What is a go-to person?

Firstly, I’d like to confirm what I am referring to when I use the term, go-to person. I’m talking specifically about those valued people in business, who we immediately think of when we have a need, related to their area of expertise.

When someone thinks of you as their go-to person for a particular need, they go direct to you.

• They don’t ask a friend for a recommendation.
• They don’t poll their friends on Facebook.
• They don’t take their need to a search engine.
• YOU get the call!

Clearly, the commercial value of being the go-to person for your marketplace is huge. Not only will you retain your existing clients for longer, you will also attract more inquiries from prospective clients.

To earn this valuable position, we need to focus on 3 core areas.

1. Demonstrate that you know your subject

A newsletter or blog is a great way to achieve this. By sharing useful ideas and information, people come to think of you as a valuable resource.

This is why it’s so important to avoid the common mistake, of only offering diluted information to your readers. If you hold back the good stuff, the really useful ideas, you will cause your readers to assume that shallow information is all you know!

Give away as much value, freely, as possible. Now, at this point some of you will be concerned, that if you give lots of valuable information away for free, people won’t bother hiring you. That is actually the exact opposite of how it works.

Here’s what really happens, when you offer extremely useful information for free in your newsletter or blog posts:

• Some people will use your free ideas, with no intention of hiring you. As they were never going to hire you anyway, you lose nothing.
• Some people will use your free ideas and get part of the way, then realise they need your expert help. These people will call you. Had you not given so much free information away, you’d never have positioned yourself as their go-to person.
• Some people will see the value of what you do, then figure out very fast that it’s far better to hire you to do it for them.

It works. People in that 2nd and 3rd group make up almost all of my non-referred clients!

2. Demonstrate that you are approachable

If we want people to get in touch with us, we need to be as approachable as possible to them. This means taking every opportunity to demonstrate that we are friendly and professional.

Unbelievably, many business owners are cranky or confrontational, even when they are sharing their thoughts online, for the world to see. This is, of course, their prerogative. However, there is a price to pay for being cranky or confrontational. It makes us far less approachable. If we want people to feel comfortable approaching us, we need to be approachable. We need to show humility. We need to remove any barriers.

3. Demonstrate your reliability

Again, publishing a newsletter or blog posts is a great way to demonstrate your reliability. Of course, this is only the case if you have reliably published content over a reasonable period of time. If you write a newsletter or blog and the last thing you published was several months ago, it works directly against you. Instead of demonstrating your reliability and stick-ability, you do the opposite.

If you have been in business for a long time, let people know. When a prospective client reads my about page, they can see that I set this marketing business up in 1995 and that I have worked in marketing all my adult life. That, along with almost 6 years worth of publishing ideas via Jim’s Marketing Blog, offers those thinking of hiring me a huge confidence boost. You should do the same for your prospective clients and customers too.

IMPORTANT: Drawing a line

It’s important at this point, to make a very clear distinction between positioning yourself as the go-to person and positioning yourself as the freebie person.

Yes, it’s a privilege to be regarded by our family and friends as a person they know they can rely on for whatever they need. However, in business, we need to draw a line between what we are prepared to do for free and what we will offer as a paid service. Otherwise, we are likely to become a magnet for freebie hunters. Freebie hunters are people who abuse the nature of others, with selfish demands for free goods and services.

For example, I occasionally get emails from people, asking me to do unpaid work for them. These range from things that would take me a few hours, to tasks that would take me a week.

It’s worth mentioning that many of my clients started off as readers, yet none, not one, of my clients came to me after asking for freebies.

How to get the balance right: The one-to-many approach

There best way to offer free information, which is scalable and sustainable, is to adopt the same approach I use here. I call it the one-to-many approach.

Here’s how I do it: All the free work I do for people is offered via Jim’s Marketing Blog and the email version of the blog. I call it the one-to-many approach, because I create one piece of work and it benefits many people.

Offering one-to-one work for free, simply does not scale. It makes no sense for me to give an hour of my time to 1 selfish person, when I can use that same hour to write something, which will benefit thousands of people.

Finally

For some business owners and consultants, there is a huge mindset change required, to adopt the idea of freely sharing, valuable content. However, for those who embrace the idea, the rewards are huge. It’s the primary marketing model I have used for years and is the most powerful form of marketing I have ever seen. I can’t recommend it highly enough to you.

What are your thoughts about building an irresistible business? Are you already a main go-to person for your marketplace and if so, what tips do you have? Share your thoughts with a comment.

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I don’t know

When a client or prospective client asks us a question, to which we don’t know the answer, we have two options. One builds trust and the other erodes trust.

1. We can say ‘I don’t know’, then assure them we will find the answer and get back to them.
2. We can give a false answer and try to fool them.

The magic behind those 3 words

When we tell someone that we don’t know the answer, something almost magical happens. Instead of our credibility decreasing, it increases.

Why?

Because admitting that we don’t know the answer, shows the other person that we are truthful, even when telling the truth may make us look less informed.

The real magic here, is that whatever else we say, that person is far more inclined to believe it. Having demonstrated that we are willing to admit when we don’t know the answer, we strengthen the value of the answers we provide. Our words become more credible and so do we.

No need to be a know-it-all

In business as in all walks of life, no one likes people who think they know it all. The good news is that in business, there’s no need to pretend you are a know it all.

Now, you obviously need to know as much useful information as possible regarding your clients needs. If you don’t know the answer too often, you show a lack of preparation and education. However, on those occasions where you need to find an answer and get back to them, honesty is always the best option.

After all, if a client senses that you’re BSing them, and they always tend to, you’ve lost them.

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Making your business customers, prospects, suppliers and partners feel like important members of a bigger community simply makes long-term business sense and is the key to long-term growth in ways that you not have even considered.

Many businesses get the idea treating customers in ways that make them want to return and refer, but you should also look at your best customers as collaboration partners able to help you formulate plans for growth.

Creating new products and services and making plans for growth is tricky adventures. Why not systematically involve your customers in every decision you make? Why not create new products and services with your customers? Why not include them in content creation and marketing campaigns?

Why not get your best customers to tell you what they need and then help you create, iterate and perfect it?

Below are five steps that can help you build systematic community involvement into your growth plans

Champion personas

The first step is to segment your business customers into personality types. Not every customer group is right for this approach and you may likely have completely different segments, such as B2B and B2C, and may need to build entirely different approaches for different segments.

Additionally, you’ll want to identify customers groups or types that are more open to this level of involvement. One of the best places to look is for customers that already refer or evangelize what you do. Can you identify them specifically or can you at least come up with a description of common characteristics?

These are what I refer to as you community champions. This is the first group to focus on as you try to expand your community reach.

Ongoing mining

Next you’ll want to dig in and figure out what this group might be lacking. This is sometimes a little tricky as if they really knew they probably would have told you by now, but I find that posing a series of questions around what they wish they had, what they can’t find or what doesn’t seem to work, even about your current offerings, is a good place to start.

After you do this you’ll want to audit your content, touchpoints and revenue streams in an effort to identify a handful of potential growth and involvement opportunities.

Many times you can find ways to involve your customers by simply creating content opportunities such as guest blogging, case studies and video testimonials.

Consider events you might create where your customers can do some of the education. Host peer-to-peer roundtables and let your customers facilitate discussions among prospects.

Consider additional revenue extensions where your champion customers could moderate other customer groups and help add ongoing value.

Innovation circles

Once you’ve established some working rapport with your community champions get them involved in helping you build, test and refine new offerings.

Create what I like to call innovation circles to use to build with your customers. Take rough product, service, packaging and pricing ideas to your circles and get feedback. Then with this feedback create a beta test group that agrees to help you get it right. Then use these testers as case studies and early evangelists for your now much improved offering.

You don’t have to stop here either. You can use this same approach for all of your marketing initiatives, copy and positioning.

Accountability tracking

The final piece is the glue that holds this entire approach together and keeps your community champions coming back for more.

You must create a way to religiously track the results your champions are getting from their relationship with your organization as well as their greater involvement in the community.

This just makes good business sense, but it will also help reinforce the value you bring to the table over and above the somewhat empty claims of good service and low pricing used by your competitors.

One of the best ways to build this into your community is through game mechanics. Create ways for your community champions to participate in contests. Get them to compete with each other. Teach them how to help each other through tangible acts such as linking swapping, sharing and guest posting.

Make the use of your progress and services something they must report and even incentivize them by creating awards for people who come up with new uses and best documented results.

Partner platform

One way to take this notion up a notch is to teach a group of strategic partners how to do the same and then start cross-pollinating your communities.

When you create a common language and process, such as “innovation circles,” you make it easier to teach the methodology and create even greater participation as you and your partners are promoting the same approach.

Imagine how much more value you can bring to your community by building this kind of best of class partner platform, Further imagine how interested potential partners will be to learn how you plan to shine the light on them throughout your vibrant customer community.

Your customer champions want to help you grow and, while making referrals is one powerful way to involve them, when you take a formal approach like the one described above you’ll not only make it easier for them to refer you, you’ll create a team of business partners eager to help you plan and grow.

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Since so many of us turn to search engines or our favorite social media platform to answer questions and solve problems, as businesses we need to make sure that we’re there, too, ready to help.

Start by Creating Valuable Content

Value is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the only beholder that matters is your ideal customer. What are they struggling with that you can help them with?

Let’s imagine you run a dentistry practice, and you’re looking to get new patients for cosmetic dentistry. You might start by brainstorming some questions or concerns that your ideal customer may have:

• What is cosmetic dentistry?
• How much does cosmetic dentistry cost?
• Will my insurance cover teeth bonding?
• What’s the difference between teeth bleaching and veneers?
• What questions should I ask before choosing a dentist for cosmetic dentistry?

These questions can come from your experience, surveys, actual questions people ask you or more. For more ideas on how to come up with great content ideas, check out 13 Ideas for Writing Content Your Audience Wants to Read.

Choose Your Channels

Each one of these questions can be turned into an article, blog post, video, a webinar, or a dozen other packages. Let’s assume we’re going to start with “the difference between teeth bleaching and veneers.” Because this is so visual, let’s create a video.

The video should be short–probably two minutes or less–and focused on explaining the differences between the two approaches. If possible, we’ll have the dentist who does the procedures explain them so she can build trust with her audience before they even make their appointment. We’ll want to end with some sort of call-to-action: perhaps telling people that if they want to learn more they should click the link in the description field.

Or you could take advantage of YouTube’s feature that allows you to link to your website. Here’s a how-to on creating external links from your YouTube videos.

Before we upload it to YouTube (my video sharing platform of choice) we’ll want to change the file name from whatever random name it has to something keyword rich and specific, like teeth-bleaching-vs-veneers.mov.

As the movie uploads, we’ll give our video a keyword-rich title, like “Teeth Bleaching vs. Veneers: Which Is Right for You?”

Moving on to the description field, we’ll start with a URL that we want to drive viewers to…a page on our site with more information, our contact information, and a call to action. We’ll continue by creating as much relevant content as we can, using our keywords a few more times within the copy.

Finally, we’ll put our keywords into the tags field.

For more detail on YouTube marketing, check out How To Maximize Your YouTube Marketing.

Promote Your Content

Even though this content is part of your marketing, you’ll still need to promote it to get it in front of your prospects. Since we created this content as a YouTube video, we can embed it in a blog post (among other places.)

So, we’ll create a new blog post about teeth bleaching and veneers. A lot of the written copy can be similar to the video content, so we’re not reinventing the wheel. In fact, we could take the transcript as is if we’re feeling especially busy (or lazy) and turn that into the blog post.

Within the post we’ll both link to the video hosted at YouTube and embed the video so people can watch it from within the video.

In addition, we’ll create a call to action, guiding people back to our website where they can call us, fill out a contact form, or setup an appointment.

When we publish this post, all of our RSS and email subscribers will get a heads up about the new content.

We’ll also share this on our Facebook page, create a series of scheduled tweets through Hootsuite, and use any other social platform where our audience might hang out.

Turn Visitors Into Customers

If we’ve done our job, a lot more people who are interested in cosmetic dentistry have discovered our content and followed the links back to our site. However, these people are still just visitors…not prospects, and certainly not customers.

Our website needs to be professional and easy to navigate. It should be at least as nice as our offices, because it’s likely that they’ll see our website before our offices, and we need to make a good first impression. A messy, frustrating or unprofessional site will send the message that our practice is the same.

The page on our website that explains in more detail about bleaching vs. veneers (and perhaps answers some of those other questions as well) needs to have a clear call to action at the bottom. What do we want people to do? Call us? Fill out a contact form? Use our online appointment form? Let’s make it clear to them what the next step is so they’re more likely to take it.

Takeaways

Although you may not be running a dentist’s office, hopefully you can see how these steps can be recreated to support lead generation for your small business.

Start by creating valuable content that answers the questions your ideal customers are asking at Google or Facebook. Find the right platform or channel to deliver that content, and follow up by promoting the content. Use any and all channels that your audience are likely to be active on.

Use your content to lead people to an information-rich page on your site, and give them a clear indication to what the next logical step would be to solve their problem.

In this way you’ll be attracting a steady stream of new customers for your small business.

Rich Brooks
Web Marketing Consultant

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Looking at YOUR bigger picture

Take some time out today, to look at your bigger picture. Here are just a few things to consider:

• Are you on course to achieve the goals or targets you set for your business in January?
• Is your cash flow looking OK? How about 3 months down the road from now?
• Are the fees or prices you charge keeping up with inflation or are your profits slipping?
• Are you getting more referrals from your clients than last year or fewer referrals?
• Are you retaining more clients than you were last year?
• Are you attracting the right type of clients or too many time wasters?
• Are you working too many hours?
• Are you working too few hours?

It’s all too easy to mistake movement for progress. That’s why it makes sense to regularly step outside your business and see if you’re on course or not.

A small adjustment today could save you from a much bigger problem in 6 months time!

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Every business does basically four things:

• Make stuff – This might mean an actual product, but it also includes making a determination about what markets to enter and how to innovate.
• Market stuff – Whatever the business is meant to do it can’t survive long unless people know about, understand it and are motivated to buy from it.
• Deliver stuff – This is where the real value exchange happens. No matter if this is a product or a result, the business must exchange what has been promised.
• Count stuff – This is what most would call finance, but to me it also includes measuring and analyzing all manner of data, both tangible and intangible.

The basic business models to consider:

Product/service – A business can make and sell its own products and services. This is probably the most common approach. Evernote makes a great software product and distributes it through a free to upgrade approach. A marketing consultant sells a consulting engagement for a monthly retainer fee.

Products and services can be packaged and distributed through a multitude of channels and delivered in physical form, digital form and as one time purchases or ongoing subscriptions.

Reseller – Resellers don’t necessarily make or even warehouse what they sell. They find products or represent brands and generally make profit based on the difference between the price they sell a product for and the price they must pay to acquire or sell the product.

Affiliate marketers fall into this category as do what are commonly referred to as value added resellers (VARs). Microsoft partners, for example, sell and install Microsoft products and add services, such as customization and training, to enhance the basic product.

Many straight up eCommerce companies, such as JustBats.com, fall into this category as do many eBay and Amazon sellers. Most retail establishments also fit this model.

Broker – The broker essentially brings buyer and seller together and takes a transaction fee. They may also provided services that make a transaction happen more smoothly, such as the case of a real estate agent.

This category has exploded with the growth of online platforms that make bringing buyers and sellers together from anywhere in the world much easier. In many cases this business model includes the creation of a marketplace, handling transactions and ensuring security. Clarity.fm is a great example of the new breed of broker as they bring experts and those seeking advice together.

PayPal is another example of brokering services between a buyer and seller. In this case, it’s the actual exchange of money.

Aggregator – An aggregator builds a community and then charges for access to the community. In many ways publications and news sites fit this model as they build a subscriber base and then charge advertisers a fee to gain access, by way of a positioned ad, to their community.

Comparison shopping sites, like Shopzilla, and daily deal sites, like Woot are prime examples of how the Internet has grown this category.

So, how does an entrepreneur decide what business model to adopt?

If you have an idea for a business then you should consider the following elements to help determine your best approach.

• Market Potential – It’s probably a good idea to determine how big the market could be for your idea. There’s nothing wrong with going into a very narrow niche, but you might build a different business than if there is a greater potential.
• Competitive Landscape – You must understand who else is already doing what you want to do and get a real feel for what their value proposition is. Having competitors who forge and prove demand for your idea is not a bad thing.
• Ideal Customer – In startup mode this may be a hypothesis, but you need to narrowly define the characteristics and qualities of the customer you intend to serve. From here you can begin to get a better view of the size of the market and how to best access it.
• Value Proposition – There’s one question you must be able answer in a compelling way – why you? Every entrepreneur falls in love with their concept, but it you can’t very simply explain why a market is going to choose your idea over another you’re destined to wobble around trying to grow.
• Distribution Channels – There are many, many ways to get your product, service or idea to market. Direct sales force, distributors, eCommerce site, retail store, sales reps, and marketplaces like Newegg. In some cases you might even choose a combination of several. This is a crucial decision as profit and expenses can very greatly depending upon the model that fits.
• Revenue Streams – Your business should have a core way to make money. But, a strong business model should also consider additional ways to add value and make money. This can be through the sale of related products – Map My Fitness sells a premium upgrade for their core app but also creates a marketplace for 3rd party addons such as heart rate monitors and bike computers. It can also come from the convergence of several assets – a consultant creates blog traffic and notoriety for their point of view and adds advertising, speaking and books as revenue streams while enhancing their core consulting business.
• Strategic Relationships – Many business models hinge on developing partnerships with companies that have products or services that are central to the model – a software company may need relationships with key software makers in order to build a business. This might also include key competencies – an electrical contractor may find that they must find technicians or partners with low voltage expertise in order to service the growing demand for data and entertainment related installations.

So, the process for determining a business model is really an exercise in understanding the classic models and determining the best fit for your idea through a process of elimination.

3 Books for startups – each of these books come at this idea from different angles and make great reading for startups and season owners alike.

• Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur
• The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
• The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufman

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1. You can delight your customers more than your competitors do

This is one of the smartest marketing investments you can make. By delighting your existing customers, they become a superb source of new, high quality business. When someone receives an exceptional level of service from you, they tell people. They spread the word about your business.

Additionally, you will find that you retain your existing customers. This is really important. Otherwise, developing your business is like filling a bucket, which has a hole in it.

The key thing to remember here, is that the process of giving and receiving starts with giving. If you want your customers or clients to tell the world about you, you need to deliver an experience that’s worth talking about, first.

2. You can outsmart your competitors

Creative thinking costs nothing. By improving your creative thinking skills, you can get ahead faster and fly higher. You can spot opportunities that most people miss. You can solve problems faster and with better, more profitable answers.

Some people claim they are not creative, which is factually incorrect. We are born creative. However, to tap into our creativity and get the best results, we can all use a little help.

That’s why I have written dozens of creative thinking articles for you, on my creative thinking website. It contains dozens of free articles and videos, to show you how to think creatively, generate ideas and solve problems.

3. You can engage with your marketplace & learn what matters to them

Social networks make it easier than ever to connect with your future customers or clients. The majority of small business owners use these networks to sell or they automate their activity. They treat social networks as a broadcast medium, rather than a communication medium.

The smartest people use a human approach to social networks. They build relationships with people and listen to the needs of their marketplace. My best advice is to reach out in a human way. It works!

What would you add to this list?

Please share your best tips for growing a business, which cost little if anything financially. Let us know what has worked for you, by leaving a comment.

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I witnessed an independent coffee shop self-destruct recently, just as the owner planned it to. Yes, although the owner said he wanted his coffee shop to succeed, his planning was all about failing. He literally (not figuratively) planned for failure.

Planning to fail

The owner set the business up in such a way, that his risk and financial investment was as close to zero as possible. That way, if it failed, his losses would be minimal.

So…

• The scruffy looking building he moved into, stayed scruffy. He refused to fix it up or pay someone to. He said he thought it wasn’t important, even though he was serving people food and drink!
• There was no investment in advertising or promotion. As his coffee shop was located in a small town, at the quietest part of the high street, no one knew the place was there.
• He set the business up legally, so that there would be very little liability when the business failed and very few costs. He wasn’t going to lose his home or go bankrupt when the worst happened. This is smart, unless, as in this case, it was used as a comfort blanket to stop him from trying to succeed.

With no investment in making the business work and no penalty for failing, he did indeed fail – and extremely fast. You see, whilst he was playing at being in business, his hungry competitors outworked him and outsmarted him. Business today is extremely competitive and competing retailers are working damn hard to make their businesses work. Going into that marketplace, without the willingness to work hard or invest the money required, he could never have succeeded.

Giving  a business 100%

Every small business owner claims they give their business 100%. What many of them really mean, is that they give their business 100%… of the things they find easy to do. The things that require little risk. The things that keep them from leaving their comfort zones.

• They hire a cheap accountant, rather than a good one. No one can afford a cheap accountant. No one.
• They write their own marketing material, rather than get it written correctly so that it converts readers into clients.
• They automate their social networking accounts, rather than invest the time needed to build relationships with people.
• They ‘save money’ by having a crappy website that loses them business, rather than pay for a great site, which attracts clients.
• They let their business plateau for months or years, rather than invest in the help they need to go to the next level.
• They do 100% of the easy stuff, rather than 100% of what’s required.

The lesson here?

Business has never been more competitive than it is today. As we navigate the worst economy in living memory, it’s not enough to do the easy stuff. Everyone does the easy stuff. It’s easy! It takes courage to invest the time, effort and money required for our business to succeed, but the alternative is to ‘half try’. The demanding marketplace and our hungrier competitors will ensure that ‘half try’ attitude can’t prevail.

Those who succeed

The smartest small business owners have already figured it out. They know that success comes from doing the things, which the majority are not prepared to do. They understand the meaning of, ‘Go hard or go home!’

• They think big, because they know it’s the only way to make big things happen.
• They give it their all.
• They make commitments, then follow them through.
• They take action when it’s easier not to.
• They look for progress, not excuses.
• They make it as hard as possible for their business to fail.
• They work hard. Really hard.
• They know that shortcuts are almost always costly detours.
• They plan their work and work their plan.
• They refuse to starve their business of the resources it needs.
• They leave work each day, knowing they gave it their best.

That’s the mindset you and your business are competing against. That’s the way the best people in every industry operate, including yours.

It’s also the most rewarding way, in every respect, to run a business.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (39.0MB)

In this session of the Expand2Web Podcast, I talk with website usability expert Aaron Weiche from Spyder Trap. Aaron is Vice President of Spyder Trap, and is also a faculty member at Local University.

I met Aaron while presenting at Local University in New York, and wanted to have him on the podcast to share some of his tips with you.

In the podcast, Aaron and I talk about the common mistakes that we see businesses making with their websites that severely limits their success online. Aaron then goes on to describe what he considers the four pillars of a great website.

In This Podcast You’ll Learn About:

The four pillars of a great website:

1. Usability: A few key usability considerations your website must take advantage of.
2. Content: Most business owners neglect this, yet it is the biggest opportunity in terms of customer engagement and search rankings.
3. Design: This is often overemphasized. But there are a few key things you can do to create the perfect container for the content on your website and allow people to find it.
4. Technology: Picking the right content management system makes it easy to update your website and create new content.

We go into depth on each of these four pillars in the podcast.

Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

Here are links to the resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Spyder Trap online marketing – Aaron’s company
• Aaron on Google+
• Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Marketing by Sharing Video mentioned by Don.
• WordPress – a great, low-cost content management system for small business websites.

I really think you’ll enjoy this one. Thanks Aaron!

Listen to the Podcast about Great Websites

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button at the top of this post. Or you can download the MP3 audio file by clicking the download link if you’re like me and you listen to interviews on your iPod/iPhone in the car.

Help the Show!

I would love if you took a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It would be extremely helpful for the show!

Leave a review for Don’s podcast!

Thank you again for your support, and I wish you all the best!

Complete Written Transcript of the Podcast

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript.

Thank you for listening!

Please subscribe to the podcast using the links below and look out for a new podcast like this every week.

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As of April 2013, the Vine app is only available through Apple devices but representatives of the platform say it will soon be available through other platforms too. Though Vine works in conjunction with Twitter, it is a dedicated app – meaning it does not run through your actual Twitter account and is its own entity. Here are the steps to get started:

1. First, visit the Vine app homepage through your smartphone, or online. If you decide to download the Vine app through a computer, you will be directed to do so through an iTunes account.
2. The app will automatically sync with the Twitter settings on your smartphone and sign you in.
3. To record your first video, simply tap the camera icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner. Keep your finger on the camera icon for as long as you want to record; letting go of it stops the recording process. This makes it easy to incorporate several cuts into one six-second video clip.
4. Sound is automatically recorded. There is no option for muting just yet.
5. Once your video is complete, simply choose to “upload” it to your Twitter stream. You can also add any additional links or text at this point.

How do I use Twitter Vine?

Not sure how to translate this app into small business speak? Here are just a few ideas for using Twitter Vine to promote your company:

• Employee introductions. Show the human side of your small business with a very brief look at your star employees. This is great way to market your brand, and not just what you are selling. Do not limit this to just management or “big names.” Let clients and customers see the people who answer phones, load delivery trucks and work the cash registers too.
• Behind the scenes clips of your office. You could even do a series of different departments or tasks to let your customers get a peek at your office environment. If you decorate for the holiday season, create a Vine video of your employees in action with a holiday greeting for viewers.
• The latest promotions. Consider Vine as a way to make an inexpensive commercial that is concise and right to the point. According to IAB, 10-15 second spots were the most popular ads. Show off your newest product or taut your services through a few carefully cut shots.
• Company announcements. Introduce new team members or promotions with a high-energy Vine video. You can also unveil mergers, awards and special recognition through a Vine video.

A great way to get some ideas for your first Twitter Vine video is to look at some examples. Here are a few picks for inspiration.

• Urban Outfitters
• Buzz Feed
• Red Vines
• Nintendo
• San Francisco Zoo

Have you made your first Vine video yet? Share it with us for some inspiration.

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