How can small businesses benefit from social media?

Alice Elliott

Yesterday I gave a talk about social networking to a group of home businesses. I see this kind of business as embryonic enterprises for the future, as you never know which one will become hugely successful, and they also are very good at word of mouth referrals if they like what they hear!

I concentrated on the main four: Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. If anyone wants to see the PowerPoint Presentation I used during my talk, you’ll have to connect with me on LinkedIn to view it on my profile page!

Blogging is always first, as to me that is the most important. Ideally it should be treated as the hub of your business, a medium of expression and social interaction, an extension to your website that can be regularly updated, making it attractive to the search engines and feedable to other social networking sites. New material is fed to and from it, links transport spider activity from fully stocked blogrolls and overflowing comment boxes, and tags and categories stimulate searchable reactions and a researcher’s dream. Subscribers wait with bated breath for your next contribution, and Twitter transports your humble post to an unconceivable audience.

LinkedIn gives us order in the social networking world – you know where you stand and there is no nonsense to cloud the issue. Your CV-like profile could easily be scrutinised by prospective employers and even headhunters. Gather as many recommendations (and give back in return) to boost up your credibility. Explore the social scene through its Groups and use the Questions section to aid research to expand your business or solve a problem, and the Answers to spread your expertise while helping others – remember best answers are shown on your signature!

Twitter should be treated for what it is, instant messaging to a large audience. It is purely social (selling is not tolerated) and provides access to a huge amount of people you wouldn’t normally be able to meet. Use it to keep your ear to the ground – what are people saying about you? Are your tweets valuable enough to share? What is your competition up to? What has the person you most admire said recently? Are there any happy or disgruntled customers to respond to? What questions can you put into the Twittersphere to get almost immediate answers? What links can you glean to direct you to websites and blogs in your industry so you can learn more? OK, there’s plenty of silly antics going on, but light-relief is sometimes a good thing, and relaxed networking can gain you good contacts, especially if you have the same sense of humour!

And last but not least, Facebook. Seen as a purely social, this networking medium can be adapted for business purposes. OK, it’s great for keeping an eye on your kids while they’re travelling, catching up with your sister’s family in Australia and sharing your latest photos, (not mentioning sheep throwing and the like), but your personal profile is vital if you want to extend your Facebook uses further. Without it you cannot create group and fan pages, which can act like mini-websites or blogs that are totally searchable in one of the biggest websites on the net. Paste up your latest information in all forms of media, brainstorm some sessions, feed blog posts and answer comments and requests from your ‘fans’, while updating your status updates automatically appear on Twitter (careful what you say!). Treat it as an extension of your website and blog all over again…

This is a lot to cope with, and many worried expressions confronted me from the other side of the room as their owners puzzled how they were going to find the time to keep up with all of this. Don’t worry, you don’t need to social network constantly, just consistently. Either set aside specific times to update your profiles, or dip in and out during the day to catch up on what’s going on and pop in your contribution – you’d be amazed how much you’ll achieve! And if you really can’t keep up with it all, hire an online marketing business to do it for you – of course!

The importance of niches for business focus

Alice Elliott

I got a flat tyre last week. After it was duly changed by my husband (he did offer!) I had the task of sourcing a replacement.

There are countless garages that sell tyres. I approached the company that had provided my previous tyres, but found the payment methods online totally unsuitable, inefficient and inflexible (in spite of offering a large discount to pay online), plus they were unable to deliver for two weeks!

Don’t get me started on poor customer service. It was useless ringing up to complain, as the person on the other end of the phone hadn’t got a clue about inadequate shopping cart systems on websites, and neither did they understand about their dire tyre outsource system that could not deliver within a reasonable period of time.

So I turned to the trusty directories to find an alternative. Just Tyres is an outfit I usually overlooked, with no real apparent reason, but this time I gave them a try.

They do exactly what they say on the tin. They supply and fit just tyres. Because they are so focused on one aspect of the market, they were able to efficiently collect payment online, allow us to select the tyre we needed, immediately source said tyre, have it ready for me at my convenience, wait for me to get there through the terrible afternoon traffic, quickly strip the old tyre from the axil, and replace the new tyre at lightening speed.

No fuss, prompt delivery, efficient processes and excellent customer service. There wasn’t anything else to clutter up their performance. Their focus on delivering one product as best as they could in as efficient manner as possible was paramount. Now if their marketing was better they could become the top of their industry, outstripping their competitors through product, process and eventually price, not to mention convenience (a highly neglected factor many businesses choose to ignore).

Excellent service in just one niche will enable you to increase your efficiency, status, expertise, credibility, trustworthiness, relationship with customers, perfect your processes, maintain your reputation – whereas an outfit that offers everything under the sun is bound to suffer, since where is their focus?

What really stops you from blogging?

Many people have told me that they are afraid to start blogging. Digging further into this revealed a number of different fears, and not necessarily about the technology side, which I thought was the main reason. Yes, technology is a hindrance, but it is something that can eventually be overcome with guidance. It is the psychological aspects that can be real barriers.

One psychological area is how you appear to your public. Are you as good as your peers, so is what you write worth reading? Everybody else seems to have such intelligent things to say, and your little contribution will be swamped.

Not so! If you are really passionate about your subject, and know it inside out, what you write about will always be interesting to others. You are the expert here, so why not let others know about it? What you think is just ordinary may be totally new to others, especially if you are able to explain it in a different way to the other bloggers.

Another way to overcome this barrier is to watch and listen (read) other blogs, and follow (or subscribe to) experts as they regularly post. This passive observation will enable you to understand more about how others talk about their businesses, how they publicise their benefits and solutions, and how they increase their visibility and therefore their reputation.

It will enable you to sort out the real experts from the time-wasters who have nothing particular to say, and the latter should fire you up in to producing your own viewpoint to counteract their crass statements. Don’t just sit there stewing, correct it within your own blog!

Another way to contribute your two-pence-worth is through commenting. If you like what someone has posted (or even disagree), then leave a comment! It doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to be more than just ‘Nice post’.

I advise always to be polite, complimentary or forthcoming, even if you are totally disagreeing, to maintain your good character. Remember how horrid it is to receive negative responses that drain all your self-confidence, so don’t go down that road. Stand in good stead with other readers and encourage them to offer their own sides in the argument.

And another barrier is if you are unsure of your own credibility to write well. All I can say to this is, practice. I didn’t start out writing well, so I read lots of blogs and learnt a few techniques, and started writing posts to see how it went, and eventually I picked up a style that seemed to work.

One technique is to imagine talking to your readers, so write like you’re having a conversation with them. It will enable your readers to warm more towards you and your posts. If you find this difficult, try yabbering away into a dictaphone and then transcribe it as a post – this will train you into your conversational style; you can always edit it into good English later. And once you’ve accomplished this ability it will make writing posts that much easier.

If I haven’t covered all the reasons why this stops you from blogging, then why not let me know? If I have enough information I could write another post about it, and acknowledge my sources appropriately (thanks go to Helene Cooper and Ute Wieczorek-King for their ideas). And remember, leaving comments helps bring traffic to your sites too.