Small Business Marketing On Social Media

The Commercial Appeal wrote a very interesting article in this mornings paper on how Social Media can be an effective tool for small businesses if handled with care. Here is a quick glimpse of what they said: “Being successful with any of the social media communities is as easy as falling off of a log for individuals; but for small businesses, not so much.The goals of these two groups are very different: Individuals use social media primarily to connect and share. Businesses participate in social media communities to pursue a marketing strategy in these target-rich environments. For professional services providers, like consultants, trainers, writers or any venture that sells information and ideas, social media is pretty intuitive, completely logical and often highly effective. But many classic Main Street small businesses, like a restaurant, dry cleaners, contractor, etc., often struggle to create an effective social media strategy.”

With that said here are 7 ways a small business can jump on the social media scene without using alot of resources.

1. Start a blog. Blogging is old news to many, but it’s still a great way to open up a dialogue with your customers, and that connection is the reason social marketing exists. WordPress is free, open source software—so the price is right. The time investment is completely up to you, but this truism applies: The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out. Still, it’s okay—and I’d even say it’s recommended—to start slowly and increase your time investment as you get comfortable with using a blog.

2. Comment on other blogs. Blogging is about creating and joining conversations, and that includes reading what others in your industry are saying and joining the discussion on other blogs. It’s free, and again, the time investment is up to you. You’ll be able to supply your name and URL when leaving a comment, and there’s no debate that intelligent comments on other blogs helps build traffic to yours.

3. Get active at Yahoo Answers. If you’re a service-based small business, you already know that your expertise is your No. 1 marketing tool. Yahoo Answers is a great way to share your knowledge with people who are looking for it—a direct connection with potential customers. I spend about 1-2 hours a week answering SEO and marketing questions there, and that small investment of time never fails to bring more traffic to my blog. Never.

4. Make and share videos. Good video cameras are cheap these days, and a short video needs little editing/production. Even if you do decide to add some sizzle to a video, the required software won’t break the bank. How-to videos are an obvious choice. “Tour” videos—tours of your business, restaurant, the homes you build or sell, etc. are also a good idea. In addition to using them on your own Web site or blog, YouTube is an obvious sharing destination. Local search is also embracing video: CitySearch recently announced that local video ads will be added to its listings, and YellowPages.com is also pursuing video opportunities.

5. Take and share photos. I’m a longtime believer in using Flickr as a marketing tool. The time and cost investment is minimal. And thanks to Flickr’s incredibly active photo groups, you can share photos of your products with people who are interested.

6. Try StumbleUpon. Of all the discovery-type of social sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc.), I believe StumbleUpon requires the lowest time investment. Joining groups related to your industry and adding friends from those groups can be done quickly. Once you do that, as you add pages to StumbleUpon—including your own great content—other users will “stumble upon” what you’ve added. As those visitors give it the “thumbs up”, your content is then shown to even more users. Unlike Digg or del.icio.us, you don’t need to spend several months building up a great user profile. StumbleUpon was the No. 1 referrer to my blog in 2006, and that’s without spending a lot of time working it. I should note that the main benefit of StumbleUpon will be traffic, more so than links, sales, etc. So rather than hope it becomes a direct source of revenue or higher rankings, you should hope that it increases awareness, blog readership, feed subscribers, and the like.

7. Join groups & mailing lists. Social marketing is about finding your customers where they are. There’s a good chance at least some of your customers are using Yahoo Groups or Google Groups to share interests. Much like the Flickr examples above, there are probably groups/lists that are highly related to the products or services you offer. And much like the Yahoo Answers suggestion, being able to help others in this community setting can be a great marketing tool.

If you adopt some of the strategies above you will be well on your way.