It seems every major corporation and conglomerate has grokked on to social media as a broadcasting tool. As a result, there’s a drive for businesses of all types and sizes to make the leap from ‘broadcasting at’ to ‘communicating with’.
It’s a great idea for businesses and entrepreneurs to get inside the minds of their followers and fans. You have access to a wealth of feedback and inside information about your services through the eyes of your actual clients.
Having said that, if you operate in a town like Nanaimo with only 80,000 people you’ll be facing some challenges before a social media campaign starts working for you. Here are my ten tips for making social media work in a smaller market.
1) Tweeting is a luxury that you probably can’t afford.
Twitter is cool, but there isn’t much to be gained beyond the glory of tweeting. Realistically, you just won’t get a huge amount of followers, those followers won’t convert to business and unless you’re really active, most of what you say will get lost in the crowd. If you have a small hotel or restaurant you may see some success by posting ‘web only’ specials. I really only recommend it for businesses with 50 employees or more, or those who are already spending a lot of time marketing their business online.
2) Blogging is still awesome.
Blogging is still a great way to generate content, build links and boost your search rankings. Most hosting accounts come free with WordPress or some other blogging CMS and support text, images and videos.
3) Lifestreaming is the new blogging.
I could dedicate a whole post to this. Lifestreaming is a new way of documenting the activities surrounding your life using a chronologically-ordered collection of information. For instance, I have everything connected to my WordPress Blog including my twitter feed, my deviantART account, my Facebook fan page and my LinkedIn profile. I get good, link rich content and a free post every week with links to my activity around the web. Watch out for more like this in 2010, as the trend will be to invent new ways to aggregate everything for me in one place. It takes a bit to wrap your mind around it, but a good place to start is here.
4) Facebook fan pages.
Don’t link to your personal Facebook profile for business use unless they’re inseparable. Creating a fan page allows you to have the same posting and communicating ability, but limits customers to only seeing business related content, not your cousin Judd’s halava recipe.
5) Social media is the tortoise, not the hare.
Slow and steady wins the race. A new friend here, a new connection there. Unless you’re Gary Vaynerchuk, you should just be content to spend no more than an hour a day on social media marketing campaigns.
6) Examine your goals before diving in.
Different social media campaigns can get different results. Blogging will increase rankings and SEO, but isn’t always a great sales tool. Twitter may give a temporary boost of traffic, but the effects aren’t long lasting. Flickr is a great way to share photos, but won’t generate much for new business. You can increase chances of conversion with custom landing pages and links, but these strategies are usually beyond the purveyance (and budget) of most small business entrepreneurs.
7) Maybe you don’t need it at all.
Ignore all of the networks, TV shows, superstars, pundits and adverts and examine what your actual market is. Are there any other general contractors on Twitter? Are there any CGAs with Facebook pages? What % of people in Nanaimo do you think are on Twitter? What’s the dialogue like for the average entrepreneur? If you don’t see anyone doing it in your industry, don’t look at it as an opportunity to reach an untapped market, because it probably isn’t.
8) Try before you buy.
Organization and timing are very important and it will take you several hours to set up the social channels so before you commit to branded social media pages, launch a test campaign and see how you feel about the results. A simple one or two week campaign in the beginning is a great way to gauge the response of your customers to this type of marketing
9) How will you inform people?
If you build it, it will sit there. That’s my new motto for 2010, because it’s not enough anymore to just build a site and profile. Conventional SEO (page titles and content) are just a foundation these days and unless you are alone in the market, are probably not sufficient to build up decent rankings. Having a twitter page and a Facebook page will not entice people to communicate with you, you have to work it and continually provide value. Asking people to join is a great way, if you have a newsletter list. Advertise on your web site, and incentivize people who join and follow you with exclusive promotions.
10) Who dares, wins.
It’s not that the internet is dominated by 17 year old’s with a penchant for lolcats, it’s that the internet is dominated by 17 year old’s with a penchant for lolcats. Edgy content wins every time, so you’re better off having a video of a car driving through your front widow or a faux haunting than you are having walkthrough tours of your custom built character home. I’ve often said that a great social media campaign is one that gets people who would never use your product or service to talk about it.
That about sums it up, of course it’s up to you to decide if social media marketing is right for your clients. Be organized, be daring and you could be the next willitblend. You never know!
