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In This Issue
Making Sense of Social Networking
Managing Your Company's Online Presence
Making Sense of Social Networking

Is social networking right for your company? It's hard to ignore the power of this growing medium as outlined in this slideshow entitled "What the F**k is social networking?"

Getting Started
Here are some tools that I've found very helpful in understanding the basics of social networking.

To Tweet or not to Tweet
Everyone's talking about Twitter, but I have found it confusing to figure out how Twitter actually works. This video on Facebook called "How to Use Twitter" makes it easy to understand the basics. You will have to sign into Facebook to access the video, but it's free and easy to sign up if you don't already have an account.

Here is another helpful article on Twitter:

"Marketing Small Businesses on Twitter"

Read more...


::
Melanie Dukas Communications

Call Melanie or email her for a free consultation or website evaluation.

www.melaniedukas.com

978.921.2650
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Dear ,

Your company's online presence involves more than just your website. There are customer reviews and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. So how do you manage all these factors to optimize your presence on the Web?

It's a complicated process and I've come across some really great articles that can help you understand and manage these tools. In this newsletter, I've included an excellent article about managing your company's online presence and some helpful "how-to" guides for marketing your business on Twitter and Facebook.

If you'd like more information on managing your online presence or a free website consultation, call me at 978.921.2650 or send me an email. I'm always happy to help in any way I can.


Sincerely,

Melanie Dukas
www.melaniedukas.com

Managing Your Company's Online Presence

This article from the New York Times addresses this issue and offers some excellent advice on this topic.

"Managing an Online Reputation by Kermit Pattison
Published July 29, 2009

Your customers are talking about you - and the whole world is listening. Local review sites are reshaping the world of small business by becoming the new Yellow Pages, one-stop platforms where customers can find a business - and also see independent critiques of its performance.

How do you manage your reputation when everybody is a critic?

Quick Tips

Here are some quick tips from the article:
  • Set up automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog.
  • Local search sites are the new Yellow Pages -- make sure your business is listed. The more complete your listing, the more likely you are to get good search results.
  • Respond to reviews to show readers that you are listening and that you care about customer service.
  • Online reviews are a gold mine of business intelligence. Analyze metrics to get a better sense of your customer demographics.
  • Don't write false reviews to puff your business or trash a competitor. You can severely damage your reputation...and look really silly.
This is an excellent article and I highly recommend it to anyone with a small business. Read the entire article

Time to revamp your website?

The first step in managing your online presence is to have a search-engine-friendly website that comes up first when people do searches for your company. This will keep them focused on the information you want them to have and make it less likely for them to come across the wrong information or bad reviews that you have little control over.

Here are some websites that have recently been revamped by Melanie Dukas Communications:

The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church
North Shore Ear, Nose & Throat
Levelline Construction Corporation

Call 978.921.2650 or send me an email for a free website consultation. I look forward to hearing from you!