Get Connected: The Social Networking Toolkit for Business

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How to Use Social Networking for Your Business

Social

networking is not just for teenagers, there are now serious sites with powerful tools to build your business. This chapter explains various business uses of social networking. Most small business owners don’t use terms like reputation management, top-of-mind branding, and key influencers, but now is the time. These aren’t only marketing terms, they have real meaning to your business even if you’re an entrepreneur working out of your home (like me!). This chapter will show you how to employ the same techniques that large corporations use to stay on top by using social networking.

Choosing the Best Sites for Your Business
The social network explosion means choosing from a lengthy list of sites. Social networks exist for every interest and agenda, however not all are appropriate for your business or cause. Here are a few tips on getting started: • Start with two of the most popular sites: Facebook and LinkedIn. Setting up a profile on these two sites will give 9

Get Connected: The Social Networking Toolkit for Business you a taste of social networks while allowing you to interact with potential customers, cause community members, and business partners. Consider joining specialized or targeted sites that are specific to your industry or area of interest. These are focused on more specific interests, as opposed to general social-networking destinations. • After joining, continue to stay active and monitor your preferred social networks as well as new ones that come online. It’s important that your goals and potential customer base are reflected in the social networks that you choose.

Reputation Building and Management
Wikipedia defines reputation management as “the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, Quick Fact: Wikipedia but that need not always be the is a free, multilingual case. Other examples of entities encyclopedia site projinclude animals, businesses, or ect operated by the even locations or materials. nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. The tracking and reporting may The word wiki is from the range from word-of-mouth to Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick and pedia from the word statistical analysis of thousands encyclopedia. of data points.” For our purposes we’re only concerned with the reputations of people and businesses. Of course, to manage your reputation you have to have one. Social networks provide an international stage to show off your shiny new dress. Just watch out for the paparazzi taking pictures of your undergarments, or lack thereof! It’s important to remember that customers will form and share their opinions about you and your business with or without you. Wouldn’t you rather join that conversation? 10

How to Use Social Networking for Your Business I’ve heard so many businesses say they don’t think that they need to be social networking. Restaurants are the biggest offenders. They claim they only need to focus on customers coming from around their town or even a small region. They don’t worry about a statewide or even national reputation. Unless they’re in a town small enough where everyone knows everyone else and all of those people are spreading positive word of mouth about the restaurant, then they’re headed for trouble. How did you used to look for a restaurant in your area? Maybe the Yellow Pages or a recommendation from a friend or co-worker? Well now these people and search systems are online. People look for restaurants, read about experiences, and talk about them. These restaurant need to invest some time to get up and running on these sites and create a system to monitor and stay involved. Or they can spend hundreds—even thousands—per month to advertise in their local Yellow Pages. For what? Other than the location, hours of operation, and a self-proclaimed “We’re the best/quickest/cheapest in town” there is little information of value.

Google and Yahoo!
Google and Yahoo! have changed the way we look for businesses. They not only provide a handy map, but a look at those undergarments, as well. Sites like Citysearch and Yelp allow users to review local businesses and post their feelings to the world. This has a profound effect for our local restaurant in question. It used to be that all a restaurateur Map: In many programming languages, would have to worry a map is the name of about was the one night a a higher-order funcyear when the food critic tion that applies a given function from the local newspaper to a sequence of elements (such stopped by. Treat them to as a list) and returns a sequence your finest meal on the of results, kind of like a key house, keep the wine word search. 11

Get Connected: The Social Networking Toolkit for Business flowing, and pray for a good review. By the way, the number of people who are reading the daily paper nowadays continues to decline. Consumers are now posting their reviews and culinary experiences online. With social networking in the mix, now every single customer, each and every night, is a possible food critic. Their review may have the same reach and impact, but unlike the article, it won’t go in the recycle bin the next day. Online reviews are there for good or at least for the life of the participants’ posting account being active. The map function on Google and Yahoo! pulls in reviews from external sites like Yelp and Citysearch, among others, to provide added value for their loyal searchers. If you haven’t seen this for yourself, go to Google maps, type the name of your city, then type sushi or pizza or any popular type of food. Where would you rather go: “Jim’s Second Day Sushi . . . 2 stars” or “Fresh as Can Be Fish . . . 4½ stars”? Hmm . . . tough choice. Unfortunately for Jim, that ranking is an average of the reviews posted. So while he may actually run a fine, clean, safe establishment, albeit with an odd name, his reputation could be sullied with only a few bad reviews. Since we’re still in the early part of this trend most local businesses have less than 10 reviews. That’s hardly a fair and representative sample. There’s an old business saying that proclaims on average a happy customer will tell three people, but an unhappy one will tell seven. Well what if that unhappy customer has the ability to reach 7,000 or, worse, 700,000? In any case, it’s important that your business be properly registered with these search sites and at a minimum that you occasionally monitor what, if anything, is being said about you and your business. Whether you’re building your reputation in groups on LinkedIn, Twittering your way to notoriety, or procuring positive reviews on Yelp, it’s vital that you understand the role Key Influencers play in your success or failure. For example, a 13year-old boy who lives for punk rock, video games, and skateboarding and has 5,000 friends on Myspace could be a key 12

How to Use Social Networking for Your Business influencer to a variety of youth and extreme sports-oriented companies. Key influencers can be any of the following: journalists, industry analysts, celebrities, politicians, bloggers, academics, retailers, manufacturers. The fact is they can be almost anyone. Your job is to find who they are in your industry and in your region, as well. Get to know these people, track their actions on social networks, make friends with them if you can. Key influencers hold treasure chests of thousands, even millions of people who value their opinion. If you launch a product, and they review and endorse it, you’ve avoided the expensive process of reaching out to those people yourself and convincing them of your prodQuick Fact: A key uct’s worth. Given the limited influencer is any pernumber of reviews most son who has influence of a large number of small businesses get, anypeople. They can be potential one who posts about your buyers or current customers. business on Yelp or Citysearch is a de-facto key influencer. Engage them, thank those who submit positive reviews and you can even offer them something exclusive like VIP access or maybe a discount. Also, thank those who submit negative reviews. Respond to their concerns, as well. You shouldn’t try to convince or change someone’s mind, just let them know that you heard and respect their voice and would like to give them a chance to engage with you further. I went to a nightclub recently that I have had a positive experience with in the past, but it was poorly reviewed online. I asked to speak to the manager, and told him that people on Yelp were complaining about the lack of friendliness from the staff and that there was a high likelihood of a fight breaking out at some point in the night. I explained that I had not had this experience, but wanted to know if he was aware of the perception, whether deserving or not. He did not know and said he would address it. That week I saw a post on their MySpace page announcing that 13

Get Connected: The Social Networking Toolkit for Business they were aware of the problems and had taken steps to rectify them. More security and smiling bartenders were evident on our next visit about a month later. Your customers have moved online. Yes, you have a website, but that’s not enough anymore. You need to build and mange your reputation online to succeed in today’s marketplace. Social networking provides the perfect set of tools to get the job done.

Become an Expert in Your Field
It wasn’t very long ago when the only “well-known experts” were the talking heads commenting on CNN panels or quoted in newspaper articles. Today experts are self-made and can be found online on a variety of blogs and social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. Some, like LinkedIn and eBay, provide point systems to earn your way to desired levels of expertise. It’s like being granted an honorary Ph.D. from a university. At first you should be asking anyone and everyone questions or posting questions in groups for feedback. They can be about almost anything: I’m confused, can someone tell me what a Wiki is? Can anyone recommend a good search engine optimization company? Or, All the social networking on my computer is causing me to gain weight … any thoughts on how to get my social networking to go? The more questions you ask the better you’ll be able to discern how questions get answered on social networks. When you feel comfortable you should start answering questions or start discussions in groups or forums. If people like your answers, you’ll quickly become known as people share your advice with others. Before you know it, you’re an expert! You don’t have to wait for a question to share your knowledge. One of the best ways to increase your expert ranking on many sites is to give away free tips. Top five lists are great because they provide just enough information to be valuable, but still fit within the confines of a reasonable post. If they 14

How to Use Social Networking for Your Business don’t, consider linking to an area on your website or blog that has all the pertinent information and leave just the summary on the posting. Post everywhere. If you have something to say, maximize its effect and your time by posting it to numerous outlets. Copy and paste to your blog, e-mail list, all your social network profiles and to all of the groups you belong to. To further build your email list, offer a free report from the post and have an e-mail capture on your blog where people need to go to enter their name and e-mail to get the free report. One top five list could be placed in over a hundred places reaching hundreds of thousands of people. This may sound like a lot of work but with the proper organization and automation you should be able to complete a task like this in under an hour. Think of the cost of placing an ad that would reach the same number of people. Are you getting the picture that joining groups is a good idea? You should. It’s repeated in almost every section of this book. So why not repeat it again: Groups! Groups! Groups! You may only have a few hundred friends or connections on your profile but a popular group may have 10,000 members. Anything you post to that group will be seen eventually by every single one of them the next time they log in. This exponential reach will enable you to build your expert status floor by floor rather than brick by brick.

Starr Hall and Chadd Rosenberg, Get Connected, © 2009, by Entrepreneur Media, Inc., All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of Entrepreneur Media, Inc.

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