Last month, we introduced 10 great ways small- and mid-sized businesses could use “online interaction” to generate referrals, boost sales and build their marketing lists. As if that weren’t enough, we’re back with 10 more crackerjack ideas – any of which can be implemented right away, for little to no money.

1. Add video

One way to breathe new life into your blog, newsletter or Web site – and increase the interactivity – is to post a video. Self-produced videos are all the rage right now, but for small- and mid-sized companies, they also serve a serious business purpose: They’re incredibly effective at personalizing your brand (allowing the real people behind your business to shine), which always attracts more interaction.

Forget the staid (and expensive) “corporate” video format; we’re talking raw, real and self-produced. A good example is this video blog posting from the people at My Glass Slipper.

2. Use Twitter as a lead generator

Ever considered using Twitter for one-to-one marketing? Here’s a step-by-step account of how the property managers at Rose Associates use this approach to find renters for their New York apartment buildings:

• Step 1: Visit search.twitter.com
• Step 2: Type “Moving to New York City” into the search box.
• Step 3: Cull through the tweets to find people who say they’re moving to the city.
• Step 4: Contact those people directly and pitch the available apartments.

According to the agency, about half the people contacted this way become renters (now that’s a successful marketing effort!).

3. Use traditional marketing to promote your social media

Email and direct mail have proven very effective at getting people to visit websites and social media. No need to create all-new marketing efforts; just include “learn more” and “see more” links in your regular direct-mail and email efforts:

• “For all the details about this special offer, see our Facebook page.”
• “To learn about all the latest Clyde Hill area listings just as soon as they’re available, follow my tweets at ….”
• “See a virtual tour of this property on my Web site.”

4. Encourage viral distribution

Anytime someone “retweets” your tweet, “likes” your latest Facebook posting, or “forwards” one of your emails, that creates a powerful “viral” marketing effect (so-called because it just keeps spreading like a virus – when done right).

So how do you get people to forward your messages and communications to their family and friends? Just make sure your missives always include something genuinely helpful, interesting or fun. That may sound trite, but it’s based on a very powerful truth: When people find something they like, they share it with others.

5. Cross-promote your social media

Once your social-media marketing efforts start to show some success, that’s when you want to begin cross-promoting. Mention your blog in the occasional tweet; encourage your Facebook fans to write a Yelp review; make sure all your social media are listed in your LinkedIn profile.

6. Create special offers and contests

When it comes to engaging and interacting with your target market, special offers and contests work just as well in the social media world as they do with traditional marketing. Your efforts just require a slightly different twist:

• Track the birthdays of your Facebook followers and offer them a special discount (or freebie) when their big day rolls around.
• Offer a “loyal follower” discount to some of your Twitter followers.
• Include a discount offer on your Yelp listing.

7. Track what’s being said about your company and industry

While you can’t control what others say about your business and industry in the social media world, you can use the feedback to improve your products and services.

• Are clients complaining about your pricing? Maybe it’s time to check in with your competitors and see what they’re charging in this current economy.
• Are people raving about your customer service? Gather up any positive statements and use them as customer testimonials on your website, your brochures and other marketing materials.
• See what people are writing about your competitors, too. No sense in making the same mistakes.

Savvy businesses view social media sites as virtual focus groups, making changes to their products and services whenever the feedback says it’s time.

8. Be active on social communities

This is no place to be a wallflower. To get noticed in the social media world, you have to interact. Do some networking via online industry groups. Offer advice on the sites where your target market hangs out.

9. Follow / friend others

Once you start interacting in online communities, the next step is to start following and friending other participants. This kind of interaction breeds more interaction, which means you’ll soon be chatting and exchanging messages with others’ followers, and picking up new followers and fans of your own along the way.

While you’ll find plenty of others to interact with online, it’s the popular, outgoing people who will have the greatest effect on your marketing efforts. Experts call these people “influencers.” Just associating with these super socials can boost your online following and lead to new referrals (kind of like high school).

How do you find them? Finding influencers in the real world is a challenge; but in the social media world, it’s a snap. These are the folks who tweet, Facebook, blog and participate in social communities on a daily basis. They have hundreds of followers and are constantly interacting with others.

How do you befriend them? First, become a friend/fan/follower. Then start retweeting their tweets, “liking” their Facebook postings and linking your blog postings (all of which will attract their attention). Finally, introduce yourself and … well, try to become their online friend. It’s traditional networking, but in a social media setting.

10. Establish a presence on the peer-review sites

The peer-review sites Yelp and Citysearch have turned into powerful referral tools with thousands of followers, yet many companies can’t be bothered to even establish a presence there. Don’t be one of those companies.

Take a few minutes right now to visit both sites and see what customers are writing about your business. Create, edit or update your company profile, if necessary. Consider adding a special promotion. Politely ask some of the people in your referral network if they might be willing to post a positive review on the sites. Then check the sites monthly to see what users are saying about your business.

Sure, interactive marketing may be a bit different than what you’re used to, but it isn’t difficult. And it’s a lot less expensive. Learn it, then combine it with traditional marketing methods.

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Everyone is gaga for online interaction today – which is why Facebook, Yelp, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr and all the other social-media tools have turned group communication into a full-blown Internet revolution. In the beginning, it was just person-to-person, but now people want to interact with the companies they do business with, as well.

The big surprise: All this interactivity has turned into a boon for small- and mid-sized businesses. In return for creating social communities, companies are able to use the resulting interactions to find new customers, generate referrals, gather valuable customer feedback and insights, grow their marketing lists, boost sales, create goodwill and build long-term loyalty – all for (get this!) little to no money.

Interested in learning how you can get in on the action? Here are 10 fast-track ideas for making your marketing more interactive (plus, next month, we’ll deliver 10 more):

1. Start using the tools – While you can incorporate two-way interactivity into your Web site, your marketing emails, even your direct-mail marketing campaigns, the Internet is bursting with simple social media tools designed specifically for the task.

For small- and mid-sized businesses, the most popular of these are Facebook, Blogger, Yelp and Twitter. For simple descriptions of each, as well as a list of all the alternatives, see Realtor Manny Riebeling’s blog

• The Fayetteville Athletic Club Facebook page
• The NY Times article about small businesses using Twitter
• The Yelp site for Busy Beaver Button Company
• Ginny Ollis’ real estate Twitter postings

Start by establishing a few accounts and observing what other companies do (especially your competitors). Then start interacting. Within a matter of weeks, you’ll be comfortable enough to start creating social communities for your own business.

2. Create original content – Once you have a business blog, Facebook page and/or Twitter account, start using them to comment on industry trends and news, write reviews and recommendations, offer insights and free advice, feature customer success stories and more. These don’t have to be lengthy postings (in fact, it’s best if they’re not).

Take a low-key marketing approach. Spend about 80 percent of your time offering useful comments, insights and information, and 20 percent of your time promoting your own abilities, services and products.

Above all, remember: Your goal is to engage people in conversation, not just deliver messages. How do you do that? Encourage people to comment on, or post a reply to, everything you write (i.e. “Have you ever had the same thing happen to you?” or “If you have an alternative idea, we’d love to hear it.”).

3. Combine forces – To generate a loyal following for your social-media sites, you should try to produce new content once or twice a week. For many small businesses and busy independent contractors, there just isn’t time for that. The solution: partner with a like-minded professional or allied business, and take turns creating the content.

4. Retweet and redirect – Another solution for those too busy to create much social-media content: Refer your readers to the work of others. Write a little blurb about why you think an article, blog posting, etc. is so compelling, then include a link to it.

Twitter is perfect for this. You don’t even need to write a summary. Just a couple clicks, and you’re done. Even better, each time you retweet, the original author will often pay you back with a reply (and maybe even become a “follower”). For more about retweeting, see this simple explanation.

5. Add commenting capability – Because two-way communication is fundamental to the medium, most every social media tool has built-in capability for your readers to comment on what you write. But if you want to be truly interactive, incorporate a commenting interface into your Web site and electronic newsletter, as well.

6. Don’t fret about negative feedback – Yes, the idea of allowing people to post comments about your business (for all the public to see) can be a bit scary. And while you can use filtering technology to make the negative stuff disappear, your best bet, believe it or not, is to hang back and let people say what they want.

According to extensive research on the subject by Keller Fay, approximately 65 percent of word-of-mouth reviews are positive and only about eight percent are negative.

The key isn’t to waste resources trying to make all comments positive, but to watch for trends and shifts in opinion (which usually signal an underlying problem that should be addressed anyway).

7. Encourage user-generated content – Allowing people to comment is good, but getting them to actually contribute content of their own making, well, that’s when things really get cooking. For one thing, it reduces the pressure on you to create everything. Even better, however, customers and prospects love it when they’re allowed to share the spotlight.

• Pose a question or present a new idea (a new logo design or an idea for a new product/service, for example), then let your social community vote on it.
• Offer an incentive (a gift card, free services, an entry in a drawing, etc.) that will motivate your readers to write a testimonial explaining how your product or service has improved their life.

The more involved you get your target audience, the more engaged they’ll feel (and the more likely they’ll be to encourage others to join your social community).

8. Use all that content in your other marketing – Once you’ve got your social community voting, commenting and contributing, you can start incorporating the best results into your traditional marketing materials:

• Include the results of online votes in your customer newsletter: “75% of our Facebook fans liked this logo design best” or “90% of those who read the Pro Aerobics blog say the Body Core class is their favorite – try it yourself this Wednesday.”
• Send a marketing postcard featuring a variety of customer testimonials – or create a multi-card marketing campaign, with each postcard featuring a different case study.
• Incorporate customer stories, photos, quotes and testimonials into your sales and presentation materials, marketing emails and brochures, even your promotional marketing products (calendars, notepads, pens, mouse pads, etc.).

By engaging and interacting with your target audience, you’ll be able to generate all kinds of cross-marketing opportunities.

9. Track your followers – Another great thing about social media is that every interaction is measurable and trackable. Using the analytical/profile features built into most social media tools, as well as all the third-party applications available, you can easily see how many people are using your sites, who they are and what they like, what types of content they find most useful, and much more. Then you can start tailoring content to your followers’ likes and dislikes (one-to-one marketing at its best).

10. Use surveys for additional feedback – For an even deeper understanding of what your target market wants, there’s online surveys. Using the services of Survey Monkey, Zoomerang and Zap Survey, small- and mid-sized businesses can easily create an online survey, monitor the response in real-time and quickly evaluate the results. Even better, the basic survey services are free (while the more advanced add-on features typically cost less than $20).

It can take a little time to develop a following, build relationships and get people interacting on a regular basis. So be patient. Soon enough, your efforts will reach a critical mass, and talk of your talents, products and services will begin to spread. Get started today (and look for 10 more interactivity ideas again next month).

Need help managing your social channels? Manage them with one simple tool from xpressdocs, Social HQ.

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