Social media marketing for my gourmet food business

I'm by no means an expert on the subject but like everything else along my journey of entrepreneurship so far, I've been learning. So, here's my deal- I have a blog, a Facebook account and I'm Linked In but these have felt like distinct stand alone networking and marketing tools though there are characteristics in common. For some time I've been interested in learning how to pull them all together and use them more effectively for my gourmet food business.

Last week I attended the 2010 Hudson Valley Business Edge conference in Fishkill, NY. I found the conference informative overall but especially so in the area of social media marketing. I attended a session by Ric Dragon of Dragon Search Marketing which explained how these tools compliment each other and how to use them along with other tools to engage consumers better and solidify my company's online presence. For example, Ric explained that businesses should use Wordpress which is open source blogging software so a company's website traffic stays within that company's website and doesn't go out to another site. For example, I currently use blogger which hosts my blog on the blogger site so my blog's readers are actually taken to the blogger website which helps increase blogger's website traffic but not mine. I came away from Ric's session and conversations with Ric and his associate Clayton Walter with many ideas that I'd like to implement. My biggest challenge now is to find the time to do it all :) as I mentioned, my biggest immediate challenge is producing the gourmet products at a rate that keeps pace with demand.

I think it was Clayton who advised starting small, doing one thing first and going from there. So true, Clayton! One small step at a time is how I started my gourmet food business and how I've been able to grow it so far. It's a solid strategy that's certainly gotten me through. Thanks so much, guys! I will be spending some time over the next couple of weeks implementing Ric and Clayton's recommendations and suggestions and I look forward to any of your feedback or suggestions on that effort. If any other fellow entrepreneurs one out there are looking to learn more about social media marketing, I highly recommend calling Ric and his team at Dragon Search Marketing. They'll help you figure it all out.

Terry