Social Media Marketing and Small Businesses
Small businesses are beginning to understand how to best leverage online tools to build a community and recognize that engagement and interaction are the foundations of social marketing, but most don’t know what’s next. Now before moving forward with an advanced strategy, it is essential that your business understands social marketing, has experience engaging consumers, and that you possess a basic understanding of online marketing. You have to begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you will measure success.
Facebook and twitter offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business and have grown tremendously over the past years. Both offer a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. Social platforms each have an ecosystem of their own. What might be acceptable on Tumblr might be considered spam on Facebook. A specific style of writing might spread on Twitter but fail on FriendFeed. Understanding that each site is different and then customizing your message ensures they do well on each respective site.
Try to comment on other blogs. You can’t blog into a vacuum. Blogging is about creating and joining conversations, and that includes reading what others in your industry are saying and joining the discussion on other blogs. It’s free, and again, the time investment is up to you. You’ll be able to supply your name and URL when leaving a comment, and there’s no debate that intelligent comments on other blogs helps build traffic to yours.
LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries. LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.
Building a community is only the first part of social marketing. Using that community to drive sales, propagate marketing, or crowd source operations is the true power of social media. One way to excite the community is to collectively do something to create a contest or offer an exclusive discount (i.e., the contest can create competition between users). Not only does a contest build buzz organically but if contestants need to, for example, publish an article that gets the most comments in order to win, the contest itself becomes viral. A good social media contest should include some sort of sharing or virility as a requirement for winning.
Make and share videos can be very attractive. Good video cameras are cheap these days, and a short video needs little editing/production. Even if you do decide to add some sizzle to a video, the required software won’t break the bank. How-to videos are an obvious choice. “Tour” videos-tours of your business, restaurant, the homes you build or sell, etc. are also a good idea. In addition to using them on your own Web site or blog, Youtube is an obvious sharing destination. Local search is also embracing video: CitySearch recently announced that local video ads will be added to its listings, and YellowPages.com is also pursuing video opportunities.
Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. Creating a basic social media presence is easy enough, getting your community to actually do something is more difficult. Taking advantage of these strategies can help you build your community, make your marketing more effective, and incentivize buying.
Facebook and twitter offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business and have grown tremendously over the past years. Both offer a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. Social platforms each have an ecosystem of their own. What might be acceptable on Tumblr might be considered spam on Facebook. A specific style of writing might spread on Twitter but fail on FriendFeed. Understanding that each site is different and then customizing your message ensures they do well on each respective site.
Try to comment on other blogs. You can’t blog into a vacuum. Blogging is about creating and joining conversations, and that includes reading what others in your industry are saying and joining the discussion on other blogs. It’s free, and again, the time investment is up to you. You’ll be able to supply your name and URL when leaving a comment, and there’s no debate that intelligent comments on other blogs helps build traffic to yours.
LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries. LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.
Building a community is only the first part of social marketing. Using that community to drive sales, propagate marketing, or crowd source operations is the true power of social media. One way to excite the community is to collectively do something to create a contest or offer an exclusive discount (i.e., the contest can create competition between users). Not only does a contest build buzz organically but if contestants need to, for example, publish an article that gets the most comments in order to win, the contest itself becomes viral. A good social media contest should include some sort of sharing or virility as a requirement for winning.
Make and share videos can be very attractive. Good video cameras are cheap these days, and a short video needs little editing/production. Even if you do decide to add some sizzle to a video, the required software won’t break the bank. How-to videos are an obvious choice. “Tour” videos-tours of your business, restaurant, the homes you build or sell, etc. are also a good idea. In addition to using them on your own Web site or blog, Youtube is an obvious sharing destination. Local search is also embracing video: CitySearch recently announced that local video ads will be added to its listings, and YellowPages.com is also pursuing video opportunities.
Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. Creating a basic social media presence is easy enough, getting your community to actually do something is more difficult. Taking advantage of these strategies can help you build your community, make your marketing more effective, and incentivize buying.
Post a Comment