Plus, many copiers are leased and returned repeatedly; or leased, returned, and sold secondhand. Which means that it’s likely that someone else will ultimately have access to your copier … and possibly all the company information stored on it.

In other words, it’s essential to your company’s security, your employees’ security, and your customers’ security that you know whether your copier stores digital information, how to secure the data in your copier, and what to do before returning a leased copier or selling a copier that you own.

Determining if Your Copier Stores Digital Images

There are several ways to determine if your copier’s hard drive stores images of documents it prints, copies, or emails. Perhaps the easiest way is to call your vendor and ask. If you’re not satisfied with their answer, or if they’re evasive, you have other options. If your copier is made by Xerox, you can go to www.xerox.com/security and click on the “Data Protection” option to download a PDF document listing Xerox products on which a hard drive is included, and what security features are included with those models. If your copier is networked, you can connect to its built-in web server. Type the copier’s IP address in your web browser. Then click on the “Properties” link and read the hardware specifications. Look for the terms “hard disk,” or “image disk.”

What Types of Businesses Should Be Most Concerned

Some businesses are required by law to comply with certain security practices. Businesses that deal with consumer financial information — like credit reports or employee background information — may be subject to rules about properly disposing of information stored on digital copiers. Financial institutions may be governed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Safeguards Rule, which involves having a security plan for protecting personal and confidential information wherever it is stored. Businesses involved with financial services, nonprofit organizations, schools, and medical services should be particularly vigilant about copier security.

Other Machines Whose Security You Should Learn About

Copiers aren’t the only devices you should be concerned about when it comes to data security. Multi-function peripherals, or MFPs, are devices that perform several functions, rather than just one. Examples of MFPs include some models of printers, scanners, and fax machines. Many of these machines also contain hard disk drives and should be treated the same as a copier with a hard disk drive with respect to sensitive information.

Recommendations for Copier Security

Before buying or leasing a copier (or MFP) with a hard drive, explicitly plan to manage and maintain it according to your organization’s information security policies. This may mean that your company’s IT staff and / or security staff should be briefed on the type of data stored on copiers and how the company plans to secure that data.

If you plan to resell your copier, check with the manufacturer about options for securing the hard drive. If you’re returning a leased copier to a vendor, ask what security practices they have to prevent hard disk data from being passed on. They may remove the hard drive for you to destroy, or they may offer overwrite or destruction services for you. Keep in mind that hard drives are not easy for a non-IT or non-technical person to locate and remove properly. It’s generally better to have a skilled technician remove the hard drive for you.

Many devices that we don’t think of as computers contain hard disks, and these hard disks are capable of storing sensitive information. To protect company and client information, it’s critical that you know whether your copier has a hard drive and how it uses it. When it’s time to resell or return the copier, you need a plan to destroy or overwrite the information on the hard drive to prevent it from being passed along to the next customer or otherwise left vulnerable.

Photo Credit: Naypong / freedigitalphotos.net

So, we decided to round up the most visited posts of the quarter, just in case you missed them the first time around!

1. How to Write User-Friendly Content that Google Will Love Too – Tweet this post!

With Google making changes all the time, you never know what’s coming next. Yet, business must still go on, and content must still be written! Don’t fear the next algorithm change – instead, write great content for your readers and Google.

2. Marketing Monday: 3 Simple Steps to Branding for Small Businesses – Tweet this post!

Your brand is integral to who you are as a business – think of some of the largest brands, from Nike to Amazon; what you recognize about them is a swoosh or smiley box. But brands aren’t just for big business; your small business needs to have one too.

3. 5 Tips to Manage Your Business From Anywhere – Tweet this post!

Whether you’re traveling for work or driving from client to client, you’re often left to do work from the road. With the right tools, you can manage your business from across the world or down the road. So, get some tips here before your next trip.

4. Zappos Case Study: Getting More Leads With Social – Tweet this post!

Who better to learn from than someone who is already doing it well – and with social, we can always use another good role model. See how Zappos generates leads and brand advocates in this case study.

5. The New Business.com – Tweet this post!

This was a big quarter for Business.com. With a new site redesign, we not only look fresh, but are able to better serve our many buyers, whether they are ready to purchase or just researching. Check out the changes we made and see what our CEO Tony Uphoff has to say about it in this post.

Our everyday lives have never been more connected and managed through software. Programs not only power our gadgets but drive our daily routines and ensure the world around us keeps on ticking over.

The services we rely upon exist at the mercy of human error, design oversights and security flaws; clumsy coding typos can bring institutions to their knees and unseen bugs can be catastrophic. Quality assurance testing has never been more important.

Related: Whatever small business software you need, we have it – invest today

Here are five infamous incidents of good software gone bad that underline the value of testing consultancy today.

1. The Sky Is Falling – Amazon crashes and brings down the cloud

Last year, a storm in the skies above Washington D.C. brought down Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, the cloud servers used to host many of the web’s most popular sites and services including Netflix, Pintrest and Instagram. While software developers can’t be blamed for failing to control extreme weather, the lack of sufficient back-up systems showed up the inherent weakness with their cloud-hosted services

• Don’t wait until back-ups are needed before finding out whether they work. Always test and ensure secondary systems are up to scratch.

2. What In The World? – Apple become fallible with maps

Apple’s immaculate public image took a hit following the troubled release of Apple Maps last year. Google’s established map service was initially unavailable for the new iOS6 mobile operating system giving Apple app a great opportunity to gain ground on its competitor.

Unfortunately, the application was beset by problems such as inaccurate landmarks, wrong directions and mapping mistakes. Australian police even warned against using the app after a number of people became stranded after Apple Maps sent them 43 miles in the wrong direction.

• Opportunities can’t be taken with inaccurate and unreliable software.

3. The Mars Climate Orbiter – a problem of scale

On September 23, 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated in the Martian atmosphere due to a fatal design flaw in the software designed to control the craft’s thrusters.

While one program was making the necessary calculations using metric measurements, another based its workings on imperial. The resulting conflict caused the experiment to burn up on entry costing $125 million and more than a year’s worth of work and manpower.

• Communication and fact-checking is vital to prevent costly misunderstandings and mistakes in development.

4. Do The Worm – Robert Tappen Morris creates a monster

Robert Tappen Morris accidently created the world’s first worm in 1989, after infecting over 6,000 computers across America’s academic and military networks. Created as a harmless if reckless experiment, Morris made an error when writing the program causing it the copy itself at an accelerated rate, overloading and damaging hard drives.

• Always test programs in a closed, safe environment.

Bio: Roger Trent works in software testing consultancy and has witnessed major corporations fall from the smallest defects. 

Businesses develop mobile apps to directly generate income (through sales of the app, or the app facilitating product sales) or for the purposes of marketing, branding, and customer service. If your business is interested in utilizing a mobile app in order to increase customer loyalty, you have two options: to build a custom app, or to make use of existing apps through a third-party provider.

Related: Design your mobile site with one of our hand-picked vendors

Building an App: Benefits

Building your own app provides you with greater control, flexibility, and functionality than a mobile website or a third-party app. As such, you have the power to customize your app to your customer: fulfilling their specific needs and increasing their loyalty to your brand.

For example, 72% of customers have a more positive view of a company if they have a customer service app. And, after having a good experience with that app, 81% of customers will use social media and word of mouth to tell their friends about that experience (Nuance).

• Customers spend 10% more time on apps than on the web. 70% of customers have at least 10 apps (Nuance).
• Mobile websites reach five times as many customers as apps, but custom apps have greater functionality and can fulfill more specific purposes than mobile websites are currently capable of (Mashable).

Building an App: Costs

While customization to your customer is a valuable benefit to building your own app, can that benefit outweigh the costs? The more complicated your app is, the more it will cost to develop it. According to Forbes, the cost to develop an app are:

• $1,000 to $4,000 for a basic content-based app.
• $8,000 to $50,000 for a database-driven app.
• $10,000 to $250,000 for a gaming app.

In making the decision whether to build, you need to keep several considerations in mind: the complexity of your proposed app (which will determine price); your overall marketing budget; and the projected ROI of the app once it is implemented.

Related: Get Involved with Mobile App Development

Pre-Built Apps

Before starting to build your custom app, ask yourself: How can an app generate customer loyalty? What does the app need to do for your business? Is there a pre-built app already on the market that can fulfill the same function?

There are a number of apps on the market that merchants and businesses can use to attract, keep, and reward customers. Here are just a few of the options:

• Foursquare: Customers use their mobile device to check in to your business, enabling them to then have access to deals, rewards, and special offers. You can customize the reward structure to attract new customers and reward top spenders.
• LoyalBlocks: A location-based app that automatically recognizes customers when they walk in the door, punches their “mobile punch card,” and provides them with rewards every time they visit.
• Spendgo: Rather than tracking location, this app tracks customer spending, enabling customers to receive points for every purchase and track their progress online, on the app, or through your POS.
• Perka: Another location-based app, this one enables you to solicit private customer feedback and deal with customer service issues immediately – before they show up on social media.

If your business needs to be able to customize its app specifically for customer loyalty – and can project a positive ROI – then building one from the bottom up is a viable option. However, don’t jump straight to app development without first investigating a mobile website and the significantly cheaper options from third-party app developers.

The thinking around management and leadership techniques has changed over the generations. If you are over 50 you will definitely remember the autocratic style of managers whose philosophy was, ‘Do it my way or the highway!’

Although we still come across some managers that are like this, luckily they are few and far between. So, what is the modern way of managing? We look at a few key techniques that make you a modern manager. How do you stack up?

Related: Improve your management with management courses

Flexibility of Leadership Style

Modern managers are prepared to adapt their leadership style to the person they have in front of them. Traditional managers believe that their way of managing and leading is the most effective and they have been doing that way for … years, why should I change now?

Ken Blanchard popularised the idea of Situational Leadership in his book ‘Leadership and the One Minute Manager. Not only did he advocate changing leadership style for the person he also suggested that we adapt it for the situation they were in too.

Openness & Honesty

Being open with your employees means sharing with them the challenges you are facing and the expectations of your bosses. Increasing the commercial awareness of team members helps them to understand decisions that you have to make.

Related: 3 Ways to Reduce Employee Stress & Improve Productivity

Honesty in feedback can be refreshing if it is balanced with positive encouragement for the things they are doing well. The realities of the economic climate mean that difficult decisions need to be made and this can result in redundancies. Changing the way we work so that we can cope better with these challenges may mean that we can mitigate the effects of tough trading conditions.

Showing Interest in Their Employees’ Promotion

Some managers don’t understand this concept. This is because they don’t want to lose their best people. Actually in our experience the best people are often attracted by managers who are genuinely interested in their development. They tend to work harder for these types of manager as it is in their best interests to impress.

Asking For 360^o Feedback

Although more popular these days it still takes a forward thinking manager to ask for feedback on their management skills from the team.When doing so it is worth structuring it so that you don’t end up with a moaning session.

Ask for positive feedback first such as, ‘What is the best way that I currently help you in your job?’ When asking for development areas, ask them to limit it to just one area where you can best improve your management style.

Related: Achieving Full Involvement in an Innovation-Capable Organization

Apologizing For Mistakes

This is a huge one. Most managers struggle to say the ‘S’ word (sorry). Even though we are managers we still make mistakes and it takes a strong manager to admit it when you do make them. Far from being seen as ‘weak’ it tends to generate respect among the team.

It also encourages other people to do the same when they make mistakes. This is especially true when you avoid having a blame culture. It is far more supportive to talk generally about mistakes and how the team can prevent them happening in the future.

Bio: Founder and MD of international management development firm MTD Training, Sean McPheat is widely regarded as a leading authority on modern day management and leadership. Sean is a bestselling author, and has been recognized for his own business building skills through the British Business Awards and has been featured in the Who’s Who Of Britain’s Business Elite. Click here to follow Sean online.  

“Too many employees work for their boss rather than their company or their clients. Businesses these days are filled with multiple layers of management, and employees often find themselves playing politics and focusing on tasks to make their boss happy.

At the end of the day, the company quickly forgets what their goals are and what they are in business to do — and everyone is focusing on the task at hand with little sense of how it fits into the bigger picture.”

You may need to consider delving into the discussion – and reassessing your business structure – if you’re experiencing any of the following issues.

Related: Achieving Full Involvement in an Innovation-Capable Organization

Your Employees Work for the Boss – Not the Company

Employees have multiple layers of managers, all of which they need to report to. One manager may give the employee a high priority task, another manager may give them a different task, and the employee becomes the locus of a battleground between managers. The battle isn’t to determine which task is most important – it’s a political battle between managers.

• When employees find themselves working to make the boss happy – rather than fulfill the goals of the company – it will ultimately hurt your business.

“Passing the Buck” is Common

A complex customer service situation arises. Your customer service rep doesn’t know how to fix it, so they escalate the problem to their manager, who bumps it down to another rep, who escalates it back to management.

The customer becomes frustrated because nothing has been fixed, and the entire customer service department is frustrated because no one is taking responsibility for solving the problem.

• If your business is so committed to its hierarchy that management always gives orders, never provides support, and can’t tackle a problem collectively, you have a problem.

Related: Consider partaking in professional management training to improve your business

Team Goals Aren’t Priority One

In the above example, the customer service team was ensconced in politics and problem avoidance. The hierarchical structure of the department didn’t provide any assurance against poor work performance. The goal of the customer service department – to provide customer service – got lost amidst the shuffling back and forth between employees and managers.

• Remove management from the equation, and how could that situation have turned out differently? The rep would have taken the initiative to find a solution to the customer’s problem: by asking more experienced reps or collaborating with coworkers. As a result, the customer would have gotten a faster response and wouldn’t have to suffer being routed and re-routed around the department.

Productivity is Stifled by Inflexible Rules

The typical manager likes to see employees at their desks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If employees boost their productivity and complete a week’s worth of projects by Thursday morning, they still have to show up on Friday.

When your managers aren’t flexible enough in their thinking to prioritize productivity and project completion over quibbling about work schedules, your business as a whole won’t be as productive as it is capable of being.

Related: 3 Ways to Reduce Employee Stress and Improve Productivity

Information Can’t Flow Freely

Many businesses complain of their departmental information being siloed – sales, marketing, and product are all on a different page. Why? Because the business hierarchy doesn’t allow for cross-department collaboration and communication. Information from one department has to flow all the way up to the top of the company before it can filter back down to another department.

• If management doesn’t allow workers to network across departments, employees can’t find the information they need to do their work, and the business as a whole can’t provide a consistent customer experience.

Dealing with problems within management doesn’t mean you have to follow the footsteps of game developer Valve. The company of 300 employees has no bosses or managers – just a pool of employees who work together to brainstorm, develop, and promote some of the most popular and successful video games of the past decade. However, consider taking a leaf from their book to foster autonomy, productivity, and goal-oriented efforts within your business.

Everything from the cloud to social media to the proliferation of mobile technology has dramatically changed the way call centers operate in recent years.

In an effort to be more efficient and effective, expect contact centers to adopt systems that enable them to reach customers on multiple platforms — from traditional calls to Facebook.

And, as more customers turn to the web to vent their frustrations or seek help with a product, expect to see more industry-wide consolidation of call centers, even as more jobs return stateside as companies hope to win back frustrated customers after the big outsourcing experiment.

Here’s a more in-depth look at what we think will be trending in 2013 when it comes to call centers:
1. Focus on social media: Companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of responding to customer complaints and concerns via social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. For instance, GM recently announced it would be adding social media contractors to one of its offices to reach out to customers on Facebook and Twitter, according to the Detroit Free Press. Plenty of national brands like Comcast and Domino’s Pizza have already made similar moves.

2. Multiplatform software: Creators of call center software are recognizing that customers expect to be able to contact and interact with businesses from a variety of platforms — including smartphone apps and Facebook — in addition to more traditional methods like e-mail or calling. An update to Avaya Tuesday’s Customer Management solutions will allow businesses to better track customer interaction across multiple platforms including Web chat, social media and SMS, as well as better route customers to  available agents with the right skillsets, according to CRN.com.

3. Video calls: With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, the younger generation has become more accustomed to video conferencing rather than traditional phone calls. Taking note of the trend, more contact centers are looking for ways to incorporate video and video calling into their business models. “Younger generations are showing a preference for a video chat over a phone call or text,” Laura Bassett, director of marketing, customer experience and Emerging Technologies at Avaya, told TMCNet.com. “This trend will extend to customer service in specific areas that require personalization, relationships, or advanced support.” Companies like Ikea, Verizon and iRobot have already been using video to reach customers for topics like frequently asked questions and how-to guides.

4. The Cloud: Look for more call centers to embrace cost-effective and easy-to-deploy cloud-based contact center solutions rather than traditional premise-based solutions. DMG Consultanting predicts that cloud-based call center infrastructure will double from 2013 to 2015.

5. More home-bound agents: More contact centers are relying on agents working from their home rather than in a large centralized call center thanks to the expansion of cloud-based infrastructure. A study by researchers at Stanford University and Beijing University found that home-based call center agents were more productive and happier, and called in sick and quit less frequently than those who worked in an office. What’s more, companies can save on costs (real estate, office equipment and furniture, etc.) associated with running a call center.

6. Insourcing: After years of shipping contact center jobs to places like India and the Philippines, companies are realizing they can improve customer relations by employing native English speakers who also understand cultural norms and who have been provided with good training on interpersonal communication. As a result, many jobs that had moved overseas are returning stateside.

7. Obamacare jobs: With the Affordable Care Act set to go in effect by 2014, states are preparing to help enroll eligible residents into health care insurance by opening up call centers. California is currently hiring nearly almost 1,000 agents for health exchange call centers across the state, according to the Contra Costa Times, and Washington has hired a Virginia-based call center company to operate the state’s online marketplace for shopping for health insurance according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

8. Local governments chasing call center jobs: With the economy still limping, local governments are looking for ways to boost job growth, and one industry they’re turning to is call centers. According to the Pensacola News Journal, the Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce is eying call center positions as “low-hanging fruit” that can easily fill vacant buildings and achieve their goal of creating 3,000 new jobs by 2015.

9. Consolidated call centers: As more customers turn to the internet for answers to questions they might have previously called a business about, call centers will continue to reduce staffing and consolidate call center operations. SafeAuto recently shut down a call center in South Carolina, moving the work to centers in Kentucky and Ohio saying it was using less than half of its call center capacity as more customers went online, according to the Columbus Dispatch. AT&T also recently cut jobs at two Pittsburgh centers citing reduced call volume as the cause, according to Triblive.com.

Learn more about call centers at Business.com.

Photo courtesy of HolidayExtras/Flickr

Being an entrepreneur requires you to take risks in your personal and professional life by creating your own path. However, there are a number of resources that you should keep in your backpack as you travel into the wide blue yonder of online entrepreneurship.

1. A Solid Internet Connection

This may seem like an obvious point, but a good internet connection is essential to running an online business. The free wifi in your local coffee shop isn’t going to cut it when your business gets up and running. You need to have complete control over your connection: from being able to reset the router to calling the ISP to order more bandwidth.

Related: Purchase an internet connection with one of our hand-picked vendors

2. Friends in IT

Whether they’re converting your website to mobile or fixing a bug in your blog’s design, you need to have someone you can call who knows their way around IT. This is especially important when your business is solely run online – a glitch in your webpage can lose you hours or days of visitors and revenues.

Even if you feel you can handle the back-end of your online business yourself, it helps to be prepared for when you hit a glitch you can’t fix. Foster relationships with several IT professionals who can provide you with aid in your time of need. Check their references to be sure you’re getting what you pay for.

3. Your Analytics Tool

Running an online business without analytics is like going orienteering without a map: you may be moving, but you’re probably not going anywhere. Your analytics can tell you more than just how many visitors you get a month.

It can tell you where they are coming from, how they got to you, who they are, what they’re looking at, and more. With this information in hand, you can make changes to attract more converting visitors and increase your revenues.

4. Social Media Tools

Social media automation tools can help you schedule your social posts to various platforms all from a single dashboard. You can control what posts go where and when they go up, enabling you to manage your social presence with little effort. You also use the tools to track your social mentions and take advantage of opportunities for marketing or customer service.

5. The Right Blogs

Stay on top of trends within your industry and in the online business world by following relevant blogs. These can range from small niche blogs to larger sites like Forbes.com or Entrepreneur.com. Reading can keep you informed; commenting can help you connect with business partners and new customers. Checkout our startup section here for more entrepreneur info.

Related: Small Business Resource Guide: Best Blogs for Online Marketing

6. Online Classes

Being an entrepreneur, online or not, means being a jack-of-all-trades. In order to shore up your knowledge and attain new skills, look into webinars and online classes that can teach you what you need to know about running a business online.

7. Your Friends and Family

According to the US Small Business Administration, one-third of startups rely entirely on owner investments and non-bank sources of funds, and the largest percentage of all startup funding comes from the personal capital of the entrepreneur and their friends and family. Look to your closest compadres for help planning, financing, and running your new business.

Related: 7 Free Business Plan Templates

8. Your Business Mentor

Get access to industry-specific knowledge and experience through a business mentor. Look for someone who is familiar with online entrepreneurship who can offer you expert guidance and quality answers to your questions.

Before you set off to start your online business, make sure that you have access to the resources you’ll need along the way. Build relationships with the right people, master the right tools, and educate yourself on how to be successful online.

Content helps persuade and motivate customers; it also has the benefit of letting search engines know what you’re about.

Unfortunately, many people write copy that is too focused on keywords while forgetting about the user experience.

With Google making changes at every turn, it’s imperative that you focus on writing quality content that is valuable to your customers; it should be both valuable and act as link bait.

And, in this post, I’m going to show you how to write content that both Google and your readers will love.

Related: Hire a professional copywriting firm if you don’t have the resources to produce high-quality content

Natural Sounding Content

You’ve likely heard the term “keyword stuffing.” This once popular strategy involved including a certain keyword density in your website copy. Anywhere from 2% to 7% was considered beneficial. Search engine algorithms have become savvier and are now able to interpret the meaning of pages beyond the number of times a keyword is repeated.

Over the years, Google has implemented algorithm changes which penalize websites that try to game search results and this includes unnatural text like keyword stuffing. A better alternative to keyword stuffing is to use keyword variations.

• Google now accounts for synonyms such as online marketing vs. internet marketing. The words “online” and “internet” yield similar search results when found near the word “marketing.” Keyword variations like “law firm in Toronto” and “Toronto law firm” are also interchangeable in the eyes of Google.

Related: Hate Writing? Create Great Content in 2013

Evergreen Content

When writing content, it’s important to keep in mind Google’s mantra: relevance. Every time Google provides you with a quick answer, they further solidify themselves as your search engine of choice.

That’s where evergreen content comes in. Evergreen content differs from content such as news-jacking. Where a news-jacked post may garner more traffic over the short-term, evergreen content is focused on long-term (search-based) traffic. A piece of evergreen content will be just as relevant 2 years from now as it is today.

Sites like eHow and About.com have built empires based on evergreen content. Their articles consistently garner traffic that produce ad click-throughs.

Related: Get an Edge: 3 Things Modern B2B Marketers Need

Readability

Let’s face it; we’re not all a bunch of PhDs. Google realizes this as well. Do you remember learning that most major newspapers write for an 8th grade level? It’s not a stretch for Google to think the same way.

If top performing search results were verbose and hard to understand, the user experience for most would be low. With this in mind, write shorter sentences and use words with fewer syllables. One way to gauge the reading level of a piece of content is to run it through the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test. Shoot for an 8th grade level; often times, it will be difficult to achieve.

Top 3 Takeaways:

• Don’t stuff your content. Instead make pages with tightly focused content and use keyword synonyms and keyword variations instead.
• Write evergreen content. Try and answer user questions. Write answers for questions people will always ask.
• Keep readability in mind. Don’t try to show off your vocabulary; focus on writing clear and concise copy that is straight to the point.

I hope I’ve given you a few ideas on how to write optimized, yet useful web content. Remember that Google wants to give users the best and most relevant search results. Each piece of content on your website should be geared towards providing the best experience for the reader.

Bio: Steve Toth blogs for TechWyse Internet Marketing in Toronto, Canada. He is also the Content Manager for the marketing intelligence software AdLuge. Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.

By getting social, businesses often have one or more of the following goals in mind: customer engagement, lead generation, and thought leadership. Small businesses that are looking to stand out from the crowd should spend some time analyzing which customers are the best for their business, but more importantly, what is going to engage them.

Related: Improve your online marketing with a professional agency

Read on to see what business.com is doing to engage their and how you can do it, too.

Customer Engagement

Engagement is how businesses can build long-term and loyal customers. At Business.com, you can find us on Facebook, connecting with those behind the advertisements or involved in the buying process. Facebook provides us, and other businesses such as yours, the opportunity to connect one-on-one.

In order to engage our fans, we share interesting blog content, photos, polls and comics. What’s our most successful post? It’s an afternoon poll about people who challenge you in business.

BDC Social by the numbers: While the average post earns about 3-4% of the possible impressions, this poll post received impressions from 30% and a large number of likes, comments and shares. Since then, we’ve begun using polls on a weekly basis. (Tweet this stat!)

• Test different types of posts – photos, polls, surveys, links, etc. – to find which appeals the most to your readers and make sure to incorporate these regularly.
• Facebook is getting visual. Use photos to increase engagement and sharing. You’re more likely to appear in someone’s Newsfeed if they comment, like or share a previous post. Photos are a way to connect with a new fan.

Related: Zappos Case Study: Getting More Leads with Social

Lead Generation

As a small business resource and lead generation company, we know that LinkedIn is one network we can’t ignore.

BDC social by the numbers: Since becoming active on LinkedIn, we’ve seen an increase in impressions, clicks, followers and visitors. Over the past month alone, we’ve seen over a 60% increase in unique visitors to our LinkedIn page and a 15% increase in company followers. (Tweet this stat!)

• Make sure your products and services page is up to date and that each listing has a compelling image and corresponding copy. Provide a point of contact and a link back to your site with each different product or service.
• Post status updates on a regular basis. From your personal account, share updates with the groups you’re in. While using your company page, share links, photos and news about your company to your followers.
• Make the most of your follower insights. You can find new companies or clients to reach out to and determine the type of content your audience finds the most valuable.

Related: Turn Leads into Sales with Video

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership should be a focus for both B2B and B2C businesses. At Business.com, we share guides, whitepapers, blog posts and resources via Twitter and Pinterest to establish ourselves as thought leaders and connect with customers, no matter where they are in the buying process.

BDC by the numbers: People who come to our site via Pinterest have one of the longest average visit duration times when compared to other social networks. (Tweet this stat!)

Use your business’s knowledge to provide new information to others via social networks and become a thought leader in your space. Daniel Rasmus provided this definition of thought leadership:

Thought leadership should be an entry point to a relationship. Thought leadership should intrigue, challenge, and inspire even people already familiar with a company. It should help start a relationship where none exists, and it should enhance existing relationships.

This definition of thought leadership is important for those who are looking to become thought leaders in their industry via social media.

• Identify questions your customers are asking and the information they are actually after. Then answer the questions with content, not a sales pitch, across your networks such as Twitter.
• Think of the three E’s: Educate, Entertain, and Examples. Educate and entertain your customers with content that features examples.
• Spread your content on social networks and don’t neglect Pinterest as it is a big driver of staying traffic.

Professionals are constantly looking for ways to improve their business, make the best decisions, and gain new knowledge to give their company an edge over others.  As your business determines which social platforms will yield the greatest ROI, be sure you aren’t just jumping in and instead have a strategy in a place that focuses on customer engagement, lead generation and customer loyalty. After all, it’s easier and cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire a brand new one.

Photo credit: Todayinsocial.com