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There is no shortage of Wordpress instruction, and the most authoritative is to be found at the Wordpress Codex. And there are no shortage of Wordpress installation tutorial videos available for free– to find the latest, just search “Wordpress installation video”.
The biggest problem is the very volume of instruction available. How to choose? One fairly reliable way for a beginner to get an overview of the installation procedure is to select a tutorial from a mainstream source, written for a mainstream novice audience. This article from PCWorld may give you the info and confidence to do your own installation of your own self-hosted Wordpress site, which we recommend as the centerpoint of your small business social media presence.

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The Global Neighbourhoods blog scratches the surface on the relationship between the high cost of travel (local and long-distance), and keeping up with your customers and business partners. This seems pretty obvious to social media evangelist-types, but I don’t feel shy about hammering the point home to small business folks who have yet to take advantage of social media opportunities.

Businesses will increasingly use social media to get closer with customers. This, of course, is already happening and happening at a pretty fast rate. But I think the trend is about to accelerate. Because it is getting too expensive and inconvenient to meet face-to-face in the real world, there will be more efforts to bring the conversation to the next best place, in the form of virtual communities.

From the article Social Media & the Cost of Fuel, Global Neighborhoods Blog

If your business’ blog generates frequently-searched-for search-terms, that’s dandy, but your site is likely to appear many pages back in a search engine, buried under older, richer, craftier competitors This is called “invisible”, or “you-don’t-exist, amigo”. Not good.

One way to increase your visibilty is to add local appeal. Almost every small business draws, to a greater or lesser degree, from a pool of local clients. Why not include your city, county and nearby place-names in your tags, titles and text?

Here is an example: I was listening to one of many of my subscriptions to podcasts concerning social media marketing. I remembered one podcast concerning “Long Tail keywords“, which is a juxtaposition of marketing terms I had never heard before, and found it very interesting, interesting enough in fact to write this blog post.

But I couldn’t remember which podcast I had heard it on, and my iTunes account is on my home machine. What I did remember is that the podcaster’s home base, and likely their business, was somewhere around Tampa Bay, because they were localizing it through comments about great weather, sports, yada yada.

So I search on the Terms “Social Media Marketing Tampa”, and was able to find their distinctive url www.findandconvert.com, which I immediately remembered on sight, with little difficulty. Had I searched only on “Social Media Marketing”, or “Social Media Marketing Podcast” I would have given up in a few minutes of frustration.

So I am able to present to you the very useful and thought provoking podcast segment “Long Tail Keywords” for your enlightenment below.  This comes to you courtesy of Find And Convert, a Tampa internet marketing company with an emphasis on SMM. I have found all of their podcasts useful and eminently listenable, and I highly recommend that you listen to them, or better yet subscribe and stick ‘em in your ears via your portable mp3 player.

FnC-longtail-sk.mp3

I was listening to Jon Udell on The Gillmore Gang podcast the other day, and Mr Udell, who works for Microsoft, referenced one of his old blog posts about the orders-of-magnitude advantage blogging (and by extension, the use of other social media applications) has over email and other web 1.0 means of communication. Same work, much greater distribution. Here is an excerpt from “Too Busy To Blog? Count Your Keystrokes“:

From this perspective, blogging is a communication pattern that optimizes for the amount of awareness and influence that each keystroke can possibly yield. Some topics, of course, are necessarily private and interpersonal. But a surprising amount of business communication is potentially broader in scope. If your choice is to invest keystrokes in an email to three people, or in a blog entry that could be read by those same three people plus more — maybe many more — why not choose the latter? Why not make each keystroke work as hard as it can?

When I can refer people to a site I have written and continually update as a reference, I am avoiding duplication of effort and putting my best foot forward. Because most questions about your business are essentially the same questions, over and over, you can maximize your reach and authority while minimizing your effort by communicating on your blog.

Read John Udell’s whole article “Too Busy To Blog?”. Read it twice. It is uncommon common sense for busy small business people.

A few years ago, in the early months of the podcasting phenomenon, I was the web-presence guy for a very funny and briefly popular podcast called “Area 51″. I had my own little niche podcast, and I recognized the importance of being “of” that community, surfing on its excitement and innovation. But somehow I could never get the “Area 51″ performers to become a part of that adrenalinized world, and the podcast died for lack of direction and commitment. To this day I believe that if the Area 51 crew had been a real part of the nascent podcast community, the exhilaration would have carried them over the rough spots.

I think it is very important to take the time to absorb the zeitgeist of the social media world in which you wish to work. Chris Brogan poses this observation:

It’s interesting to note that companies will spend anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 on a good website design, but will fail to implement even the most rudimentary listening tools to move their capabilities to understand the impact of such a site beyond the realm of hits and clicks.

Read Chris Brogan’s piece concerning listening tools for social media. Or don’t, and just sling spam into a world you don’t really “get”.

Flash embedding: it’s not just for videos anymore. Export to Scribed and you can get the word out just as the generous Brian Solis of PR 2.0 does here. Go to Brian’s site to see the best head shot ever!
Oh, and read the book below– it’s genius.

Scroll through the pages using the scrollbar below.

Scribd.com is so cool, and a fantastic tool. Brian Solis rocks the Scribd with alacrity and verve!

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

The idea of Social Media Marketing, as I interpret it, is to get other people to happily do your work for you. In this spirit, and with sincere appreciation for the work and thought that went into it, I present this excellent blog entry from “Viper Chill” by Glen Allsopp. It is itself a compilation of how-to-leverage-social-media articles and tips:

Here is an excerpt:

MySpace Tips Summary

• Look Around - Really get to know all the options available in MySpace before you start comment spamming. Messaging can be a good option and there are also paid advertising spots.
• Target a Niche - If you are going down a ’spammy route’, don’t just try to target the whole of MySpace. Look into people in niches for example women or members of certain groups.

Read How to Get Traffic from the top Social Media Sites from “Viper Chill” (Cool name, huh?)

If you are reading this piece with a beginner’s mind right now, then you are probably very lucky. You have probably not cobbled together a social web presence higgledy-piggledy, signing up for various services as they arrived on the scene with various identities, agendas and degrees of commitment. You have a chance to put together a social media strategy that will present you or your business in a unified and coherent manner across the web. (Actually, it’s never too late to start fresh, but what to do with all that accumulated juice, eh?)

As usual, I’ve found an article from someone who is a lot smarter than I am, and I offer this excerpt to whet your appetite.

Begin with the End in Mind

Strategy isn’t the goal. It’s the path you plan to take to get there. So, let’s put some goals out, and then talk through how to build a strategy to reach them. Here are a few sample goals. Feel free to add some to the comments, if I don’t cover yours.

Increase customer base.
Generate leads.
Drive sales.
Build awareness.
Make money from your content.
Establish thought leadership.
Educate customers.
Customer-source part of your product development.
Reach new channels of customers.
Improve internal communication.

Read the rest of Chris Brogan’s article “Starting A Social Media Strategy.” His is another blog one might consider subscribing to.

Unlike old media (tv, radio, newspapers, magazines), social media is a better servant of small business than it is of giant corporations, because Social media is the Great Equalizer. Here’s one reason why– General Motor’s Facebook page or Twitter tweet looks the same and has the same potential reach as Joe’s Pizza’s Facebook page or Twitter tweet. There is a democratic leveling of the playing field here that can raise tiny players to star status (and back again, if you’re not prepared) in a matter of hours.
In what other time in history has this been possible? Will this opportunity exist forever, or will regulation or GiantCo bring dull hierarchal order to this Wild West? Beats me, but why not take advantage of this fun, cheap (and by “cheap”, I mean “free”) marketing opportunity? Investigate further, even if you don’t think social media marketing is right for your kind of business.
Thanks to Duct Tape Marketing!