Social Media Marketing: Advantage Small Business

Sunday December 7th saw me hosting a Social Media Roundtable with a group of passionate business women as part of the Ladies Who Launch, Lady Palooza event. It was great to share expertise and answering questions (I love doing that), however far and away the most enjoyable part was hearing about the businesses, whether established or soon to be so, and sharing with entrepreneurs the how Social Media, integrated into their marketing efforts, could give them a competitive edge.

It was great conversation. And what was clear is that small businesses are eager to know more about how to incorporate social media strategies into their marketing.

I thought I’d share some highlights from the day. I use Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses interchangeably.

Strategy Before Tools

Entrepreneurs are keen to know about Social Media tools. However they also want a strategy for how to use them. They want to know how Social Media will help them achieve their business goals. For me it all starts with a strategy… even if it’s high level. So, my post What’s Your Social Media Marketing Strategy merited a mention. Discussion about Social Media so often starts with tools, so it was great to hear business people recognizing the importance of a Social Media Strategy.

Blogging – Businesses Want to Know More

Blogging is an area where entrepreneurs want to know more. They want to be able to set up a blog and hit the ground running and get their names out there. They want to know how blogging works as part of a marketing campaign, as well as how to monetize their blogs.And they see how blogging can help build relationships. Blogging Your Way to the Top maven Christa Jean answered their questions and showed participants how Blogging can be an effective and next to free way to spread a message to millions of people around the world. Christa has built a successful (and packed out) workshop on blogging. Check out her site to find out more. If you’re in Toronto, you can attend her live workshop.

I’ll also be posting more blogging tips and resources here in later posts.

What’s Micro-blogging?

In a word: Twitter. Most of the entrepreneurs had heard of Twitter but, were mystified about what it was. There was a lot of interest in learning more about Twitter and I suspect several more small businesses joining Twitter and seeing how it works for them after today’s session. Here’s a link to a video on How To use Twitter… shared by a Twitter friend.

On Being Overwhelmed

As we talked about all the wonderful ways Social Media can help build relationships, gain exposure, help find new clients, and help businesses market themselves, one of the biggest concerns of Small Businesses was the sheer amount of time needed to use and manage these tools to their advantage. Most businesses were on Facebook and many were also on LinkedIn. While Linked In demands much less in terms of upkeep, Facebook was another story. Key concerns included:

How to manage the amount of messaging received via these tools (Facebook, MySpace etc)
Managing the “noise” factor of Social Media tools… having and keeping up with followers, tweeting, having to be everywhere as well as running their business
Finding time to blog regularly
Understanding the Social Media jargon

My initial advice? Have a plan, set an objective and try one or two tools at a time and get a feel for how they work for their businesses a little at a time.

Clearly Small Businesses can use Social Media to their advantage and they understand that. The opportunity for Social Media thought leaders and practitioners(as I see it) is to help SBs use Social Media Marketing – by understanding their key problems and showing how Social Media can help solve them.