Top 10 Social Media Tips for Small Business Marketing

Social media, popular Web-based technologies that let people socially interact with one another online, has changed the way small businesses communicate with customers and market products and services. Social media lets many businesses -- especially small businesses that cannot afford to launch private online communities -- interact with customers in a more personal way to build better customer relationships.

 

One thing a small business owner should know is that using social media for marketing is a time-consuming task, and there is definitely a right and wrong way to deal with customers in online social spaces.

While your efforts may be derived from a marketing perspective, your online social interactions with customers needs to be honest, open and provide value to be successful. You need to focus on building relationships more than blasting customers with marketing messages and sales pitches.

The following top 10 social media tips for small business marketing will help you understand how to interact with customers in online social spaces and also guide you in building better, smarter relationships with customers on social networks.

 

1. Plan Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

As with any small business marketing campaign or business strategy, you have to create a plan and stick to it in order to be successful. Outline the goals and the steps you will take -- in addition to the tools you will need -- to meet your marketing objectives.

Your plan should outline how your small business will integrate social media marketing into existing marketing strategies. Some social media-specific issues you will need to think about include:

• Delegating the daily tasks and updates to an employee with marketing and social media experience
• Deciding on whom within your organization will create profiles and accounts and which individuals will have access to the accounts
• Choosing tools that will help automate the social media marketing process and finding social analytics tools to help you track success
• Reviewing your current small business marketing strategies and deciding where an expansion into social media will be the most beneficial

2. Find Your Customers

With so many social networking platforms available to consumers, it can be difficult to choose a social network for your business to use. Before you randomly log on to Twitter or Facebook to start your small business marketing campaign, research to find out where your customers already congregate online.

Existing communities of customers will have formed the basics of the "social glue" that holds online relationships together. It takes less time and effort to join customers where they are, compared to creating multiple profiles and accounts in the hopes that customers will find you.

 

3. Schedule Social Time

Once you become a social resource for customers you have to stick with it and be there on a regular and frequent basis. Using social networks is time consuming, so schedule social time for yourself and your marketing staff.

You want to have enough time each day to monitor conversations, converse with customers, and to send out new messages. Splitting the time up throughout the day will be a benefit as it shows customers you care enough to check back and respond quickly.

 

4. Be Authentic and Human

People are more likely to create relationships with other people more so than with businesses. You can encourage customers if you use a "human" voice -- not a corporate presence -- when connecting in social spaces. You can do a few simple things like show a picture instead of a business logo on your profile, and assign one or two people within your small business to be your social voice.

Another big part of being human on a social network that businesses often find challenging is to "own up" to customers in public when they make a mistake or someone posts criticism. If a customer complains about your shipping, don't ignore it or follow-up outside the social network. Keep the conversation public; drop the corporate tone and converse with the customer on a personal level.

 

5. Be an Expert

One of the best ways for a small business to interact with customers is to be an expert in social spaces. By joining existing communities where your customers are, you can easily insert yourself into the community by being a voice of expert advice.

For example if your small business is plumbing hardware, find those online social communities on Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums and blogs and start answering questions and offering advice. Remember to let people know you are a business owner -- never pretend to be "just another consumer" when you participate in social discussions.

 

6. Learn to Listen

It's easy to fall into the "broadcast trap" where you spend too much time talking about how great your products are or how fabulous this week's sale is. In a social network you have to stop broadcasting and listen to what your customers have to say.

People use social networks to converse, and the best way to build strong a social relationship with a customer is to be a "friend" who can listen.

 

7. Be Social

A small business also needs to demonstrate good conversation skills -- after all responding to people is the best way to show you are listening. The point of a social network is to converse, and customers will get bored very quickly if you don't participate in the social flow.

You can demonstrate good listening skills and boost participation by responding directly to questions and comments in a timely fashion. Just like an offline conversation, you should also ask for opinions and direct questions to customers within your social group to make them feel valuable.

 

8. Respond Often

Successful social media marketing depends on your own ability torespond to customers in a timely fashion. You want to show customers that you are a "reliable friend," so stay active and participate in all conversations related to your company or area of expertise.

If you see new questions or comments, be sure to answer immediately. This is also a great way to "be social" by asking questions back to the customers to keep the conversation going.

 

9. Provide Value

You'll find that just your own conversation and participation is not enough to keep a continued interest in your social network, especially if you choose to create your own community instead of joining an existing one.

There has to be value in the interaction for people, and you will need to provide the reason for people to stay and participate in your social network. You have converse with customers on a regular basis, but you also need to provide ways for customers to connect and befriend each other to firmly establish your social community as a popular online destination.

Your social network should not just be about deals, but there is nothing wrong with making your fans, friends and followers feel special. One way to do this is to offer rewards or promotions exclusively to social networking customers.

Keep in mind that promotions are an immediate call-to-action, and while you may have short-term success it doesn't mean you will attract quality social customers. Instead of on-off deals or coupons you can try a rewards-type program where only your best advocates and best social customers qualify for the reward.

 

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9 Steps to Get Your 'Social-Selling' Program Off the Ground

These days small businesses are being bombarded by consultants, pundits and thought leaders telling them they need to get their businesses on social media.

With hardly a moment passing where we aren’t told to follow something on Twitter or like a page on Facebook, the proliferation of social has reached epic proportion. With this hyper-awareness comes a certain sense of urgency for most entrepreneurs -- primarily the desire not to miss the ball on social media.

With this in mind, the desire alone doesn’t serve much purpose: Companies need to focus on an agenda or goal. One way to do this is using social media to ramp up revenue, specifically through a tactic called "social selling." In the age of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and what seems like a million other social platforms, the idea of social selling is for companies to use content, social media and traditional communication channels to more successfully sell. (Otherwise, businesses may not be able to keep up with their competition.). Think about it. As social media has evolved, consumer behavior has changed. No longer are they relying on one channel (a sales person) for information, but they are actively seeking out data on the Internet – everything from your products, evaluating your vendors and looking at clients – before making a decision.

And consumers are coming out in droves on social media to find this information. Indeed, there are currently more than 1 billion regular monthly users across social media platforms. And buyers tend to do their research before making a purchase, with the average consumer viewing more than 10 piecesw of content prior to making a purchase. Plus, people are much more likely to make a purchase when someone they know (via social) recommends it. Seems like a win-win for businesses – that is if a company implements it correctly.

Here are a few tips to get your business (and customers) invested in social selling:

1. Get your sales team on board. Make sure you introduce them to the premise of social selling. This means spending time mining data and information that helps them understand how social media may help them connect to customers and can lead to sales.

2. Take baby steps. Sales executives often need some simple tactics such as how to use social media or content. I usually recommend a very simple program where the sales execs share three to five pieces of content a week via LinkedIn or email with at least five different customers and prospects. Make sure the customer gets a personalized message that says why the content is being shared and why it matters to the client. I also recommend setting up a follow up in the email that spells out an explicit action, like a follow-up meeting.

3. Show results. Wins don’t have to be just sales. I advise clients to track conversations and appointments generated from the tactics I suggested above. For instance, have the sales person mark down responses to their social-selling tactics, coffee or other meetings that they may have led to and then of course any revenue opportunities that can be directly correlated to the efforts.

Once you got you sales team on board, here is how to customers excited about social selling.

4. Have your ear to the ground. Keep an eye out for content that is useful for your clients. Generally the content should be on topic and with some good tips or actionable items. Note that these may also be good for future clients and prospects.

5. Keep track. When you find useful content, it is a good practice to keep an Excel or Word document where you keep the article titles, links and main topic. Also, look to software that can help keep track of metric, like views, clicks and time spent examining the content.

6. Find connections. Look for opportunities to pair the content with specific clients. Keep tabs of this in your document to know what you sent to an individual. Over time you should build an aggregate of useful content that helps provide more clarity to your message and your customer needs.

7. Make it meaningful. Deliver the content with an email and a simple message that helps the customer or prospect understand the topic and why you think it is important. Often referring to a previous conversation where the topic was discussed.

8. Include a call to action. Make sure the client needs to take some sort of step. Some examples include a follow-up call or a meeting, where you can discuss the information.

9. Be consistent. The response rate will likely not be 100 percent but that doesn't mean clients aren't reading it. With so much information out there if you can be the person that consistently delivers solid content then you will be front of mind when buying decisions are being considered and made.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234824