book you can submit it to them, select your book finishing options, and they’ll create and ship the book to you.

Click Business Cards (clickbusinesscards.com.au)

A fully Do-It-Yourself online business card design and ordering system. Use one of their templates or upload your own design. Choose the finishing and quantity and you’re done. The results are high-quality and the pricing is extremely competitive.

How they make money: They print and ship your business cards to you after you’ve ordered and paid online.

Etsy (etsy.com)

Etsy is a massive collaborative shopping community where users can buy and sell all things handmade.

How they make money: Etsy allows anyone to set up a shop for free. The shop owner will then pay $0.20 to list an item and 3.5% of the sale price once it has sold.

Facebook (facebook.com)

Well over 100 million users actively use Facebook with half visiting on a daily basis and spending, on average, 20 minutes catching up with friends, updating their profile and sharing media. Facebook overtook Myspace in popularity in April of this year (see Alexa graph) as the most trafficked social media site in the world.

How they make money: Facebook makes its money from on-site advertising. Leveraging all the information Facebook has about its 6 million+ users, advertisers can target very specific groups.

Freshbooks (freshbooks.com)

“FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional!”

How they make money: Freshbook is an online service that has a number of different monthly membership levels depending upon your needs. There is a free membership level.

iStockPhoto (istockphoto.com)

“iStockphoto is the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Find your inspiration on the world’s leading royalty-free stock destination. Search for over 3 million photographs, vector illustrations, video footage and Flash files. Buy stock or sell stock — or both.”

How they make money: In return for helping photographers, illustrators, Flash designers and videographers sell their stock media, iStockPhoto takes a commission of every sale. iStockPhoto is one of the Internet’s first successful example of a micro payment site – wherein users purchase credit and use it to buy items that are priced quite low.

Pistol Clothing (pistolclothing.com.au)

Pistol Clothing provides a means for users to design their own personalised t-shirts, hoodies and singlets via its online, easy-to-use clothing designer. All garments are printed on high-quality clothing.

How they make money: Just like Blurb and Click Business Cards, above, Pistol Clothing print and ship what you order.

WhereIs (whereis.com.au)

Just in case anyone hasn’t discovered this yet, WhereIs is a fantastic online map service that allows you to look up street addresses and view them on a map that can be zoomed and panned. The most useful feature of this site, however, is the ability to get directions between two or more locations. I must use this service every week.

How they make money: Banner advertising on the side of the screen and advertising on the map itself.

Wishing you happiness and success in all your offline and online endeavours.