8 Things Every Small Business Should Know About Social Media

Marketing your small business online is becoming increasingly challenging as more people – your customers – spend less time browsing traditional websites and more time on social networks and blogs.

Traditional websites were once the prime advertising and marketing ‘real estate’ where advertising banners, text link ads and PPC ads helped bring traffic back to your site. Now, social media sites built around communities are becoming the highly reactive space where customers are much more likely to respond to your marketing efforts.

If your small business has yet to join Facebook, participate on Twitter or start blogging about your products and services, you have an opportunity to tap into a growing market of highly-targeted, interested buyers. Here are eight things your small business needs to know about social media:

#1: Social media marketing is less about you and your 'message'. Unlike conventional advertising where you are required to create a ‘pitch’ or catchy statement to grab the customer’s attention, social media marketing is first and foremost about participation. Any social media marketing you engage in needs to provide value for the receiver – whether you decide to share news or other information, a special offer, or make a request for opinions, the goal is to participate with – not pitch to – the community.

#2: Social media marketing is about listening first. When you start using sites like Twitter and YouTube to promote your business and get noticed, you’ll want to ‘listen’ to what the community is talking about before jumping in. Marketing your business on Twitter, for example, will involve posting replies back to your followers and talking about certain topic of interest already floating through your Followers’ Twitterstream. If you’re posts don’t have value for the community, you are far less likely to generate a strong following.

#3: Social media marketing is a long-term investment. Even when you’re blasting out links to all your followers on Twitter or promoting a campaign via Facebook, your true value comes from long-term participation and developing a community. Marketing using social media tools allows you to build and nurture a brand, not use a ‘drive-by’ method of marketing to the masses. Choose your strategies wisely.

#4: Social media marketing can be difficult to track. There are now dozens of analytics tools and tracking programs that can help you assess how well your marketing campaigns are performing, but it’s still difficult to quantify the actual value of each click, each response or each reply. Ultimately, the more you participate in different social media outlets, the higher the long-term return on your investment. As long as you’re on the ‘top of mind’ of the majority of consumers, you will be able to stand apart from your competition.

#5: Social media marketing isn’t a PR quick-fix. If you’re looking for mass amounts of traffic to your website or want to improve your brand image overnight, social media marketing is not the solution. Companies that thrive using social media tools are the ones that have nurtured a community, participated regularly and provided some solid input and resources for the community at large. This strategy can take months, even years to develop, and when it’s executed correctly, will benefit your brand in many ways.

#6: Social media marketing doesn’t have a formula. Unlike running PPC ads where you have rules about keywords, URLs and types of copy to use, or sending out press releases designed in a certain format with keywords and hyperlinks, social media marketing strategies don’t follow a step-by-step formula. Many campaigns are like grassroots marketing where you need to be as creative as possible to get the attention of your market; in most cases, your profile, the tone you use to communicate with the crowds, and the quality of your posts and contributions will determine how successful your social media initiative really is in the long-term.

#7: Social media marketing isn’t just for corporations. You may already be following world-renown companies on Twitter or seeing special ads by top brands on Facebook, but anyone can participate in social media. Small businesses can benefit most from social media marketing by finding the right communities, looking locally to find out what communities already exist, and providing highly targeted content and information to each of these groups.

#8: Social media marketing success relies on consistency. Being consistent with your social media efforts is essential for long-term gains. This may mean posting on a blog on a daily basis; defining a strategy to promote your RSS feed; updating your Twitter page every day; or setting up a series of promotions and campaigns on Facebook. The goal is to set up a system so that your participation on each of the sites is frequent enough to keep you at the top of the customer’s minds more often than not.