Finding Your Voice on Facebook

"The key to successfully marketing your business on Facebook is finding an authentic voice that connects with and engages your desired audience," suggests John Wayne Zimmerman in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Facebook Marketing.

Zimmerman devotes a chapter of his to "The Voice of Your Business" that suggests choosing a celebrity whose persona reflects the way you want your business to be perceived. Mimic the language and style of this "celebrity spokesperson" in your Facebook posts, he advises, and try to be consistent. If more than one person is posting, make sure they also use this "brand."

As for the content of your posts, Zimmerman says it should always be what your target market wants. "If you own a landscape business, focus on offering tips on how to prepare the lawn for winter, how to get rid of grubs, and when to plant bulbs in your garden."

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Facebook Marketing

by John Wayne Zimmerman

ALPHA, 2012

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Time for a Mobile Marketing Strategy

Many analysts predict mobile browsing on the web is going to surpass desktop browsing by 2015, or soon thereafter. This is indicative of a fundamental shift in Internet users' browsing habits and choice of devices. E-marketers of all stripes are going to have to develop or incorporate a mobile marketing strategy into their business plans.

The Bootstrapper's Guide to the Mobile Web

Practical Plans to Get Your Business Mobile in Just a Few Days for Just a Few Bucks

by Deltina Hay

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Is Organic a Better Meat?

Whether or not organic meat is actually more nutritious or safer than non-organic, the idea has cogency among consumers and is a principal driver for the organic market.

Authors of the paper on "Organic Meat Marketing" in Organic Meat Production and Processing note that "there is no evidence that organic food is healthier or more nutritious. Consumers are often not aware that the organic standards are only based on the production and processing of the product and not on the final quality of the product."

They concede, however, that a majority of consumers have concerns about chemicals like hormones and herbicides in their food and try to avoid them as much as possible.

"These worries have increased because of the negative publicity about genetically modified (GM) crops, which are sold and fed to livestock, and... food scares such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, foot and mouth disease, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli outbreaks."

Organic Meat Production and Processing

edited by Steven C. Ricke, et al.

Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

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Contagious

Word-of-mouth often leads to popularity, or notoriety. It is much more effective than any form of traditional advertising and it seriously impacts the products people buy, the way they behave, and what they discuss.

So, how do you get it? What makes people talk about certain subjects rather than others? What makes some online content go viral? According to marketing professor Jonah Berger, the answer came be found in the psychology of social transmission.

Berger and his colleagues in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania studied hundreds of products, analyzed thousands of news articles, and tracked millions of purchases in an effort to understand why people talk about and share certain things more than others with the objective of helping marketers By applying this knowledge to their own products and ideas, marketers craft "contagious" content that is more likely to spread.

"We noticed that the same six 'ingredients' or principles were often at work," Berger explains. "Six key STEPPS, as I call them, that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated."

Berger's six STEPPS to contagiousness are delineated as Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories. Each chapter of his book, Contagious  focuses on one of these principles with research and examples showing how individuals, companies and organizations have applied them to help popularize their products and ideas.

Berger's book has some clear and important implications for anyone selling something, whether it is broccoli at a farmers market or an e-book online. By understanding why people talk about and share things, you can make your own product more contagious.

Contagious

Why Things Catch On

by Jonah Berger

Simon & Schuster, 2013

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