Social media guide for small businesses

Social media relates to the use of the Internet in a number of different ways to interact with other people through content and conversation. Social media covers a wide variety of ways to interact and this article discusses a number of them.

Small businesses that incorporate social media into their marketing strategy will find a very cost-effective and efficient way to gain visibility and demonstrate credibility, and attract advocates, customers, suppliers, partners and associates.

So what is social media?

Social media comprises a wide variety of facilities, mostly delivered through the internet, (although some would incorporate other forms of media such as digital broadcasting and electronic books). Primarily, the elements of social media used by small businesses relate to those systems that enable small businesses to create a presence online to attract others. In this article we’ll go through the six principal social media routes and briefly discuss the main advantages of each.

Blogs

Blogs, a contraction of the word weblog, were one of the first routes to using the internet for small businesses to develop a presence and understanding for their customers, suppliers and associates. Blogs are effectively dynamic websites in which it is easy for the author to write articles, whitepapers and discussion documents and engage with a readership. Readers can subscribe either to the blog itself or through electronic feeds (RSS) from those sites.

There are a number of ways to create a blog using software provided either free or at a relatively low charge from sites such as Blogger, TypePad and WordPress. Small businesses need to decide whether to host the blog themselves or to use the facilities of the providers of the software. Blogs enable their owners to create detailed information about their products and services, their business, or indeed anything related to the business, its owners, its staff and so on.

Used well, blogs can become popular and attract a wide audience that talks about the subject matter of the blog, the business behind it and so on with their contacts. Typically though, to be successful, blogs need to be dynamic and active; the most successful subject matter blogs are often written by a variety of authors. In a small business context that can be harder to achieve where the number of potential writers is often limited to the business owner themselves.

Business Social Networks

Social networks are a new phenomena which have really only grown up in the last three to four years. Different sites provide a different culture but enable members to interact using the facilities on the site.

In the business environment sites such as Ecademy, Xing and LinkedIn enable businesses to interact in an environment based on interactions for business between members. Some of these business sites allow advertising through classified listings. The business ethos of these sites enables connections to be made in order to discuss and understand the needs of each business and the opportunities that exist for them to help each other as opposed to social networks discussed below where more emphasis is on individual activities.

Social Networks

Social networks have been extremely successful at attracting a very large audience. Facebook, MySpace and for a younger audience, Bebo have grown very rapidly to millions, even hundreds of millions, of members primarily as they enable social ties to be maintained online. Although not designed for business, many business people do participate in these platforms and it’s possible for small businesses to integrate their activities into their personalities as individuals in a way that attracts business to them.

In many ways, social networks are populated by a consumer market, whereas business social networks tend to be populated by a business network, so the nature of the small business’s products and services will determine what strategy for social networking the business should use.

Micro blogging

In recent months the growth of Twitter has drawn attention to the opportunities for what is known as micro-blogging, very short updates (140 characters) to enable your network to see what you are thinking about, or reading or doing at any particular point in time.

Twitter in itself would require a whole article to discuss the detail of how it can be used, but in principle it is again enabling others to see your business and you and how you think and interact in ways that will attract them to contact you through other means for conversation and business.

Photo Sharing

Sites such as Flickr enable small businesses to share photographs; if you’re selling a physical product then they provide a free means of publishing photographs of your product or service and enabling others to comment on it.

For example, it’s possible for you to develop a visual testimonial page for your products and services and attract those customers who would prefer to see, as well as read about, your products and services.

Video Sharing

YouTube has been a phenomenon in the internet world for some time and has enabled privately produced video to be shared with a massive audience.

For small businesses a video testimonial from a satisfied customer is incredibly powerful. Again, once the video is shared using a service such as YouTube, it’s possible to embed that video in your website and use the content in many places. This is true of many of the items we’ve discussed above.

Conclusion

Small businesses have a wealth of opportunity to provide content in words, audio, pictures and video to support and develop an understanding of their products and services for their target market and a great opportunity to review and assist those whose products and services they have bought or seek to buy.

It is important that small businesses take the time to develop a clear overview strategy with clear objectives for their activity. In summary, any social media strategy should include elements that:-

• Determine which audiences you are seeking;
• Understanding where those audiences are currently interacting;
• Developing the content and the approach to; and
• Having a clear strategy once you have engaged your audience within your business.

The barriers to entry into social media are almost non-existent and that creates a risk of entering into activity without purpose. Without clarity of purpose, without a structure, the activity would require luck to succeed and that rarely happens.

About the Author

William Buist is director of Abelard Management Services, a consultancy specialising in improving team dynamics and performance. For more information visit www.abelard-uk.com

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