Why Use Social Media?
The hottest topic on the Web today is social media. Popularity of sites such as Twitter and Facebook have captured the imagination of traditional media and marketers alike. With Facebook's claimed 500+ million users and more daily page views than Google, it is a compelling platform for businesses to communicate with customers and attract new customers.
Let's face it, as business owners, we often spend enormous amounts of time by our selves working on our business and in our business. It is good to have a place to connect with people, and social media provides a great way to connect with our peers and our customers.
What is Social Media?
Social Media, in the generic sense, is nothing more than a place for people to connect and share. How people connect and what they share can vary greatly. Sites like Twitter and Facebook allow people to share just about anything, but how they connect is a little different. Twitter focusing on brief, fast moving conversations. Facebook having a more in-depth interaction with threaded conversations and much more interaction with the site itself, with things like social games and applications. Sites like Flickr allow people to share images and people can comment on them. LinkedIn is primarily concerned with building business relationships and sharing your business experience, though it has grown to be a much richer experience.
Arguably, any forum or bulletin board can be considered social media. Blogs, for that matter, can be very social places. They way these types of sites differ from what we usually think of when we talk about social media is that most blogs and forums are appealing to a particular group, or common interest. For the purpose of this discussion, we are going to focus on sites that are really general in their appeal, and allow the members to use as they please and are either not policed or very lightly moderated.
How to use Social Media?
So, you run a serious business, and you are looking for a way to effectively use social media, but you don't have time to sit around posting status updates all day long. How do you take some of the drudgery out of social media? How do you build a following?
Well, in our upcoming Social Media series, I am going to show you some quick tips and tricks to building a social media empire. With some fore thought and some free (and paid) tools, you can automate much of your social media campaign.
The first thing to keep in mind at all times is that social media is a communication paradigm, not unlike traditional networking. The trick is to listen and pay attention. You must give people what they want, or you will lose your audience. Having your information on a social media site does not guarantee fans and followers. This is not a billboard or a television commercial. If you treat your audience as sheep, they will leave or ignore you.
The second thing to remember is we are building relationships. This is often overlooked in our zeal to promote our business to the maximum audience we can muster. Many lose sight of the fact that most of our business actually comes from word-of-mouth and referrals. Instead of trying to build a network of advocates, so many businesses I see run around the social sphere friending and following everyone they can in the hopes that they get someone else to push their direct sales.
Instead, think about those whom you can actually help, the people who usually refer a business like yours to your clients. If you are in the mortgage industry, follow and friend real estate agents. If you figure out who your strategic partners are and be kind to them, you will find success!
Something I learned from the networking guru, Andrea Nierenberg, is to promote other people. People love to be mentioned, and you will seem like a hero and get exposure to their networks as they share your message. I love to put things out there that may help my customers, we're a team. When I finish a Web site, I will put a picture on Facebook and tag the customer. I will tweet my customer's blog posts, exposing them to my networks.
The last thing to keep in mind at all times, be professional, be personal, be positive. One of the reasons people prefer small businesses is because they can actually work with a human. Don't be a robotic corporate advertising machine. There is enough negativity on the Web.
Which Social Media to use?
There are thousands of different social media sites, some we know well, and others that are great, but not as well known. Usually, these sites offer some appeal or benefit that makes them great for a specific social purpose. And the landscape changes very rapidly.
Let's take probably the most well known and used of all the social networks in history. Yes, your business needs to be active on Facebook. It is a very engaging platform, and very likely many of your customers spend hours everyday there. What's more, people often will post about their needs and problems, which translate into opportunities for you to provide the solution. But not everyone is on Facebook. In fact, I know some people that refuse to use Facebook for various reasons.
I, for one, was a bit of a hold out on Facebook. I saw people spending so much time (that I do not have) on Facebook and the games have no interest to me. Twitter is so much more my speed. Quick messages and easy sharing are what I need.
A couple of additional values I receive from Twitter include:
- I get my required reading from the people I follow who post links to interesting articles.
- If I am having problems with a particular service (like an ISP), I do a quick search on Twitter and can tell if it system wide or just me.
- Many times, I can get a faster response from Twitter that by calling the company directly.
Having a LinkedIn account used to just be about having an online resume. Now it is so much more. You can make connections with people and businesses, create events, make recommendations, answer questions much like Facebook, but with more of a business focus.
LinkedIn has really stepped up it's game to keep from being over shadowed by the other extremely popular social sites. With easy Twitter account integration, it is easy to keep up your activity, and the new "Apps" features that can do things like import your blog posts and setup a portfolio.
http;//www.myspace.com
Ok, we all remember the nightmare that was a myspace profile. This do-it-yourself wonderland of gaudy was the haven of teenagers and indie artists.
Well, I think with the mass exodus to Facebook about 3 years ago, myspace has really tried to clean up its act (and profile pages :). By focusing on their bread and butter users, mainly music artists and entertainers, they have actually made a pretty compelling reason for businesses to take a look.
If you are in the music or entertainment industries, myspace is actually a great place for your social media campaign.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Well, this is certainly true on Flickr, the social image sharing site. We all have images for our business, before-and-afters, product shots, our favorite customers. Maybe you are in a more creative field, photography, tatoo artist, ehem, Web designer. Share your work on Flickr.
The great thing about Flickr, I think, is the community. It seems to be very light hearted and fun. People are very encouraging when they comment on each others photos.
I know what you are thinking, can't you just share photos on Facebook? Why yes, yes you can. And I encourage you to do so. The advantage to sharing on Flickr as well is that it is a dedicated community for images. While not as large as the Facebook community, I really like what I have seen.
The final advantage of Flicker over Facebook is that you can store high resolution images on Flickr. Facebook down sizes images before storing them. This may not be a problem for most, but if you really want to show off a high quality image, Flickr is your best bet.
If you wish to share video content, YouTube is the big dog. If you've ever made a television commercial, share it on YouTube. Many professionals participate in conferences and seminars. If possible, record them. Post them up on YouTube.
YouTube offers many ways to share your videos on other social networks, and offers an embeddable player so you can put the videos right on your Web site.
If you have video, you need to be on YouTube.
Tip of the Social Iceberg
This list of social media sites is in no way conclusive. I just wanted to offer a brief overview of some of the top social media sites that businesses should be taking advantage of and a quick way to get started with each. In the following posts, I will delve deeper into each and share some tips and tricks that will help you create that vast social media empire you so desire to rule!
If you have any great social media sites you would like to share with us, please comment below. If you have any questions about how to get started or are looking for ways to leverage social media in your business, feel free to comment or contact us directly.
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