How can small businesses use Social Media?

[kadesmith]

This is a question that has been nagging at me for more than a year now.  I've played around on Twitter and LinkedIn, and am a frequent user of Facebook.

I really struggle to see how a small business can utilize Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Let's get the obvious, "Tell your friends about your business" post out of the way.  I have a friend that posts about his business everyday, the same thing, over and over.  I have since blocked his feeds because they are annoying.  I always pay attention to when someone makes a post about a new business they are starting because I want to watch and see how they use social media to grow, but it never seems to develop into anything more than a simple "I have a new business." I don't want to be the guy at the neighborhood Christmas party that everyone ignores because they think the only thing I will talk about is my business.

I've also tried doing the "Build real relationships on Twitter" approach.  It seems like everyone I chose to follow and try to become friends with was a bot. They didn't post anything, but "Inspiring Quotes" and "Random Facts".

I think my real question is "How do small business use social media, WITHOUT being annoying?"

[kadesmith]

Perhaps my problem is I have never been to a pub.

[ResslerMotors]

Are you a business that people are going to want to interact with?  Oddly enough, people aren't too keen on liking a Car Dealership (my business), but I have seen other companies get followers.

My favorite example of engagement is a company that does it's troubleshooting through Facebook.  If someone has a problem they post it on Facebook, and get it answered right away.  Every other company I see has to run some sort of competition, but this company (Schedulicity - I think that's how it's spelled), just had to be a great resource.

[SimonCullum]

I agree with Stephen, as per the 2nd part of my answer; ask the question as to whether your social activity will be sustainable once started and if the time needed could be better spent on other important tasks, at least for a while.

[firstconversion]

Consider whether you should be using social media at all.

It can be a massive distraction and waste of time that you can be spending on activities that you are good at and help your business more

If you are trying twitter, facebook and linkedin all at the same time, with no idea what you are doing, its no surprise it doesnt work - 3 painful learning curves all at once.

Pick 1, and be great at it, or spend your time doing something more useful

S

[SimonCullum]

Hi there,

To answer your real question, "How do small businesses use social media, without being annoying?"  ~  I have 5 tips for you.  It's by no means an exhaustive list, it's just 5 to consider and to start with:

1. Be engaging, don't simply broadcast, one-way conversations are annoying and won't encourage that many to actively converse and engage.

2. Content,  in order to have something worth communicating about, you'll need some great content, whether that be website based content or purely social content.  Having something interesting and topical to share and engage about is critical.

3. Join existing communities,  before being able to realistically build any social community of ones' own, become active in relevant existing communities, whether those be LinkedIn groups, forums, guest blogging... Becoming known and perceived as an authority in your chosen specialist areas can really help.

4. Don't be too opinionated,  by all means share your knowledge and views, just be careful not to force them on others, as that can easily become annoying.

5. Enjoy engaging socially,  if you enjoy engaging with people in social circles and get some satisfaction and value out of it, then chances are others will also.

An important point to note as to why some don't do so well when it comes to social online;  a lot of small businesses (and even large & medium ones) start out really well intentioned with their social networking initiatives, not realsing just how much resource it takes to be regularly, consistently engaging socially online and to focus on the reasons for being social in the first place, the social objectives if you like.

It often starts out well then becomes less and less regular with reducing value, purely because of the amount of time and resource it takes to participate in and be successful in social networking.

I hope all that is of some help to you,

Regards

Simon

[Ratesonline]

I hate to say 'it depends' but it really depends on the sort of business that you're running and what you're trying to achieve Simply adding more friends/followers doesn't, imo, correlate to more business and perhaps you need a different approach or goals.

E-commerce stores know their customers E-mail addresses/names and can easily build a following of people interested in their products. From that, they can create special offers or articles that these people would be interested in.

A plumber can add his clients and invite them to tweet him if they want any advice.

A consultant can publish articles on their specialist subject and post links to his blog.

A law firm can write a weekly round up of cases relevant to their specialist subject and tweet these to other lawyers to ask for their comments.

I tend to view social media as a pub. You don't want to sit there shouting at everyone and asking strangers to be your friend; that's just weird. But, if you start to spark up a topical conversation that some or a majority of the pub are interested in, and what you are saying is valuable information then people will listen.

You'll only be annoying if you sit in the corner shouting "BE MY FRIEND, BE MY FRIEND!" - try being a bit more tactful - write things that you know certain individuals would be interested in, show them and see if you can gain some traction through retweets and sharing.

[seoroyal]

Well  i think there you giving yourself the question already. Make sure you have interesting content to share and not just the random things. There are a lot of interesting blogs out there that you can retweet and people will follow you for that.

If you dont want / can't or dont have the time to write interesting  articles maybe ask some one to do it for you or just look on the web for good stuuf and retweet it.