The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

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BizSugar is a niche resource and social networking platform for the small business community. The social networking platform is owned and operated by Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends LLC. Small Business Trends LLC is a stable of 7 websites including the flagship site Small Business Trends, group business blog Tweak Your Biz and BizSugar. As their former community manager, I am well placed to advise you on how to get the most from the platform. What is BizSugar? BizSugar is a place where you can submit and share your small business content. Once submitted, the BizSugar community votes on this content with the most voted posts making it to the home page. The business case for using BizSugar: • BizSugar is a niche and successful social media for anyone interested in the International Small Business community. • With over 1 million registered members based around the Globe, it is an effective way to target the small business community, promote your content and drive qualified traffic back to your website. • It allows you make connections with small business owners, managers and entrepreneurs and to stay informed. • “Top stories” on BizSugar make it into their Top 10 widget, weekly Top 10 newsletter and the Twitter feed where they get even more visibility. What others say about BizSugar: Steven Hughes, GeeklessTech: “BizSugar is a recommended platform to market your website and blog…There are also moderators that get involved and comment, keeping the pace fluid…Be consistent and you’ll make connections. The BizSugar blog traffic back to your site will be sweet.” TJ McCue, Forbes: “If you are looking for high quality content you can trust, BizSugar offers it. There are real people moderating, vetting, and culling out the spam. There is an opportunity to build a reputation in this niche social network and then spread your content and ideas.” John Jantsch, Wall Street Journal: Try “networks that cater to business owners, such as Biznik and BizSugar.”

Transcript of The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Page 1: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

The Small Business Social Media: A Guide to BizSugar

BizSugar is a niche resource and social networking platform for the small business

community. The social networking platform is owned and operated by Anita Campbell of Small Business

Trends LLC. Small Business Trends LLC is a stable of 7 websites including the flagship site Small Business

Trends, group business blog Tweak Your Biz and BizSugar. As their former community manager, I am well

placed to advise you on how to get the most from the platform.

What is BizSugar?

BizSugar is a place where you can submit and share your small business content. Once submitted, the

BizSugar community votes on this content with the most voted posts making it to the home page.

The business case for using BizSugar

BizSugar is a niche and successful social media for anyone interested in the International Small

Business community.

With over 1 million registered members based around the Globe, it is an effective way to target the

small business community, promote your content and drive qualified traffic back to your website.

It allows you make connections with small business owners, managers and entrepreneurs and to

stay informed.

“Top stories” on BizSugar make it into their Top 10 widget, weekly Top 10 newsletter and the Twitter

feed where they get even more visibility.

Page 2: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Setting Up

New users need to provide a username, email, and password, and confirm if they would like to subscribe

to the weekly Top 10 newsletter.

Then, once your account has been set up, you can further edit your profile to add more info including

your:

Avatar

Location

Occupation

Skype

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Websites

Interests

RSS

Note: You can also log in using your Facebook account.

Page 3: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Submitting content

To maintain the quality of the website and information, content that gets submitted to BizSugar goes

through a moderation process:

To submit your content to BizSugar, you need to include:

1. URL

2. Category

3. And description

Moderation team

This content then goes into a queue to await approval from the BizSugar moderation team.

Guidelines

Here are the full BizSugar submission guidelines but in short, content needs to be specifically relevant to

small business. Also, titles must not include site names, locations and other words unrelated to the

article and there should be no barriersi.e. extra windows, forms, or links out that readers have to click

through.

Voting

Voting on BizSugar is easy.

Users simply:

1. Log in

2. and vote (“sweet”) for their favourite articles.

Page 4: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Voting buttons

BizSugar also provides the option of voting buttons.

These you can install onto your website or blog and allow the community to vote for your content directly

from there.

Page 5: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Getting more “Sugars”

As with any other social media and online community, the more you put into BizSugar, the more you will

get out in the long run:

Content: The first step towards getting these votes is of course, creating and submitting great

content to BizSugar. However, it’s also a good idea to submit more than just your own content. If you

find information that the small business community would find useful, why not submit that too!

Community: Playing an active part in the BizSugar community, voting and commenting on other

members’ content will get you noticed and will in turn help your content to get votes, comments,

exposure and traffic.

BizSugar exposure

Getting your content onto the homepage is where you want to be seen on BizSugar: the more votes you

secure, the better your chances of getting on there:

Hot stories: Hot stories are published to the @BizSugar Twitter feed which has over 20K followers.

Weekly Top 10: The content with the most votes over a 7 day period also have the added bonus of

being included on the BizSugar newsletter that goes out on Fridays to over 200,000+ subscribers.

Video & Image Gallery: BizSugarlaunched a new “Video & Image Gallery” on October 30, 2012.

Videos include those submitted by members as well as some especially selected by the moderation

team.

Page 6: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

What others say about BizSugar:

Steven Hughes, GeeklessTech:

“BizSugar is a recommended platform to market your website and blog…There are also

moderators that get involved and comment, keeping the pace fluid…Be consistent and you’ll

make connections. The BizSugar blog traffic back to your site will be sweet.”

TJ McCue, Forbes:

“If you are looking for high quality content you can trust, BizSugar offers it. There are real

people moderating, vetting, and culling out the spam. There is an opportunity to build a

reputation in this niche social network and then spread your content and ideas.”

John Jantsch, Wall Street Journal:

Try “networks that cater to business owners, such as Biznik and BizSugar.”

Page 7: The small business social media, a guide to biz sugar

Understanding the Digital Economy

Reports:

E-Commerce

Food and Drink Sector

International Student Recruitment

General and Health Insurance

FMCG Sector – Retail and Ecommerce

Attracting Top Tier Talent

Social Media in Politics

Guides:

Social Media Strategy

Blogging

SEO

Facebook

Facebook local search

LinkedIn

Twitter

YouTube

Foursquare

Google Analytics

Pinterest

Instagram

Adwords

Google+

Klout

SMS Marketing

Mobile Commerce

Infographics

Hootsuite

BizSugar

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