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Social Media Is About Engagement

Guest post by: Michael Farrell

Article Overview: Social Media is not a sales plan, it is just another tool, suggests Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz. Read this short post to learn how the small business owner should make the best use of social media to work in conjunction with traditional and existing marketing and selling techniques.

Social Media Is About Engagement

This is not the time to let customers or profits slip through your fingers.

You need to make your business stronger, more successful, and ensure your customers are more loyal and responsive to your engagement with them.

Recently, Harry Dent, Jr. said that you should break free of provincial geographic thinking and focus on demographics. You should go after customers, able and willing to spend on what you sell, wherever they are, not where you are.

As a result, many marketing, media, technology, and advertising experts use social media forums as a way to champion the use of social media. They suggest a company, especially a small business on main street with a modest marketing budget, become better known, extend their reach, and increase their company's sales using social media.

Here is an example of a teaser message recently transmitted in an email marketing campaign to small and medium sized businesses ... the message says, "Social Media is the most explosively growing media of all-time and growing faster with each passing day with no slow-down in sight. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. It took TV 13 years to reach 50 million users. Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months. And iPhone applications hit 1 BILLION in 9 months."

Based on this message, it is easy for small business owners to get seduced into thinking that by using Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, big sales are just around the corner.

However, social media should work in conjunction with traditional marketing and selling techniques such as relationship marketing within "old" social networks, cold calling, vertical marketing, and other effective prospecting activities.

Small business owners should take the time to learn how to maximize their use of social media but they should not rely on it to make their sales. Small business owners need to learn how to use social media to engage their prospects and customers and how to get their prospects and customers talking about something that is important to them and the small business. This type of engagement is necessary and will ultimately get prospects and customers to take the action the small business owner wants them to take ... leading to a sale.

In order to make the best business use of social media, the small business owner needs to prepare a simple strategy with several guidelines to follow in the use of social media. The strategy and guidelines need to pinpoint the specific message to be communicated so that all employees using social media for the small business know what direction their messages should take and how they should focus their posts. For example, is the company's focus to increase customer service? is it to enhance awareness of their products or services? or is it to boost their brand recognition? Each of these things would have a different yet consistent message for the employees of the small business to follow.

For example, one insurance company uses Twitter and Facebook to let people to know about all the philanthropic things they are doing for the community. All the posts are about events they are sponsoring and contributions they're making. Employees know that they should post information about personal thing they're doing for the community, such as volunteering at the local animal shelter or helping out with Habitat for Humanity. With a clear guideline that the social media effort is to increase philanthropic awareness it is easy for employees to know the kinds of things they should be doing on social media sites. They have a clear focus and a unified purpose.

Another company in the retail industry uses social media to improve customer service. All their posts highlight things they are doing internally to improve the customer experience, what they are doing online to make shopping easier and how they are handling phone inquires to deliver a memorable shopping experience. They also regularly ask customers how they would like the company to improve customer service. With that as the key message, all of the company's employees are focused on problem solving and on making the customers happy.

Therefore, a good social media strategy, with employee guidelines, is far more than a list of good and bad words or topics. Instead, the strategy with guidelines needs to focus on the core message the small business wants to portray along with the best ways to spread that core message.

The guidelines should cover the following topics.

Build trust. The small business employees should use their posts to build a reputation of trust among clients, media, and the public. When they are reaching out to others on social media sites, they should take every opportunity to build a reputation of trust and to establish themselves as a credible and transparent representative of the company.

Be transparent. When participating in any online community, the small business employees should disclose their identities and affiliations with the organization, clients, and their professional and / or personal interest.

Be direct. When creating posts and content, the small business employees should be direct, informative, and brief.

Give due credit. If the small business employees post copyrighted materials, they should identify the original sources.

Self-edit. The small business employees should always evaluate each posting's accuracy and truthfulness. Before posting any online material, they need to ensure that the material is accurate, truthful, and without factual error. This includes doing a spell and grammar cheek on everything.

Responsibility. Make sure the small business employees know that they are responsible for what they post. Negative or questionable posts should not be tolerated.

Be professional. When posting comments, the small business employees should refrain from writing about controversial or potentially inflammatory subiects, including politics, sex, religion, or any other non-business related subjects. The tone of their comments should be respectful and informative and never condescending or "loud."

Privacy. The small business employees should never disclose proprietary or confidential information. This includes product releases, service updates, and employee information not made public yet.

Obey the rules. All small business employees should follow local, state, or federal laws and regulations. Ultimately, their online activities will be a reflection on the company.

Today's social media tools are great for business building, provided that the small business owner and their employees know how to use them for the company's ultimate benefit.

Therefore, the small business owner needs to determine why their company is using social media sites and then let that purpose be known throughout the entire small business. Additionally, they need to implement clear social media guidelines that small business employees can follow in order to further their company's mission.

Ultimately, when small businesses know how they are supposed to use today's social media tools, they can do so with focus and purpose, leading the small business confidently into the communication age.

This blog, and related posts, will continue to provide a blueprint for entrepreneurs and small businesses to make money online with Internet Marketing. Here you will find step-by-step road maps for various parts of the Internet Marketing business. You will find material that provides an entrepreneurial game plan generating a new approach to work, family, and lifestyle. You will find tools, education, training, and support. And you will find a community of like minded entrepreneurs that are using the Internet to get out of debt, build wealth, and secure their financial future forever.

Finally, I want to thank Daniel Burrus of Burrus Research as his recent article in Home Business was the source of some of the materials mentioned in this post.

I Hope You Enjoy the Posts and I Trust You Will Find Them Insightful! Let me Know What You Think.

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Article Tags: Internet Marketing, Main Street Business, Make Money Online, Mike Farrell aspenIbiz, Small Business, Social Media Marketing



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - GT - thanks for the FYI - I'm not sure if we'll put a link back. Something to consider though! Trent - the new category is "Social Network and Media" which was put in to compliment the Online Businesses category that currently exists. Overall the new categories are: - Looking For, Networking and Events - Review My... - Social Network and Media - Brags and Rants These came as a result of Ringo doing research on other forums and thinking about what could be improved on ours to give a better experience for everyone. I hope you enjoy them! David, I'm looking forward to reading your Brag / Rant!
Re: Marketing 2.0 - What Are Your Thoughts - Hi Shri, Thanks for posting this. I also read it and I believe Social Media is here to stay, until the next best thing comes up. Social media proved to be useful for me many times and I think everyone should use it for their business.
Re: Social Media Marketing Ignorance - [quote="vbn411":7qciluxl]Social Media is space that you have to be in to succeed in our current climate. People are going to be discussing your brand / product whether you like it or not, so you might as well join the conversation and add value. [/quote:7qciluxl] I think that's probably one of the most realistic way to think about it. There's no real textbook way of understanding Social Media, it's the networks of people and their interactions that will exist with or without your input. As for Jennifer, You can always have 2 Facebook pages. Many people do. There is also LinkedIn, which is like a professional networking version of Facebook. The only way to know is to try it.


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