10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2)

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1 Join Now Log in Contact us Search How it works Browse Community Help Post a project Forums Blog! Back That Mass(ive amount of data) Up How Do You Align Your Form Assets? " 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2) Ross October 20th 1 of 5 10/21/09 10:22 AM

2 One of the biggest challenges for small businesses who want to market using social media is capacity. crowdspring is a small business - there are only 10 people on our team - so we understand this challenge well. You must decide whether social media makes sense for your small business. There is no universal answer. In this two part series (part 2 will be published in a few days), I ll offer 10 small business social media marketing tips. For each tip, I ll discuss the basic strategy - for those who simply want to get their toes wet, and also the advanced strategy - for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. Where possible, I ll point you to other excellent resources to help you execute your strategy. The tips are all based on my own experience leveraging social media marketing for crowdspring. I recommend only tools I ve personally used - and third party references I trust. I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figure out how you ll measure success. A good place to start is one of my posts from a few months ago - Can Social Media Help My Company? 1. Facebook. Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. You might be surprised to learn that Facebook has over 300 million users. And while that seems like an outrageous number, Facebook offers small businesses a powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you re not already active on Facebook, what should you do today? Basic Strategy: If you haven t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should do one thing today. Sign up and reserve a name so that nobody else takes your company s name. Usernames must be unique, and while you might not be ready for Facebook today, you should at least reserve a name to give you the option later. You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of pages have they built? How many fans or friends do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they re using Facebook. Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account - which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read the FAQ here) and you ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a fan - expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). For an excellent and more in-depth discussion about using Facebook for business, I recommend you read yesterday s from Duct Tape Marketing - 3 Ways for Businesses to Take Full Advantage of Facebook. You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook. For more about hyper local advertising on Facebook, see the second tip in my post from last month: 5 Things Your Small Business Should Do Today To Increase Profits. 2. Twitter. Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. For others - it s a waste of time. crowdspring was fortunate to be included in a recent BusinessWeek profile on 20 ways businessese use Twitter. That article might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business. Basic Strategy: If you haven t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don t want your competitors to register your business. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business. Next, you should spend minutes on Twitter s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on Twitter. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as gift basket, gifts, gift basket business, etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they re on Twitter and if they are, how they re using Twitter. And - don t forget to search for your small business name - your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you ll leverage Twitter for your business. Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. 2 of 5 10/21/09 10:22 AM This includes PC clients like TweetDeck and iphone clients like Tweetie (you ll want version 2) (or TweetDeck for the iphone). PC and iphone clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you ll be able to pre-define

3 ShareThis 17 comments fergusdyersmith on October 20th at 3:37 am Great post. I am especially interested in what Facebook can do for a business. The others i get and use frequently. Facebook we use but trying to draw value out of it is proving difficult. I guess some more time on it would help. If you could only choose 2 of the above which would they be? Twitter Trackbacks for 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2) crowdspring Blog [crowdspring.com] on Topsy.com on October 20th at 3:39 am [...] 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2) crowdspring Blog blog.crowdspring.com/2009/10/20/10-small-business-social-media-marketing-tips view page cached One of the biggest challenges for small businesses who want to market using social media is capacity. crowdspring is a small business - there are only 10 people on our team - so we understand this (Read more)one of the biggest challenges for small businesses who want to market using social media is capacity. crowdspring is a small business - there are only 10 people on our team - so we understand this challenge well. (Read less) From the page [...] Facebook Social Media Opportunities on October 20th at 8:22 am [...] Original post: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 [...] Ross on October 20th at 10:06 am fergusdyersmith - The answer really depends on your business. There isn t a simple answer to that question, other than to at least stake claim to accounts in your business name on the various services. If you can share a bit more about what you do - it would help to answer your question. 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 «Business Resource on October 20th at 11:04 am [...] Originally posted here: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 [...] 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 on October 20th at 2:12 pm [...] See original here: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 [...] ajf7688 Blog - 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 on October 20th at 2:54 pm [...] Read this article: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips, (Part 1 of 2 [...] Jessica on October 20th at 5:46 pm Great Info! Thanks for the post! U`phoria on October 20th at 9:18 pm Very helpful information! Thank for posting! 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips «Real-Time OutSource Blog (Social Media Marketing News) on October 20th at 11:02 pm [...] Posted by Blog in social media, social media marketing. Tagged: 10 small business tips, social media, social networking. Leave a Comment Ross October 20th [...] Twitted by yeastymobs on October 21st at 3:54 am [...] This post was Twitted by yeastymobs [...] 3 of 5 10/21/09 10:22 AM

4 Patrick Murphy on October 21st at 4:23 am Great post, looking forward to Part II Global Assistant on October 21st at 4:55 am Some great advice and strategies here, am looking forward to part 2. Dhane on October 21st at 11:56 am Great post! Can t wait for part 2. Quick question: Where do you think Local Search fits into the equation for small businesses? What kind of strategy would you use for Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing? Ross on October 21st at 11:58 am Dhane - excellent question and something that I ll be sure to cover in Part 2. ProStores on October 21st at 12:44 pm Great article - will be sharing this with our merchants. Ahava Leibtag on October 21st at 2:46 pm Great List! Thanks. I would add that it s valuable to leverage all these sites off of each other. I ve made a lot of valuable connections by finding people on Twitter, tweeting with them and then sending them a Linkedin invitation. Add a comment Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) 6 # =? Submit Latest entries 99 Designs You Can Crowdsource on crowdspring Granny is totally LOL ing at you How Do You Align Your Form Assets? 10 Small Business Social 4 of 5 10/21/09 10:22 AM

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