Tips for building a small business social media strategy
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Listening. It should be at the top of your small business’ list if you’re developing a social media strategy. It’s not a coincidence two respected social media advisers both ranked “listening” as the focus area for small businesses.
Chris Brogan, social media adviser, author, Trust Agents, offers this advice, “Listen. And Listen Deeply.”
Scott Monty, head of social media, Ford Motor Company, “Determine where your audience is and begin by listening.”
How do you listen online? I recently shared a “how to” post for monitoring. Read it. Use it. Begin your social media listening stage.
Listening should be the FIRST PHASE of your strategy and continue through all stages (i.e. planning, execution, etc). Before you begin, know what you want to accomplish: find business leads, establish yourself as an expert, connect with peers, raise money, meet bloggers and journalists, etc.
This strategy is most likely part of (or compliments) your marketing and communications outreach, right? If you don’t have that in place, back up a few steps.
Keep these four things in mind when outlining your strategy: 1) Listening; 2) Emergence; 3) Sustainable; 4) Exit. Listening and emergence are self-explanatory. What do I mean by sustainable? If you, or the designated social media person, went away tomorrow how would your online strategy change? A sustainable plan means anyone could pick up where you left off, is familiar with the strategy and tools, etc. If your plan cannot be sustainable, build in an exit plan. This is literally the steps you need to take, including communication, before removing your online profiles. I recommend an exit strategy to all clients, regardless of whether or not their plan is sustainable.
A high level overview of categories recommended for your social media strategy:
- Listen and Monitor
- Manage
- Read, respond, share and engage
- Publicize
- Routine/habits
- Measure
Managing online networks and providing content can be time consuming, especially when you’re a small business owner. How do you keep it all straight? I’ve created a very simple tool I provide to my clients to help manage content, the social media tactic grid. It’s literally a table with social media/networks on the top and types of content in the left column.
EXAMPLE: If you provide “discounts” as content, select which networks are appropriate. These will be your social networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare) and not YouTube or Flickr.
These are a few of my tips to get you started. I also posed the question, “What tips do you have for small businesses developing an online strategy?” to several online networks. Here’s what they had to say:
Grant Gannon, “Use Google business listings. If I can’t find you online, I won’t look for you on the street.”
Noah Cohen, “Engage – don’t just talk at your audience. Listen, respond and communicate.”
Heather Lytle, “Monitoring. Having a concrete monitoring strategy to identify what is being said and who is saying it—then acting on it. Identify Opportunities. Small businesses often don’t realize how listening can identify opportunities. Who is talking about them often leads to who needs them. What is being said about the competition often leads to opportunities to step in. How to make a wrong a right. How to identify issues before they become a crisis.”
Ross Evans, “Offer engaging, two dimensional content/conversations/solutions for the brands consumers….When you invite your community in to play, you’re not the expert anymore, they are. Tough pill to swallow, but if you don’t give up some of the control over the conversation, you’re just offering a static, one-way street of useless noise.”
Mark Ragan, CEO, Ragan Communications, “ Never bore your audience. Riveting, funny, compelling content is key. Always has been. Always will.”
Amanda Vandenhurk, “It has to fit your business goals & be part of well-throughtout marcomm plan. And if you don’t how to begin or use SM then hire a PR professional w/ depth. Get it right from the start.”
Rebecca Ames, “Don’t get seduced by design. Use free/cheap & easy interfaces; keep it simple & scale up with demand. Focus on relationships!”
DJ Litten, “Drive people back to your site.”
What’s your tip for small businesses developing a social media strategy?
44 Comments on this post
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Richard A Marti Jr said:
Yes Sarah. I agree listening is critical. Years back Dr Covey spoke about “seek first to understand, then to be understood” This was and is great advice. Relationships that begin online are no different that those that begin IRL. I sense that at times people have an imaginary wall between the two. Especially people who are new to connecting through social media.
As companies ( and more importantly the people in them) wrestle with how to join the conversation, they have many questions. One of the best answers is in listening. I agree with Chris Brogan, and the age old advice of know your audience, which today is much more like a community. An audience you speak to, a community you engage in dialog.
Thank You Sarah!
March 1st, 2010 at 9:42 am -
Laura Click said:
Great tips, Sarah! This is wonderful, practical advice.
Another suggestion to throw in the ring is to BE REAL. I think that people can see right through the stiff corporate messages and PR fluff. A key to engaging with your audience is to find your voice and act like a real, live human being.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:49 am -
Social Small Biz said:
Great piece – let us know if you’d be interested in writing something similar for socialsmallbiz.com
March 1st, 2010 at 10:18 am -
Lissa Duty said:
Good advice for newbees to social media and also those they are using social media, but have no formal strategy.
My added piece of advice would be get training from others using social media effectively before starting yourself. So many get training from a buddy or friend, but they themself aren’t successfully using social media. How can they teach, if they don’t have the concept themself? So in other words, hire a social media strategist to advise you, you might pay out so money up front, but it will pay off in the long run!
March 1st, 2010 at 12:48 pm -
Trish Skram said:
All great tips! I liked Rebecca’s advice — don’t get caught up in design/image hype. So many organizations spend too much time on getting the image/design right that they forget about the point of the strategy in the first place. Content and engagement trumps!
March 1st, 2010 at 1:12 pm -
bill palmer said:
this is all good advise for pre-strategy research meeting, but appears to be more tactics and warm fuzzies to me than stategy. A workflow and process of indepth competitive benchmarking and keyword analysis to understand where, when, how, and why your prospects and customers are searching for information and having online conversations. the goals, metrics, content, etc. should flow from a deeper understanding of your customer conversation empowered by search marketing, PR, and social media to increase visibility, traffic, lead conversion, and sales.
March 1st, 2010 at 1:51 pm -
Cara Stewart said:
Great collection of tips, Sarah. Once small-business owners have mastered the art of listening, I also believe it’s critical to SHOW their community what they have learned. For example, if the owner of an IT services company learns its turn-around time is too long and s/he improves response time, let the community know their complaints and suggestions resulted in action. Another example: If the owner of a local restaurant hears that customers want more “green” choices, take the time to seek out local green businesses online to form partnerships and offer more value to their combined communities.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:09 pm -
Perrie Hayes said:
Sarah – Love your social media grid! I agree with listening in the social media sphere and picking up the gold dust along the way… it will surely make for a product enhancement or competitive advantage down the road. Also, other key thing to remember is leveraging the SM tools and relationships to create an extrinsic synergy that will push a whirlwind of activity to your front door.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:55 pm -
Canopy Bed Curtains said:
What an enjoyable post to read – thank you Sarah! I especially enjoyed the way you listed other peoples opinions about social media strategy from comments tweeted on twitter. A very nice touch to add!
March 1st, 2010 at 9:37 pm -
Sarah Evans said:
Thanks for sharing, Bill. You’re right…it’s not all about the “warm fuzzies.”
March 1st, 2010 at 10:22 pm -
Writing Jobs said:
Building a social media strategy is not as complicated as it sounds. In addition to the marketing experts, here I got some tips about the basic things we should consider:
* Analyze your staffing needs.
* Start when you are comfortable.
* Remember your manners.
* Be consistent and responsive.Hope these tips can add more. Good luck.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:40 am -
Cartoon Bears said:
This is an extremely helpful article, which I’m sure I’ll be referring to again and again as I am working on a social media strategy for an association right now. I’m going to take a look at some of your other posts on Mashable.
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:51 am -
how to start a blog said:
Let me add…
Know your customer’s WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). Sometimes it’s not about money or discounts.
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:04 am -
how to start a blog said:
@Richard A Marti Jr: am a big fan of Dr. Covey as well
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:06 am -
used tires said:
Listening is very important. Too many times people assume they know all the specifics but it’s imperative that you refresh yourself with the latest trends and areas of interests before you go ahead.
Till then,
Jean
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 am -
Net Age Web Design said:
Listening is important, and we all pretty much agree on that. I liked Ross Evan’s statement of inviting people into play, and allowing them some control over the conversation. A good conversationalist is a good listener, after all….
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:48 pm -
steve said:
What’s an example of a graceful exit if the plan isn’t sustainnable or becomes unsustainable? I’m curious.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:59 pm -
Writing Jobs said:
Most of us don’t get it. Few skills are as critical to our success as our ability to listen. And even though we may think we are good listeners, most of us are not.
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:23 am -
wholesale handbags said:
Do you think giving freebies offers by subcribing fan page or contents to win pizza coupons will work for small business industry to get maximum out of social media?
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:07 am -
Catering Florida said:
This time absolutely outstanding tips sara, as my business is Catering but some time hard to engage people with content, because many time i get confuse what should i do related to catering which peple can be like it…. but sure i wanna fully tryout your given idea hope it been work for my business.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:43 am -
youtube gir said:
Listening is very important. Too many times people assume they know all the specifics but it’s imperative that you refresh yourself with the latest trends and areas of interests before you go ahead.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:01 am -
sikis izle said:
Great tips, Sarah!
March 4th, 2010 at 2:04 am -
how to start a blog said:
Grant Gannon, “Use Google business listings. If I can’t find you online, I won’t look for you on the street.”
—
Google local listing is under utilized right now – even if your business is online you could list it using your mailing address. Just extra traffic that’s free and ignored.March 4th, 2010 at 6:43 pm -
Writing Jobs said:
I don’t know how these tips would work out for some people who are still new in the online marketing world.
@sikis – these are indeed!
@how to start a blog – I wonder how Google treat those local business listings because most of them has no follow attributes.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:44 am -
Cartoon Bears said:
Do you have your own online company? Do you blog? Are you trying to get into Internet marketing? Social media is a marketing way to increase the traffic to a website or blog.
March 5th, 2010 at 5:33 am -
Catering Florida said:
But local listing showcase are limited and some time its not showing local listing in area where we already located… any reason of that why happens so…?
March 5th, 2010 at 7:03 am -
how to start a blog said:
@Writing Jobs: the benefit of getting in Google local listing is the search traffic.
March 5th, 2010 at 4:02 pm -
Writing Jobs said:
@how to start a blog – is it proven? the way I see it looks like Google will crawl those lists instead of those links?
March 6th, 2010 at 5:51 am -
I.Zing said:
I fully agree. If listening is paramount in every personal relationship – “s/he is such a good listener” – why would we expect it to be any different in a business one? Often these days people treat business relationships like jobs they are not to happy with. Business is different. If you want your business to succeed, you have to love it, appreciate it like a personal relationship and, most of all, listen to it and all of its participants.
March 7th, 2010 at 7:38 am -
Barbara Bates said:
Nice post for people trying to do the right thing when it comes to developing a social media strategy. In the five steps you list…manage seems to be the one that people are struggling with. Would love to get your opinion on a new suite of tools…that social media marketers can use to engage with their brand influencers in social channels and get detailed performance measurement and analytics–from engagement all the way through conversion..not just awareness. Is this the kind of thing you think would help people manage their social media campaigns better? Let me know if you’d like to get more info…
March 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm -
darjeeling said:
Social bookmarking is the best way to promote your site, make it try to reinvent the wheel.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:27 am -
darjeeling said:
By the way thanks for sharing this info.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:30 am -
Cartoon Bears said:
Social buzz is becoming a ranking factor on its own, and the search engines, especially Google, does take this into account when calculating rankings.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:05 am -
how to start a blog said:
@Writing Jobs: Yes, I get traffic from Google local listing – their analytics tells me so!
March 10th, 2010 at 4:28 pm -
Catering Florida said:
In google local tools its shows impression and clicks on listing, so it will be helpful to analyze.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:32 am -
how to start a blog said:
also tells you how many times people have looked up driving directions to your business location in google maps.
March 12th, 2010 at 8:49 pm -
used tires said:
Yes, I use Google Maps quite often so it’s a very helpful supplement.
Till then,
Jean
March 14th, 2010 at 3:20 am -
Catering Florida said:
Google local tool also helpful to determine local hits and area for buisness…
March 15th, 2010 at 6:53 am -
Freelance Writing Jobs said:
If you want to be on the local listings better submit your sites to local directories.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:08 am -
Writing Jobs said:
@Catering – better be known in the local region because you can gather more customers.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:09 am -
Linda White said:
Give. Give something. Offer something. It does not have to be a coupon or a freebie – it can be expertise, advice, whatever. Something of value. It doesn’t even have to be something that YOU created – could be a link to an article, website or whatever. There has to be a reason for people to share what you post. If they share it, your strategy will work. If people do not share your posts, you won’t get the exponential blast that makes social media the magic pill. Give your attention, give your expertise, give your personality. Don’t automate. You have to take the time or you will be wasting the effort.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:08 pm -
Sarah Evans said:
Thanks to all for your comments. Yikes…I need to get a new post up!
March 16th, 2010 at 3:24 pm -
Cheap SSL said:
Great tips.
I think the key to make money online is doing some promoting to your business. Making money online is an amusing way to build an income through home based businesses. Most people that think about making money online generally relate to having an online business where you sell products or services.March 17th, 2010 at 4:31 am
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