Undergrounds Coffeehaus Uses Social Media To Generate Business
By Nick at 28 May, 2007, 11:24 am
Awhile back I wrote an article about Undergrounds Coffeehaus in Fort Lauderdale, who opened two months ago to begin brewing for the coffee lovers and those simply seeking an alternative to the nearby bar. This small business does not have their own website with its own domain name. All the have is a MySpace profile page.
This got me thinking. Does a small business really need their own domain name to establish a presence on the web? In a word, no. Undergrounds Coffeehaus is just another example of a small business who is leveraging the power of social media. Social media describes the use of online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. It is the building of an online network of friends that can generate either positive or negative word of mouth for a business. For those of you looking to start up a business and do not have enough money to build a website, consider signing on with one of the social media sites. It does not have to be a custom design and fancy looking. A plain and simple one will do just fine. If you have the money to build a website, signing on with social media sites will expand the brand of your website.
Undergrounds Coffeehaus, still alive and kicking, has built a powerful friends space and keeps them informed about events happening at the establishment. However, can they do much more with their MySpace profile page to build their brand on the web? Absolutely! For example, using the groups feature, they can create discussion groups on a variety of topics, such as having online reading groups discussing your favorite book, or having discussions with local artists who are having their work featured at the company. Undergrounds Coffeehaus is currently featuring the artwork of Travis Wright. To expand their brand on the web and on the MySpace community, a group discussion page can be set up to allow the artist, Travis Wright, to discuss his artwork and his inspirations.
Obviously if you have your own domain name, leveraging social media in this manner to promote your website is a valuable tool that cannot be ignored. Knowing your target audience is key to effectively leveraging social media to build your online brand. MySpace is geared towards the twenty-somethings, whereas Ryze is focused on the working professional. There are other social media sites out there, such as Newsvine, Hi5, Friendster, and FaceBook.
The key is to know your target audience and tailor your group discussions towards that audience. As the group discussion grows in popularity, more people will see the link to your website, thus will click on it for more information. You are also building relevant links to your website, and in the eyes of Google, is powerful enough to increase your page rank as well as search rankings. Quality, and relevant backlinks are still a major factor in page rank.
Other small business resources that can be used to build a web presence with or without a website include the use of the Google Local Business Center, Google Base Online Classifieds, and Google MyMaps. The Google Base Online Classifieds can be tied in with a pay-per-click campaign. Google Notebooks, the equivalent to Microsoft OneNote, has proven to provide good search rankings. You can add links to websites that you find on the web to your Google Notebook, and share with the world by making it public. I have created several Google Notebooks for a variety of websites, and those websites have shown up in the search results.
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