There are several ways to measure a successful social media campaign. For some, it’s the number of followers they have and the interaction that occurs between themselves and followers. For others, the main focus is on having content shared as far and wide as possible. There are others who would claim that success can only be measured if both are achieved. Gaining followers is not that difficult, although the quality of follower may not be great. Having content shared is a lot harder and most website owners struggle to achieve more than a handful of shares.

One of the keys to having content shared is the knowledge of what others want to read, and what spurs them to sharing. There are some tactics that will see your content shared more often, although again, the quality of those shares may not be great. Images, particularly funny or silly images, always get passed around. The same can be said for videos; again, those that are funny will often see more shares than bland or dry videos.

As a business owner, care needs to be taken with this type of content. Sure, it will get shared a lot, but will it be associated with your business or brand? That is often the mistake that individuals make. A photo or image gets shared around a lot, but ask someone who shared it where the image came from and they probably won’t know. Concentrating on a lot of shared material is a mistake. What you need to work is on is material that will be shared while also spreading your message  – in other words, content that is shared and easily connected to your business.

That’s all easier said than done. It is possible that there are a lot of brands that have achieved success, often by poking fun at their own brand. While doing so, they are promoting their brand. When looking to increase social media sharing of your content, make sure you are doing so for the right reasons. It is your brand or business that you are trying to promote – not the next door neighbor’s child or cat!

QR (quick response) codes are everywhere now. You’ll see them on billboards, the sides of buses and trains, and even on television. They are not placed in these areas for practical purposes; they are being used as part of a consumer education/branding campaign by marketers, particularly the big national brands. QR codes are really best suited to areas – as a download to a smart phone in the form of deal or coupon, and in print media. Large corporations have the jump on small businesses in this area, however, you can fight back. Large corporations can place these codes on national publications such as newspapers and magazines. The cost to advertise in these publications is often prohibitive for small businesses – you can get around it.

To begin with, let’s look at QR codes. They are used in a similar way to a bar code. A smart phone can scan the code and either store it for later use – for example, to claim a discount or deal – or they can be used as a link to a particular web page on the Internet. For small businesses, your opportunity lies not in national advertising, but in your own printed matter. This includes letters, business cards, invoices, brochures or flyers, and in local media such as local newspapers. You can even have QR codes in your offline storefronts.

The key to successfully using a QR is to have the right destination in place. Smart marketers are linking to their Facebook or Twitter pages suggesting users ‘follow’ them in order to receive news and special offers. A well written intro on these pages can result in a lot of new friends on these social media sites.

Big businesses have taken on QR codes very quickly. They can see the benefits that they can bring to their business, and since the costs involved are fairly minimal, easily justified. For small businesses, you may need to update your technology, however, the long term costs and benefits are proving to be very sound and producing good conversion rates.

Internet users generally have one thing in common: they want more information. In particular, they want information that answers questions, and the proof of this is in the popularity of a wide range of question and answer (Q&A) websites. As a small business owner, you can use this thirst for information to your advantage since Q&A sites often provide an inexpensive (as in free, apart from your time) way to communicate with potential customers. The most difficult task is to find a Q&A site that best suits your business and your expertise.

Q&A websites take three formats – general questions and answers, specialist (as in genre) and the newish kid on the block – local question and answers. General sites include Yahoo Answers and Quora, and they do receive the bulk of the traffic. However, specialist Q&A websites are appearing in search results in increasing numbers and it won’t be long before the local sites join them. One of the easiest ways to find a suitable Q&A website is to use both Google and Bing – enter in a range of questions related to your field to see which Q&A sites appear in the search results.

Finding a Q&A site is one thing; using it effectively is quite another. If you are able to build a profile, make it as professional as possible. Users need to be able to see that you are an expert in your field, and not just an amateur who’s shooting off at the mouth. You can further develop your standing by answering questions in a professional way, no matter how mundane they appear. Always bear in mind that, to the asker, the question asked is very important to them. You should also try to answer the question is non-technical ways, often difficult, however, you are generally talking to potential customers, not fellow experts.

Specialist sites are generally much smaller and don’t receive as much traffic as general sites. However, the traffic they do receive is often more targeted and more likely to visit your website. If using a specialist site, you can become a little more technical, however, you will need to assess the questioner’s knowledge based on their question – if they use technical information correctly, then use a technical answer.

Local Q&A are an interesting development. Askalo, CrowdBeacon and LocalMind are three that are becoming popular. These sites allow users to ask questions related to specific areas; for example, “where can I get a pizza at midnight in Wayzata?”  These are as useful for businesses too – still, some questions go unanswered for several hours.

Q&A sites allow you to develop your brand and build a reputation whilst also working to funnel traffic to your website. They also have SEO benefits delivered through any links you include. Just remember to link to related content on your website, and not to a sales page – that will drive visitors away as soon as they land.

Many tend to think that branding and logos are one in the same. It is and it isn’t. Branding encompasses so much more than just your logo. Logos are a part of branding to the extent your customers recognize who you are by seeing the logo. But branding is actually who and what your company is about in all things.

The correct definition is from The American Marketing Association AMA, which states that the “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

What this basically means is that it is the building of an image that is specific to your company, that customers will quickly identify as your business. Besides the logo, it will be the customization of your website along with your mission statement, design and colors of the website. An example would be Apple Corporation. The logo is a large part as everyone knows about the big red apple. But it is also more than that if you really look at their website and core values.

You will want a website that will reflect your business and beliefs and will be easily recognized by your customers. For instance, let’s say you sell western riding accessories, your branding would be a western style website with perhaps a horse or a lasso as the logo.

If you already have a website but are not happy with the way it looks, then it’s time to try something different that will pull in more customers and reflect your business better. Your brand must reflect the type of business you have. Otherwise all of your hard work will have been for nothing.

Some search engine optimizers are stuck on keywords and links. If you listen to them talk, these are the Holy Grail of online marketing. But are they?

Don’t get me wrong. SEO is important. I mean, how will you rank in the search engines for the key terms you want to be known for if you don’t employ sound SEO strategies? But you should also understand that there are some things about SEO that you can’t control. The search algorithms, for instance.

It’s important to study what you can about SEO tactics and perform your best practices. But don’t hang your hat on them. They can change at any time.

Branding, however, is something you have 100% control over. It’s your image. You control what images, taglines, and statements are associated with your brand. No one else can control that for you. So if you focus your time and energy on building your brand with some thoughts how to employ SEO and a social media strategy effectively, then you’ll fare better in the long run.

What I’m really saying is this: Build your brand first. Market it secondly. SEO and social media are the nuts and bolts of online marketing. Without a brand, they’re just nuts and bolts.

There comes a time in every business’s life when it will be prudent to re-brand the business. How do you know when that time is?

There might be several reasons why you’d re-brand a business. If the current branding is hindering you more than helping you, then that’s an obvious situation that requires paying attention to. For instance, lawsuits that have drawn negative publicity and have hurt your brand could spell an end to your brand and require a re-branding effort. Many large businesses have done just that. But that’s not the only reason to re-brand.

Sometimes you can re-brand a business just for the sake of improving the customer experience.

Recently, Small Business Mavericks underwent a re-branding effort. We streamlined the website and simplified our navigation to make it easier for you to find information on the website. We hope you like it!

Another reason you might re-brand yourself is your mission has changed. If the company changes direction and your service offerings change along with it, then you might find that your old branded look just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. You might find it necessary to re-brand in order to communicate your new mission and new values more effectively.

Re-branding is not always a bad thing. If you do it right, it can be very positive.

This is no joke. Funny man Louis CK has decided to abandon traditional media and deliver his own comedy routines via his website. He’s going to charge $5 per download. Is that really a good idea?

There have been similar experiments before. About ten years ago Stephen King conducted his own experiment on a book download that didn’t turn out so well. No quite that long ago Radiohead performed a more successful experiment with music downloads. And it seems that in the last couple of years artists of various stripes are being more bold to go out on their own without the safety net of corporate sponsors and agents.

I applaud their efforts. The world needs these kinds of risk takers. And I really hope Louis CK succeeds.

If he does succeed, maybe small business owners can learn from that success. What can you do on your own website that you now do through traditional media? Or social media? What do you do in other ways – ways that maybe you’ve always used – that you can re-think and take a risk on, maybe even pave a new trail? Are you ready to take the risk?

Maybe Louis CKs little bit about Twitter and social media on Conan can be a source of inspiration. Be prepared to laugh.

What is the beginning of Internet marketing for your small business? If you thought I was going to say your website, sorry to disappoint you. Effective Internet marketing begins long before you start building your website.

Internet marketing begins with research. There are three really important areas of key research that you should undertake before you do anything online.

• Keyword Research – Not necessarily first, but definitely not least. You should research important keywords for your business so that you can determine your search engine marketing needs and strategy.
• Competitive Research - Who is your competition? What are they doing and what have they done? Are you subscribed to their newsletters and blogs? You should be.
• Brand Research – Brand research is a little bit more complicated. It goes beyond basic competitive and keyword research. You must also look at other forces that can affect your marketing online. Who are the customer that need what you have to offer? Where do they hang out online, what social media hotspots are important to them? What are their questions? How are you going to answer them and meet their other needs as a brand?

Before you start marketing online, do some level of research. What is the market for your product or service? Who is doing it now? What holes are they leaving unfilled? If you’re going to build a brand online, then you need to make sure the most important questions don’t go unanswered.

Mashable is reporting that Google is planning to rebrand two of its largest Web products – Picasa and Blogger. The rebranding supposedly is taking place in concert with the public launch of Google +. Here’s my question: Why?

I understand rebranding Picasa. It’s new name will be Google Photos. When I think of Picasa, I think of Picasso – the famous painter. But Picasa is about photos, not paintings.

I don’t know if that’s what the creators of Picasa had in mind when they built the photo sharing site, but that’s what I think about. So I can understand changing the name of Picasa to Google Photos. But what about Blogger?

The proposed new name of Blogger is Google Blogs. I’m not sure I like that. But the real overriding question is whether or not the services will change, and it appears that they won’t. So if Blogger isn’t going to change in nature, will changing the name to Google Blogs make much of a difference among those who use it? I’d say probably not.

When it comes to branding, merely changing the name of a subsidiary service won’t make it a better service. In case of Picasa and Blogger, they’re popular and good services as they are.

Yesterday we discussed the difference between effective and ineffective social media marketing. There are a lot of companies trying to do it, but doing it poorly. And many of them are top advertisers.

While big brands are going online to advertise their products, they are also approaching social media and new marketing tools with the same old mindset. Here’s an infographic I found that shows how the top 200 brands are using their advertising dollars.

Designed by Marketing Degree, to see the research please click here

Many of these companies are shifting their advertising dollars to online channels – social media, search engine marketing, PPC, etc. An interesting question to answer would be, Why?

My take: I think the top brands are shifting to online marketing because it is cheaper than traditional marketing. Their dollars can go further. The perception is that they can get more mileage for the buck by saving on the medium. That’s not true, however. It says nothing about the effectiveness of the advertising.

One thing companies need to understand is that online marketing – and social media marketing, in particular – is not like traditional marketing. You can shift your budget, but you’d better shift your mindset along with it, or you’ll just end up throwing your ad dollars down the drain.