Logical Operations, LLC – Small Business Technology Consultants

2009 will go down as a breakout year for the social networking sites Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Right now is the time to think about your 2010 social media action, business or marketing plan.

What are you going to do this year differently? One suggestion I have that many people tend to overlook is their “social metrics.” It is important to track your social metrics on a regular basis (do you currently know what these are?) Instead of being concerned with how many friends, fans, followers, tweets, retweets, lists, mentions, etc…. maybe you need to look at your metrics a little bit differently and calculate your growth rate on a weekly or monthly basis (what ever makes sense for your business.) If you start keeping track now then you will have something to compare them to next year.

If your growth rate is accelerating month to month, set a projection for the coming months and identify ways to keep your content fresh, your community engaged, and interest in your social presence strong. If your growth rate is slumping, use the first few months of 2010 to work on fixing the problem. Test different scenarios in Q1 and measure whether or not your efforts are making a positive impact.

In order to keep your metrics accurate you also need to have a “clean” data set from which to work from. Make sure that you are policing your various friend list’s and are deleteing out obvious spammer or bogus profiles. It really doesn’t matter if you have 100 followers on Twitter if 97 of them are fake accounts looking to spam you the first chance they get.

Start the new year off right and start tracking your social metrics!

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Earlier this month I came across a post on Brains on Fire called “Why You Don’t Need Social Media Consultants.” The author of the post basically says that social media is common sense and that you shouldn’t need to hire a consultant to help you essentially be yourself on social networks. I agree with the author…to an extent. I think social media is easy to grasp because I do it for a living and know the ins and outs pretty handily. However, as the post comments point out, you’d be surprised how many people have a problem with social media marketing, if not for themselves then for their business. Full story…

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Here is an article published on Ohio.com that talks about the challenges older displaced workers are facing in the job market. It is now more important than ever for the over 50 job seekers to embrace and use Social Networking tools to their advantage. Do you fall into this category and don’t know where to start? Call me today and let me share my knowledge with you.

bit.ly/7SfnxX

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Social media platforms can build “buzz” around a product or business and serve the small business owner as a no cost to low cost marketing vehicle. Small business owners need to understand how social media platforms can strategically serve and support their business first so they can avoid the initial pitfalls and implement social media strategies that best sell their products and/or services.

How Social Media Benefits the Small Business Owner

Simply put, Social Media marketing serves the small (and large) business owner in three ways:

1. Communication

Marketing is all about building relationships — relationships start with communication. New web tools like blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning), podcasting (BlogTalkRadio), video distribution (YouTube), event coordination tools (Meetup), wikis (Wikipedia) photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), and product review sites (epinions.com) allow small businesses to communicate, educate and share information directly with their current and prospective customers.

Content in the form of blog posts, audio, video, comparison/review sites, tweets and social network messages help share information in a less-formal way that builds the know, like and trust factors that influence decision making. Content is no longer just text. Small businesses can use audio or visual content for a “show me” and “tell me” to make communications a pack more interactive punch.

Social media’s direct communication distinction serves and supports small business as it brings the people you want to attract directly to you and makes direct communication possible. Social Media makes communication a conversation so small business owners can share, receive feedback and connect on equal ground with their target markets.

2. Collaboration

When small businesses empower their target consumers, they feel powerful. When your target market feels powerful, it trusts you, buys from you, and stays with you. Social media collaboration transforms consumers into prosumers. In an era of social media prosumers, it’s people (not companies) who make, shape, or break purchase patterns.

Small businesses can ignite collaboration for marketing by creating their own communities and/or joining communities. By doing so, they can listen and connect to their target customers and build a free forum to bring their market together. Collaboration = Marketing Acceleration.

Social media collaboration tools like review sites, video sharing sites, blogs, wikis and more allow users to self-serve, collaborate, and potentially serve as an endorser for your small business. Social media works as a marketing tool because people are more likely to trust peers rather than companies.

The power of mass collaboration serves and supports small business owners in a distinct way. Tapping/creating valuable collaborative options can bring people together to share ideas, exchange information, and help each other — and support relationship growth. Removing the “company/client” disconnect can break down elitism and boost marketing mind power.

3. Entertainment

The most important reason that social media works as a marketing tool is simple — because it’s fun. People want to go where they feel they belong, have a voice, are listened to, and enjoy themselves. Small business owners need to be where their target markets are — and these days, the masses are on Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Linkedin, Photobucket, YouTube and more because it has entertainment value.

You can’t put a dollar amount on free promotion. The way social media stores data as an “Interactive Rolodex” also has an entertainment factor. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming the “new databases” because they are fast, easy, and fun. People are more likely to update their Facebook and LinkedIn information than a sterile address book because it is fun.

Small business owners use social media’s entertainment factor to build their online database of contacts and connections, be visible to prospective customers, and get the word out in creative ways like YouTube videos, blog posts, images, podcasts to make people smile and spread the word.

How Social Media Helps Small Businesses Sell

Social Media Marketing helps most small businesses boost sales indirectly by increasing relationships. Understanding that social media marketing serves users for communication, collaboration, and entertainment is the first step to considering how to strategically implement the multitude of social media marketing tools and choose the ones that work best for your unique organization.

The key thing that small businesses need to remember when using social media to help sell is that efforts must have value. There has to be value to your content, community, and execution to get people to engage with you or your organization. Social media doesn’t sell things — people sell things. Engaging in social media marketing starts the relationship-building process. Start small and snowball. Social media takes understanding, passion, effort, and commitment to make it work. Give your small business an authentic voice with social media and commit to providing value and you will be off to a smart start.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lorrie_Thomas

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