Walls Posts, and Bloggers, and Tweets, Oh My!
How to handle social networking specifically for your small business
You can’t go two steps in the digital world anymore without hearing buzzwords like web 3.0 or Social Networking. As with any new technologies, business owners have a way of quickly hopping onto bandwagons without much thought as to why they might even need them in the first place. There are huge benefits to be reaped by smart use of social networking, but they are situational. The presence of social networking and the degree of its use are something that must be determined by careful study of your business marketing plan. Here are a couple of points to get you started.
What information are you presenting on your social networks?
The excitement of a new medium of marketing sometimes blinds people to the obvious. You need to keep your Social Networking updates relevant to customers. They should be offering relevant information or something like a coupon, or helpful advice.
Here’s a Good example of a smart marketing Twitter update:
We just finished work on a client’s new roof. Check out pics here. Call us today. Mention Twitter and receive 10% off next project!
Here’s a Twitter update that you might want to avoid:
Sunset wuz beautiful from client’s roof 2day. Really took our breath away, LOL.
Notice in the first one we provide the client with relevant information regarding the business, but also present added marketing value by adding a call to action. The second one also attempts building rapport with an audience, but in a casual tone that could be detrimental to your business goals. This is one of the challenges that social networking brings to small business marketing: The temptation to use a casual medium to build rapport and forgo intelligent marketing decisions. You can still use social networking as a fun alternative to increase marketing exposure for your business, but you can’t do so at the expense of the reputation that your company has previously built.
Do you even need social networking in your marketing strategy?
Just because a technology is new and exciting, doesn’t mean it has a place within your business’s marketing strategy.. Is your target audience even using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc? This is important to know. It’s always good to have a face of your business available on all mediums of the internet. However, if most of your business is B2B, and your efforts on social networking will go largely unnoticed, then you won’t want to put much effort into your small business social networking beyond setting up a profile and checking it every once in a while to keep it up to date. If you can reach a relevant audience via social networking, then just remember to keep your communications professional and relevant to the audience.
Don’t forget to ask your customers where they’re hearing about you. If your marketing analysis reveals that you are pulling in decent traffic or sales conversions from social networking, then you might even consider going into a heavier social media campaign. The important point for social networking in small businesses is determining ROI. Not so much for financial investment, because most social networks are free to join and use (for right now), but it will let you know how much of your employee’s time should be spent on your business’s social networking to keep your marketing strategy as efficient as possible.