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Social Media can be a little overwhelming sometimes and time consuming. When you started your business or got into the industry you are in, did you start it to do Social Media? Probably not! Social Media has become so popular over the past couple years that every type of business is doing it. Now, there are companies like mine you can outsource your Social Media campaign to, but not everyone has the budget to do that yet.

Today I am going to share with you a couple tools you can use to make your life much simpler. With Social Media you need to have a plan behind your efforts or you WILL be sucked into the black hole of Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a schedule you can go by:
Monday– Schedule your posts (using Hootsuite and Onlywire, read further down in blog for link)
Tuesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Wednesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 20 connections on LinkedIn
Thursday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Friday – Add 20 connections and LinkedIn and 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them) Suggest your business page to your new friends

There are two tools I like to use that allows me to schedule my posts out to my networks weeks in advance and one that allows you to post to 40 different profiles.
The first one is called Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/p_1748 this is a FREE service and an amazing tool. You can add you Twitter, Facebook, Business Page, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi, and WordPress to this service. Once you have all your profiles set up you can schedule your messages to go out.

The second one I like to use is OnlyWire http://www.OnlyWire.com now with this account you don’t need to post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you can post to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FriendFeed, and much more. This is a great tool to reach out to all of those other Social Media profiles that Hootsuite does not post to.

I hope these are helpful tips, if you need help on how to use these tools please check out my YouTube videos http://www.YouTube.com/YourMarketingVoice

Huge Disclaimer, it is no wonder that I say you SHOULD outsource your social media, I have a social media marketing company!

 What Is A Social Media Marketing Expert

A true social media marketing expert is actually a marketing expert who is using social media as ONE of the tools in their marketing arsenal. Every bit of marketing touches the social media platform including branding, sending a cohesive message, targeting the correct prospect, lead follow-up and more, all the way through the sales cycle and onto a sale. Okay, so a social media guru is actually an expert marketer. I get asked the question a lot which social media outlet do you like the most and if you could choose only one to use what would it be? Well each of them have a unique way of helping to grow your business. Such as Facebook builds an online community and is an easy way to reach out to people, Twitter is a huge traffic driver to your website, LinkedIn a wonderful online resume tool and a way for people to see what your experience has been also to connect to ideal clients, YouTube is such a popular tool people use and allows people to see your personality, also allowing them to learn from you while driving traffic to your site, Blogging is great because you are staying in front of Google and you show people why you are an expert in what you do.

Who Is NOT A Social Media Marketing Expert?

I am on A LOT of mailing lists and get all kinds of come-ons from people wanting to sell me get rich quick schemes. One of the biggies right now is to sell either social media marketing or local marketing and start raking in the dough. An expert has NOT taken a class called anything like this:

  • New Webinar! Become a Local Marketing Expert
  • 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
  • Make money as a social media strategist
  • How to become an internet marketing expert in a short time…
  • This came in when I was writing this post, “The real kicker is that: most of your revenue is pure profit! Stuff we consider “basic” is mind blowing to most, if not all, local business owners.”

Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing Or Keep In In House?

So now we have established what a social media marketing expert is, the next question is should you outsource it to an agency or company or keep it in-house?

  • If you are not looking at hiring someone who has just left college, the kid who types really fast or a 10-to-4 day “expert”, you are looking at paying that person between 60K and 80K a year. We have some great horror stories from the trenches about how “the kid” set up the whole business network under his own name, left the company and reeked havoc for the next few months. Hiring a reputable company to do your social media eliminates this problem.
  • You are going to have to provide benefits and taxes for that employee which would not be necessary if you outsource.
  • If you are hiring a marketing guru, you are still probably going to have to get them some admin help. I can tell you this from experience, the person who is creative and has a brilliant marketing mind does not always have the best admin skills like the everyday tasks that go on in a business. We hire people  who implement the marketing plans that we work out with our customers and make sure the daily tasks get done for your business needs.
  • There are economies of scale for a business to buy the latest software and attend the high level trainings needed to stay up-to-date. When you are spreading the cost of these items over multiple clients, it makes sense to keep to the cutting edge! We are always keeping up to date with the new software, tips & tricks. Remember that is what we do for a living!
  • We have programmers and others resources to help when the Social Networks change what we need to do. The easiest example of this is Facebook eliminating the FBML capabilities that we used to use to make pages. I got our programmer on it and he sent over the two page document on how we should do it now!

Okay, Why SHOULD You Keep Your Social Media Marketing In House?

It comes down to CONTROL you want to have control over what that person is doing and how they are spending your money and time! That is a valid point and will have to be taken into consideration. I CAN tell you that with frequent communication with your marketing company, you can stay on top of this easily. There will always still be a personal responsibility you will have in your marketing.

No one loves my company like I do – If you are a small company or a start-up, the owner or manager can probably do a bit of social media marketing. My question to you is, I KNOW you love your company, but do you love marketing? Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t help if you do not have the technical and education chops to back them up.

I can get an intern to do it for free
– I have tried interns, you teach them, they work for a bit and then leave. Walking back the cat to figure out what they did can take your next marketing person hours or days to figure out! Additionally, you get what you pay for and when you are paying nothing it is hard to expect the kind of dedication that you can get from a real business. Remember they can probably take care of some easy daily social media tasks but they probably do not understand the marketing side of social media and internet marketing in order to get you a ROI. (Return on Investment)

What Types Of Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?

  • Business to consumer businesses do well on Social Media as they have a product that people would be interested when they are just surfing around having fun on Facebook or Twitter. Additionally there are neat ways to bring items to market that consumers look on favorably if done right.
  • Business to business marketing is trickier, as you need to position yourself correctly to find comparable areas to market in and be very careful to make sure that your offerings are social, not salesy. I see this done wrong all the time!
  • Local companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power of social media because of the ability to target geographic regions in friending and following. These types of businesses fair VERY well in the social media realm.
  • Businesses with lots of “stuff” are great to promote. If you hold meetings with different topics, sell a million kinds of shoes or have a ton of different product offerings (like pawn shops and ebayers, social media can be a great way to get the word out!
  • Highly regulated industries. Okay I know that I am going to take heat on this one, BUT I have to say that a financial services guy who positions himself correctly would have a very bare playing field to compete on. This takes finesse and should work within the bounds of your state or federal licensing.
  • Restaurants and bars have fun people doing fun things. We have a couple of restaurants that we work with and they are the neatest peeps because of the activity and the fact that they are inherently social anyways!

There you have it, multiple reasons to outsource your social media marketing. If you are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, give us a call 720-338-6996 or email us with questions YourMarketingVoice@yahoo.com

Have you been holding off including videos in your marketing mix?

If you want to generate more visitors to your web site don’t just rely on written content. Not all people like to read content online. Many are attracted by learning visually. This is why video marketing is so powerful. You now see Google video ads, video newsletters, video sales letters and so on.

Top 7 benefits of video marketing

1. Attract a large audience

Video enables you to capture people who like to watch rather than read. This extends the reach of your content because you can appeal to visual learners.

2. Engages the senses

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then video does even more because you can create live movies with sound. This engages more senses than written text which only uses one medium.

3. Access at any time

You can view videos with all kinds of devices these days eg ipods, cell phones, laptops, etc. allowing you to access video content anywhere at any time.

4. Achieve top rankings in the search engines

Google recently introduced Universal Search. This means videos now appear in the search results pages. For example if you Google “Mustang” you’ll see video listings of mustang cars on the first page of Google.

5. Become known as an expert in your field

If you consistently create high quality video content that your visitors want and need you will soon become recognized as the expert in your niche.

6. Repurpose content

Convert your written content to video by talking about it in a video clip or creating a slide show then upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube. The beauty of this method is that you don’t have to create fresh content and there’s no need to worry about duplicate written content.

7. Easy to create and publish

All you need is a video camera (or just use a digital camera), windows movie maker software (already on all windows’ computers) and a YouTube account.

Now you have no excuse for not creating your first video then marketing it on YouTube and other video sharing sites. It will take some time to get it right the first time, but with practice you’ll soon be generating more traffic to your web site.

http://www.drostdesigns.com/video-marketing-top-7-benefits/

I can help you with creating videos also, if you do not have a good camera. I do 4 videos for $125, email me if  you are interested yourmarketingvoice@yahoo.com

Late last week Facebook announced changes to Facebook Pages. The latest overhaul will streamline the look of the site to match Places and personal profiles. Plus, added features expand the options for brands to engage on Facebook.

Here are the highlights:
New Look Mimics New Personal Profiles and Places
Last month Facebook revealed it updated looks for personal profiles. Just as users are growing accustomed to the new look, Facebook announced similar updates for Facebook Pages – plus an array of other useful features for page admins.

What’s Changing: The addition of a photostrip at the top of the Page that mimics the personal profiles. This displays the latest photos the Page has tagged itself in, according to Inside Facebook.

What It Means: Users have done creative things with this section (view examples at Mashable), but because these photos display randomly, there’s not ways to work strategically with these images. Regardless, this will immediately put an increased focus on images.

What’s Changing: Tab navigation is now on the left, instead of the top. Six tabs are displayed by default, and tab names support more characters.

What It Means: The question of whether this move from top to left will reduce the traffic to tabs remains to be seen. As visitors grow more accustomed to the layout, checking that space on Facebook Pages could become commonplace. Plus, the added character space for descriptions might aid in piquing interest. This could make strategic use of default landing tabs more important than ever.

What’s Changing: Info blurb moves from Wall to Info tab

What It Means: For brands that aren’t highly recognizable, this could hinder their ability to give their “elevator pitch” to new visitors. Welcome tabs as default landing tabs can help raise awareness and could come in handy for this issue.

The profile pictures shrink from 200 x 600 pixels to 180 x 540 pixels. Shortly after the announcement, a Facebook bug led many to believe that tab width was changing from 520 pixels to 492 pixels. The tab width will remain at 520 pixels.

Administrators Have More Freedom to Speak on Brand’s Behalf

What’s Changing: Page admins can now “be” the brand on Facebook. This includes:

  • Browsing Facebook as the brand. Facebook will allow admins to jump between browsing the site as themselves or as the administrator. Along with this comes the ability for a brand to read a newsfeed of its own.
  • Posting comments on other Pages.
  • Liking other brands’ Pages.

What It Means: Brands have a bigger voice and greater reach. Not only will brand-to-brand relationships be seen (what if Coke and Pepsi Like each other? Packers and Steelers?), but this will also impact consumer discussions with brands on other Pages. There are co-branding opportunities in terms of cross-commenting on partner Pages. While there are opportunities for spam to increase or consumer fatigue to swell at seeing more brand posts in new places, if used wisely the increased freedom to engage in different parts of Facebook could be somewhat of a game-changer.

What’s Changing: Users will see friends who also like the Page, as well as Liked Pages that the user and the Page have in common.

What It Means: AllFacebook reports this is one of the most requested features. And rightly so – these connections mean more opportunity for organic discovery for brands. This is a good sign, especially with recent discussions around the need to break through the noise of users’ newsfeeds. The importance of having an internal process for commenting as a cohesive Page among team members will become more important to ensure there’s one voice among many admins.

Management Options Updated and How They Work with Shoutlet

What’s Changing: Admins can receive email notifications from Facebook when users post to the Facebook Page. These can be turned on or off by administrators.

What It Means: For small Pages, this will be a lifesaver. For large brands with a significant number of Likes, it will be overwhelming. For Shoutlet users, this feature currently exists. Unlike Facebook notifications that only notify of posts and comments, Page activity notifications from Shoutlet can be tailored and include more notification possibilities. For instance, users can turn off notifications for new comments and only receive email when new Likes are added.

What’s Changing: The order of Wall posts move from most recent to most relevant. If admins choose to display user posts (the other option is Page-only wall posts), Facebook determines the most relevant posts based on factors like friend comments, country, and more.

What It Means: For Page admins managing their Pages within the Facebook interface, this can make moderation tricky. Although there are email notifications, some have complained that without chronological ordering of posts, moderation will suffer. Having a social media management system can help your team catch everything and respond quickly – without being buried in email notifications from Facebook or wading through the Wall to find what’s new.

For current Shoutlet users, all changes are supported and are ready to roll when admins make the switch manually or Facebook converts all Pages to the new layout on March 1.

We’re interested in what you think about the new Pages. How do you think it is going to change the impact of Pages?

http://socialmediatoday.com/jason-weaver/270419/new-facebook-pages-mean-new-look-greater-reach-and-more

As a Social Media Manager I get asked the question a lot, “What does Social Media mean to you and how do you think of it differently?”

Well to me Social Media means a connection source. If you think about it Social Media connects people all over the world. People have found long lost family and friends; people have done business with each other, even though have never met.

In my environment, the people I am around the most are what I like to call “Light Workers” and these are people that are very authentic, bring spirituality into their business and talk about rising up to a new level of vibration for 2012. I always tell them by using social media the right way we can accomplish that. They give me a funny face most of the time.

Social Media is a tool we can use in the right way to find people nationwide that have things in common with us. We then build those relationships. We have videos we create to teach people what we do and who we are, we put those up on our Social Media profiles and that builds relationships. Sometimes people think that everything is going on the internet and we are getting away from face to face connections and growing part from each other. That is one way to think about it, OR you can think about it like this: there are thousands more people on the Internet that you can connect to. Yes people are using Internet more than going to meeting and events to find people. At the same time there are tools like Skype and GoToMeeting where we can still see that other person face to face.

I just want you to remember that Social Media is about building relationships with people from all over, it is NOT about selling.

Social Media can be our connection source to the world!

1)    Make your videos viral

2)    Use other social media outlets to post your videos like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, ETC

3)    Have a plan or theme for your videos

4)    Make sure the sound is clear so people can hear you clearly

5)    Keep your content engaging to your audience, make it funny and informative

6)    Keep your videos clean without too much conversation

7)    Have your logo and information (Video bumper) on each video

8)    Write down your goals for YouTube, what do you want to give and receive from it

9)    Use a good camera and editing tool. ( Windows movie maker, Camtasia are good editing tools, cameras any cannon or Kodak are great)

10) Make sure you are recording with an HD camera and publishing in HD so it is very clear for your viewers

11) Have a color scheme to your videos and stay congruent

12) MOST IMPORTANT BE YOURSELF, show your authenticity

13) Remember nothing is perfect online, it is better to get videos up rather than trying to look like Oprah, as small business owners we do not have a backroom stage crew

14) Practice before doing your video that you will post out into the Internet world

15) Think of doing an ongoing series of videos then think of making a product of those videos

16) Do more than just talk if you are doing a video longer than 3 minutes, be interactive and have handouts and pictures

17) Work hard on getting you videos between 2-5 minutes, after that it is hard for people to stay engaged. If you are creating a product or training that is different

18) Make a schedule for your videos, once people start to like you and follow you they will be used to a schedule, this also keeps you on track.

19) Have a creative sign off that people will remember and brands you

20) Ask for feedback from your viewers and have them leave comments

21) Work on bringing other people into your videos, clients, coworkers, friends, family so it is not always you

22) Do not use music unless you have permission

23) Remember the title of the video is just as important as the content

24) Use your keywords in your title and tagging in YouTube and other Internet outlets

25) Use tags in addition to the keywords, as this also get people attention

26) Do not stress over negative comments leave them, pay attention to them and see if it is something you need to change or someone just having a bad day

27) Use as many social networks as you can to get your videos out there, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, ETC

28) Let your customers and email list know when a new video went out and ask them to share it

29) Add your videos to various communities and subject areas of YouTube for more exposure

30) Remember to thank people who post positive comments and see if you can do the same for them

31) It is ok if all your videos are not all huge hits, be patient and practice

32) Have a script or bullet points you want to make in your video

33) Use analytics tools like YouTube insight to track your sources and hits

34) Use the word “video” in your title

35) DO NOT MAKE YOUR VIDEO A SALES AD

36) Choose your thumbnail picture wisely. YouTube actually allows you to choose your thumbnail picture

37) You can delete comments on YouTube, so do not hesitate to get rid of those negative or rude comments on your YouTube channel

38) You can put up more than one video at a time

39) Be real, don’t try and fake something you’re not

40) Have FUN and focus on fun, and then it will be fun for others

41) Aside from your logo and website include a phone number and email people can reach you at

42) Watch others in your industry and learn from them both good and bad

43) Stick with your target market. You want loyal viewers

44) Do videos in different locations, office, outside, client project ETC. If using a webcam please make sure when you publish it that your lips are sync with your words

45) Make a YouTube Channel profile, it gives your viewers a personal touch

46) Do NOT cuss or use inappropriate language. Stay away from religion and politics in videos

47) Use props, costumes, pictures and other “organic” items in your video.

48) Create a video bumper with your logo and theme music before you start

49) Utilize other videos sites to get your videos posted

50) Specify your channel type, and have a clear sense of what you are offering on the YouTube channel’s main page.

I found this blog on http://socialmediatrader.com/social-media-marketing-for-small-businesses/ and wanted to share it!

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There is no denying that Social Media websites have made  huge strides on the web. The immense number of people who participate in social media websites has led to increased investment in the growing field of social media marketing. As we see a rapidly growing number of small businesses include social media ideas and strategies in their goals, we will look at exactly what a social media marketing campaign means and where the benefits are for small business owners.

If you’ve not been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard about sites, such as, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube. It seems that many small businesses have embraced these sites and have diligently filled out their profile pages and waited (and waited and waited) for a rush of traffic and new business to arrive.Despite what you may hear, there is no “silver bullet”. If you want to attract new visitors to your site then you have to actually participate and become involved in a community.

There are also social news websites, such as, Digg and StumbleUpon that have the potential to send up to 40k unique visitors to your website in a short space of time as well as a good number of backlinks if you manage to reach the front page. If you don’t get your story to the front page, then you are unlikely to see much more than a handful of visitors.

Social Media Marketing(SMM) is the practice of creating compelling content from a marketing angle. SMM general happens off your website, and the best example of it is on Social News and Bookmark sites. Social media marketing can help to grow a website very quickly under the right conditions.

Benefits of a Social Media Marketing

More online conversations about your brand
A successful Social Media Marketing campaign leads to a lot more talk about your brand online. When your message works with your users, they will spread your message more effectively than tradition methods.

Quick turnaround
Hitting a front page of major social video, news and bookmark sites will send you huge amounts traffic and almost instantly. This doesn’t mean the traffic will equate to conversions, but it should generate momentum in the right direction.

Low costs
A comprehensive SMM strategy may provide a partial or full replacement of traditional advertising and marketing at a fraction of the costs.

Impact on search engine rankings
SMM campaigns bring you large amounts of backlinks that benefit your ranking in search engines.

Compatible with traditional Marketing
No one says you have to approach and embrace SMM full on. SMM campaigns can be run along side traditional marketing and advertising.

The power of recommendation
Would you rather buy from a faceless company or from a company that people recommend? We know that initiators and influencers play an important role the buying process and you can reach these people with SMM.

Sidestepping ad blindness
Traditional online advertising methods, such as, banner ads are seeing drops in the level of their effectiveness. As ad blindness increases, social media marketing has the potential to send visitors to your website without traditional advertising methods.

Things to consider

Social Media Marketing can be unpredictable if sufficient planning has not been made. Consider the following points for any SMM campaign.

Target audience
Having a general idea of what your customers want is not enough for effective SMM. You should define in detail who your target audience is, what is it that they want, and how you offer content of value that is most relevant for their needs.

Once you identify your target audience, you will be able to focus on what they have in common and crafting a strategy to draw in more of the same people.

Length of campaign
Although you may see traffic relatively quickly, it is important to note that a for real success in SMM, you must think and plan long term. It may be more damaging to abruptly end conversations with your customers than to never start one in the first place. Know your time scale objectives and work towards them.

Strength of product
Consider that your products or service will be exposed to a huge amount of potential customers almost instant; Are you confident in the strength of your product? It is imperative to understand that you will be under scrutiny and having a product or service which just isn’t strong enough can have very negative side effects. If your product or services do not perform well, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your target and or the viability or appeal of your product.

Time constraints
Obviously, with any small business, time is an important factor. Depending on what your product or service is you may find it more efficient to allocate a larger portion of time on a few targeted sites rather than spreading yourself too thinly across multiple sites.

A definition of success
You must set short term, medium term and long term targets for you campaigns. Without clear goals and objectives, your campaigns will fail.

Here are a just a few examples of what success might look like:

  • Reducing costs for achieving the same targets
  • Gaining a better understanding of your customers
  • Increase brand exposure in ways which were not possible before
  • Increase Sales and Conversions

Tips on Running a Successful Campaign

Two way conversations
You must listen and respond to your customers. This is not like setting up a poll on your site. Having conversations which flow in both directions help you understand the concerns of your customers, why they exist and what you can do to fix them.

The personal touch
Automated responses and standard letters are a great way to sabotage your SMM campaign. social media is about equal conversations and recommendation. Just think, would you rather purchase a new camera from a friend who recommends it or an automated newsletter?

Transparency
Be transparent, be honest. There are many compelling ways to raising awareness for your company. Having hidden agendas or stretching the truth will simply backfire.

Be a part of the community
Acknowledge others in the community which offer value to your business. Take some time to really be a part of the community and share useful knowledge. Personality goes a long way. It’s a bit like making friends; you have give a little to receive. You never know, you may build useful networks that extend offline. If you begin your campaign pushing only your content and disregarding the community, you will be dead on arrival.

A successful Social Media campaign can prove to be one of the key catalysts in growth for a small to medium sized business. It can increase brand exposure and PR for a fraction of traditional advertising costs and effort, as well as provide large scale market research and product refinement ideas at no extra charge.

Soon, SMM will join SEO as being important aspects of any site owner’s marketing strategy. The speed in which trends evolve on the internet is can often be daunting, but SMM by large companies can be emulated in whole or in part even by very small businesses. It’s not the money. It’s the content marketing mindset that separates success and failure. Big ideas can beat big budgets.

Facebook is about building relationships and building community. When you create your Facebook Business page it is NOT for selling it is to educate people on your industry and to help them in their business. It is to share why you are so passionate about your work and what you love to do.

Here are 5 steps to follow that will increase your return on Facebook for FREE!

1)      You want to brand yourself on Facebook, people will do business with you when they know, like, and trust you. It does not matter what “Company” you are with it is about your personality, your enthusiasm, your authentic self. You want to share your niche!

2)      When posting on your business page you want to have valuable content. When you are writing your blogs use those as content to share on Facebook, talk about tips people can use, think about what your niche market is looking for on Google and write about that.

3)      The goal with social media both Facebook and Twitter you want to build a targeted following. In my opinion it is not about the quantity of fans or followers it is the quality. I want people to “Like” my page and follow me because they want to hear what I have to say and may even want to do business with me. When you are writing your blogs be sure to share them to Facebook and Twitter and also have your links on your blog so those people that read your blog can also “like” your page and follow you.

4)      Ask for syndication from people. Once you have built the relationships with people ask them to share your blogs, posts, tweets etc. That way there is more than just YOU promoting YOUR business. Remember you want to do this for people as well. If you have great power partners make sure you are sharing their stuff. Now one thing with syndication make sure it is within your industry and makes sense, what I mean is I do Internet Marketing so I am not going to promote jewelry or make-up on my business page. I can share it with my personal friends but not with business people make sense?

5)      Last but not least, ALL traffic points back to your blog. Your blog is your hub that is where people can really see and learn who you are. Then from there they can purchase products or be pointed to a site where they can purchase. When people come to your blog they want to read and or watch what you have to say and learn from you. This does two things, one builds your database when they subscribe to your RSS feed and two allows them to learn about you to decide if they want to do business with you.

Now with all this great information these steps are not just a onetime thing, these steps are to be done on a consistent basis and from doing these steps you will see an increase in fans and increase in traffic to your site. An added bonus you will see business come in!

This is my sales pitch! I am looking for businesses who need help managing their social media or would like a 2 hour consultation for $50. Here is a fun video I created with Animoto. Enjoy!