Get Social: Small Business' Guide to Social Media Success Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Getting Started on Twitter Chapter 2: Diving into Facebook Chapter 3: Loving LinkedIn Chapter 4: Understanding Google+ Chapter 5: Using YouTube Chapter 6: Picking Up Pinterest Chapter 7: Promoting Your Social Channels Get Social: Small Business' Guide to Social Media Success Introduction If you haven’t heard about the virtues of social media for small business, you might be living under a rock like we were here at CorpNet.com when we first embarked on getting our business social! Social media is rapidly becoming the marketing tool of choice for businesses of all sizes. But for small businesses, tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are even more important, since they’re affordable to use (they just require the time to manage the accounts) and are a great place to connect with customers. Social media helps brands engage with consumers. What that means is that instead of forcing a customer to watch a commercial, view a print ad or click an online banner ad, a company can talk to customers directly (and believe us: they like being heard!). They can get feedback from customers about their experiences, as well as their thoughts about new products. Companies can find out quickly when a customer is unhappy through social media, and can take steps to remedy the situation. For customers, social media provides a great way to learn more about a company. A Facebook page for a brand, for example, might offer photos or videos of a product a person is considering buying. She might find that the company is hosting a contest that she then enters and tells her friends about. Social media creates a degree of trust between brands and consumers that you simply can’t get anywhere else. “But I Don’t Know The First Thing About Tweeting!” Fortunately, social media is easy enough to pick up, and because the tools are free, it fits perfectly into your small business budget (which is likely pretty small). That being said, if you don’t have the time to manage your own social media, you can hire a freelancer or marketing agency to handle it on your company’s behalf. It all comes down to what you have more of: time or money. Social media is great because it’s easy to measure what sources send traffic to your site using Google Analytics (also free). You’ll get a report of which sites referred traffic to yours, so you can see if your efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube or Pinterest are netting the results you want. If they’re not, you can easily shift gears and change your focus. Social Media is All About Branding All that being said, however, keep in mind that social media marketing isn’t about instantly doubling your sales. It’s about building trust and relationships with potential and existing customers. You do that by providing value, not sharing link after link about how great your products are and self promoting. 2 Get Social: Small Business' Guide to Social Media Success We’ll get into what you should share on each social site later in this guide, but the big picture is: valuable content. Whether that’s a link to a blog post (whether you wrote it or not), a video or a photo, it should deliver value to your followers. They should want to click those links because they know what you share is good stuff. The Big Players We’ll go in detail on each of these social networking tools, but to begin, let’s get an overview of the primary players in the social media space. Keep in mind: these will likely change, and others will be added to this list over time, simply because there are constant innovations in social media technology. • Twitter: great for sharing links and short comments in 140 characters or less. • Facebook: good for longer posts, videos and images. • Google+: great for sharing blog links and starting dialogue about them. • LinkedIn: groups are great for creating conversations around a specific topic of interest. • YouTube: excellent for sharing how-to videos. • Pinterest: ideal for sharing images that relate to the lifestyle your brand portrays. CorpNetNellie’s Social Media Tips 1. Social Isn’t the Place for the Hard Sell It’s hard to resist sometimes, but keeping the hard sell out of social media is the best strategy. Keep only 5-10% of your social media activity as self-promotional, and focus the rest of your efforts on growing trust. 2. You Don’t Have to be Everywhere There’s a lot going on in the social world, and you’ll make yourself crazy if you try to be everywhere. Instead, focus on one or two of the channels most relevant to your business (i.e. where your customers are) and dedicate your efforts there. Remember that having profiles that you never update makes your brand look shoddy, so in this case, less is more. 3. You Don’t Have to Keep Up With the Big Brands You’ll never have the deep pockets of a corporation, so don’t try to mimic big brands in their social media efforts, especially contests. Rather than giving away 10 iPads, which you probably can’t afford, give away products you can afford, and that your customers will appreciate. 3 Get Social: Small Business' Guide to Social Media Success 4. Social Media Isn’t “Free” While yes, it’s free to set up a Twitter or Facebook account, remember that it will cost you: in time and effort. Social media requires constant commitment, from keeping fresh content on your accounts to engaging your community. Unless you consider your time (or the time of your employees) worthless, there is cost involved with social media. For example, if it takes one employee approximately ten hours a week to manage social media accounts, you can assign a hard cost to the effort. 5. Don’t Measure Success by Follower Counts Starbucks has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter. You probably don’t, and that’s okay. As a small business, you shouldn’t get caught up in the numbers game or try to keep up with the big brands. Growing your community is important, but you should be focused on who’s engaging with you and at what levels. It’s tempting to pay a service that promises to deliver thousands of followers literally overnight. However, in the long run it’s more important to have a devoted, enthusiastic community. Be patient. It’s organic growth that matters. Things don’t (and won’t) happen overnight. 6. Learn From the Experts There are some great companies and brands doing great things with social media, so there’s no reason for you to reinvent the wheel. Get ideas for your own social media campaigns by seeing what other companies in your space (or other industries) are doing. But don’t be a copycat! Just because something worked for one company doesn’t mean it’s going to work for your community, and of course, copying isn’t ethical. Find your own path, but take notes along the way. How to Use This Guide We at CorpNet.com designed this guide to help you set up your social media accounts as well as develop a strategy for connecting with potential customers. We’ve broken the chapters down by each social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest). At the end of each chapter are Terms to Know. If, while reading the chapter you come across a word you’re not familiar with, flip ahead to the end of the chapter to find out its meaning. 4 Get Social: Small Business' Guide to Social Media Success Chapter 1: Getting Started on Twitter Twitter allows you to share updates in 140 characters or less. You’ll quickly learn how to say what you need to say in as few words as possible! You can follow others who have similar interests as you, potential customers or even competitors, and others can follow you. Creating a Twitter Account If you don’t yet have a Twitter account set up for your business, set one up here. Go ahead. We’ll wait. Fill out your profile in detail and include a link to your site, as well as your company logo or a photo of yourself. When creating your Twitter name, choose wisely. If you’re representing your company, go with your company name, or an abbreviation of it. If you’re branding yourself, you can use your own name. For example, we use @CorpNet to brand our company, but our very own CEO, Nellie Akalp, has her own Twitter account as @CorpNetNellie. Sometimes the content overlaps, but mostly it doesn’t. The company account is the voice of the company, whereas Nellie has her own distinct voice on Twitter. CorpNetNellie’s Twitter Tips • You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. Focus instead on people who have similar interests, are in the same or parallel industries, or who have talked about your brand or type of product. • Go beyond those that follow you and actively follow others. There’s no exact science to it, but aim to follow more than the number of people who follow you. • Use Twitter etiquette at all times! Pretend you’re at a dinner party. Don’t just talk about yourself! Ask about the other person as well, and focus on providing valuable comments.