Today, the pressure is on to deliver on the demands of customers and investors—and to do it right now. More than ever, every business executive needs to be thinking carefully about how markets develop and how to sustain them, what customers and markets value, how to best serve these markets, and how to reallocate resources to succeed. As a company’s business model shifts to meet changing market requirements, its business strategy and IT infrastructure must be ready to shift as well.

The WMT publication is an example of modern CMS/blog site design, using transparent effects with a layer of sophisticated and professional imagery.  WordPress themes that have a strong CSS (Custom Style Sheet) structure behind them, plus have all the widget locations you need already coded in, are worth investing in.  We can easily  change the site’s design along with our business and at any time also duplicate the site for new or related purpose with a completely different look and feel to suit it’s reuse.

SMM means a whale of engagement

A Managing Editor at BE (BoomersEdge) Media asked me a couple weeks ago how her husband might go about drumming up some new prospects and customers for his small business using Twitter.  I  believe that Twitter can be a very powerful communication tool for reaching potential customers of almost any business and market.  However early market research (and surveys done) on Twitter usage show  that the vast majority of Twitter users are currently just seeking entertainment from this rapidly growing social media communications platform.   Twitter itself is a micro blogging syndication tool, and it does possess power and speed for getting a message out, as well as being able to give indications of what your potential customers and markets are interested in.

Your  Social Media Market Strategy might be greatly enhanced by incorporating Twitter, so we will be doing more research and reporting about our how’s and why’s of it’s use in the coming  months.  But since Twitter is just one of many core SMM (Social Media Marketing) tools which your business may want to deploy, we feel it is important to first understand the amount and kind of change which your business needs to be prepared for, before you start Tweeting away.  So before making specific suggestions, I first warned my friends that there can also be a  down side to using social media tools, including Facebook and others, if you are not willing or ready to engage with prospects AND customers, who may be happy to see your business is reaching out to them using this form of media.

Specifically, are you ready to answer all questions that any prospect for your product(s) or service(s) may have?  Do you have a web site that can answer most of those questions for a prospect, including packaging and pricing of same?  Do you have samples or references of your product/service benefits and value to current customers?  Is your value proposition clear, and without marketing smoke?

But perhaps most importantly, are you ready to be accountable for your business reputation?  Social media is all about building trust and reputation.  You may be able to delete an errant post, but you can’t delete a negative impression, or knock to your business reputation.  Those issues will have to be addressed, one by one, if you plan on getting up close and personal with your market(s) using social media.

Here’s a link I posted on Twitter last month to an article about the engagement factor of using social media to market your business.  There is no question about whether social media can get you closer to your customers, help find new prospects, and improve your revenues and bottom line profitability.   But you’ll need to be prepared to engage.

Social Media Engagement and Your Bottom Line http://su.pr/2F6hde