We're happy to announce the launch of the Greenview Lawn & Landscape website! Visit greenviewlawnandlandscape.com to check it out. It's always fun to work with textures, and this one has it in spades.

Hello!
Welcome to the November edition of our free email newsletter, the Maestro Monthly, created and published by Web Maestro, LLC. The intent of this newsletter is to bring you news and updates on Web Maestro services, local business news, as well as general Web news relating to small businesses.

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Creating a Community
(Social Media and Tourism)

by Nathan Lyle

You may have already tried using Facebook or other social media platforms to create a community around your business or product. Did it work? If not, you may just need to step back and think about your approach. If you haven't tried it yet, now's an even better time to think about your approach. Here's the main thing—people don't come together to bond about how to make money for your business. This doesn't mean you can't create the community, and benefit from it, but you have to approach it from their point of view. What's going to be in it for them? It doesn't have to be that they make money or get something free, it might just be that they're able to be a part of something important. If, for example, your product can be used in some way that changes lives, then you've got the golden ticket. You can form a community around that and gain built-in marketing practically for free. The hard part isn't actually the technical side of things, it's finding that come-together spot.

If you can get to understand your customers, and especially why they use social media, you have your "in" for building a community. Think about it this way, Facebook didn't become what it is because it's a nicely designed website, or because of it's various features—it was because all of a sudden you could find people you hadn't seen in years. You could connect with them, and maintain those connections with a few clicks. (And behind the scenes, Facebook benefits from the collection of personal information they have amassed as a result.) What do your customers want to do that you can help them do better?

It's easy to sabotage your own efforts. If you use Facebook or Twitter as a way to broadcast advertising messages like coupons or other obviously marketing-based tidbits, you will have a difficult time building a following. Oh sure, you'll get your friends and family and some of your loyal customers to follow you, but people won't really care. If you connect all your social accounts and have it set up so that you can post an update to one and have it funneled through to all of them, people will be able to tell. The ways different social sites are used are different, and people will see through your artificiality. If you can't immediately have others being social about you and your product, then it will fall to you (or someone working for you) to actually take an active role along those lines. Engage people. That's where the power of social media is.

So, getting to the tourism part of this... a business operating from an area where there's a definite tourism draw, has a bit of an advantage. Tourism, once you get past the marketing hype, is about experience. Experiences are best when shared. People like to talk about their experiences. They like to share them. This is a natural sibling to social media. If your business is operating from an area with a lot to offer, connect with that. Even if it's just creating an image of your business as an entity that appreciates the same things as the individuals you're interested in. Your business can benefit from from a social media community even if that community is built around a tangent to your business. You can be a company that sells mufflers, and still manage to be the entity that brings together the people that love traveling. The day-to-day topics might not always be about you, but as the facilitator, you gain the respect and loyalty from the community.

To sum things up, don't worry about the technology. You can learn that, or you can find people who can help you handle that. The hard part, and the important part, is knowing why you're doing what you're doing and having a good plan. Talk it out with someone, make sure that it makes sense, and then dive in!

Want to read more articles? Read previously published articles on our website's article archive.

What Is Twitter?

Guest Article by Steve Laba

Twitter is a social networking and micro blogging system that allows you stay in touch with other people on Twitter. You do this by sending short text messages that are 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers."

Before you can start Tweeting you must sign up and become a member. But don't fret, joining Twitter is free. Once a member you can start following other members. These members can be newscast sources, individuals you know, business or celebrities.

When any other accounts you are following send a tweet, the message will appear on your homepage. This will give you real time updates as they occur.

You will also start to see that others are following you. So now when you send a Tweet it will show on the home page of all the people that follow you.

This type of communication is like texting but with multiple people at once. Because of all the Tweets you will be receiving you can actually miss a lot.

So what the heck do I tweet. Some people just write random information like "Good Morning", "I just walked my dog" or "It's raining in Seattle... again".

If you own a business you can use your Tweets to tell the world about your products or services. But don't over do it. Too many Tweets will be considered spam and others fill stop following you.

Instead of spamming about what you sell, Tweet helpful information and tips that will grab people's interest and want to follow you. This will lead to a long term relationship and allow you to sell your products at a later time.

The more time you put into Twitter, the more followers you will have. In order to gather many followers there are ways to find them so you do not have to wait until they find you.

On the top of your Twitter page there is a tab called "Find People".

There are a couple of ways to find others here.

Find on Twitter—Search by people's names, companies etc. that have a Twitter account.

Browse Interests—There are about 20 different categories here such as News, Twitter, Family, Fashion and more.

Find Friends—This allows you to search by using any contacts you have on Gmail, Yahoo, LinkedIn or AOL.

About the author: Steve Laba is an internet marketer and eBay PowerSeller with over 10 year of experience making money online.

Miscellaneous Maestro Minutiae

Just a quick shout-out (and hearty "thanks!") to Greta Berg at Company B Graphics for the great lettering on our van... over several years, I've found that vehicle vinyl is the most cost-effective form of business advertising. The TV, radio, newspaper, and yellowpage folks will all shout the benefits of their particular form of ad, but nothing has given us the same exposure as driving our ad around. (Of course, it also means having to drive politely.)

That's it for today, thanks for reading! Please feel free to let me know what you find useful or what you'd like to see us cover in future issues.

Sincerely,
Nathan Lyle

Website: www.webmaestro.biz
Email: nathan@sylvaniawebmaestro.com
Blog: www.webmaestro.biz/blog

Notable Quotes

"Ambition can creep as well as soar."
~ Edmund Burke

"The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time."
~ Henry Ford

"If you're not making mistakes, you're not taking risks, and that means you're not going anywhere. The key is to make mistakes faster than the competition, so you have more changes to learn and win."
~ John W. Holt

Web/Technology News

Why Broadband Service in the U.S. Is So Awful

The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre. According to a recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, broadband Internet service in the U.S. is not just slower and more expensive than it is in tech-savvy nations such as South Korea and Japan; the U.S. has fallen behind infrastructure-challenged countries such as Portugal and Italy as well. [read more]

Informational Crowdsourcing Takes Off

The Internet is an overwhelmingly powerful source of information, but the technology for harnessing that information, for getting it filtered and delivered how and when we want it, is still in its infancy. If you don't believe it, see what kind of useful information you get when you Google "What kind of harmonica should I get for my 10-year-old?" Recently, though, a flock of new services have cropped up to deliver highly targeted answers by passing your queries on to a sea of strangers. Call it informational crowdsourcing. [read more]

The U.S. Smart Grid Is Shaping Up to Be Dangerously Insecure

President Barack Obama's talk about the need for a "smart grid" sounds, well, smart. What's not to like about the idea of an electricity grid that can work at top efficiency? By wrapping power transmission lines in advanced information technologies and the Internet, a smart grid would enable us to integrate alternative energy sources such as rooftop solar panels and local wind turbines into the power supply, balance supply with demand and optimize the flow of power to each consumer—even down to the level of individual appliances. It would vastly improve the reliability, availability and efficiency of the electric system. As currently envisaged, however, it's a dangerously dumb idea. [read more]

The unvarnished truth about unsecured Wi-Fi

Chances are you don't leave your front door unlocked. And you shouldn't leave your Wi-Fi network unsecured either. Many of you may have heard this before, but many still seem to not be doing anything about it. You should. Here's why. With a $50 wireless antenna and the right software a criminal hacker located outside your building as far as a mile away can capture passwords, e-mail messages, and any other data being transmitted over your network, and even decrypt data that is supposedly protected. [read more]

White House Press Secretary Fields 'First Question' From Twitter

The first question at a White House press briefing goes to a wire service reporter as a strict matter of seniority and custom. President Obama's Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, hasn't exactly disrupted that time-honored tradition but has begun fielding what he's calling the "first question" on Twitter—aka #1q. The very first "first question" Gibbs chose to field might as well have been asked by a member of the White House press corps (or as a conveniently selected spin opportunity)—about the reasons for a state visit to India. [read more]

The Web Isn't Dead (So Says Its Inventor)

Holed up in yurts in a field in Cardigan Bay, Wales, a couple of week ago was an impressive collection of some of the most intensely motivated, high-achieving individuals ever assembled—oh, and me! I was attending The Do Lectures—a series of talks, by turns inspiring, funny, jaw-dropping, but mostly humbling. The speakers come from diverse walks of life brought together by a common thread—a great story. There is a very special atmosphere in this field—a suspension of cynicism helps and any negativity is drowned out by the spirit of can-do that hums throughout. [read more]

Why Mark Zuckerberg Should Like The Social Network

It's hard to go anywhere and not see, hear and read about Mark Zuckerberg right now. Last week and the week before, the Facebook founder and CEO was getting attention for giving away $100 million. This week he's talking about two long-awaited Facebook features—a way to easily get your data out of Facebook and a better way to parse friends into subgroups. On Tuesday night, satirist Andy Borowitz wondered on the radio—only half in jest—if he should win a Nobel Prize in economics. [read more]

Microsoft Buying Adobe Would Solve 'The Apple Problem' For Both

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has recently been at a secret meeting with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss topics including the two companies' mutual competitor, Apple. The Times says that the companies were investigating ways to partner in order to do battle with Apple. One option was for Microsoft to acquire Adobe, a claim that has seen Adobe's stock price surge by more than 10 percent. [read more]