Michelle and the other 40 under Forty winners appeared in the April 27, 2009, special issue of the Charleston Regional Business Journal. Click here to see it. Michelle Salater is proud to announce she joins 39 business and community leaders as someone who excels in her industry and devotes time to the community. Each year, the Charleston Regional Business Journal salutes forty people under 40 years of age who are making their mark with professional success and community involvement.

Message from Michelle

Greetings from beautiful St. Croix. I’m here for a week visiting my brother and for a little rest and relaxation before I begin promoting the launch of my new website.

Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing bits and pieces of the work that’s gone into rebranding my company and refining my services and message. Throughout the process, I’ve had to take a hard look at what my company stands for, whom I serve, and how we can better serve current and prospective clients. What I found is that after I got clear on the above, my message became crystal clear.

This issue of Your Business Marketing Solution offers three tips on authentically marketing your business. Customers and strategic partners alike enjoy being loyal to companies that are authentic through various marketing platforms, such as their company website, social media sites, and networking events. And people like doing business with a company they feel they can trust. Being authentic not only attracts your target audience to you, but it also makes doing business so much more fun and a whole lot easier.

Feature Article: Three Ways to Authentically Market Your Business

Building a successful business online requires effectively reaching potential clients through strategic and authentic marketing practices. And companies that utilize transparent practices are more successful than companies that shy away from expressing their brand personality and business practices.

Transparent practices are crucial if you want to build trust between potential clients and your brand. If you hide your brand personality, if your message is inflated or muddled in industry jargon, or if the message is too focused on the company, it will be difficult to reach a large range of potential clients and strategic partners.

The key is to get real. Take some time and evaluate your business mission and what your company stands for. Take a look at where you aren’t being as authentic as you could be, then rework your message to reflect the personality and the message you want to communicate.

Here are three result-driven ways to authentically market your business:

Tip of the Month

According to eMarketer.com, small-to midsized businesses are spending quite a bit of their marketing dollars online. In 2008, $6.8 billion dollars was spent on online advertising by small businesses, and by 2013, an estimated $7.4 billion will be spent on online advertising by small businesses.

Building a successful business online requires effectively reaching potential clients through strategic and authentic marketing practices. And companies that utilize transparent practices are more successful than companies that shy away from expressing their brand personality and business practices.

Transparent practices are crucial if you want to build trust between potential clients and your brand. If you hide your brand personality, if your message is inflated or muddled in industry jargon, or if the message is too focused on the company, it will be difficult to reach a large range of potential clients and strategic partners.

The key is to get real. Take some time and evaluate your business mission and what your company stands for. Take a look at where you aren’t being as authentic as you could be, then rework your message to reflect the personality and the message you want to communicate.

Here are three result-driven ways to authentically market your business:

• Share your brand story and your company’s personality on your website. Don’t make your potential customers feel out of the loop or intimidated when they visit your website. A website that lacks a clear, authentic message and unique company personality will weaken the connection between the visitor and your brand image. A site with a transparent About Us page is a powerful tool that facilitates a strong connection. Not only do potential clients like to see whom they’re doing business with, they also like to see an authentic brand story and the personality of the company.

• Become transparent on social media sites. Social media sites are the perfect places to reach a high concentration of potential customers and strategic partners and to integrate your company into the online community. They are an informal way to market your business and places where you can truly let your personality and brand image shine through in a fun and interactive way.

Offering behind-the-scenes information, sneak peeks, photos, videos, and recent news about your business on these social media sites provides potential customers with a clear understanding of your brand image and your practices. It also gives prospects a sense of the personalities behind the business.

• Share yourself and your company at networking events. A networking event is the perfect place to meet referral partners, strategic partners, and potential clients. Your goal at a networking event is to be remembered—in a positive way—by a handful of people with whom you speak. Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through when discussing business. This transparency is the key to showing others that your business practices and brand image are authentic. Allow potential customers and strategic partners to build a strong connection between you as a person and your brand name. When you are remembered, your business will be remembered.

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Message from Michelle

Overwhelmed. It happens to all business owners at one time or another.

With technology moving faster than it takes me to make a pot of coffee (I have a Bunn–brews delicious coffee in three minutes or less), feeling overwhelmed is hard to avoid. You try your best to stay on top of the newest avenues to market your company online. But as hard as you try, you can’t seem to stay abreast of the latest and greatest ways to get your message across the Internet and reach prospects.

You are not alone.

In my business, it’s my job to know what’s going on in the World Wide Web. My team and I constantly surf the Internet for the newest technology, changes in SEO, and the latest applications for social media sites. And guess what? As much as we research, we’re often overwhelmed.

This issue of Your Business Marketing Solution, I decided to share with you five new ways to use social media sites to stay ahead of the competition, optimize your marketing efforts, and increase your company’s online exposure. The article provides you with a brief summary of each new application, so you don’t have to go searching for it.

Feature Article

5 New Ways to Market Your Business Online

One of the best ways to market your company online is through social media sites. Although it can be time consuming, learning the ins and outs of social media sites is extremely important if you want to stay up-to-date with your online marketing efforts.

Unless you’re a social media guru, you might have to search vigorously for the location of applications, and you might spend hours finding new changes. Often, trial and error is the only avenue to figure out the proper ways to use these sites. The hours begin to add up, and by the time you finally figured out how to navigate and use a social media site, new applications and formats have been added. So, it’s back to the drawing board…

Before you get discouraged…keep reading. There’s hope. Save yourself time and effort searching for new social media site updates and applications. Here are five new ways to use social media sites to stay ahead of the competition, optimize marketing efforts, and increase online exposure:

1. Google Friend Connect API: In March, Google launched the Google Friend Connect API (GFC), which works the same way many social media sites do. GFC is an excellent tool for companies to use on their blog to drive targeted site traffic and grow a successful business online. The application offers entertaining social features that engage visitors, allowing them to interact, sign into your blog as a member, and invite their friends from other social media sites to become a member. All of GFC’s features permit you to build your own niche-oriented online community centered around your blog. This community will consist of people interested in your industry expertise and business. To more easily view the social activities occurring on your site, add the Google social bar to your blog. Go here to get started.
2. YouTube’s Collaborative Annotations: On February 20, 2009, YouTube introduced an updated version of its collaborative annotations application. The update allows friends to create speech bubbles, notes, and spotlights on your videos. This tool works to stimulate conversation among viewers and allows you to receive feedback about the message of your video from viewers, colleagues, and friends. And it enables the audience to inform you about positive and negative elements of your video. Go here to get started.
3. Yahoo’s Rich Ads in Search: Providing advertisers with similar benefits to banner ads, Yahoo’s Rich Ads in Search add a whole new visual element to search engine results. This new search layout incorporates video and images into the search engine results next to the company name, as opposed to a simple hyperlink. Yahoo’s Rich Ads in Search allows viewers to become more engaged in the search process and allows visitors to easily find what they’re looking for. Go here to get started.
4. Speeqe: Similar to Twitter, Speeqe allows you to send updated messages to friends and co-workers. The difference between the two lies in the length and immediacy of the conversation. Speeqe provides visitors with personalized, instant chat rooms, where they can invite others to join a discussion. This social media tool is an excellent way to have an immediate and fulfilling conversation without being restricted by word count. Twitter, on the other hand, only allows you to send messages no longer than 140 characters per message. Go here to get started.
5. Google’s Rich-Media / Video Ad Templates: Advertisers looking to engage viewers in the buying process greatly benefit from using Google’s new ad templates. These templates allow advertisers to display numerous products across one ad, enabling them to sell several products at once. Even better, you can attach a URL to each product, which means you could virtually have three landing pages as opposed to one. This will increase site traffic and online exposure. The new Google templates also allow you to place video in the ad for an even more interactive user experience. Google can also track what viewers scrolled their mouse over, and how long they watched the video for. Go here to get started.

Tip of the Month

MarketingSherpa reports that more than 90% of companies see their presence on social media sites as helping build their brand reputation and awareness.