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Social media strategy tips for small businesses
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We have a simple approach to getting our knowledge out there. That is:
Create it
Present it
Make it a value add
Repeat the process
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What to expect in the rest of this ebook
Overall we talk about the following on each page:
• Why you need a social media strategy
• Do you have the time?
• Identifying the right outlets
• Now you have the accounts, what's next?
• Risk mitigation strategies
• Analytics & measurement
• The final word
Of course each of these subjects is worthy of a lot more than a page, but, we didn't have time, the
ebook is free and this ebook is only really intended as an overview.....
And it is part of our Social Media strategy to get people to use our site and our sponsors site,
wejustlaunched.com, so as you can see we practise what we preach.
We have recommended people to talk to on some subjects at the end of that page.
We gain nothing from these recommendations, though we feel that we will probably get some
kudos and you never know - business - out of these unsolicited recommendations... another part
of our social media strategy for you to see in practice.
We are open to questions and offers of free drinks to come and chat to your staff, you or someone
completely unrelated.
Who are we?
We are a couple of blokes (James & Jeremy) from Sydney and can be reached at
info@smallbizfix.com
We highly recommend that you address your email to James if you want a valuable reply. He is the
smart one of the two of us. Jeremy is merely the eye candy.
Hope you enjoy and get something tangible from the following pages.
James & Jeremy.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Why you need a social media strategy
Firstly, because it ain't going away.
And that is it in a nutshell. Social media is not going away. It is not the flash in the pan it was once
touted as. It is the real deal.
A strategy doesn't need to be a 48 page document with an 'all seeing all knowing' accompanying
Powerpoint presentation.
It can be one or two lines: “create an online presence and develop it to the point that it makes
money. To achieve this source information from good people.”
Secondly, because when you have a strategy it is easier to stay on target to what you want to
achieve. If you have a scattergun approach of posting on all sorts of mediums then chances are you
will be missing your target market.
The next part is REALLY important.
By researching where your customers are likely to be, your strategy will become clearer as will your
path to reaching more potential customers.
As an example if you are a wedding cake shop, targeting brides to be LinkedIn isn't the place to be,
twitter (use a #tag to target future clients), Facebook and marriage forums are.
Thirdly, when you are armed with your strategy it will be easier to introduce, test and measure
new angles and sales strategies. Such as offering followers free stuff for feedback on new
products/ideas or discounts on items before you release to the general public.
and Finally, Social media will allow you to build deep and profitable relationships with both new
and your most valuable existing customers.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Do you have the time?
Make no mistake, social media is time consuming and at times you will throw your hands up in the
air if it is not bearing the fruit you thought it would.
Once you have started – stick with it, because once you stop you will not win the people back.
The first thing you need to do is obvious. That is, develop a content strategy to manage your time
wisely.
Not creating a content strategy is where many companies
fail.
Take the time to set out a monthly/weekly schedule for posting and the content you want to
concentrate on. Make sure the content strategy outlines the specific days and times you will spend
on social media.
Remember to be realistic and what makes practical sense for your business and go from there.
You might want to allocate certain times each day to tweet or update your status etc..... try and
vary them though, social media users will ping you for being a robot if you post each day at the
same time.
We highly recommend that you use tools to maximise your productivity. If you have set up
accounts on a few networks then a tool like ping.fm will dramatically reduce your time spent on
social media. Whilst maintaining your profile.
After you have implemented a strategy but still find yourself spending too much time answering
questions etc... then you could consider outsourcing. We have done this and it works.
There are a number of people on sites such as elance.com who will look after your social media
requirements for no more than a few dollars per day. It is an extremely effective and commercially
sound approach. There will of course be a period of training for the elancer, but they are generally
diligent and do a fine job.
Recommended outsourcer
If you are looking for help, then visit www.elance.com and post a job for someone to monitor your
social media accounts. You will be amazed at the quality of people on there.
We use elance on a daily basis for a wide range of tasks.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Identifying the right outlets
Which platform should you use?
The smart people will tell you that you need to be where your customers are. They are right, that is
why they are smart.....
The chances are that they are on one or more of the three major social media sites, with accounts
on more industry specific networks:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
As a result you will need to keep up a presence on these sites. It is not as daunting as it seems.
There are plenty of tools out there which will allow you to post to all three sites simultaneosly.
You will spend more time on one than the other.
For example if you are a surfboard shaper near the sea, chances are you will want to post photos
of your latest board, or the surf that day.
Facebook is most likely to dominate your time, with twitter being used for quick updates.
Whichever platform you chose, keep researching trends on there, observe ways people utilise the
features to their full capability.
Don't make the mistake of using a platform because your friend does or another business you
know does, they might be using it for an entirely different purpose.
Do the research to find out what platform suits you and your business best.
Recommended outsourcer
If the B2B arena is where you are looking to build your platform, we recommend you speak to
Tom: http://www.skotidas.com.au/about/tom-skotidas/ He is a top operator.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Now you have the accounts, what's next?
Plenty of hard work, plenty of frustration that is what is next. Think back to what we said earlier
about creating a content strategy... Because this is where you are going to use it.
So you know your message, you know your posting windows, but what first? Humour? Business?
Lifestyle?????
To start you off, the general rule is to kick off with a conservative 20% business & brand, 15%
entertaining/humour and 65% personal views and opinion. From there you can expand into
pushing your brand more, but initially readers want to find out about what is behind the brand.
A big part of social media strategy is posting high quality content that people care about. People
want to be informed and with so many 'experts' on the internet it is the quality of your work that
will set you apart.
Ask questions, you are going to get a far greater level of interaction on your Facebook and twitter
accounts if you ask a question. This is what you want, you want to drive people to engage with
each other using your pages as the medium.
You will need to become an expert at arousing people’s interest on twitter using 140 characters or
less. You will also need to build up their trust, saying hi and then spamming them with a link back
to your website is a huge no-no.
You should also be monitoring social networks which are
genre specific to your industry. This is where you will find
people talking about your products, or you will be able to
identify and subsequently introduce people talking about your industry to your company and
products.
The biggest mistake many small businesses make is to not tell people about their twitter account
or Facebook page. If you have a shopfront, put the link where it can be seen by all visitors. When
you get your business cards printed, be sure to include it on there.
Hand out a flyer with the site details when you hand out receipts, just make sure you tell as many
people as possible! They all use twitter and Facebook too, they have friends and will spread the
message for you. After all, they are your current customers. What better recommendation is there
than that!
Recommended outsourcer:
You can of course out source your social media work. Having met Karen, whilst running a sports
website we know that: http://inscriptionsmedia.com.au/ will do the job well for you.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Risk mitigation strategies
Why do you need a risk mitigation strategy?
While a certain amount of negative press is expected from consumers, businesses that are nimble
enough to respond to social media marketing crises; are well positioned to counteract, or reverse
negative effects. As a business leader, how can you stay ahead of the social media marketing
curve? How can you best manage negative social media messages?
The risks associated with social media are very real. Your hard earned reputation can be destroyed
in short time with unfavourable tweets, postings etc.... The greatest risk mitigation strategy comes
through monitoring social media channels.
How do you do this? Well it is a bit easier than you
think. set up a #tag search on twitter using your
company or product name (easy if you use tweetdeck).
This of course will not catch all chat about your
company, but it is a good starting point.
Another tip is to look for your product name and
negative words on google (again set up a google alert) such as "product name is crap".
It is better to know what is being said so that you can engage and correct opinion. Just make sure
you engage properly, if you are hostile or seen not to be addressing the issue then the online
chatter can easily go from bad but manageable to out of control and catastrophic.
You have to be in a position to respond and no matter how hard this may be, it is the only way to
protect your company.
We outline some of the risks you can face.
Reputational Risk: Social media allows individuals to broadcast their messages to the public at
large very easily and quickly and with generally little or no oversight. This can have a serious
impact on an organisation, its brand, and its reputation if the comment is not favourable.
Employee Risk: Over 60% of twitter users tweet about their place of employment. Good or Bad!
You need to introduce a social media aspect to your induction or ongoing training to make
employee's aware of their responsibilities and your expectations.
There are more risks, but the bottom line is, you need to engage and be prepared to take criticism.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
Analytics & Measurement
So you have been tweeting, facebook'ing, linkedin'ing and all sorts of other things.... so, the
burning question is:
Is this bloody strategy working?
The best way to work this out is to revisit the part of your strategy which lays out “what you want
to achieve”
How will you know?
Only really by measuring things.
So what should you measure??
If you can, direct sales and visitors to your website (if that is important to you) as click-throughs
from a social media post.
The take up of an offer you have been running online through your Facebook fans or twitter
followers only.... Increased orders through new LinkedIn contacts.
Anything that you can identify as a direct result of your social media campaign should be
measured.
So what should you use to measure all these wonderful
new stats?
Google analytics – free and easy
Omniture – Not free, still easy and there are plenty more
AWStats etc....
Ah, but this will take more time won't it? No, not really, you can set up your analytics software to
send you daily reports on various aspects of your website, so you will get your reports with no
effort at all.
That doesn't mean you should set and forget, revisit your analytics on a monthly basis to look for
trends. For example, you will be able to see information about how many of your customers drop
out of your sales process at certain stages of the process.
This will allow you to revisit your cart process, test improvements - all with the knowledge that you
will be increasing sales if you get it right.
Remember what measurement works as a measurement for you offline – will almost certainly not
work for you online in the social media world.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.
The Final word
Thanks for reading through the ebook, hopefully you will have gained something from it, if you
didn't, so be it.
Please do visit www.wejustlaunched.com as if you spend $2 on there our families will be able to
eat again this week.
This ebook has been produced by and is the property of www.smallbizfix.com Any reproduction requires express permission from
us.