Getting Started with Social Media Marketing

The current trend in search engines is to use tweets, status updates, shares, likes, dislikes and reviews about your website as a piece of ranking your site.

This article is the second part of a two part article published in the August Mid Minnesota Marketing newsletter, "Small Business & Social Media".

Don't get lost in the frenzy of success big business gets from social media campaigns they spend tons of money on. You won't be able to duplicate that success . . . you just don't have the budget.

Instead focus on what you can accomplish through social media locally within your budget. You can have success of your own, you just need to scale it down to fit your business.

Identify The Players:

To get started you need to pick someone within your company to handle most of the day to day social media tasks. Keep in mind there are some things you will need to do yourself.

 In a small company where you are the only employee, it will be you. If you have employees you can select someone who is responsible and computer literate.

This person will need to work with you to execute your strategies and will need a clear understanding of your goals and how important the effort is to the success of the company.

It must be someone you trust.

Set Up Accounts:

Set up your accounts with the various social media sites.

• Complete all possible sections of the profiles. Include a photo.
• Make sure you control account login information and keep a master list in a safe place.

Who Should Do What and Where:

LinkedIn: This is a social media site geared toward professionals. The owner, an officer of the company or lead salesperson should handle this site. Think of it as your online business card.

Facebook: An employee can post general information, but the owner should handle posts containing more detailed information.

Twitter: Make sure the twitter page name is the company name with the profile photo and bio being that of the owner. General tweets can be done by any employee.

Twitter is more typical of "shooting the breeze" in short snippets. Nothing too in depth here. Some retail stores have had success mixing in an occasional announcement of last minute sales designed to bring people in on slow days.

YouTube: Yeah, it qualifies as a social media site. Create videos about products or services you offer and post them on YouTube. You can also imbed them into your website from YouTube. It really doesn't matter who posts them, just make sure you use the name of the company.

Keep in mind that this list is subject to change as new sites appear. Google, trying to be everything to everyone, is in the process of releasing its own version of social media.

You must look at each site and determine for yourself which social media sites you wish to participate in. It is unlikely that you will be able to effectively participate in all of them. Better to be effective with a few, than blow it with all of them.

What Do We Post?

Participating within a social site comes with a learning curve. You will make a few mistakes and discover things you can do as you move along. The sites themselves continue to develop and new features are constantly being released.

Reference getting started sections of social media sites to learn the basics. Forums can be excellent sources of information about what others are doing with their accounts.

Watch what other people post to get ideas. There is nothing wrong with paying attention to what is going on around you. Just don't plagiarize.

Here are some tips:

• Be honest.
• Keep it useful.
• Social media is meant to be a conversation, not a commercial.
• Listen more than you talk.
• Participate in other's conversations.

Paid Advertising

They need to make money too, so they offer paid advertising opportunities. You can purchase ads that appear when people use the site. You do not need to purchase advertising to take advantage of your social media accounts. It is simply an additional avenue to get peoples attention.

The important thing here is to make sure you are tracking your results. If you are seeing additional traffic into your store or website that translates into sales . . . it is money well spent.

Like everything else in life . . . if it is worth doing it will take some time and commitment to do it. It doesn't have to be tackled all at once or become all consuming.

The important thing is to get started at some level and grow with it.

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Tip of the Month

Tackle advertising through a balanced approach. Don't put all your eggs into one basket . . . so to speak.

Spread your marketing dollars across multiple forms of media to reach the maximum number of people in multiple ways. Most people need to see a marketing message several times before it sticks. The more places that message is shown, the more likely it will stick.

If you are overspending in a single media . . . don't be afraid to spend a little less by eliminating an ad or two. Take that saved money and apply it to an ad in another form of media.

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Don't Do That!

As we struggle through recovery from the recession, current events have "experts" predicting a 1 in 3 chance of a double dip recession. (Hope not.)

This type of news has business owners looking for ways to run leaner. A common mistake is to put marketing at the top of the list of things to cut. Why? I guess it is because it is simple to do.

 I know I am biased, but cutting back on something designed to increase revenue for the business seems counter productive to me.

It is much more difficult to make decisions based on what is going to help assure the success of the business. You may need to cut back on extra phone lines or cut employee hours working more hours yourself.

Strive to keep the things most important to the success of your business at the bottom of the list of cuts. 

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