Mabel and Zora is a clothing boutique, having two stores in the Portland Metro area.  They offer ladies’ clothing, jewelry, luggage, art and accessories from new and established designers, including local Portland designers. I got a chance to interview them about their use of social media and how it’s affected their business:

Do you use different social media tools to promote your business?
We have started using Twitter and Facebook lately, we have been on myspace for a few years, I like the twitter and facebook, I’m not a big fan of myspace, it’s a little hard for me to navigate around and is slow.

What has worked for you?
Twitter and Facebook have both been very successful for us and we know we still have a lot to learn about it! But so far, so good! I don’t know if people are seeing our blog or not but we keep writing just in case. We redid our website last August and spent a lot on it and nothing really sells on it, so we are trying to get more people to it, so far no luck, but they are coming to our stores! I know I need to do more with the website, but just haven’t got the patience for it!

What hasn’t?
Like I said above, the web sales haven’t really worked out, but the website does drive people to the store, which is great, I would just like it to pay for itself!

What do you hope to achieve with these tools in the next 6 months?
I guess I’d like to just keep learning, and figure out how to simplify. I’d also like to get the website selling more. I’ve read lots of things in magazines about things I can download to simplify the twittering and facebooking, I just need to take the time to put them into action!

A few years ago I bounced between two different computers and learned quickly how much I depend on my bookmarks. I kept trying to look up my bookmarks on the computer that DIDN’T have them and would feel like I was going crazy. Luckily, I was introduced to delicious.

The name Delicious sounds enticing and is a fun experience to use. Create an account on Delicious.com and you can start saving your favorite webpages and sites instantly. One of the best features of Delicious is how you can “tag” pages. This means you an add a descriptive word, for example, I’m always on the search for great small business resources. If I run across someone’s blog post about a great tool, I can tag or label it “small business tool” or “business resource” or even more specific like “time tracking tool”. I can also add a description of the page to help me remember why I’m bookmarking it (my memory can be a little fuzzy at times, aren’t we all!)

These bookmarks are public (you can check if you’d like them private) but since they are usually public, you can search on these tags and see what other folks are tagging for their bookmarks and find some high quality information and tools for your blog, newsletter, or just finding precious information.

You can even categorize your bookmarks and share them specifically with friends, collegues, or clients. I’ve done this meeting with a client to help brainstorm what they wanted their website to look like. I had bookmarked a few sites I thought would reflect their design look and feel. It was very handy to login into my Delicious account on their computer and not have to worry about using my laptop. Delicious makes our lives easier.

Let me know if you are using Delicious or if you have a different social bookmarking site you prefer.

The answer isn’t simple - having your website ranked higher might result in more traffic, but do you really see your ROI? Will it encourage products and services to be bought and sold? Are you aiming at the right target market? The following suggestions focus on changes you can do to attract the right customer.

The key point to remember is that you don’t want to be too broad when marketing your business online and ranking high in a search result won’t equal products/services bought or sold.

CONTENT

It’s crucial that your website is written so it’s easy to read and incorporates some keywords. Be careful you don’t overdue or add too many keywords (about 1 every 100 words). Engage your  targeted audience and draw them in, it’s important to put time and energy into all the content of the website. Hire a copywriter or editor if you need help.

REFERRING LINKS
Google rewards websites when other quality websites link to each other.  Having  quality & high-traffic websites (including blogs, social media sites, forums, wikis) link to your website is a good thing. For example, having your business on yelp.com with excellent customer reviews can be a huge way to gain new clients.

CLEANLY CODED WEBSITE

The foundation and structure of your website can play a huge role in how Google perceives it’s value. It’s important that your website is current and isn’t running extra scripts or excessive information. Running a 8 year old website will not encourage folks to come. Make sure that your web designer meets the basic standards and doesn’t produce a broken website.

Google has many tools to help you improve your website include Google Analytics, Google’s Webmaster Tools, and much more. Get your hands dirty and start doing these simple things today.

I’ve worked with a bunch of different email newsletter systems, some having nifty features, but my favorite is Mail Chimp.

It might be how friendly and easy it is to use. It might be the cute Monkey who greets you every time you login. Here’s just a few of the awesome features:

-it has tons of tutorials to help you get started
-when you first sign up, you can try using it for free if you have under 100 subscribers
-they have free live chat and email support
-they promote best practices for your email lists which includes building an organic list and ALWAYS getting permission to use anyone’s email address
-lots of great tracking tools to see who opened your newsletter
-helps you test what your newsletter will look like with other email software such as Outlook, AOL, and many more

Read about more reasons to check them out (if you weren’t already convinced). I was sold after using it for a client and will continue to suggest it as a great tool for freelancers and small businesses. Be consistent and start an awesome Mail Chimp newsletter today!

It provides a free listing of your business and allows you to update it for free as well. As a business, they encourage to put your address, photos, hours, and a description of your business. It’s a nice supplement to your blog and website and integrates with Google Maps, which especially nice if you are tricky to find and are always giving directions. As a bonus, you can add coupons to this listing, a great way for new businesses to get customers walking through the door!

Don’t wait, an account only takes 5 minutes to set up, get more business an easy way!

Please describe your business and what you offer:
AG Ambroult jewelry is a line of contemporary silver jewelry that explores the link between industry and nature.  I (Amy Ambroult) am a jewelry designer and fabricator — which means I make all the pieces by hand, using traditional metalsmithing techniques.

Yes–Facebook, Twitter, and I have a blog (http://agaelemental.blogspot.com)

I think they have all served a purpose. I wouldn’t  say any one doesn’t “work”. In terms of sales, Facebook has definitely been the best. I have a fan page for my business and invite all my personal “friends” to become fans. This brought awareness of my business to long lost friends and acquaintances that wouldn’t have otherwise known about my jewelry line. As a result, I have had a good handful of orders through Facebook contacts.

Twitter has been great in bringing awareness of my business to perfect strangers. I have tried to create an interesting “persona” through my tweets. It has brought a good amount of traffic to my blog and Etsy shop (where I sell my jewelry online), though I couldn’t say for sure if this has resulted in any online sales. Either way, it is helping to reinforce the “brand” of  my company–which could only be a good thing.

The same goes for my blog–reinforcing my “brand” and “persona” by not only posting about metalsmithing and my jewelry, but also about recipes, gardening tips, craft projects and other thoughts of interest. This brings people to my blog who might not otherwise be interested in knowing about my jewelry. Creating a following on my blog will bring a feeling of community, trust, and credibility, which will (hopefully!) transfer to the public’s opinion of my company.

In the next 6 months I will continue using these forms of social media to bring awareness to my business, reinforce my company brand, and continue to create an interesting online presence and persona that will become synonymous with my business, AG Ambroult.

RSS turns out to be this great time-saver. You can subscribe to all these different news feeds and put them all in one place. The most popular reader is Google reader, my favorite. It’s easier to get your ow reader, just go to http://www.google.com/reader/ and follow the directions.

Now, instead of having to go to all these different news websites and blogs, you can have them all in one place. I know a lot of folks who will save all the updates from their reader and read them one day of the week or a few minutes a day.

Try it out and see if it doesn’t make your life a little easier.

My first business is Mercedes Rose, a talented voice-actress, as well as film actress, model, and teacher.

Please describe your business and why you are passionate about it?

For the last 13+ years I have been a full time actress and voice over artist. These industries combine all that I love- creativity, self motivation, variety…

It also helps that I am incredibly good at my job. And since i have no other marketable skills, that is a very good thing!

Do you use different social media tools to promote your business?

I use social media on an almost daily basis to promote my own business but also to stay in touch with trends and cycles within the acting community. Almost all films, advertising agencies, production companies, performers and crew have their own sites now. Sites like Facebook are a great way to spread the word about what you are working on.

What tools have worked for you? What hasn’t?

I successfully use Facebook, You Tube, and Twitter and a variety of industry specific Ning sites.  Many actors and filmakers swear by MySpace and while I do have a page I find it too 2008…

What goals to you want to achieve with social media tools in the next 6 months?

I would love to get to the point where I can have a personal assistant to help with all the updates and postings. It can be time consuming to post blogs, photos  and videos. But the time is definitly worth it.

If you are new to Twitter, find a few folks you respect, for example, journalist from NPR or an author you respect. The power of Twitter is that by following them, it allows you to have a very unique dialogue with these folks. If you reply or direct message them, it’s much more powerful than emailing or phone calls. You can also get insight into what they are into or what’s going on in their lives. It’s also fun to see who else is watching them, you might find some other great people you want to follow.

Wefollow also ranks tweeters and let’s you know whose getting more followers, whose moving up in the ranking and whose moving down.  You can type in keywords to find specific people, for example, if you type in “seattle”, Pearl Jam are the top tweeters!

This is a great tool is you want to start following Though Leaders on subjects such as small business, marketing, coaching, it just goes on and on. Overall, it’s fun tool that keeps it simple.

This year the focus was the future and I’m happy to say my impression of the future is pretty positive. The two things that everyone seem to keep repeating were:

1)  Open-ID – having one username and password to login your Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts

2) Open Source – having the source code of software available to the public to design, develop, distribute, and share. For example - most of Microsoft’s software is the opposite of open-source.

Hearing those two themes mentioned over and over again was such a relief! I develop and host websites in a mostly open-source environment and I feel that it’s a solid foundation to work off of.

What do you want to see change in the future for the online world? What would make your life easier/better online?