Posts tagged small business


Facebook —Wake up! You’re a business, now act like one!

Dec 11th

5 comments

moneybags

Neicole Crepeau is among the smartest bloggers on my social media radar.  Imagine my surprise when out of the blue she sent me this email: “Your blog made me think about some things and I’ve written an article for you. Here it is.”   Isn’t that cool?  So I get to take the day off and we can all enjoy Neicole’s unique perspective today …

Mark’s post Does the social web primarily benefit service companies? discussed some of the obstacles to greater use of B2B social media marketing, particularly by small and medium businesses.  As he points out, businesses must do a better job of integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy.  However, there is an even bigger obstacle to an expansion of business use of the social web, and it is in the networks themselves.

Wake up, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn.  You might have started as a lark, a side-project done just for fun.  Now, you’re a business.   But you’re not acting like one.

These popular social networks have failed to recognize where their bread and butter is going to come from. Even YouTube, under Google, continues to focus on ads as its potential source of income. It has yet to make that work. Chances are, that model will never be successful enough to turn the profit they need.

I see a clear evolution of social networks, as outlined in my video and blog post of December 8th. It begins with a great idea, like micro-blogging or connecting friends via status updates. That draws an initial, small set of users. The customer base expands as the social network transforms and improves.

But end-users won’t pay for these services—not enough, at least. The social networks now need to look to the corporate world to make a profit.  Remember, you have two customers, guys:

  • End-users
  • Business users

You’ve correctly focused on building a great tool for end-users, and you need to keep doing that. However, you also need to recognize that business users are an equally important customer. Now, go focus just as fervently on them!

Google built a great search solution that end-users love—but weren’t going to pay for. They turned to innovative corporate solutions and found a goldmine.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn need to do the same. But NOT through the same tired technique of ad serving.

These companies need to take a page from the marketing 101 handbook and listen to their customers — business customers — and find innovative solutions for them. What do businesses want to do via your site? Marketing … maybe customer support?  What do they need in order to do that successfully?  Ways to engage and maintain contact with consumers?  The ability to find/target the right consumers? Mechanisms to track and measure their engagement and ROI over time?

They are your customers.  Solve their problems. Make money.

Look at Ikea’s photo-tagging campaign on Facebook. There’s a creative new revenue stream.  How can you make that method available to lots of businesses, with a low barrier of entry/use? How can you monetize it?  Could YouTube do something similar, by making it possible for businesses to find and tag their products in user-supplied videos? Or make it beneficial for users themselves to do product placements in their videos.  Businesses would love to promote those user-created placements!

When social networks treat the corporate world as a key customer, the innovation will really start that will drive businesses to the social web in droves and drive profitable new business models from themselves.

Neicole Crepeau is a 25-year veteran of the tech industry, with experience in technical writing, usability testing, user experience/interaction design, website design, and product management. Her outstanding blog can be found at http://nmc.itdevworks.com/

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The best business opportunity in social media marketing

Nov 18th

14 comments

blog

Awhile back I put forth a “success formula” to create business benefits through social media:

Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Benefits

The more I see and hear and learn about the social web, the more I’m convinced this is spot-on.  You can see the whole article here, by the way.

I’m learning that within this formula, content is a SEVERE bottleneck for most companies.  Here’s why:

  1. Companies are piling on to the social web and are desperate to provide content that will cut through the clutter. It takes a special talent to do that. Typically, they don’t have that special talent … but are willing to pay for it.
  2. I’m sure you’ve heard stats like, “more content has been created in the last five years than in the history of mankind.”  I either made that up or I heard it someplace (or both) but I’m sure you’ve heard similarly ridiculous statements.  There is a kernel of truth in there, however.  There’s already too much freaking content for any normal person to keep up with.  And the problem is going to get worse.  In fact, it will never get better. The need for content seems insatiable. This exacts more pressure on companies to not only develop “meaningful” content, but content that will knock your socks off.  Every day.
  3. The need for “authenticity” is an artificial barrier set by the social media country club that is keeping some people from ghost blogging. (Article on how to do it RIGHT is here.)  That barrier will go down as the price companies are willing to pay for content goes up.  There will be plenty of content-whores around for everybody.  And I mean that in the most respectful way.

So here’s the business plan: Come up with a posse of technical writers/content whores who can churn out blogs on a variety of subjects (maybe organize by verticals) and fill this out-sourcing market niche.  I would do it myself but I’m far too lazy.

So there it is.  Business Idea of the Year!  Go be the Wal-Mart of content.  The Blog Super Store.  Content Whore Warehouse.  Whatever, just go do it and I’ll be the first to hire you for my customers.   See, you can’t tell me I never did anything for you. : )

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Social media advice for the small business

Aug 19th

1 comment

Photo: This is an article about advice. This sign is not one of Robin’s recommendations. But it should be.
Final installment of a three-part interview with Robin Frank, who manages social media strategies for The Gap Outlet, Banana Republic Factory Store, and other leading brands.
Many of {grow} readers work for small businesses. What is the best advice you could give to a small company or a regional brand establishing a foothold in social media marketing?

I love lists. Here are my Six Strategies for Success:

1) It’s all about your audience: If you only remember one thing, remember this point. This is where social media is no different than traditional marketing. Ask yourself these questions: who are your customers, where are they living online, what communities do they participate in, what do they like to talk about there? Now go play in that field.

2) Stay focused. You absolutely must set clear goals and objectives for your social media program AND you must align these with your marketing and business objectives, AND you must stick with them.
3) Everyone on board. Get buy-in throughout your organization. Social media touches all aspects of an organization, so get everyone paddling the same direction here.
4) Create an excellent communication strategy. Develop measurable campaigns and a communication strategy that reflects your brand, creates engagement and two-way communication, provides useful information, and sometimes talks about your business.
5) Measure your results and fine-tune your strategy. Set up a system for monitoring your progress, then adjust your strategy. Repeat often. See my answer earlier on ROI.
6) Get an expert. If at all possible, hire an expert to get you up and running or to give you a tune-up. Seriously, Social media is not rocket science, but who has the hours to invest in learning the ins and outs and ups and downs, thousands of apps and best practices? This will save you money in the long run. With your strategy in hand and several months of implementation under your belt, you can run with this baby or hire someone cheaper to run it for you.
Robin, thank you so much for doing this interview. Here is my final question. Do you ever wash children in the sinks?
What???
Robin Frank consults with a wide range of companies – retail, banking, clean/greentech, and B2B – helping them establish cost-effective Social Media programs that increase marketing ROI and foster broader and deeper customer engagement and education. You can reach her at @robeen, robeenf@gmail.com, or linkedin.com/in/robinfrank.
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Building meaningful business connections through social media

Aug 4th

6 comments

This is the second in a series exploring the keys to achieving business benefits in social media:

Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefits.
Now, we’re going to dive into each element to build a strategy for YOUR social media success! Today we start with CONNECTIONS.
Think of the social media landscape as a garden … being planted in a desert! To get something to grow, you need to plant a LOT of seeds, which are your connections. Then you’re going to water those connections with meaningful content and authentic helpfulness, which I will cover in subsequent articles.
I’ll give you seven delicious ingredients for the business connection recipe, but before I do, I’d like you to consider two things 1) What is the profile of your best customers, and 2) Where are they likely to be hanging out? If you can answer those questions, your quest for great business connections will be so much more successful! Here are two resources to help you out (click links)
CUSTOMER PROFILING
FINDING YOUR CUSTOMER “TRUCKSTOP”
OK, let’s mix up a fresh batch of social media business connections:
1) The Advanced Search feature on Linked-In is your best connection-finding buddy. You can find high-potential connections by location, company, industry, even business title. Offer to link with these people as a first step toward building your targeted audience.
2) Participate in Linked-in groups and forums. What better way to build relationships than to get involved with online groups of like-minded professionals? So many people sign up for Linked-In and forget about it. Get your skin in the game and actively ENGAGE new connections. A new national contract of mine began with a lady who liked my answers on Linked-In!
3) Find online journals related to your industry. Look for comments that interest you. In the comment section, note who is there – their comments often point readers to their Twitter name, Facebook or Linked-In page. Connect to them. Engage.
4) Use Twellow to find targeted industry connections who are actively involved in Twitter. There is a related app on this site that you can use to search people by state or city, which is so important if you are a small business serving a targeted geographic area.
5) Steal contacts from your competitors. If you can find your competitors on social media channels, you can also find their links and followers. This is public information for all to see and so it is perfectly acceptable. P.S. They can do the same thing to you!
6) Use http://my.peoplebrowsr.com/ to do high-powered searches for relevant Twitter users by just about any demographic category you can think of.
7) Have you participated in Twitter “discussions” on subjects related to your area of interest? These discussions are demarcated with a hashtag (#) so you can search for the term and follow the trail of the discussion, whether you are following the people or not. Here’s an example. In the search field in the right hand column of Twitter, I searched for #SMROI because I want to find people who are talking about social media and ROI. I will see a timeline of the discussion and all the people who are participating. Follow them!

There are hundreds of ways to build targeted contacts but these are a few ideas that have worked for me and my clients. What is working for you? Please share in the comment section below.

This article is part of a series on creating business benefits through social media. Other posts:
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