Three reasons social media marketing favors small businesses

I’ve spent some time this week attending a few online webinars and catching up on my blog reader and I noticed an interesting trend. The conversations, research, presentations, and case studies focused entirely on large corporations.

For example, I sat through a Forrester presentation on new social web marketing analytics and their ideas on measurement took resources that were way out of reach of the small business owner, meaning … most of us.

Look through the success stories in your blog reader. Nike. Ford. Coca-Cola. And of course the ever-present Zappos. Is anybody paying attention to the little guys?

We keep hearing about the great opportunity for small businesses to “take part in the conversation” but is that really true?  In the daily dogfight for consumer attention, are they being overwhelmed by the big brand mega-productions, online promotions and games?  Are small businesses going to be crowded out by the big chains and big marketing budgets?

No!  It’s time for the small business owner to rise up and embrace the social web!  Local businesses CAN have an advantage through social media for these three reasons:

Local angle — Social media’s greatest power is when it is used in a way that is targeted and local.  I could care less about a tweet from a mega-brand, but I would certainly be interested to get to know a local shop owner in a personal way.

Here’s an example.  I don’t follow Starbucks on Twitter and probably never will. However, I do follow Brian Myers, the owner of JaVerde Coffee here in Knoxville. We became friends over Twitter.  Although his shop is 15 miles from my home, I go out of my way to support his small business entirely because of our personal Twitter connection. That’s how business works!

Personal touch — One time Brian saw this tweet come through: “On my way to JaVerde Coffee but forgot my wallet!”  The shop owner replied, “Come on by, this one is on me.” He just won a customer for life.

Even though companies like McDonalds may fill a room with tweeters, I don’t think they  could ever match the connection and loyalty a local business owner can drive with its customers.  If Bank of America tweets every minute of the day for the rest of my life I am probably never going to connect with a real person.  And for a small business, that is everything.  It’s not just about coupons. It’s about caring.

The ROI advantage — Culturally, I think it is difficult for many large businesses to do anything more than check a box on social media because they expect all the results to be neatly assembled on an Excel spreadsheet or infographic. If you have a moment to spare, I encourage you to watch this three minute news story about a small bakery’s use of Facebook.  Here are some of the social media benefits described in the clip:

Higher customer loyalty/number of visitsHigher rate of spendingFrequent customer connectionA channel for customer serviceEmotional connection to the brandSource for new product ideas and customer polling

Now if a customer provides an idea for a great new pastry, how do you measure that?  I suppose you could create a pie chart.  Pie chart!  Get it?  Oh, never mind.

For a local business using an essentially free social media platform, this list of benefits is pretty impressive.  In fact, it’s revolutionary.

So while small businesses may not be getting the spotlight on the blogosphere, there is no question that, done right, there can be great opportunity in this critical segment of the economy.

What is your experience? Do you have any great case studies from your city you would like to share?

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Oops! I made this Social Media mistake. How about you?

By Stanford Smith, Contributing {grow} Columnist

Many passionate and hardworking social business operatives are making a business-killing mistake.

Proud of their impressive Twitter followings, Facebook crowds and Klout scores they are lulled into a false sense of security.

The rude awakening often comes when they try promoting their product to their audience. Suddenly, their enthusiastic following vanishes into thin air leaving behind crickets and one or two “mercy” sales.

Their error is simple. They have invested too much time engaging their peers and have overlooked their customers in the process. This social rut is easy to fall into, let’s see if you are in danger of falling into it yourself.

Pop Quiz:

Do you spend hours trading @mentions with people with profiles identical to your own?Do you struggle to remember the Twitter handle of a customer but can rattle the usernames of 5 social media A-Listers in 5 seconds flat?Are you afraid that promoting your product would offend 90% of your followers and blog readers?Are you hoping that your followers will share their audience with you when the time is right?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions then you are in danger of being popular and broke.

But, don’t beat yourself up. I’ve been in the exact same rut. In fact, I started and shuttered two blogs before I realized that being social is different than “Social Business.”  Knowing the difference is critical to your success.

The world of Social Business is like your typical high school cafeteria.

Take a second to remember lunch hour.

Striding into the cafeteria you quickly made dozens of “life and death” social decisions. Sit with your friends? Invite the new kid to your table? Introduce yourself to the Student Government crowd or take a risk with the Jocks?

Depending on your social goals: getting a prom date, finding the best parties, not getting hassled on the school bus, you picked your “community.’

As a hormone happy teenager, I should have sat with crowd most likely to attract the cheerleaders’ attention!

Instead, I spent my time, dreaming and drooling from afar with the chess club geeks. My buddies were “Stand By Me” cool. We encouraged each other. We had our own language and didn’t miss an opportunity to hang out on Friday night.

But, my buddies rarely helped me get a date.

It’s easy to make the same mistake on social media.

Sure, it’s comforting and safe to hang out with people with similar interests. But if you are in business, you need to sit with a different crowd – your prospects.

It’s easy. We go to a popular conference in the name of research and networking. We meet some cool folks, share some raucous memories and head home snug in our mental rug.

Meanwhile, not one new person with cash and a purpose has been introduced to our blog. Oops. Not one person with signing authority has started to follow our Twitter account. Double oops.

Here’s the tough love. You should be networking and masterminding with professionals who share similar goals. You should not build your business on these comfortable get-togethers.

If you do, then you are needlessly delaying your success. You should immediately take a frank look at your activities and focus them on finding and attracting quality prospects to your blog.

Finding prospects is a different game.

By nature, prospects don’t want to be found. They lurk in the shadows only making an appearance when they can’t afford to stay anonymous anymore. When they do step into the light they sign-up for email newsletters, register for webinar, or put you on the RFP list. Retweeting, commenting, and liking isn’t their style.

Like a lion on the Serengeti your best bet is to find watering holes, where your prospects gather to network, trade advice, and share resources. The watering hole location is different for every industry and prospect type:

C-Level Executives read top-shelf trade publications dedicated to their profession. Sites like the Harvard Business Review is a likely watering hole. Comments and guest post gigs can give you instant visibility with this crowd.Passionate hobbyists hang out in niche-forums where they exchange tips and compete for social credibility. Joining these forums and being a resource for new members while discreetly promoting your expertise is a winning strategy.Micropreneurs and service professionals like attorneys, home appraisers, coffee shop proprietors and insurance agents often run in packs. You can spot them congregating around LinkedIn Groups or following one-another on Quora. Answering questions on LinkedIn, creating niche-specific twitter lists on Listorious, and hosting free webinars never fails to attract their attention.

By the way, if you blog solely for pleasure then hang out with whoever you wish.

But, If you need to show results for the time you spend on the social web then get serious about sitting with your prospects.

Make sense? What are your social business strategies for finding and attracting prospects?

Stanford Smith obsesses about how to get passionate people’s blogs noticed and promoted at Pushing Social, except when he’s chasing large mouth bass.

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Social Media — Just flirt with me, won’t you?

Guest post by {grow} community member Krysia Hepatica

As a newly-divorced mom, being both back on the dating scene and trying to establish a new career, my life has been anything but dull.

Because I was married at such a young age, I missed out on a lot dating and the drama that goes along with it. I also missed out growing a career because I was home raising babies.  So here I am now trying to balance a family, career, and social life and have found, thankfully, two of these have a lot in common.  Yes, I have recently had an a-ha moment.  Several, actually.  I am finding that making social media connections is just like dating.

They play by the same rules and your chances are pretty much the same: You’ll win some, you’ll lose some.

Rule #1 Get Noticed!

In the dating world when you have your sights set on a special someone, what do you do?  You try to get them to know you are alive and do a little flirting.  It’s the same with social media connections, maybe there is someone you are anxious to connect with on Twitter, begin a dialogue with them.  Say hi.  Introduce yourself.  But, whatever you do…(see Rule #2)

Rule #2  Don’t come on too strong

You want to get their attention, but in a positive way.

Reply to a Tweet they have made, find some common ground and keep it simple and light.  Once you get their attention, do a little woo-ing, a little romancing.  Please don’t try to hit it out of the park on the first encounter.  It won’t be pretty.  I am not inviting you in after one date, not into my physical or virtual (blog) home either.

Make thoughtful, appropriate comments, notice their Tweets, re-Tweet if they are interesting to you. Be kind. Do your homework; try to stand out with your comments by becoming one of the first to leave a comment.  You can sign up to be notified via email when they have published a new post.  This will show your interest in their work.

Rule#3  Reciprocity: Is she/he just not that into you?

Ask yourself if your efforts are being reciprocated.  In the dating world, does she “like” your comments back?  Has she responded to your texts?  Because this is how we let you know we aren’t interested without having to come out and say it. Period.

In the social media arena, are your comments getting a response or a “like”?  Have they started following you on Twitter yet?   If they haven’t started a follow yet, it may be okay, they probably have a pretty big following.  But if your comments are flat out ignored, and you have made more than one, you may have someone who is not interested.  I was trying to build up a connection with a blogger whose work I enjoyed, but he just wouldn’t warm up to me.  No comment I made even registered on his radar.  It was frustrating, but I got over it, and moved on.

Rule #4 Easy There, Killer!

It’s kind of like Rule #2, because yes, it is important enough to bear repeating.

So the first date was great, you may be in love.   Whatever you do, don’t tell this person after one date that you want to marry them and have them be the mother of your children.  Please.  Don’t.  This only creeps girls out, believe me, I know.  Slow down; don’t reveal everything there is to know about you in the beginning.  Keep it interesting, keep her guessing.  The chase is fun.

Relationships don’t happen overnight IRL or online.  You have to be patient and give it time.  There is no definitive timetable because every relationship is unique.  So, you have your bogie in the social media world.  You know you are dying to write a guest post for them, just don’t come on too strong or you will scare them away.  Apply steps 1-5, repeat.  When you have grown and nurtured a reciprocal relationship then take the plunge!

However, if you do make some mistakes, all might not be lost!  First of all, regain your composure; pull yourself together and back off a bit.  Just like in dating, don’t completely go away but dial it down a few notches and see if something can still grow.  I know firsthand this can work.

Everybody makes mistakes, don’t beat yourself up.  Take what you have learned and apply it to future endeavors.

Rule #5 Keep your house (blog) clean

Advice my mom would like.  Keep your physical house and virtual house neat and tidy, you never know who is going to show up for a surprise visit.

Does any of this ring true for you?

Krysia Hepatica is a mother, rock climber, blogger and all-around outdoor adventure seeker. She is currently working as an intern for KarmaCRM.   You can read more about her adventures at venturesome krysia or follow her on Twitter.

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Can you make money managing social media?

In a blog post almost two years ago about the best business idea for social media marketing, I made a prediction that I think stands up.  I said that there would be increasing demand for out-sourced social media management and content farms that would pump out low-cost, low value content in a Wal-Mart kind of way.

I’m not not saying this is necessarily recommended!  I just thought it would happen … and it is.  Now, here’s the next big question … can you make money managing social media for others?

My original prediction was based on a statement I heard at many companies: “Can you please just do this social media stuff for me?”

Of the course the purists will contend that everybody should do their own social media because of the “authenticity” value.  Certainly that is an ideal, but I’m also a realist. If people want to out-source their social media and there is a buck to made, it will certainly happen somewhere.   I also think there is some value to a consultant or agency helping people along for some period of time.  When you first got your driver’s license somebody still had to sit beside you and teach you how to drive, right?

In my job as a consultant, and especially in my job as a college educator teaching grad-level students from a variety of corporations, I see many approaches to social media management. Now, this is a short blog post and there are lots of nuances and exceptions, but IN GENERAL, here are some broad trends in social media management:

Mega brands – I can’t name names, but I have had a chance to witness some AMAZING and sophisticated social media marketing programs. These companies are beginning to make correlations between “share of voice” and true marketshare, using listening platforms to track micro-trends and the “cool kids,” and taking location-based marketing to a whole new level.

These companies have the resources to hire the biggest agencies and best minds in the world to help them navigate social media labyrinths and determine a strategy, but generally, they are organizing and resourcing to respond to the new opportunities. One brand has renamed part of their marketing department “Customer Connections.”

Medium-sized companies. I have a limited view of the world (of course), but I’ll be honest. Unless you are an elite brand, I believe at least 95 percent of the companies I see are desperately confused about what to do about social media.  I think they would just like for it to go away so they can return to having a trade booth at the annual conference in Las Vegas.

They probably don’t have a corporate culture that can easily adapt to the transformation needed to “listen” instead of “broadcast” and they simply want to check a box to do SOMETHING. You, know … I actually think there is some value in that.  A company that is at least thinking through the platforms, attempting to listen on the new channels and dipping their toe into content marketing is taking a step in the right direction.  Most of these companies at least have the vision and budget to hire an agency to get them started on social media marketing.

Small businesses.  As I wrote last week, I think social media can provide an advantage to most small businesses, but that doesn’t mean it actually does unless they are working on it!   Why isn’t it happening?

They’re overwhelmed by the concept and don’t know where to start.They started a Facebook page and nobody “liked” them so they quit.They understand the concept but don’t have the time or resources to do anything consistent and meaningful.Their marketing budget is tied up in local newspaper and TV ads and they don’t have anything left for something new.When you bring it up, they stare you down and tell you they “Don’t need the Facebox or The Tweeter,” usually followed by ”Dammit.”

Unless your customer falls into Category 5, they may be asking you to manage their social media program for them.  I see the following business models emerging:

Local support.  The new category of social media gurus are trying to teach best practices and perhaps do some hands-on social media management.  My take is that most of these efforts eventually fail because you are communicating for somebody else, which is probably not sustainable, and the labor cost to actually do this stuff is so high –and the results so undefinable in the short-term — that customers lose interest. People with a limited budget need this to work NOW.

Cookie cutter.  I am seeing a ton of people and small agencies offering social media packages — “our gold package features two tweets per day, a Facebook update, and one blog post per week!”  I truly despise this approach because it institutionalizes lazy marketing. But it is happening, a lot. I also forecast that most of these efforts will fail because at some point, the customer is going to wonder when all the new sales are going to start coming in from these two tweets per day they are paying for … and of course there will not be any. So this is a band-aid but I don’t see it working broadly.

Overseas.  Kind of a hybrid. Let’s solve the labor cost problem by hiring low-cost virtual assistants in Vietnam or The Philippines to do the tweets and blogs for us. I have a friend offering this to customers now and the VA can set-up WordPress websites so inexpensively he gives them away.  There are a multitude of problems associated with this approach but it at least addresses the labor issue.

Coaching.  I think the only viable long-term solution for most small businesses is to get some coaching.  I have successfully taken this approach with several clients. They buy an hour or so of my time each week and we methodically work on a step-by-step plan to eventually create a culture, an organization, and an actionable strategy appropriate for the company resources and budget. This seems to be the approach that will work best. It is not fast (and a lot of people hate that! ) but it does slowly integrate these practices into the fabric of the company, get real employees involved, and become a natural extension of their sales and marketing strategy.

I know it’s a big world and there are probably lots of other advances and models around.  What are you seeing?  What’s working or not working? Have you found a way to monetize social media management?

Illustration: Courtesy Toothpaste for Dinner.com

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