Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs pt 2

From the comments and emails I've received, the benefits I described in the first half of Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs have hit home but also helped you think of new ways that your blog can help you build your business.

I liked the issue raised in a comment by SaveMoneyCostCutting from last week. Sometimes it is a fine line between too much marketing and just enough. It is important to establish a position on this that will work based on what you're selling and to whom you're selling it. There's no one-size-fits-all on that one. Blogging is a tool you can use creatively to get out what you need to say to the world, and/or as a serious business tool for driving leads, creating advertising inventory (aka traffic), generating sales and building a brand. Just be true to the brand and the tone you establish.

I also like jimfracis' comment that blogging helps him "shape his convictions". As I mention towards the end of the "Credibility" paragraph helping you to actually articulate what you know or believe is definitely a big benefit.

If you think that blogging might be a great leads or revenue generator for your business, the problem is how to justify the fact that blogging is *really* time consuming, especially when you consdier that typically you'll spend at least the same amount of time marketing your blog as you do writing it, often more, sometimes, 2-3 times more.

So to help you to decide whether to blog or not to blog, I'll outline the final 5 of Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs.

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Networking

I think many people don't understand what it really means to "network" (not that I'm a guru). But instead of focusing on "networking" I'd like to talk specifically about "how to build" a network that will educate you, inform you, support you emotionally, and tell you about opportunities, and one that will also enable you to inform, support, provide opportunities for and educate it. This is a network that serves your needs 360 degrees. When you're building a network it's critical that people in your network know what it is that you need, and what you have to offer. Regularly publishing content that makes clear your areas of focus is a great way to help people very tangibly understand why they should connect with you. It's one thing to say you're an expert, it's another thing to write 50 articles about it that are read, appreciated, forwarded, reposted etc. Making it very clear what how you can help people is ironically also a great way for other people to figure out how they can help you.

Customer Loyalty, Customer Service & Customer Education

Product details, how-to instructions, usage hints can all be smart content to provide to build both sales and loyalty especially if your product is technically complex or has a lot of hidden features. A blog can be used like individual FAQ posts to answer both old and new customer questions. And just like FAQs, your posts/answers can highlight features that customers don't know about, or help customers understand the best way of using your product or service.

Related Articles by Maisha:

Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs

To Blog or Not to Blog

Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)

Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)

Case Studies

One of the greatest benefits of Case Studies is self-identification. Case studies offer detail and context about a specific situation your product resolved and provide more information about the customer you worked with. This is wonderful for potential customers, enabling them to see themselves and see their specific needs, situation, challenges not only laid out in front of them and tangibly understand that you can fix it.

Social Media Content

Social media strategies and campaigns are built around content. Whether the content is video, images, or text, those businesses who invested in the idea that "content is king" now have a leg up in creating social media strategies because they have a store of content that can be used to support, encourage and extend dialog. If you have a blog you also have the beginnings of a wonderful social media strategy.

Consistent Presence

Presuming you blog with some regularity, blogging, like all social media tools, has the excellent benefit of helping you strengthen more of your weak ties by communicating with large numbers of people frequently and with relevance.

Advertising Revenue

Not that I created this list in any order of priority, but I do advise making a mental note of how far down on the list this one is (at the bottom). While generating significant revenue from your blog by selling advertising can still work for some bloggers, these days it is a difficult way to justify the investment if advertising revenue is the only payoff. You have to either have a significant amount of traffic (I'd think about 50,000 page views minimum) or have a captive audience of readers who are extremely difficult to reach else where, or both. While Google AdWords are great it generates tiny amounts of monthly revenue for most bloggers so don't assume that's all you'll need!

So Now What?

You may have looked at this list of payoffs and recognized several that fit squarely into your business strategy. So now what?

Armed even with knowledge of what reasonable goals are, I find that businesses trying to dive into the world of blogging are still somewhat at a loss for how to start. How on earth do I build an effective blog? How much time will it take? What tools are available and which ones make the most sense for our needs? How do I actually get all the payoffs?

Stay tuned — next time we dive into the technical side of blogging and how to get started.

Till then I look forward to hearing more about blogging benefits and what you get out of blogging for your business.

Two important notes:

Get Your Blog Featured
I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples in upcoming posts. If you've had success with your Blog and can describe results/back it up with real data, you can submit your Blogging strategy here.

Get a Free Blog or Web Site!
Even in a bad economy there's a silver lining. I'm giving away a free Web site! If you'd like to be the lucky business owner tell me about your business and why you should win here. I acknowledge I'll be choosing the winner purely based on my own discretion. Heck I may even choose more than one. I look forward to seeing your entry!

Post Your Comment

Have a question? Got something to share? Something I missed?

Your feedback, comments, real world experience and tactical questions are an important part of the discussion. If you have a comment, question or feedback post it below.

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Pinpointing the Next Bubble

Each day,Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today.

Start-up bubble? Nope, says Thiel. College bubble? Perhaps. "Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you," Sarah Lacy writes in TechCrunch today. Lacy sits down with the PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel at his home in San Francisco to discuss what Thiel believe is the next big bubble. And, no, it has nothing to do with tech or start-ups. In fact, it's perhaps the most sacrosanct of all American institutions: a college education. "A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed," he says. "Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus." This is perhaps a justication-or a reason-for Thiel's "20 under 20" where he pays 20 kids under the age of 20 $100,000 to pursue a business idea. But the program has drawn criticism from academic-types that argue that a 19-year-old can't successfully run a well-rounded business. So, what do you think? Is education valued too highly, or is this just hot air from Thiel?

The art of being a part-time entrepreneur. As the hiring market heats up, The Wall Street Journal poses an interesting question for people who started their own companies after being laid off: "Should you continue growing your start-up or go back to earning a steady paycheck?" For some, like Kevin Dinino, founder of KCD Public Relations, going back to work for "the man" would be impossible. "I'm the decision maker," he tells The Journal. "I don't have to take orders anymore." For others, though, it's a necessity. When Stephanie Burns' start-up, Chic CEO, ran out of funding, she took on a marketing job at a healthcare company. Now, Burns wears two hats as an entrepreneur and marketing exec. But before you consider that option, consider the cautionary tale of Kendra Kroll, who got fired for talking about her company Undercover Solutions while on the clock at her day job. "Going forward," Kroll says, "I would be more cautious about the way I accept a position given my propensity for talking about my business."

Gathering signatures gets simpler. Is your business wasting a lot of time and money sending documents around town—or around the world—when they need a signature for a transaction? Now there's an app for that, the New York Post reports. It's called Sign Docs, and it's exclusively for the iPad now, for $6.99.

Nurturing creativity. In today's ultra-competitive marketplace, one may argue that the only truly sustainable competitive advantage is creativity. But creativity doesn't just happen to an organization; it requires building a culture that fosters curiosity, exploration, and innovation. Forbes compiled a list of the seven most important rules to establishing and maintaining a creative startup culture. It emphasizes concepts such as diversity, independence, celebrating and sharing ideas freely, and how to act in the face of failure.

Is a social media consultant right for you? It's an existential crisis. You want to promote your small business on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but you have no time to post or tweet because you're too busy actually running your small business. Never fear, there's a consultant for that. Today, Mashable posted a guide to to help small business owners decide if outsourcing your social media efforts to a consultant is the right step for your business. The guide follows a recent MerchantCircle survey revealing that that of 8,500 small businesses, two-thirds use social media as a marketing tool, but one-third of these admit they lack the time and resources to be sufficiently social. Mashable's guide offers four questions to consider, including whether social media will drive your business growth, how well your social media is working now, if outsourcing could free up more of your time, and how to determine ROI of using a consultant.

How they did it. Women who made it big talk to the Wall Street Journal about how they fought challenges in the workplace to get where they are today. Here's Mellody Hobson, Julie Louise Gerberding, and Marissa Mayer, and it's all part of the Journal's well done and extensive report on women in the economy that came out this month.

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The Week on AdFreak (Adfreak)

Out-of-home advertising was hot this week, just as springtime got in full
swing. We also got a new Aflac duck, a possibly gay military spot from
Budweiser and a remarkably sexist poster from Dos Equis. Check out all the
AdFreak highlights from the week below.

1. Classic anti-drug ads


Rebecca Cullers put together a great collection of anti-drug ads that might
have had the opposite effect on the target market than they intended. Lots of
great '80s stuff in here. Just say whoa! 10 Anti-Drug Ads That Make You Want
to Take Drugs

2. Aflac's new quack


It doesn't look like a duck, but it quacks like a duck. After a monthlong
search, Aflac found its new feathered mascot--36-year-old Dan McKeague of
Hugo, Minn. Yes, his quack is nearly as annoying as Gilbert Gottfried's. Meet
the New Voice of the Aflac Duck

3. Budweiser: Don't ask, don't tell


A TV spot featuring a gay U.S. soldier from Bud, that prototypical Americana
marketer? Maybe, maybe not. You be the judge. Is This Budweiser Ad Gay?

4. Clever new outdoor ads


A street ad from Holland for a local aquarium appears on ...

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Real-Time Data And A More Personalized Web (Smashing Magazine)

As Web designers, we face a daily struggle to keep pace with advances in
technology, new standards and new user expectations. We spend a large part of
our working life dipping in and out of recent developments in an attempt to
stay both relevant and competitive, and while this is what makes our industry
so exciting to be a part of, it often becomes all too easy to get caught up in
the finer details.

Responsive Web design, improved semantics and Web typography have all seen
their fair share of the limelight over the last year, but two trends in
particular mark true milestones in the maturation of the Web: ?real-time data?
and a more ?personalized Web.?

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The Case for Boardroom Bullies

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today.

Should workplace bullying be legal? Business Insider's Suzanne Lucas thinks so. It's not that Lucas thinks bullying is right, it's just that she believes the anti-bullying legislation currently being considered in New York and Maryland would be bad for business. For starters, she writes, it would make hiring a nightmare. "Since almost every person who has been fired for poor performance feels like their boss is being mean, i.e. bullying, that means companies will be less likely to hire if they can avoid doing so," Lucas writes. "Restrictions on firing=restriction on hiring." Lucas also takes issue with the fact that bullying, itself, is tough to define, and just because it's illegal doesn't mean it won't happen. As Lucas puts it, "A law won't make a bully stop and say, 'Gee, I was going to torment my coworker, but since the new law is in place, I shan't!' Bullying in the workplace should not be tolerated, but the companies should have the freedom to decide what that means."

Google gets geeky with new data mag. Watch out, Wired, you may have some new competition. Google has just launched its first online magazine, Think Quarterly, whose first issue is devoted entirely to the subject of data. Although the publication is aimed at Google's partners and advertisers, Mashable notes "that it's a visually stunning piece of work" and contains "thought pieces about major business and technology topics." It's not exactly clear how many magazine editions Google will release, but it does mention upcoming issues in May, July, and October. The reason behind the new venture? "We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service," Think Quarterly notes in its introduction. "But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It's a place to take time out and consider what's happening and why it matters." Check it out here and let us know what you think.

Walgreens snaps up Drugstore.com. The drugstore giant is plunking down roughly $409 million for the perfect URL...about 13 years too late. Founded in 1998, Drugstore.com did more than $456 million in sales last year. Walgreens says it will maintain Drugstore.com's office in Bellevue, Washington, and also acquire the company's other sites, Beauty.com and SkinStore.com, TechCrunch reports.

They're in the money! Venture capitalists are pouring millions of dollars into social networking start-ups, and the one of the biggest moneymakers is a phone-based social network called Color Labs. The Wall Street Journal reports Color Labs received an astounding $41 million from venture-capital firms excited by the start-up's idea to use "a phone's location-sensing abilities [to] build a user's social network for them, allowing users to share photos, video and messages based simply on the people they're physically near." The moral of the story? If you're looking to start a new business that will get funding, mobile social networking is probably the way to go.

SCORE scores funding. SCORE, a non-profit organization based in Herndon, Virginia, dedicated to mentoring and training entrepreneurs and small businesses, received a $285,000 grant from Deluxe Corporation Foundation to help grow its mentoring base, according to The Wall Street Journal. In a statement, SCORE chief executive Ken Yancey said the grant "will enable us to attract new, highly qualified mentors and improve our ability to match them with small businesses, [and] help us achieve our goal of helping to grow one million successful small businesses by 2017."

The tax man cometh. To Connecticut. Yoga studios in Connecticut were in for some bad news this week when state Gov. Dannel Malloy announced that they'll soon be required to pay the mandatory 6.25 percent business tax, which, until now, has been waived for commercial yoga studios. The Wall Street Journal notes that "Mr. Malloy calls the new taxes part of his plan for "shared sacrifice." But consumers and business owners say the levies on everyday items come at a time when they're already stretched for cash."

The importance of start-up teamwork. The team is the only thing that matters, says Mark Suster, a VC at GRP Partners in a blog for Techcrunch. Before you go out and recruit a team, heed the advice of this two-time entrepreneur. Suster says he'll only hire the "A" players, and he'll never stop recruiting fresh talent, even it means you can't pay them initially. Read more on Suster's tidbits of wisdom for assembling a start-up team.

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Guest Blogging ? Are You Making These Mistakes? (Blogging Tips)

One great thing about blogging is that it doesn't matter how great your
content is you won't go anywhere without traffic, hence, the need for
marketing your blog. As someone who has written hundreds of guest posts I can
attest ? read more

POSTLINK



A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at
www.bloggingtips.com/books/

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Is the "Check In" Era Nearly Over?

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today.

Is the "check in" nearly dead? Could location-aware check-in services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places have already jumped the shark? Blasphemy, you say? Well, ReadWriteWeb's guest author Mark Watkins performs a pretty in-depth analysis of user bases, traffic, and check-in rates for Foursquare and Facebook Places—and the numbers might just speak louder than your sniffles, social-media junkie. Watkins, who is the founder of a "fun-things-to-do" recommendation engine, writes that while Foursquare has shown impressive year-over-year sign-up growth, "this means check-ins per user declined from 0.5 per person to 0.4. It also suggests that many of those five million users aren't active." Think about it: How many of your friends actually check-in regularly and post that on Facebook? Is it about 1 percent? Are check-ins going the way of the Hacky Sack and the eight-track?

How to get stuff done. In the latest podcast for the Harvard Business Review, the hyper-efficient Bob Pozen speaks with HBR's Justin Fox about how to be highly productive. "Let's concentrate on results, not on hours clocked," says Pozen, a business leader who wears hats in finance, academia, and on numerous corporate boards. Pozen's principles for higher productivity include think before you read (i.e. don't read randomly; read with an agenda in mind.) He also says you must know your comparative advantage—that is, what does your organization most need from you specifically? For example, if your company relies on you for PR or sales or recruiting, you should look to see a., if you are good at these tasks, and b., anyone else can do them just as well. Do what you and only you can do.

Rent too high? Blame the start-ups! From the days of the Gold Rush in 1849 to the technology boom in the 1990s, San Francisco's consumer-driven economy has long provided a haven for business opportunity and innovation. However, the influx of new start-ups and Silicon Valley firms to the city proper has caused a spike in rent costs, GigaOM reports. The average asking price for a loft space in the SoMA (South of Market) district, a hotbed for tech start-ups, has nearly doubled over the last year. "Everyone wants these creative spaces," said Blake Luger, a broker at Kidder Matthews, a commercial real estate firm based in Seattle. "But demand is growing and the supply is not." We can't help but wonder: Is this really start-up gentrification of the cool neighborhoods?

"Secret sauce" for jobs. You know Uncle Sam is looking at you, entrepreneurs. For Tim Kane, it's not rocket science: Cutting taxes will help entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs will create more jobs, more jobs will boost the economy. Kane spelled out this theory in a lengthy Huffington Post column yesterday. He writes: "What's the secret sauce for job creation? Step one is to identify who actually creates jobs (hint: entrepreneurs), and it seems like all parties in Washington finally agree on this one. Step two is to find the best way to, if you can forgive the term, stimulate them." Stimulate them, indeed. Kane calls for a less progressive tax system to limit the tax burden on entrepreneurs with sole proprietorships or LLCs, a solution which he claims is "sure to please no one." Still, he draws from his own paper to prove that start-ups create 150 percent of new jobs in the United States. As existing firms lose an average of 1 million jobs, start-ups create an average of 3 million. But are lower taxes really the answer? Inc. investigated that theory last month.

Who cheats on their taxes? University of Chicago economist Casey B. Mulligan writes in the New York Times today that "some people pay taxes not because of fines that the I.R.S. might levy, but because a tax conviction would harm their professional reputation and that, in turn, would lower their income." He posted one of the most amusing charts we've ever seen on the subject of taxes, placing various professions along a graph measuring importance of integrity in profession against net tax misreporting percentages. Guess what, sales professionals and techies? You apparently, in Oscar Vela's data supply, rank lower in misreportings, and higher in integrity than us media folks (although you don't hold a torch to lawyers. Analyze that).

Who lags in tech adoption? According to an annual study conducted by the World Economic Forum, we do. The United States is behind other countries when it comes to communications technology and computing use. The study ranks the U.S. at fifth, behind Sweden, Singapore, Finland, and Switzerland (in that order). The New York Times notes that the study compares results from 138 countries and actually began after the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2001. It also notes that the U.S. had a lot of "uneven" results when looking at its technology economic competitiveness, one which ranked the country 76th in the rate of mobile phone subscriptions. Can you hear me now?

The double-sided future of smartphones? First we had giant phones. Then flip phones came around, only to be ousted by single-sided touch-screen smartphones. Now, it seems, the next big thing could be a combination of all three: Giant, flip, touch-screen smartphones. Seriously. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the new Kyocera Echo from Sprint, which, at first glance, looks like a typical (albeit "chunky") flip Android. But when the top half is opened, it reveals another screen, giving the phone near-tablet size proportions. But will it stick? "Using two screens at once makes sense from a productivity standpoint," the Journal notes. But "I'd wager many people will use just one screen most of the time, since revealing the second screen requires the clunky step of folding back the top screen with an awkward hinge." In a broader sense, perhaps the real question that this phone begs is one of identity, that is, can a phone function as a tablet, and can a tablet function as a phone? Weigh in below with your comments and/or philosophical sentiments.

Newsweek chairman dies at 92. Less than a year after acquiring the struggling magazine, businessman and philanthropist Sidney Harman died Tuesday. He had been suffering with acute myeloid leukemia, according to The Daily Beast, the news website also owned by Harman. He made his fortune with Harman Kardon, an audio equipment manufacturer he co-founded in 1953. As The Daily Beast writes, "His stereo was a monster hit—the iPad of its day. Soon every educated music-lover in the country had to have a Harman Kardon and static became a thing of the past." He used that success to support the arts, education, and, in August 2010, to buy Newsweek from The Washington Post Company for $1. When he did so, his daughter Barbara told The New York Times "He’s a man who needs a project…He will die working—if he does die—and he'll love every minute of it, because he’ll pick things to do that are worth doing."

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LBi International N.V.: LBi International N.V.: Quarterly trading update for the period January - March 2011 (Market Wire)

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (MARKET WIRE) LBi International N.V. (NYSE Euronext
symbol: LBI), Europe's largest marketing and technology agency, today reports
its first quarter results for the period ended 31 March 2011.

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GSP's Secret to Becoming A Champion in Anything You Do

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My App Gap Posts for April 2011 (Portals and KM)

Here are my AppGap posts for April. I am also writing in another Corante blog,
FastForward (see right side bar for links), The AppGap posts began toward the
end of January 2008. Here, I am primarily doing product commentaries with...

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Complete Rules of Entrepreneurship

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today.

Entrepreneurs, defined. Merriam-Webster defines an entrepreneur as "one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise;" however, Business Insider columnist James Altucher believes this definition is inadequate. Altucher, who has started, invested in, and advised dozens of businesses, has created his own definitive 100 rules for being an entrepreneur. Most of the rules on this comprehensive list address the initial challenges of launching a new business—but some rules also apply to those larger, more stable, companies as well. Which rules do you follow? What's missing from the list? Let us know below.

Is the start-up bubble just "blubble?" That's the word Michael Arrington is using, at least. In a TechCrunch piece published this weekend, Arrington asserts that the state of the start-up world is a far-cry from the 1999 to 2000 years of cash and burn. "This isn't a bubble," he writes. "It's more like a Blubble. A blubble? Yes, a blubble. Because there is a lot of whining going on." Arrington asserts that start-ups 11 years ago were encouraged to raise hundreds of millions in venture capital and spend it on anything remotely useful, while today's start-ups are much leaner. High valuations on Facebook and Twitter have stoked the "bubble" buzz, he says, but start-ups are hardly raising enough funds to start using the B-word officially. Well, most start-ups at least. "Absolutely no one is telling start-ups to raise and spend money as fast as they can. With the possible exception of Color. I have no idea what those guys are up to over there in crazy picture-sharing land."

Happy employees work here. In the mist of a gradual economic recovery, how do you retain employees? Fortune highlights the best practices from three companies that made this year's 100 Best Companies to Work For list: Zappos, DreamWorks Animation, and Teach for America. Some of the perks include a live-and-work-from-anywhere policy, free dry-cleaning, meals and medical care on campus, and the ability of veto hiring decisions if a job candidate doesn't fit the company culture. One recruiting manager, Christa Foley, says: "We're looking for people who don't take themselves too seriously." The company she works for interviews job candidates in rooms with weird names, such as an Oprah-style talk show set where candidates sit on a couch next to their HR host.

The stalemate is over. Twitter is staying in San Francisco, the company announced on its blog Friday, the New York Times reports. The news puts to rest a months-long stand-off over during which Twitter threatened to leave its home by the bay, and officials debated whether Twitter should be allowed to benefit from a special tax exemption to San Francisco's only-in-the-state payroll tax. In order to take the break, Twitter is moving into a district of the Central Market neighborhood newly zoned as payroll-tax-exempt. When? "We don't yet have a timeline for our relocation, but we expect we will move into our new space in mid-2012. We can't wait," Sean Garrett posted for Twitter. What's yet to be seen is how the city reacts to similar relocation threats from other local, growing tech companies such as Zynga.

Redmond rethinks employee comp. In an effort to keep from employees from departing for start-ups, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has unveiled new rules governing employee pay, according to an internal company memo published by GeekWire. The retooled compensation scheme would raise base salaries while reducing deferred compensation awarded in the form of stock. In addition, Microsoft's performance-rating system will be retooled, and special consideration will be paid to "early and mid-level R&D, mid-level company-wide and certain geographies," the memo says. In a post titled "What Microsoft CEO Ballmer Gets Wrong About Employee Compensation," Mogulite's Amy Tennery observes a.) the shout-out for oft-maligned middle managers is surprising; and b.) "For the less-stock-more-cash strategy to be a boon to employees, Microsoft shares would need to decline significantly over time."

Big gains for tablets predicted. When the iPad was introduced a year ago, critics complained it was simply a bigger version of the iPhone—without the actual ability to make a phone call. The iPad and its competitors have since proven themselves highly useful both for consumer and for commercial use. Goldman Sachs forecasts tablets will account for 17 percent of all wireless data demand by 2020, as reported by All Things Digital this morning. Smartphones remain far more prevalent than their larger counterparts (they can make phone calls after all), but this data proves tablets are fast becoming less a luxury and more a necessity for consumer and commercial use.

Marketing begins at home. Sure, customers research large purchases, such as electronics or automobiles, before heading to the store or showroom. Research shows that "coming out of the recession, consumers are more scrupulous about researching their everyday products such as diapers and detergent, too," the Wall Street Journal reports. More than one-fifth of consumers research food and beverage purchases online, one-third research pet products, and nearly 40 percent research baby products, data from consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail shows. Is this an early knell for the end of flashy in-store shelf displays and aisle-end promotions? Not necessarily, but it does mean retail stores and brands are boosting their investments in reaching consumers online first, including on social media. Eighty-three percent of consumer-product companies say they plan to increase their investments in shopper marketing over the next three years, according to a Booz & Co. survey.

Are you a winner? Eager to learn more about the ins-and-outs of social media and how to apply them to your business? An American Express-sponsored Facebook contest could land you (and four other small companies) a trip to Facebook's offices in Palo Alto, California, as well as $2,500 in Facebook ad credits and a $20,000 check, ReadWriteWeb reports. How can you enroll? Why the AmEx OPEN Facebook page, of course.

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