Simply put, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are to businesses now what Microsoft Office and its tools like Excel, Word or Lotus 1-2-3 were to businesses in the past: new tools to master. These tools can increase your internal productivity and communication, help you find and hire good help, expand your business reach, stake your claim as a leader in your field, create avenues to new markets and increase your revenue stream. But there is a big but: You have to know how to use the sites to your business's advantage.
The Power of Tweeting
Twitter can be overwhelming to the new user. It's not uncommon to feel as though you are wasting your time in the beginning. You have 140 characters, including spaces, to be insightful. (That would mean ending this paragraph at the h in characters.)
It takes a bit of time to build a valuable network on Twitter, but it can be done and result in a bigger reach, better employees and increased revenue. The interactions themselves are easy and instantaneous, but the creation of a solid Twitter network needs a good foundation or it won't produce results. So how can your business be more effective on Twitter?
Be Human: As you embark on this journey, know that people like interacting with a human business. They want the people powering the company to feel within reach. Instead of having your logo as your avatar (the little picture that follows you around on Twitter), have the face of the company CEO, or a group shot of your employees. Place your logo as part of the background image. This humanizes your company to the consumer. Also, sign your tweets with your initials so consumers know to whom they are talking.
Tweet Ratio: Before you get started, keep in mind that a good ratio of sales tweets to engagement tweets is key to success on Twitter. Businesses that only advertise their sites and services will not succeed. You must also talk with people on your Twitter stream, offer advice and insights, and promote colleagues and other businesses.
Be consistent: Avoid becoming a social ghost town that dies after a few interactions. Have a Twitter engagement schedule and stick to it, even on the days you don't think you have anything to say. At a loss for words? Share something amazing someone else did, or simply join someone else's conversation. The key to growing your Twitter following and seeing results in your bottom line is to remain active and engaged in an authentic and believable manner.
Optimizing Facebook
Facebook can be a challenging environment to engage as a business. They tend to change the way the site looks and operates on a regular basis, which can create time management issues for the people in charge of managing the corporate account. Still, Facebook has become invaluable to businesses for reaching specific demographics, creating targeted and effective ads and customer investment in a brand, and for increasing search engine juice via social media optimization so your business appears higher on search sites.
Some things to remember about Facebook:
Always create a fan page (now a like page) for your brand, never a personal profile. Creating a profile for your business as if it were a person is a violation of the Facebook terms of service and gives you access to too much personal information. A fan page distances a business from any privacy and legal issues that could arise.
Use Facebook's custom tabs tool and FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to make a landing page for your fan page. That will allow you to convert customers immediately into likes for your page and then lead to the next step of creating customers for your business and new additions to your newsletter mailing list. Remember, the goal is conversion. Your time spent is only valuable if, after a few months of engaging, you have increased sales as well as awareness.
Once you have 25 likes on your page, grab a custom Facebook URL. Keep in mind that social media URLs are first come, first served, so if you are late to the game, you may not be able to get your exact company name.
Linking In
LinkedIn-the most business-oriented of the three top social media sites-has recently decided to emulate Twitter and Facebook by adding more social features. Among them, and most relevant to a small-business owner, are public company pages and public groups.
Public company pages give you a place to tell your LinkedIn network about your company, services and staff. Of more relevance to you: These pages are visible to new businesses and people outside of your network, and can include recommendations of your services. This is huge news as you no longer need people to connect with your personal page to give you a recommendation or endorsement. Now you can have them connect with your company page instead and recommend the services themselves for all to see.
The advantage of having a topical group or a group for your company or association is that it gives you a searchable and public platform for customer engagement about your brand or subject of expertise. It also provides your customers with a place to talk to you that is not as busy as Facebook or Twitter and that can have longer, searchable threaded topics.
Managing Social Media
Time management is the number one issue for businesses embarking on an online presence. There are several steps you can take right now to grow your online presence without giving up your valuable time.
Create an Editorial Calendar: Make an editorial calendar for your blog posts, Twitter posts, LinkedIn updates and group discussion engagement, and Facebook wall posts. Then stick to it. One major post per day on Facebook, minimum; two to five on Twitter (not counting conversations with others); and one per day on your LinkedIn group or page will be a great start. You may find you need to increase this as you become successful online.
Multiple User Management: Having one person updating your accounts on all three sites will only lead to burnout. While one person can and should spearhead the online effort to keep the brand on course and help direct engagement, you should have someone from each department helping. By spreading the work around, you are more likely to be diverse and interesting, and to avoid becoming a social media ghost town.
Have Scheduled Check-ins: Schedule your social media check-ins and brand monitoring to coincide with other already ingrained daily activities like checking your e-mail. Plan to check in online at least three times per day. Remember, this includes weekends and evenings (social media never sleeps)-another reason having many people helping will do wonders to share the load and create success.
Use Tools To Manage Your Activity: Tools like Seesmic.com, HootSuite, CoTweet, Tap11 and more can help you manage your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts as a company. They help schedule posts and let everyone on the account see how the company is engaging and when to avoid duplication and make sure the right person addresses the right questions as needed.
The Internet is a big place, and this advice has only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding value and success using social media tools. But it should get your business started. If you already had a presence that was not as successful, this should help you get over that hump and start seeing conversions from engagement to both brand awareness and sales.
Leslie @leslie Poston is co-author of Twitter for Dummies. She owns Magnitude Media, an emerging media and business development consulting service in Portsmouth. She helps businesses grow with social media, speaks on the topic and offers classes. Visit her at magnitudemedia.net or twitter.com/leslie.
Current Issue - May 2024