Social media is quickly becoming one of the most effective ways for businesses to promote themselves.  Many small business owners find the concept of social media and its potential to be confusing and intimidating.  It doesn’t have to be if it’s learned in small steps.  No one mastered all the social sites in a day, and you won’t, either.  So take your time and poke around a bit.  Most importantly, start following people who do what you do and watch how they use social media.  It may or may not be done well, so don’t start to copy them until you get a feel for what’s working and what’s not.

Step 1: Sit back and watch.  You’ll find that many users do this.  Not every consumer who has a social media profile uses it to communicate.  Many use it to check in on friends, brands, competitors and the news.

Step 2: Evaluate what you’re seeing.  Are the brands you’re following engaging their audience by asking questions and responding to inquiries?  Or are they spouting information only about themselves?

Step 3: Understand how to best use each of the social media sites you’ve identified.  Facebook is different than twitter.  For example, while you should post often enough on Twitter so that you appear on the first page of a Twitter search for your keywords*, you don’t want to post that frequently on Facebook.  Nor do you want to use Twitter lingo and hash tags on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Step 4: Once you decide to begin, give users a unique experience with you.  Emphasize what makes you different and spin your posts to reflect how that benefits the reader.

Step 5: Create custom graphics for your Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and any other site that allows customization to backgrounds.   Having consistency throughout your social media sites lends to familiarity and comfort for your audience.

Step 6: Put yourself in the shoes of your audience.  Is their user experience with you enjoyable?  Will they feel it’s worth sharing with friends or colleagues?  If you notice your content is not being commented on, look at who you’re targeting, are they likely to comment on posts?  Look at the content being posted, are you asking questions that will encourage readers to participate?

Step 7: Advertise.  Pay per click advertising is available on social sites, so target your audience with eye catching ads drive relevant people to your pages and events.

Step 8: Set expectations you can measure.  Having an opt-in form on a Facebook page is a lot like having an opt-in form on your website.  Measuring how many opt-ins you get can be a good indicator of how effective your social media efforts are.

Step 9: Build a relationship outside of social media with an e-mail marketing campaign.  If you collect e-mail addresses on Facebook, make sure your e-mail messages direct your readers to come back and visit your Facebook page.  Be sure to provide relevant content and keep the selling to a minimum.

Step 10: Stay engaged.  There’s no point in doing any of this if you can’t dedicate the time and resources to keep up with it.  Make a commitment and stick to it.  There are free tools available to help you manage the content you put out there, so you can make efficient use of your time.

Search Ad Marketing helps small businesses get started with social media marketing.  We provide assistance with strategy as well as ongoing management.  Contact us today for help with getting your business active in social media.

*Super advanced strategy!  As of the writing of this post, Twitter receives 1.2 million searches per month.  A good strategy is to post as often as necessary to appear on the first page of search results for keywords relevant to your business.

During recent years, branding a company using social media has become a hot topic.  Marketers are quickly changing the way they brand their business.  Traditional marketing used to build company reputations have given way to building reputations that are defined by media as a whole.  Marketing, branding, management, and reputation of employees are now all part of a businesses image.

Professionals are expected to act appropriately in their work place.  For years, successful professionals have advised keeping your personal and work lives separate. Three years ago, following this simple rule was not hard.  Now we’re faced with being friends with colleagues and clients on social networks where they can see how we behave “off hours”.   Our reputations are now being determined not by our work ethic, our volunteer activities, or how we behave at school, but by a search results on Google!

So, does this mean we shouldn’t use Facebook and Twitter for personal use?   Absolutely not!  But ask yourself this, what do you, as a person wish to be known for?  If you don’t want to be known as the guy who gets drunk every weekend and takes embarrassing photos, than don’t post that information.  In personal branding, “bad” behavior weighs more than good behavior.  For every 4 hour drunken excursion you share on Facebook, you’ll need to do 40 hours of volunteer service to even the scale.  The rule of thumb is this, assuming you have a grandma you love and respect, don’t post anything you wouldn’t share with your grandma.

Here are some simple questions to use as guidelines when using social media:

1. Nothing you post on the Internet is private.  This is also true for what others post about you. Strong security settings are important, but do not guarantee complete privacy.  Consider this rule before you post pictures, political views, opinions, etc.  Would you be okay with your boss, grandma, or pastor seeing them?
2. Your behavior outside of work now can now influence your job.  Ask any Human Resources person what the first steps of the hiring process are.  You will hear that Google, Twitter, and Facebook searches are used to evaluate you.  If you already have a job, your public personal life is a reflection on your employer.  Your employer will always keep this in mind.
3. The internet is called the world-wide web for a reason.  It reaches further than any of us could have dreamed.

Although wide use of the internet is fairly new, it is like a history book. Everything we do is recorded and easy to find.  If used appropriately, it can be the most positive tool for our careers and reputations.  If abused, small mistakes can write destructive chapters.  In the book of world history, how do you want to be remembered?  For what would you like to be known?

Last week, I noticed in my Twitter timeline that a Tweeter @mentioned my friend as having unfollowed her (along with 16 others).  My initial reaction was of bewilderment as to why this information was important enough to share.  My second reaction was thinking, “Why does she care?”  For all Tweeters, it boils down to this: Why are you using Twitter?

If your purpose for using Twitter is strictly personal, then following people to see how many followers you receive in return is a perfectly legitimate strategy (or lack thereof).  However, if your purpose for using Twitter is to market or brand a company, service, or person, then following people who solely follow in exchange for a follow will not add value to your business or campaign.  Just like any type of networking, positive promotion develops based on conversations started, and relationships established and nurtured.  Your strategy should focus on choosing tweeters who will help you to reach out more directly to your target audience.

So, you’re asking, “How do I start?”  When looking at a Tweeter’s profile, try to identify the following, based on a profile picture, bio, and past tweets:

Would your audience benefit from what he/she has to say? Has he or she posted content that you can retweet or links to articles that you and your audience may enjoy reading?  If you are in sales and someone tweets primarily about their dog, this will not help you and it will eat up valuable viewing space in your timeline.

Are their followers likely to overlap with your targeted audience? Would their audience be interested in hearing what you have to say?  (Most likely, if your answer to the question above is yes, than this one is, too.)

Do they tweet regularly? If the individual’s last tweet was three months ago, then forget about it.  The ideal person to follow tweets a steady balance of original information, retweets, and mentions multiple times per day.

Is his/her public identity parallel to the morals/reputation of what/who you are trying to market? Remember, who you are following and who is following you is public.  If someone you follow appears or tweets inappropriately, by following, you have chosen to associate with them.

That being said, don’t worry if you’ve collected a pool of Tweeters to follow who don’t fit the descriptions above.  If you’re using automation tools to target followers, sometimes you’ll get a bad egg.  Do as my friend did and simply unfollow them.  If the Tweeter you’ve unfollowed @mentions you as having unfollowed them, so what?  Let it go.  Clearly their strategy isn’t one of good business if they tell the world they’ve been unfollowed.  You have a strategy, you have a goal, they don’t fit, so “good-bye”.  I hope this explanation about the importance of carefully choosing who to follow, and unfollow, on Twitter will help you use Twitter more successfully for your business.

A common mistake business owners make when creating their profile on LinkedIn is to call themselves “Owner”.  This does not describe what you actually do, so it’s best, for the purposes of being found in a search, to use a description with industry keywords as your title.  For example, I am an Internet Marketing Specialist at Search Ad Marketing. A friend who owns a travel business is a ‘Travel Expert”.  These terms are more likely to be used as keywords in a search than “Owner”.

If you change your title, be mindful of any recommendations you have that were tied to the old title.  These may be moved to the unassigned state.  If this happens to you, please follow these steps:

• Go to the left-hand navigation menu. Click ‘Recommendations’ under the ‘Profile’ sub-menu.
• Scroll down to the ‘Unassigned recommendations’ part of the page. Click ‘Show ‘Recommendations’.
• You can now assign each recommendation to a specific experience listing.

Good luck with your search and find objectives!

Social networking and social media outlets should not be ignored by small business.  Sure, it is time consuming and often one can get side tracked, but if the small business owner wants to be proactive in the hunt for new clients, maintaining current clients and rebuilding relationships with past clients, social media is a great, free, easy way to network with people already engaged with your product or service.

Twitter offers an audience of forward thinking consumers.  Commonly, Tweeple (Twitter people) are the ones talking up a new brand or shredding it to pieces.  Need proof?  See Bruno a One Day Wonder.  Search can be performed on Twitter to see who in your region is talking about you.  If they are happy with you, take the opportunity to build your brand more with them by engaging in a discussion about them, their needs, and desires.  If they’re not so happy with you, build unbreakable loyalty by taking this opportunity to hear them out and make it right.

LinkedIn offers a level of credibility and integrity. As of this writing, 80% of users are college educated/white collar workers and 8% are C level executives.  People searching for you can see who your contacts are and immediately judge whether or not it’s worth their time to connect with you.  The ability to receive (and give) recommendations let’s people who have found you get a taste of what clients, co-workers, employers, etc. think of you professionally.  Your peers can confirm you as an expert in your field by rating your answers to their questions.  The ability to join groups of like minded people gives you exposure to people you probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to meet.  Recently “Companies” has become an area where you may create a profile for your business.  In companies your profile may include a summary, who your current, past and new employees are as well as company news, stock information and your blog posts, plus much more.

Facebook is exponentially growing.  Now with 250 million users it’s becoming a top place for advertisers to market their products and services.  Facebook maintains an incredible amount of personal data, voluntarily submitted by it’s users.  Advertisers tap the data and filter the users to get an extermely relevant audience for their ads.  Often the CPC fees are below and estimated clicks are higher that those on Google.  Another benefit to utilizing Facebook is the ability to build a page for your business.  Pages offer Events, Discussions, Reviews, Photos, and almost anything else you can conceive.  The planning committee for my high school reunion created a page for our class and communicated primarily through wall posts to our classmates.  It’s a wonderful tool!

In summary, there are many uses to utilizing the top three social media outlets.  It takes time to evaluate which is right for your business, but you’ll find they all offer the ability to get closer to your consumers and build your relationships.  Check them out and give them a shot.