Focusing on what the customer wants is critical to successful marketing efforts. Once you have a product people want, set your price, let others know about your product through public relations and advertising and make it available to them for purchase. It is a good idea to create a marketing plan to help guide your marketing efforts. It should include your market research, location, customers, competition, how you plan to position yourself against them, the product or service you are offering, pricing, advertising, and promotion.

Marketing Links

Entrepreneur.com  
Broad-based information about many facets of starting and operating a small business.

How to create a marketing plan
Entrepreneur.com’s guide to creating a marketing plan.

Business.gov  
The official business link to the U.S. government for new and existing businesses. A guide for marketing your small business.

Social Marketing

 More than 300 million active users spend more than 8 billion minutes a day posting 45 million status updates on Facebook. Over 65 million people on Facebook and 80% of Twitter users are connecting via handhelds allowing them access to you and your company anywhere at anytime. Of the 200 million bloggers out there, 54% post content and tweet daily. Youtube.com has reached 1 billion views per day. Are you beginning to see the value of becoming part of the social marketing craze?

Not only has it proven to increase company and brand exposure, social marketing is free, fairly simple, customizable, and can be updated as much or as little as time permits.

The most popular social marketing sites at this time are:

• Twitter
  Twitter allows users to post a micro-blog of up to 140 characters on their profile page. Other users can view your tweets by following your page. You can also start or join a conversation with other bloggers or send a direct message to another tweeter.
• Facebook
  Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends or colleagues, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. You can also create a fan page for a business or organization or send invitations to events among other things.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has over 50 million members and continues to show steady growth. LinkedIn is a place to connect with colleagues or trusted contacts and exchange knowledge and ideas.

Stats provided by Socialnomics.net and Facebook.com

Useful links about social marketing:

Socialnomics  
A Social Media Blog.

Social Media Revolution
YouTube video on the effects of social media.

Visit Socialnomics on YouTube.com for more videos about social media.