I was speaking with a group of small business owners last week at the Greater Warrenton Chamber Business Seminar on social media. Social media was the topic and “WHY” was the question. Here are my top five reasons that every small business owner should consider jumping on the social bandwagon.
#1 Build Credibility
Social Media provides an opportunity for you to “publish” and establish your expertise.
Writing blogs that demonstrate you are an expert in your industry, pictures that show work you have completed and videos that teach or demonstrate are great ways to establish your expertise. Make sure your posts provide value. After all, it’s tough to establish expertise when your posts are all promotional. And don’t forget to find other experts and knowledge seekers in the industry so that you can comment and share their content. It will build great credibility with people who can promote you.
#2 Promote Your Network
The foundation of networking is that by knowing and promoting our network, they will more likely learn about and promote us. Social Media is a sharing, referring, mentioning gold mine!
The biggest networking mistake I see every week is that we aren’t leveraging social media to really launch our networks. If you are serious about a networking group, like everyone’s fan page, subscribe to their blogs, follow them on Twitter and connect and recommend them on Facebook. Pay special attention to their posts and make an effort to share and comment on their posts. It’s a great way to help out your network.. On the other side, make sure you are posting content that your network will want to share, stuff that will make them look good.
#3 Communicate with Customers
Frequent contact and interaction with customers is a critical sales tool. It builds trust and increases the chance that you will be top of mind when it’s time to buy. Social Media provides the tools for “opt-in” frequent messaging.
Provide your customers with daily posts of value – reminders of features, hints for products, upgrades, anything that will keep them informed and loyal. Another great approach is to post content that generates interaction. Ask them about creative ways to use your product and answer their questions, anything to keep them involved.
#4 Promote Your Business
Yes, finally, you can promote your business. The value of social media is that you can be more effective by mixing self promotion in with other information and discussion, subtly branding over time.
Be creative in how you mix in your promotional message. One of my favorite sources for social media ideas is Social Media Examiner. When possible promote yourself while promoting others. You might want to talk about the work you are doing with a charity organization or write about one of your customer’s and your part in making them great. Don’t forget about social media paid advertising. You can ultra-target in many areas using the demographic and interest information social media sites collect.
#5 Generate Leads
Social Media provides tools to rapidly expand to and effectively manage a much larger network.
By posting great content and adding value for your fans, followers and connections, you will generate quality leads. However, you can use tools like LinkedIn to proactively target companies and people within those companies to make bigger sales. I mention LinkedIn specifically because it allows you to identify people within your target customer and then figure out how your network coincides with theirs. As a business owner (pronounced “sales person”), you know the value of the warm introduction to a target customer. Social media provides a way to better identify those opportunities. Once you have made the initial contact, mix social media with your visits, calls and emails to build the relationship and move towards the sale.
Go Social!
I haven’t met a business owner yet who couldn’t benefit from social media in some manner. Don’t get overwhelmed! When I work with people who are getting started we begin with one or two tools and focus on doing those consistently well. Then we add in additional tools, continuing to build the network and more importantly the value!
This scene from the movie classic Raising Arizona reminds me of a conversation between a Social Media expert and the typical small business person!
“Well you’re on Facebook, right? You’re not on Facebook, you don’t have a page? And what about Twitter, well you just have to be tweeting…and blogging, are you using WordPress, Blogspot, what, you aren’t blogging? And make sure you use Hootsuite, or Tweetdeck or you won’t have any idea what is going on!”
I often catch myself doing it with my students and clients, and then slow down when I see the eyes glaze. Because of the value of social media and the ease of linking things together and sharing, it is difficult to talk about only one media at a time. For those who are overwhelmed and panicked, here are some tips for fitting social media to you. Make sure to leave a coment with your biggest challenge in social networking!
Some is better than none! Start with one application and build as you get comfortable. What you start with depends on the business and objectives. I like to get professional services people up on LinkedIn first and then get them blogging before digging into Facebook and Twitter. For retail I might focus on Foursquare first, followed by Facebook and Twitter.
Learn to Subscribe and Comment. Find blogs to subscribe to, people to follow on twitter and Facebook Fan pages to “Like”. Track those with experience and see how they do it. Write comments, respond to questions and ask them questions about their sites. It’s a great way to learn and an easy way to start getting your name out there.
Carve out an hour a day. Most social media is free, but if it’s a significant part of your marketing plan you have to put in the time. At first you will spend the hour learning more than posting, but as you get more comfortable and experienced the hour will become more and more productive. To start try spending 20 minutes learning more about social media, 20 minutes reading and commenting on other peoples posts and 20 minutes on your posts – thinking through what and when you will post throughout the day.
Read a good book on Social Media. I recommend the book Trust Agents because it focuses more on the philosophy and strategy of social media than how to use any specific tool. What you really need to understand is how you can add value to the network you are trying to build. For the “how-to’s”, there are a ton of step-by-step blogs out there.
Slow and steady wins the Race. Listen, you may go a couple days and not have time to post anything. It’s ok to jump back in! Even if you can only spend 30 minutes every other day, it’s better than nothing and you will see some results. Just like most other types of marketing, a little every day is better than a marketing dump every two weeks.
Don’t try to solve world hunger in your first week of social media! You will become quickly overwhelmed and likely stop after a couple weeks. Instead, pick one media app and go with it, focusing on establishing a routine and setting aside the time. You will get people telling you about a ton of other tools that are out there. Write them down for reference but make the time and get comfortable with the first thing before taking on the second and third.
It won’t be long until you shift from finding the time to network online to forcing yourself to stop so you can get some work done!
What’s your biggest challenge to social networking?
As part of my networking routine I join the email lists of new contacts. Yes it tends to fill the inbox, but more importantly it gives me something that I can forward as a referral for the people that I network with – it’s just easier for me. I’m not an email expert by any stretch, but I’ve seen, heard and read enough to identify some of the most common mistakes. Feel free to join my mailing list and hold me accountable to my own advice! Join Sigma College Email List
Make the Subject a Headline – I’m constantly reminded by my friend Scot Small at RevBuilders – “Unless you are Coke, your logo means nothing – you need a good, prominent headline”. The point is that people don’t notice our names and logos (yet), they notice and open good headlines. Search WordPress blogs for articles on writing subject lines for a ton of great articles.
Be Consistent and Patient – It may take months for people to start consistently opening your emails and discovering the value that lies within. For about 4 months after I started email marketing I heard nothing and open rates were sporadic. Eventually, after consistently emailing over a period of months, people began recognizing me by my brand and thanking me for sending out my class schedules and other information. Open rates steadied and I was able to start some A-B testing to refine. So, don’t give up!
Content that Adds Value – Keep the content relevant and to the point. My weekly email is simply a list of upcoming classes. You may have articles to publish or events to announce, but my recommendation is that you include a headline and excerpt, or the basic facts and then use a “read more” link to your web site (you may prefer a “call this number” action). This does two things – gets them to your web site (or calling) which is likely the reason you send an email, and puts more content on your web site for better search engine optimization. Most importantly, after time, your readers will know they can sift through the headlines and pick what they want to read very quickly, rather than paging through an 800 word email to find that nugget.
Create an Opt-in Email List – It took me some time to grasp the value of an opt-in email list. This is a list that you build through people joining online or giving you specific permission to add their name. Collecting business cards and adding everyone results in lower open rates, high “unsubscribes” and even some spam reports. Now sometimes there are reasons to do mass campaigns using purchased opt-in lists, but most small, local businesses should stick to a list that will help you build relationships and not alienate people.
Email marketing is a great marketing tool, especially when combined with other things. But, a campaign that is done poorly and forced on an unwilling audience can actually hurt your business. Make sure you continue to review, test and improve your email strategy!
Yesterday, my friend Becky O’Brien from Optimal Wellness recommended that I write something about why a small business owner, even an independent distributor should use social media. To keep it simple I’ll focus on Facebook, but the same general principles apply across applications with some unique benefits for each.
Customers are using Facebook and don’t seem to mind brief, useful posts from businesses they “like” – this sets up for you to have multiple touch points with a lot of customers and potential customers every day. Social Media is still a “passive” media where people understand a little promotion and it’s acceptable if it’s kept short and there is value mixed in. But, don’t get greedy by overdoing it.
Businesses like “word-of-mouth” business and Facebook is “word-of-mouth” times 100 – Let’s say your average fan has 100 friends and that you have 200 fans, not a bad start for a small, local business. If even 2 fans share one of your posts you have the potential to hit 400 people with your post! Build up your fans and you can see how quickly that number could jump. Oh, and these are word-of-mouth referrals FROM people who have chosen to “like” you, TO people who have chosen to be their friend!
Facebook advertising can be tightly targeted to a specific audience – I get Facebook advertising targeted to Naval Academy Graduates because it is in my profile. You can target by location, age, sex, relationship status….. That means if I sell wedding dresses I can target engaged women, ages 18-30 and filter out those who are already fans. That’s tight!
Facebook is warming up to business more each day, and I highly recommend jumping on the band wagon before business dominates and people start looking for less commercial alternatives. If you are just getting started remember to be consistent without being overbearing, spread posts throughout the day and week and add posts with value that are worth reading and sharing.
I’ll close with a link to a simple example of how my sharing on Foursquare, combined with Facebook to create awareness for a local small business. The post is
I was listening to the Tony Kornheiser show this morning and they read through a direct mail piece that Tony received from the Washington Kastles Tennis Team. The letter was a form invitation from the owner of the Kastles to an upcoming event and seemed to be pretty well done for a direct mail piece. Tony and the crew absolutely ripped the Kastle organization for it though. The problem – the letter started out “Dear Anthony”.
Boy, if you could take back a direct mail piece!
Most of us understand the methods for gathering names and information for direct mail, and that there are many mistakes in the names, titles or even gender. Where the Kastles really messed up though is that they didn’t use public relations to address the media audience separate from the direct mailing to the general population.
For those not familiar with the Tony Kornheiser show, it is a daily talk show on a local DC sports radio station. They talk some sports, but it is more about entertainment and, well, just stuff. The Kornheiser crew/posse/team (what exactly are they?) loves to latch on to a product or company, for good or bad, and use it as conversation fodder throughout the show. At the end of the show there is an email pile-on where the audience sends in their take on the day’s topics, usually dominated by the product or company in the spot light. You can imagine (or you can probably go listen) how much fun they had with a letter from a local sports group to a national sports celebrity and local sports icon that started out “Dear Anthony”.
When you are planning your marketing campaigns, especially for upcoming special events, do some public relations planning first. How would this have been different if before Tony received this impersonal, promotional invitation he had received a personally signed invitation, or even a phone call, from the owner or a public relations person? Do you know the ten or twenty media people in your industry who have the power to make or ruin your day because they have an audience? You should be communicating with these folks through public relations.
Many small business owners mistakenly limit public relations to periodic press releases about their business. PR is much more than that, and unless you are a company popular enough to be newsworthy, self reporting press releases are useless. Public relations is about knowing and building relationships with the media and providing information and resources that help them provide more value to their audience. Of course your hope is that the end result reflects positively on your business.
The Prince William Chamber of Commerce is hosting a Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations Strategies conference in September and the focus this year is on Public Relations. Wouldn’t it be great if Tony Kornheiser somehow found and read this obscure blog post and offered to come to the September 22nd as the keynote speaker! “Mr. Anthony”, you can email me at jlgorman@sigmabizlearning.com if you’re interested. It’s more likely that they read this post and publically humiliate me for my poor grammar and shameless use of their name to promote my blog and MAPS event!
A couple weeks ago, I finally purchased my new Droid phone. This led to an increased frequency in my Foursquare posts – the posts you see on Facebook and Twitter stating that someone has just “checked-in”. Now that my friends and followers are seeing these posts I’m getting more questions about Foursquare, so I decided to shed some light for those that are in the dark on this unique social media application.
It’s Good for Businesses
Quite frankly, if it didn’t show some value for my small business customers, I wouldn’t be so enthusiastic about Foursquare. It’s good for business because it has the potential to send out your brand from a trusted source to hundreds of people every time a customer enters with a cell phone!
Here’s How it Works
Let’s say I am sitting at the Sigma College of Small Business offices in Haymarket, VA and decide that I need a cup of coffee and something sweet. I walk across the parking lot to Cupcake Heaven. While I wait for my tall decaf coffee and afternoon treat, I turn on my Droid, open the Foursquare app, select Cupcake Heaven from the list of nearby venues, add a note about how great the service is and “check-in”. This automatically sends a post to my Facebook and Twitter accounts and all my friends and followers see my comment and that I am at Cupcake Heaven.
So, do the math. If 5 customers like me walk into the store and each of us has 200 friends and followers, the name of that store is promoted to 1,000 people that day. Cost and effort to the store – ZERO!
Why Would a Customer Check In?
Just read your Facebook posts. I get posts from people when they wake-up, go to bed, eat, stub their toe, etc… So people will check-in just to be social. However, Foursquare offers tools for businesses to encourage customers to check-in. As the manager of Sigma College of Small Business I “claimed” my venue and can now offer specific promotions to people who check-in. Promotions can be based on number of check-ins or given to those who check-in the most – The Mayor. That’s right, if you are the person who has checked in to an establishment the most, you are given the title of Mayor, which is announced to all your friends and followers. People will definitely check-in for free stuff and a title!
There’s More!
As the registered owner of your venue, you have the capability to see who is checking in at your place and how often they are checking in – a great way to keep tabs on some of your most loyal and vocal customers. If you are a retailer or restaurant and not using this free tool, you need to put it on your list of things to check out. I’m still researching all the benefits, but this one seems to be a no-brainer, just set it up and let your customers promote your business! Did I mention FREE?
This weekend I traded emails with Becky O’Brien of Optimal Wellness about my Subscribe! blog posts that described the importance and steps to subscribing to a blog. As part of the discussion I went to her blog, checked out the subscription setup and left a comment – nothing serious.
Here’s where it gets interesting…
I walked into Sigma College of Small Business yesterday afternoon and there on the desk was a little pink box with a great thank-you note from Becky. The little pink box contained a Southern Red Velvet cupcake from one of my business neighbors in Haymarket, VA, Cupcake Heaven. Now, 5 years ago I would have e-mailed or called Becky to thank her and probably told my wife and a few others what she had done and how wonderful the cupcake tasted. In the end maybe 5 or 10 people would have known how thoughtful Becky had been, what a wonderful cupcake they have over at Cupcake Heaven and the fact that I took some time to help Becky out with her blog.
The Difference with Social Media
Instead of just e-mailing or calling, I posted my thank you on Becky’s Fan page and on my personal profile in Facebook, tagging her fan page. I also mentioned Cupcake Heaven and the quality of their product. The difference with social media is that the same message that went to 5 or 10 people a few years ago can now reach hundreds of people between my friends, my fans and Becky’s fans. And it took no more effort on my part than if I had just sent an email. If I could have quickly found the Cupcake Heaven Fan Page, (I have since found them on FB) the message would have been received by all their fans as well! So the advantage is that in the simplest of transactions and communication, all three of us are promoted from trusted sources (people choose to fan, follow and like those that they trust) to a few hundred people.
And By the Way…
You may be asking the question “Why would Becky choose Cupcake Heaven, with its pink box and swirly frosting for a male business associate?” Well, it is right next door and I look like I enjoy a good cupcake, but that’s not the case. The fact is that I have been posting my visits to Cupcake Heaven for coffee through Foursquare, and commenting on how tempting the cupcakes (and ice cream) look, for several weeks! In fact I’m the Mayor! So Becky knew going in that this would the perfect thank-you gift, and it absolutely was! I was wiping frosting off my face as I walked into my next meeting.
A Lot of Hype
There is certainly a lot of hype around social media. And there are some who can fit the technology so well with their business and personality that it becomes a huge business driver. But like any other marketing tool it takes time and consistency to build success. Don’t get scared by the hype because even a simple presence and effort can become beneficial. In fact, in many cases, like the one I described above, you just need to set up the presence and let your customers and network do the work for you through their social media channels!
Subscribe! Part 1 covered the importance of getting interesting blog content brought to you in a convenient, efficient manner. Part 2 is a bit more hand’s on in showing you how to actually subscribe.
Decide where you want to see blog content
A great thing about RSS is that there are multiple ways to manage content. You can set it up in your web browser, through email or even feed it to your personal or business home page. I actually have some feeds that come up in my iGoogle home page, some that feed to a tab in Internet Explorer and some that go to an email folder in Outlook.
To determine which tool to use for feeding content you should ask yourself, “Do I want to see this post immediately, or have as a reference for later” The posts I want to see immediately, the timely information I want to comment on, are fed to my iGoogle personal page through Google Reader. Those I use for reference to search later feed to my browser or an email folder, and some feed to multiple places.
Don’t forget that following and commenting on other people’s blogs is an important part of social networking. It is how you listen and interact in the discussion, building trust and credibility with each thought and comment.
For step-by-step on three basic RSS feed techniques, click the links below. If you have any questions, suggestions or run into problems, drop me a comment. Although the directions are specific to an application, most similar apps have the same functionality.
Google Reader is a great little tool that helps aggregate the blogs you are tracking to your Google account. The reason I like it is that I have an iGoogle “portal” page (a page that I can personalize with info I want to see) and there is a “Gadget” that puts my feeds right onto my personal home page, the one that I see first every time I open Internet Explorer. This is what I use for those blogs I want to see and review quickly and then comment, especially on blogs related to educating small business owners.
1. Sign into your Google Account. If you don’t have a Google account:
Click “Create an Account Now” under the Sign in box
Follow instructions for setting up an account
Click on Settings in the upper right to add new Google apps
2. In the upper right of your Google page click on the “Settings” drop-down and select “Google Account Settings”. You can do a lot here to personalize your page and account.
3. If “Reader” isn’t listed under “My Products”, go to the “Try Something New” section and click on “More”
4. Under the “Communicate, show & share” section, click on “Reader”. This will place Reader into the “My Products” section where you can open and start using.
Open Google Reader by clicking the link
5. Open Reader by clicking on the link and you should see your Google Reader Page
Now it’s time to add a subscription.
Go to www.SigmaBizBlog.com or another blog you want to feed
1. Go to www.SigmaBizBlog.com or another blog that you would like to track. Select and copy the web address, or url for the blog. (you can also just type this in to the subscription box when the time comes if you know it)
Click on the "Add Subscription" Button
2. In Google Reader click on the “Add a subscription” button at the upper left, paste or type the url into the box that drops down and click “Add”.
3. You should now see your new subscription in the subscription box on the left and the latest blog post in the reader box.
Click on the Subscription to see the latest posts from that source.
Add the Google Reader Gadget to Your iGoogle Home Page
Click on "iGoogle" at the top right to open your iGoogle page
1. Go to www.Google.com and sign in if you aren’t already. This should open your iGoogle page (if it doesn’t, click on the “iGoogle” link in the upper right) and you should see something like this. Each of the little blocks is called a gadget and you can customize which gadgets you want on you page.
Click on the "Add Stuff" link in the upper right to get new gadgets!
2. In the upper right click on the link for “Add stuff”. In the search area type in “reader” and search. This will show you the Google Reader gadget and clicking “Add It Now” will put it on your iGoogle home page.
Search for "Reader" to find the Reader Gadget and "Add it Now"
3. Now, when you go to Google.com, your subscriptions will show up for a quick review. If you click on the title a preview window pops up so you can take a quick look without even leaving the page.
Although I walked through the Google method for putting subscriptions on your home page, most other portal sites that let you customize a home page will have similar functionality.
In Subscribe! Part 1 I talked about the importance of tracking and commenting on relevant blogs and news feeds to building your online presence. Internet Explorer and other browsers have the capability to help you manage your RSS feeds and this post will walk through how to send news and current blog posts to the “Feeds” tab in Internet Explorer 8. Other browsers should have similar functionality.
If you are someone who routinely uses the “favorites” functionality in IE to manage the web sites you visit frequently, then this may be the best place to track important RSS Feeds that you want to comment on immediately. I don’t routinely use the favorites part of IE so I use this method for sites that don’t update often, or for sites that I want to track for reference when I’m developing business curriculum. Remember, in social networking it is important to follow and comment, so keep your “high interest” content where you will see it often through your normal work routine.
1. Go to SigmaBizBlog.com or another blog or news site that you want to subscribe to.
Click on the RSS Icon in the upper right of the IE window
2. In the upper right of the window, in the menu area is the little orange RSS icon. If the icon isn’t orange, either you are already subscribed or the site doesn’t have RSS capability. Click on the RSS button and a “feed” page will load.
3. Click on “Subscribe to this feed” and then “Subscribe” in the window that pops up. The subscription will be placed in the “Feed” Tab in Favorites.
Access your saved RSS feed through the Favorite window on the Feeds Tab
4. To see your feeds, click the “Favorites” button in the upper left of the window and then the “Feeds” Tab.
5. Click on the subscription to see the latest post!
Remember that a big part of building credible online relationships is to listen and comment on the thoughts of others. Subscribing to interesting blogs with RSS, reading them and consistently commenting is a great way to be part of the discussion!
September 1, 2010 | Posted by Jamie Gorman 
I was speaking with a group of small business owners last week at the Greater Warrenton Chamber Business Seminar on social media. Social media was the topic and “WHY” was the question. Here are my top five reasons that every small business owner should consider jumping on the social bandwagon.
Categories: Marketing and Sales, Online Marketing, Social Media | 
Tags: blog, business class, facebook, google, LinkedIn, marketing, Online Marketing, rss, Social Media, subscribe, twitter | 
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A couple weeks ago, I finally purchased my new Droid phone. This led to an increased frequency in my 
