Back in the day of small towns and dusty “main streets”, word of mouth was what kept the small business owners alive.
That began to change as towns became cities, suburban sprawl developed, and mammoth shopping malls were built. The concept of marketing your small to medium sized business to individuals quickly became a thing of the past.
Well, word of mouth marketing, more commonly known as social media marketing, is back – and it’s more immediate and powerful than ever before.
The customer rules the marketplace today, and if you’re not actively building a presence in the social space, you will be left behind.
Convince Me!
The 3 most important reasons small businesses leverage social media are:
- Connecting with customers
- Visibility
- Self-promotion
Over the last few years, with advancements in mobile technology, social media marketing has changed how companies interact with customers and, more importantly, how customers interact with companies.
Social business conversations happen online, every second of every day, and you need to be listening. Online marketing – or social media marketing – is an extremely cost effective tool.
Social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms help you connect and communicate with prospective clients. Sharing links and articles with your fans and followers establishes you as a trusted industry thought leader.
And short videos, photos, and video testimonials shared with your community clearly show your brand personality.
That’s Too Much Work!
If you think that it all sounds like just too much work – you’re mistaken. Here’s an interesting statistic: mathematically, it only takes 20 people to drive increased interaction and sharing. The possibilities are endless, and if you play your cards right soon those 20 will grow to 2000.
That said, there are rules and guidelines that you should know before jumping into the social space.
What If I Blow It?
There’s an essential place for certain rules in our everyday society – if not we would all be living a la Lord of The Flies in our respective neighbourhoods.
There are just things you *don’t do*, out of respect and consideration for the people around you. It’s not much different in the social media marketing space.
Think of it as a cocktail party, or a business meeting. Take the same instincts and gut checks you would use in real life when interacting with people, and transfer them to your online marketing strategy.
- Be Respectful: Show respect, same as you were taught at your parents’ knee. Get a feel for your community, before plowing in with sales pitches or comments. Add value to their conversations. And learn when the fun starts – some Twitter communities are fun and frisky all day on Fridays – no surprise there.
- Be Yourself: Social media is about your – or your brand’s – voice and personality. When you fake it, it shows. If the offline you and the online you don’t match you will eventually be found out.
- Be Human: Everyone in this space is a human being. Some are more accomplished than others. Some are nicer than others. Just like out there in the real world. And because you’re human as well, you will make mistakes. But if you are genuine, have allowed time to cultivate and befriend your community, and treated them with the respect they deserve, you will find you have a group of fiercely loyal brand advocates ready to rise up in your defense. Then, just like in real life, you will be able to laugh it off and chalk it up to a learning experience.
In a nutshell, it’s best to keep your online small business marketing simple, real, trustworthy and honest.
Respond quickly to customers’ complaints or questions. Give them the same level of customer service online as you would offline. Share your latest news and company information with them, but keep it friendly and not spammy. And be consistent.
You will soon see a healthy, engaged brand loyal community of fans and followers, who are more than willing to tell all their friends and followers about you, as well as give your company the online ‘word of mouth’ traction that every company desires.
About Lindsay Bell
Great post, Lindsay! There’s a lot of really great advice here for any businesses making their first foray into social. “Respond quickly” is an incredibly important tenet to live by – businesses (and people) make mistakes, but allowing the situation to fester will only amplify the problem. We’re in an on-demand society and people expect to get answers right away. even if you can’t provide them, you have to let them know you’re listening.
Great advice, cheers!
@JulieTyios I sometimes wonder if we’re becoming too “rapid response”, I know I have no patience waiting for anything anymore!
But it’s the new way of the business world, and a great way to connect and bond with clients and customers. Thanks Julie!
I love this. I love its simplicity and its pace. I love the encouragement to get involved, which doesn’t stray into the blinkered enthusiasm for all things social that I’ve seen other people display when addressing this topic.
I interviewed a lawyer (when I was a journalist in the 1990s). He said “before the fax machine, clients would expect a response to their letters within a week. Now they fax you their letter and expect to hear from you the same day.”
I wonder what social media has done to that timeline..?!
Get involved or get left behind. So very true. But to temper that with sage wisdom is very welcome.
@flemingsean Thanks so much Sean! I wrote a somewhat misty and maudlin blog post awhile back about how “we used to wait” – Arcade Fire does an incredible tune of the same name – it boggles the mind really how rapid the world has become. But I love it when it works in my favour! ;D Enjoy the rest of your day!
Thanks so much Sean! I wrote a somewhat misty and maudlin blog post awhile back about how “we used to wait” – Arcade Fire does an incredible tune of the same name – it boggles the mind really how rapid the world has become. But I love it when it works in my favour! ;D Enjoy the rest of your day!
Awesome post Lindsay! One of the hardest advice to abide by as a company is to be human. Funny how we’ve been conditioned to live a business existence the minute we walk through the corporate doors! It’s only business as everyone says. Park your emotions at the door! I’ve worked with companies who tried to “say” they were social but deleted comments on their Facebook pages and chose to run social media like a promotional campaign. It’s not necessarily a new channel that runs similar to any other marketing channel. It has its own set of rules and agenda. If you embrace it, you take the good and the bad… and you’d better be ready for it!
@hessiej ”…you take the good and the bad… and you’d better be ready for it!” – Love that Hessie. That should be at the top of every pitch to “take a company social”. As for parking your emotions at the door (and you’re so right!), I don’t know if you’ve read Francois Gossieaux’s books or heard him talk about humanizing the enterprise, but I have and he’s amazing. He takes it back to the most beautiful mix of human evolution and today’s business (science geek here!) – whether you’re wearing a mastodon hide or a bespoke business suit, all of the most basic evolutionary drives/needs that helped create modern man are still actively at play in people today (though we tend to keep them in check)! Tribalism, bonding, sharing information, trust, honesty, connecting with others – we still viscerally and deeply respond to these key emotional behaviours that allowed early man to survive and thrive – and they are all things that can and should be brought into modern day business and customer service. Social media has finally achieved that. Now, back to my National Geographic mag! ;)
@EmmaJLogue Thanks for the share Emma!
@julietyios @jugnoome
@belllindsay @JugnooMe Nice article, couldn’t agree with you more http://t.co/MR5g97Oy
http://t.co/FRUUlGoA
Thanks, @MarcoMediaVideo – glad you liked it. ^HA
Ok, ok, I see that I must become, a little bit, more social. You won.
Would you like to know my biggest source of high quality followers on Twitter? I mean people above 10.000 followers. My paper.li newspaper where “I” talk about them and not me. So I’m having more social results by spreading the word about others and not myself. Not that this means that I get my content shared more but at least it’s a beginning.
So probably it’s time to go from being a social media caveman to a social media hunter-gatherer. I just hope Jugnoome will help with this as I don’t have enough time to be sucked up by the social media thing as I have to write content first. We’ll see.
@Andrea H. | The Hypnotism Weekly See! You’re evolving already! LOL I think you made a super point and provide a concrete example here about what is key about social – engaging with other people, sharing their content, and making them feel valued and – for lack of a better word – special! You’ve proven it works. Not get outta that cave and start gathering!
Thanks for stopping by Andrea, cheers, LB