Using Social Media for Business: Small Business Series Part 1: Thinking Strategically

18 hours ago by Philip Ryan Johnson 0 Comments

Implementing a social media plan for your small business may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. And let’s face it—small businesses have limited time and resources to devote to new projects.

Like many others, you probably have an urgent need to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon.

If you fall into this category—you wouldn’t be reading this post otherwise, right?—then read on for some valuable advice and tips to get started with social media for your small business.

Getting Started: Thinking Strategically About Social Media

Thinking strategically must come first before any steps are taken towards formulating a social media strategy. This helps you to focus less on the tools and technologies available and more on business needs and building relationships with your audience, customers, and potential customers.

If you are a small business owner wishing to implement a social media strategy, it is essential to consider whether social media tools connect with your mission, values, and both short- and long-term goals.

The faster you get yourself into the habit of thinking strategically, the most successful you will be with social media.

Why?

We regularly hear small business owners yelling from the rooftops anything ranging from “I want a Twitter account,” to “I must have a Facebook fan page with 1,000 adoring new customers scratching at my door to spend money.”

But does using these or other social media tools connect back to your organization’s mission, vision, and goals?

For example, a little bit of planning beforehand will help prevent you from wasting valuable time and resources creating YouTube videos if they serve no goal-oriented purpose other than to fulfill your desire to have a YouTube page.

Social Media Strategy: Not Sure Where to Start?

Sit down for a few minutes and write a few key points and ideas about your business. Form a profile and synthesize the basics about your organization. Yes, it seems silly, especially as some things are more obvious than others. Just get brief list a few ideas down—they don’t have to be perfect. Later, you’ll be able to look at potential social media tools and how they fit in with your business.

7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Developing a Social Media Strategy

Where you and your business are now and where you want your business to be in the future.

Know your social media audience. Try Forrester’s Social Technographics Profiling tool.

Your budget for social media, in terms of employees, hours, and capital.

Knowing what your competitors are doing with social media.

Your short- and long-term goals of both your business and your social media strategy.

A simple SWOT analysis.

Your employees’ knowledge of and experience with social media (including your own).

Remember, social media marketing requires a clear picture of your small business. A little brainstorming and analysis goes a long way.Read more at blog.brand-yourself.com

How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future

Today’s CEO is not social. So says Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony. Very few of the CEOs at top companies in the U.S. and the rest of the world have any material presence on the popular social media sites. Colony believes they should be social though, and all signs are pointing to a future filed with CEOs who can speak the language of the people — social media.

While one can only speculate about the future of CEOs and social media, there’s no question that social media plays a huge part in life and the world as we know it right now.

As younger CEOs replace older ones, news consumption habits change and social media continues its trend towards ubiquity, there’s little question that the man (or woman) at the top will need a firm grasp on social media — whether that be for recruiting, scouting, public engagement or social CRM.

The Next Generation of CEOs

When it comes to CEOs, there’s a vast disparity between the young ones heading up startups and the more seasoned CEOs running the world’s most powerful companies. That disparity is social media — the young are more versed than the old. The difference between the two groups can be attributed to different generations and different attitudes around content and information meant for the public and private domains.

No one is predicting that the venerable CEOs will be booted from their lofty perches for lack of a Twitter account. In fact, younger CEOs with a predilection and savvy for social media may find their visibility to either be a contributing factor to their rise or a liability once they graduate to bigger, hence more vulnerable, publicly traded companies.

Let’s have a gander at some stats on the status quo. In April, Colony let it be known that most CEOs are not social. In fact, by his own research and calculations, Colony has concluded that, “None of the CEOs of Fortune Magazine’s top 100 global corporations have a social profile.”

Social media abstinence even appears to extend to CEOs of tech companies. “Eric Schmidt of Google is an infrequent Twitterer and is not a blogger; Steve Ballmer at Microsoft has no blog and no Twitter account; Michael Dell is on Twitter but is not an external blogger … Steve Jobs of Apple, and Larry Ellison of Oracle have no Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or blog presences that we could find.”

His findings paint a bleak present tense. In the coming years, however, there will be a changing of the guard that favors social media over silence.

We Live in a Social Media World

Let us pause and reflect on the fact online users spend 22.7% of their time on social networking sites. That’s twice as much time as we spend on any other online activity. Consider where people are getting their news today. More and more, it’s not through direct sources like USA Today, The New York Times, or TV broadcasts, but through social networks.

Plus, industry is social. In the future, every company, no matter how small or how big, will be influenced and impacted by social media internally or externally. In the entertainment industry, for instance, social media has the potential to significantly bump up live television viewing audiences. Network executives such as Greg Goldman, formerly an executive director at ABC and now CCO at Philo, are nearly certain it’s happening now and will become more obvious with time.

Take what you know about the world today and then ask yourself, can a CEO remain relevant if they’re not versed in the new language of the people they serve?

SCVNGR’s youthful CEO Seth Priebatsch doesn’t believe so. The 21-year-old CEO says he’s “never lived in a world where I didn’t use social media.”

Priebatsch compares social media to cloud computing, and makes the analogy of how building applications for the cloud is a given. “It never occurred to me that you would write software to run on machines as opposed to access it through a browser. Why would you do that?”

For Priebatsch, social media is a given.

“Those companies that actively monitor, react and engage with what people are saying about them are at a huge advantage. If I’ve just launched a new feature on SCVNGR and people like it (or don’t) I know immediately. And that’s powerful. And what’s even cooler is that I can dig deeper. Someone says on Twitter: ‘Hey @SCVNGR, love the new social check-in. Way cool!’ and I can tweet back immediately ‘Thanks @user. What have you been using it for?’ And immediately get more information on how people are using SCVNGR, why they like it (or don’t) and how to make it better. That’s real power. It combines huge scale (tons of people talking) with massive granularity (ability to dig deep into one response).”

CEOs and the Future

The business leaders of tomorrow will be versed in social media, and we don’t need a crystal ball to predict how CEOs in the future will use social media. It’s the socially versed CEOs of today who help manufacture the following:

Opportunity Knocks

LIVESTRONG CEO Doug Ulman, himself a social media advocate and user, believes that perceptions around social media being too risky for CEOs are beginning to change.

“I would predict that more and more executives will see this as an opportunity rather than a risk,” he says.

Certainly the opportunity is there. Ulman pulls from his own work at LIVESTRONG as proof of concept. “Transparency and authenticity are two important factors in our work and social media allows us to amplify both in a significant way.”

Plus, given the digital landscape of the world we live in, future CEOs using social media is practically a given.

“Those who are currently growing up using these tools and mediums will have them integrated closely with their daily lives as they begin to enter the workforce, so they will come to expect their colleagues to be engaged as well,” according to Ulman.

Colony also sees social media as a platform paved with opportunity. He believes that CEOs should be social if the CEO “has something valuable and distinctive to say,” and has “a specialized strategy for social.”

For CEOs looking to start their social path, Colony prescribes a four part methodology that involves targeting the right audience, defining a clear reason to be social, setting up social expectations, and choosing the right platform(s).

Public Engagement

Edelman Digital’s Senior VP and Director of Insights Steve Rubel also sees great opportunity for how CEOs will use social media in the future.

One opportunity lies in public engagement, or as Edelman CEO Richard Edelman calls it, “the third way.”

“Companies need to complement their usual paid and earned media strategies by embracing new, social and owned media,” Edelman argues.

Rubel believes that CEOs will drive adoption of the third way. “They [CEOs] will lower the internal barriers within the organization so that it can engage the public at every level directly in achieving shared outcomes.”

Rubel’s own personal use of social media, his day-to-day dealings with the CEOs of client companies and his astute observations of corporate and market dynamics make him an expert on the subject.

While bullish on CEOs making organizational changes to better incorporate social media, Rubel does not see reason to predict a huge uptick in social media broadcasting from the CEOs themselves. “I see CEOs more laying the groundwork in vision and process than necessarily participating actively themselves,” asserts Rubel.

Recruiting and Scouting

Talent is a commodity. Facebook, Google and Twitter often cherry pick each others’ employees. The company with the brightest minds is the one that’s most likely to excel. As such, recruiting is key and social media gives CEOs the ability to scout out potential hires and follow what they’re posting and what others are posting about them.

In a related fashion, CEOs will scout out the competition and search for potential acquires via social media properties. Many executives have already been doing this for years. Venture capitalists like Fred Wilson, for instance, have discovered the added benefits of maintaining a professional blog.

Wilson uses his blog to find companies to invest in and build relationships with entrepreneurs. It’s certainly no coincidence, then, that Union Square Ventures has an impressive portfolio of companies that includes Fousquare, Twitter and Tumblr.

Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

“Every CEO has a CRM dashboard right now. In the future, every CEO will have a social media dashboard,” predicts Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi.

Niyogi asserts that the social media dashboard will become a fixture inside the enterprise. “Every business unit will be using social media within the enterprise – customer support will use it to answer questions using tools like CoTweet, sales organizations will use it to get a better read on what’s happening with their customers in real-time, marketing organizations will be using it as a new channel to connect with new or existing customers. It’s already happening right now.”

What are your thoughts on how CEOs will use social media in the future? Let us know in the comments below. Read more at mashable.com

Rethinking the Value of Social Media

By Aliza Sherman

Aug. 18, 2010, 7:00am PDT

“All things digital are inherently vulnerable to inflation.”

via inoveryourhead.net

In my quest to get closer to understanding the value of one’s social media channel followers and fans, and the seeming non-stop challenge of trying to keep up with both growing and interacting with one’s audience, I was intrigued by a post from Julien Smith entitled “Follower Hyperinflation.” Smith is co-author of the book “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence.”

Follower Inflation

Smith’s post helped explain to me the concept of inflation in a social media following. If you start out on a social network early on and that network grows over time, you can only keep up with that growth for so long because, at some point, the service will experience faster and bigger growth than you. The result is that you end up with less “access” and have to make more effort to be able to reach more people. As Smith puts it, “100 friends yesterday has the same value as 200 today.” This feels to me like a never-ending vicious circle.

My own company sees this dynamic happen within our clients’ social media channels, and we believe there is inherently more value in an honestly-acquired following over time. We’ve been concerned our clients won’t appreciate the smaller but more meaningful numbers and understand that —  because of inflation- – we can’t necessarily get to the “big numbers” today as easily as we could a few years ago (not that we’d even recommend quantity over quality).

So here is the burning question:

How do we effectively scale up over time to keep growing and “managing” our audience?

Here’s what I don’t think we should do:

Don’t buy followers. Don’t follow too many people at once hoping they’ll follow you back. Don’t spam as a tactic for getting your message out there. Don’t stress about the numbers of followers.

We’re getting too caught up in the numbers – and the wrong numbers at that – because of old media, marketing and advertising language. I talked about this before in “The Problem with Social Media.”

Let’s Remember Value

Regardless of the number of ratios and formulas we cook up to better measure and explain the “value” of our social media channel friends, fans and followers, social media marketing is not and should not be a pure numbers game. The real value comes over time when your followers become customers and then enthusiastic evangelists of your brand. You can’t buy that. You can’t inflate that. You can’t put a formula to that other than this:

Do good work. Create a good product, have great customer service, etc.

Listen. What is being said about you is as important, if not more than, what you are saying about you.

Care. In social media channels where conversations are more intimate, people can really tell if you are paying lip service or paying attention.

Add value. What you bring to the conversations and communities better be relevant, thoughtful, and of real use to the community members (friends, fans, followers).

Be real. Authentic, transparent, honest — you know the drill, but are you doing it?

We should know this by now: Good business boils down to good relationships. Social media tools, networks and channels are just platforms to communicate more closely with others to build those relationships. How you use these tools is up to you. Just make sure you aren’t measuring the wrong numbers and ruining relationships because you’re too fixated on the numbers.

Stay tuned next Wednesday for the second part of “Rethinking the Value of Social Media,” where I’ll talk more specifically about re-framing the way we think about the measurement of our social media efforts.

How are you measuring social media’s value and how is it changing over time?Read more at webworkerdaily.com

The Zen of Social Media

By Aliza Sherman Jul. 28, 2010, 9:00am PDT 3 Comments

Is social media pure chaos to you? Do you feel stressed out just thinking about engaging in social media channels almost as much — or more than — actually doing it? If so, what can you do about it? How can you better understand and utilize social media-powered communications tools and tactics?

I’ve been exploring, writing and podcasting about how our lives and our work have become inundated with technology, information and connectivity, and trying to figure out what this means to us holistically — that is physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually. I call this project The Zen of Being Digital.

Social media is merely an extension of the things that many of us have already learned about via online communications, connections and communities:

People want to communicate with other people. People want to connect with like-minded people and form communities. People want to access information that is useful to them in some way. People want to share information with others and to be recognized by others.

Let’s face it: We’re human. We will create, gravitate toward, and use the technologies that help us get closer to other people in some way — even if it is merely virtual.

How Can We Use Social Media to Complement Human Nature?

I’d like to share a framework for thinking about social media engagement and interactions based on the premise that social media is merely an extension of what we already know about interacting with others online:

Who has reached out to you? Someone reaching out to you is an effort that should be honored, so pay attention to your direct messages on Twitter and the messages in your Facebook Inbox and respond if people are making a connection with you. Who is trying to reach you? Not everyone can reach you directly in social media so pay attention to overtures, such as @ messages on Twitter and comments on your Facebook Page, and respond. Who are you trying to reach? The beauty of social tools is that you, too, can reach out to make connections with others through a myriad of tools and features. So choose your connections wisely and rather than always casting wide nets, find ways to zero in on making fewer, more meaningful connections. What do you have to share? The more you connect with others via friend, fan, and follower-type connecting tools, be thoughtful about how and what you share and why you share it, keeping in mind that you can strengthen your connections with value and sever them by being thoughtless.

A fifth piece of this framework is something companies look to do, and while I’d argue it is time consuming, it can be an effective way of reaching others: “How can you support a forum where others can connect?” Or put in another way, how can you build and nurture a community to help others connect with like-minded people and with the company who is hosting the community platform?

If all of us approach social media tools with a basic notion of how to frame our activities on our blogs, via microblogs, in social networks, and on other sites that facilitate connecting and sharing, we begin to pave a path for more purposeful and less chaotic interactions. We’ll make more meaningful connections. We will feel less stress and strain.

Reframing How You Think About Social Media

We are overloaded. There are always going to be new things that attract our attention or seem to demand our time. Just remember that technology is neither good or bad. Social media isn’t the greatest thing to happen to our world or the worst thing. How we use social media, however, can be the difference between enhancing our communications and spiral into an endless time suck.

To truly “master” social media — or any technology for that matter — try applying these principles to the way you adapt and adopt new things:

Attention. Pay close attention to the handful of quality tools that can help you reach the people you want to reach and achieve the objectives you want to achieve. Don’t let yourself get distracted by the “next big thing” but find your focus and direction and give it the attention it deserves. Intention. Get to the heart of what you are trying to achieve using social media tools. Be honest about it not just to others but to yourself as well. A negative intention can repel others as much as a positive intention can attract. Discipline. Only you can truly manage your time and attention. Be more diligent about how you spend your time online. Only you can make the difference between frivolous time-wasting and gleaning real benefits from social networking. Awareness. As you adopt new technologies and add new communications methods to your daily routine, be intensely aware of its affects on you and on those around you. Modify your behavior if your choices are causing unnecessary stress and strain. Openness. Social media tools are not “hard to use,” or “frustrating” or “time-consuming.” We tend to cause our own frustration or feelings of being overwhelmed by clinging to the notion that “the way we’ve always done it” is the right or only way or that a new way is too hard. Open up, loosen up, relax.

How are you approaching social media to create more meaning and less stress?Read more at webworkerdaily.com

The clash of the social media know-nothings

The know-nothings.

You know who I’m talking about right?  Social media “marketers” who have never practiced marketing.  Maybe have never even had a sales job or a college-level marketing class. But they’ve created a Facebook page and have 500 followers on Twitter so somehow that makes them a guru.

“You can’t walk out your house without bumping into a social-media expert today, said Forrester Analyst Sean Corcoran in a WSJ article. ”The reality is the space is still very much a Wild West.”

I’m not going to dwell on the shake-and-bake “experts” and their webinar info-mercials promising to unleash profits through the magic of follower lists and multi-level marketing scams.  Enough has been written about that. The point of this post is that there is a clash in the marketplace because there aren’t enough true social media marketing experts — with the emphasis on MARKETING — to go around.

Look at what’s happening on the demand side.  Ad spending on social networks world-wide is expected to rise 14% this year to $2.5 billion. Every advertising, marketing and public relations firm in the world wants a piece of the action and is looking for talent.   Consider these news bites from the past week:

Universal McCann, is launching a social media practice this month called Rally.  “Social media is now part of all our clients’ plans; we can’t not be in this space,” says Matt Seiler, chief executive of Universal McCann. Publicis Groupe’s digital umbrella organization, VivaKi, says it also will open a social-media consulting practice this year. Pepsi’s Gatorade brand created a “Mission Control Center,” which is set up like a broadcast-television control room, to monitor the sports drink around the clock across social-media networks. Kraft hired 360i, a digital ad agency owned by Japan’s largest ad company, Dentsu  to monitor brands like Oreo and Jell-O. Microsoftis currently searching for a social-media firm to handle duties for its Xbox videogame system.

In other words, social media marketing is white freaking hot.

Now for the supply side of the clash.  Who is going to fill all these positions?   Unless you define success by the loosey-goosey standards of “engagement” and “conversations,”  there just aren’t many individuals out there who have actually demonstrated an ability to use social media to move the needle for a business.  And I don’t mean new “followers.”  I mean sales. Cash flow. New customers.

If you have the fire-power and mega-budgets of Microsoft, Pepsi and the other big brands, you can certainly buy your way into success on the social web.   But the vast majority of businesses out there are going to be stuck with the no-nothings instead of the exceptional marketing talent they really need to grow their business.

The dirty little secret the know-nothings are keeping from you is that, with the rare exceptions, nobody wants to be Facebook Friends with your company. You’re going to need much more than an intern tweeting earnestly about your latest coupons to impact your bottom line.  We live in a society that is absolutely sick of being advertised to, sold to, and marketed to, which is why most people turn to Farmville and the social networks to ESCAPE commercialism. So if a know-nothing is promising that they have this figured out and they’re going to help your car dealership or clothes boutique be the next Old Spice succcess story by “listening” to the Twitter stream … well, be afraid.

At the end of the day making money on the social web — or anywhere — still gets down to MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS.  Research, strategy, planning.  Creating points of differentiation. Finding a unique way to delight your customers and out-smart  your competitors.  And then, using the social web as a channel. Maybe.

For most businesses trying to figure out what to do with all this social media stuff, forget about finding a social media expert. That’s a hammer looking for a nail. Find the best, most experienced marketing pro you can afford and let them figure out where it fits for you, if at all.

Can I hear an “amen?” Read more at businessesgrow.com

6 Ways To Build Your Personal Brand With Social Media

Whatever industry your personal brand is based in knowing how to use social media to increase awareness is important. Social media is an amazing tool that can be used to gain exposure and a loyal following in a few simple steps. Consider these steps below as you use social media to build your brand.

1. Be Friendly & Approachable

Far too often people share overly candid remarks and opinions on the web. Perhaps it’s the anonymity of cyberspace that feeds their bullying tendencies, or maybe they feel untouchable behind their laptops. Whatever the reason – don’t let yourself become one of those people. Building your personal brand means that you’ll need to show off your amiable side. You’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar and the great thing about flies is they generate quite a buzz when they’ve found something they like. Put a smile on and get to know the people on the social media platforms that want to support your brand.

2. Remember to Share

Here’s a prime opportunity for you to shine. Share what you know or what you do best with others. If you’re an expert in your field, or if you want to become one, using social media to communicate credible and helpful information is one of the best ways to boost your personal brand. Social media is exactly what its name implies – social. People are connecting with others to learn, exchange and network. Reach out to your Twitter followers, Facebook fans and blog readers and supply them with honest to goodness valuable content and information. The more relevant your shared material is the greater the chances are of it being shared with others and the more likely your supporters will stick around for the long haul.

3. Promote Authenticity

Politicians call it ‘shaking hands and kissing babies‘ but in social media transparency is everything. Be authentic in your conduct and approach. If you’re using social media to rope 10,000 groupies in a single swoop versus the slow build of meaningful interactions with people, chances are you’ll be left high and dry in the end. Social media takes time and requires patience, but the end result is well worth the wait. Just remember that people are not sheep. They will not follow for the sake of following. Take a genuine approach to your personal brand and position it as such among your audience. Say what you mean and mean what you say and don’t forget to do it with originality.

4. Don’t Be Everything to Everyone

If only it were so simple to win the hearts and minds of everyone with your personal brand. Sadly, this will never happen. Find your niche and stick with it. Once you’ve figured out who you are and what you stand for you can find your social media audience. For instance, if your personal brand appeals solely to women with a finger on the pulse of technology, you might want connect and network with members of Kirtsy, a social media site for women. Your personal brand should connect with the right people through the right social media channels and not to the world. Streamline your branding efforts to yield better results.

5. Grab Endorsements

Use social media to collect feedback about your personal brand from clients, customers and colleagues. Being able to share reviews and praise demonstrates the integrity and capability of your personal brand. Gathering recommendations and posting them on social media sites like Yelp, Merchant Circle and YellowPages.com will work to build credibility and respect for your personal brand much more quickly than a brand without any.

6. Associate Yourself

Use what you’ve got. If you’ve guest blogged for a well-known blog or if you’re connected to industry experts then leverage those relationships with your personal brand. You’re not bragging, you’re showing networking achievements and accomplishments that can enhance what personal brand is about. People like to see who you know and what your credentials are. Mentioning some of the more well-known ones can give your personal brand a leg up. Read more at mindsproutmarketing.com