11 Tech Tips to boost your business

The year end has come and gone. To usher in 2011, here are 11 Tech Tips for those who wish to leverage on IT and new media to boost their business or profile.

    1. Devote resources to these four social media platforms.

Although there are too many social media platforms out there to count, Facebook and Twitter stand heads and shoulders above the rest. Since time and resources are limited, your primary focus should be on Facebook and Twitter. Two niche services that are worth devoting some resources on are LinkedIn for business networking and headhunting and Foursquare for geo-location (more on this later).

   2. Replace your blog with Facebook pages.

A: If you have sufficient staff or resources to keep up a blog, by all means do so. But if not, focus on Facebook pages instead. It can do practically everything a blog can but has additional features that make it more dynamic and interactive. It also facilitates viral marketing much better than blogs.

   3. Use Twitter for customer service

Last year, Twitter was still very much the preserve of techies and those interested in politics. A common complaint is that Malaysian companies are lousy at customer service. To help change this perception, companies should consider adopting Twitter to aid in customer service. The telcos are already doing it quite well. It's time for other companies to catch up.

   4. PR companies should target press releases not just for traditional media but also for social media.

Traditional press releases are designed for print media. But given that many people are now getting news and information through the web and in particular, through social media, modern PR companies should angle some of their releases specifically for that platform.

Create catchy titles and reach out to supernodes or key influencers to interest them in tweeting and retweeting your content or sharing your link via Facebook.

   5. Time to create a social media manager position.
If your company is big enough to have a corporate communication manager or public relations officer, you'll need to create a new position for someone in charge of managing social media engagement and interaction.

   6. Create video content and share via social media.

It's now super easy to companies to publish their videos on free services like YouTube or Vimeo but they should share them via their Facebook or Twitter pages. If the videos are cool, they can go viral very easily. Fans just have to like or retweet the video and it starts to spread through their networks.

   7. Companies should start to think like media companies.
Companies which are traditionally not in the media business should consider creating content in various forms and publish them through digital means, especially social media. This is one way to achieve thought leadership and branding. It also helps you develop a following, from which you can do many other things

   8. This leads us to my next suggestion, which is that companies should incorporate crowd-sourcing into their decision making process.

If your company can build a big following, it's the ultimate focus group. This is a group that is intensely interested in your brand or product. You should tap on them for ideas, input and feedback.

   9. More emphasis should be placed on online ads.

When most people think about online ads, they tend think about banner ads. But the world of online ads is larger than that. You should consider adding Google Ads and Facebook Ads into the mix because these allow for very precise targeting. Best of all is that such ads can be bought on a cost-per-click basis so they are really performance-based.

   10. Geo-location emerged into the public consciousness last year but so far not many companies have adopted it as part of their marketing campaign. It's time to try.

Although Facebook Places is not here yet, Foursquare already is. Encouraging your regular customers to register with Foursquare and checking in as a form of loyalty program is something already being done in the west. It's just a matter of time before this trend spreads here so might as well get a head start.

   11. Lastly, the mobile phone is the one device that everyone carries with them everywhere.

A company doing business today should have a four-pronged mobile strategy:

i) dotMobi-compliant mobile website

ii) iPhone optimized mobile website

iii) iPhone app

iv) Android app

OON YEOH's new social media book 'Like Me, Follow Me' is published by MPH. You can connect with him via Facebook and Twitter.