Next Steps
If you have signed up on a few social media sites and are interested in taking the next step, you need to figure out what you are going to do with the tools that will actually add value (today) to your business or chamber. It depends on your goals, where you perceive the opportunities and how big a part of your communications strategy you want social media to become.
There is no “one way” to begin to get value from these tools. In combing the Web, there are a few really good examples of small businesses and chambers of commerce who are using these tools to drive performance through the roof. So how can you become one of those businesses? One who uses social media intelligently to connect with your customers, build relationships and drive sales.
As we’ve said before, the only way to figure out how to use these resources to help your business is to actually start to use it. As you get more familiar and more comfortable, ideas will start to percolate that make perfect sense for your business. The best advice we have for you is to give your idea a try. There is no magic formula to get value out of social media and no way to keep score on the effort versus the outcomes. You know your business better than anyone.
So what you will find below is a list of ideas that we came up with based on what we know about social media and what we see others doing with it. Again, the “great examples” for small business and chambers aren’t out there in the “hundreds” at this point, but they are out there. Our hope is that Social Media Leaps will become a place where you can share your successes so that others can learn from you.
Getting Value for Your Business or Organization
1. Monitor Your Brand
If you do absolutely nothing else with the tools or the information we have provided, you must at least do the basics to ensure you can “listen in” to the social Web and know when people are talking about you, your organization and your brand.
- Set up Google Alerts, Twilerts or other monitoring tools for your name, your brand, and the brands of some key competitors. You’ll be surprised at just how much you learn in a short period of time about what is going on with your industry “talkers” and your customer’s alternatives to your product and services.
- Look up a few of your key competitors and their key people on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Technorati, YouTube and Flickr. If you want to go further, use How Sociable? to put in their brands to see where they show up across a wide variety of sites. The ways in which they are using these sites, may give you some additional ideas and more information about what people in your industry are doing with these tools.
- Your searches above will turn up a few interesting sites, blogs and resources that you may want to add to your feed reader using RSS. If you haven’t set up a feed reader yet, we’d suggest Google Reader.
2. Research your market, your customers and your industry.
- The reach of social media tools is great for doing quick searches to see who is saying what in your industry or community. Whether it’s searching realtime posts in Twitter or following industry thought leaders, customers or suppliers blogs and posts, social media can help you stay connected and informed in your market.
3. Create a presence for your brand.
- Use Knowem.com to figure out if your brand or a unique alternative is available for you to begin to build your presence.
- Make sure people can find you easily and use the platforms that exist to direct traffic to where you will be seen by those in your target market. The searches above will start to identify where those places might be. To start we suggest registering your brand on the majors: Facebook, LinkedIn (you personally), Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Even if you only begin with one platform, reserve a common identity across all the sites that you can integrate later.
4. Create a social network of customers and suppliers
- One of the amazing facts about Facebook is that more than 500 million people have a facebook account and over 50% of them check their page every day. With stats like these, at least one of your customers or members is on Facebook once a day.
- LinkedIn has become a virtual talent and experience database that allows you fast access to almost any person with a particular skill set.
- Complete your profile in any of the above referenced sites to be put in touch with others and begin a leadstream of friends and links.
- Search for customers, suppliers or members and invite them to link with you.
- Ask some of the people you connected with on LinkedIn to provide a recommendation for you or suggest you to others. This will differentiate you and your brand and will help as you begin to reach out to more people to connect with.
- Once your network begins to grow, explore the relationships inside your network and map your way to a few new prospects or customers. Use your contacts to meet to those you desire to talk with or do business with. You can use this network to connect with people across the country or across town. Invite others into your network. Like networking in every other context you’ll get both high value and low value connections as your network grows. Spend a little time every week reaching out to new people and mining the network as it changes.
- Take the time to “put people together” that have common interests or mutual value to each other. As a broker of new connections, you’ll be bringing value that will come back to you.
5. Provide value to customers by feeding your network with content and resources.
- Be the provider and resource that others remember by sharing interesting information that has value to them. The social Web is about sharing content with others. As said previously, you want to be 80% about sharing information and resources of value and 20% about self promotion.
- Others will reciprocate and you will begin to also receive information and resources from them that can be valuable to your efforts.
- Anita Campbell started Small Business Trends as a way to share some information with other small business owners and her site has become a mega resource because of the value of the content and information she and her online community is providing.
6. Use video or pictures to show your unique products or services.
- A very inexpensive video camera can allow you to capture and share video information instantaneously. With a little thought, a video or digital camera, and some creativity you can find ways to highlight your products or services via the Web.
- Check out this example of digital agency, SageRock’s video talking about why you should hire them to do your work. This sits right on SageRock’s home page and is an interesting way of making their case!
- And, if you’ve never seen a blender’s effectiveness demonstrated by blending an iPhone – this is a unique way of illustrating how video can create a lot of exposure for a product like a blender!
7. Use Twitter to interact with and keep your customers up to date.
- Do you use an email newsletter to update customers on the things you are doing within your business? If so, you already have some potential followers and a place to send them for more information about your business.
- A Twitter account allows you to quickly send information you come across that is relevant and useful to your audience. It’s great for drawing attention to something new you think your customers or members should be aware of; highlighting an honor or award your business has received or pointing out new issues, trends or developments that will impact your customers. It reinforces the fact you are thinking about them and that you want to help them accomplish their goals.
- Here are some Twitter uses by big companies to support and interact with customers: 16 examples of huge brands using Twitter for Business.
- And, here’s a great videocast from Jim Kukral, Cleveland-based Social Media Guru, on how small businesses should be using Twitter. How and Why to Use Twitter for Small Business.
8. Position yourself as a thought leader or expert.
- While Twitter posts and Facebook updates may be good for sharing links to content, a blog for your business will provide you with a broader forum to share ideas and insights with your customers.
- A regular post once every week or ten days in which you talk about trends, industry developments, resources for your customers or share success stories and ideas is a low pressure way to remind your customers of your knowledge and your ability to help them. You blog may also attract the attention of other key individuals in your community or area of expertise.
- A great example of how a local small business franchising consultant uses his blog to communicate what he does: The Franchise King Blog.
9. Research your next job applicant
- This is more fun than it sounds! Plug your next job candidate’s name and/or email address into your favorite search engine, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The results you get could be pretty interesting. Sometimes their digital trail is helpful in getting a better sense of how the person conducts themselves, their ability to develop ideas and communicate them and where their priorities may be. Just be sure to validate you have the right “John Smith” before drawing conclusions, and be careful about relying on what you see online to determine whether or not someone gets hired—remember its only one piece of the puzzle!
- Here’s a little bit about using social media tools to screen job applicants and manage the search process: Hire Smarter with Social Media.
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