You and your small or micro business need to have a social media presence. That we know. If your potential clients, customers, and audience live on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and so on, then it's only reasonable that you go to those places to reach them. They ain't coming to you.
Rarely do small businesses have the resources to hire a social media manager, meaning the fate of your online social presence likely rests on your shoulders. Even if you have an employee or intern whom you can charge with spinning a social Web, that person still needs input from you.
1. Write Down the Results You Want
I see so many businesses (not just small ones, either) set up social-media profiles without having any clue what they want to happen. Ask the person in charge, and the answer will be something terrifyingly vague, like "to engage with our audience," which doesn't mean diddly-squat.
Do you want to provide answers and assistance to your customers or readership? Do you want them to visit your website? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want to build a relationship so that the customers are now thinking more about your brand or business and are developing a positive image that they will later share with their friends? What do you want to happen?
If you don't know what results you want, using social media will be a huge waste of your time and resources. Define what you want to happen as a result of being on social networking sites, and write it down. Writing forces you to think through your ideas clearly and fully. Writing is a heightened form of thinking (that's why writers are so smart). Whatever you write down in this exercise, that should be your social media mission statement.
2. Decide Where to Be
Just because you read about Pinterest or Instagram attracting millions of users doesn't mean your business will benefit from being on those sites. Decide where to spend your social time based on the desired results and likelihood of payoff.
One of the best ways to help you decide is to find out if people are already talking about your business or brand on various sites. The next three tips are site-specific tricks for doing so:
3. Find Out if Your Business is Already on Facebook
On Facebook, use the search bar to look for your business or brand. It's entirely possible it already has a Place presence, in which case you'll want to claim it. You can also see how many people "like" your business and are talking about it.
4. Find Mentions of Your Business on Twitter
On Twitter key your domain name into the search bar (assuming you have an active website, of course). A Twitter search for a domain, like "pcmag.com" will turn up instances tweets that site it, even if the URL has been shortened using a URL shortening service, such as bit.ly, for example.
5. Find Out if Pinterest Users are Pinning Your Content
Want to know if content from your business is already on Pinterest? A good trick to know is to type the following into your address bar: http://pinterst.com/source/domain/ replacing "domain" with your business' homepage URL, for example with "geek.com" as shown in the image.
6. Broadcast Your Purpose
As you decide where to put your business within the enormous world of online social sites, be clear about what your business is and why it's on the various sites when setting up your profiles. Fill in descriptions, "about" information, and other indentifying content with clear, tight explanations. Refer back to your main business mission statement and your social media mission statement. What is the business or brand (or "who are you?" in the case of self-employed people) and what will you do on the social site?
7. Fulfill the Promise
On Facebook in particular, do what you promised. Did you dangle a carrot to get Facebook users to "like" your page? Then follow through and give them the exclusive offers, coupons, updates, photos, news, or whatever else you said you'd deliver. It's not enough for Facebook users to "like" your business once. Engage with them. It's what you wanted when you set up the page, and it's what your "likers" wanted when they liked it.
8. Be More Than a Business
People connect with people on Twitter, so, even though you may be tweeting and facebooking as a business, tell your followers who you are and why you are in charge of the account. Include this information in your bio or "about" information. Something as simple as, "I'm Uncle Artie, CEO of Uncle Artie's Widgets" will do. From time to time, post information that reminds your followers that you are a human being with depth and interests. Social media users really do appreciate a human touch.
9. Don't Push Only Your Own Content
No one likes a self-obsessed egomaniac (I know, it's hard to believe), so, in addition to posting content about your business, also discuss other relevant issues, businesses, brands, or ideas—anything that makes you excited. This tip directly relates to tip 8. People who are passionate about a wide range of subjects are interesting, and interesting people attract followers. Trickle little bits of your passion into your social media presence, maybe one in every ten posts or so. Skip taboo subjects (politics, religion, money), but share whatever it is that ignites your enthusiasm.
10. Keep a Fresh Stash of Photos and Images
Do post photos and refresh images in all your social media accounts—except the profile picture, which should be constant for at least a year at a time. Keep a stash of photos from your work environment, the people in your small business, outings that spark your entrepreneurial creativity, prototypes of the goods you sell, whatever. Reserve these photos and share them intermittently, rather than vomit them at your followers all at once. When you save the photos, name them intelligently so that it's easy to post them later and add the right caption.
11. Learn Basic Image Editing
You don't need to be a professional graphic designer to know how to spin an image counter-clockwise, crop it, resize an image without squashing it, and adjust the color, but having those few skills makes a huge difference in the quality of the images you share on social sites.
12. Use an Aggregator App
Efficiently manage all your social-media profiles from one place with a social media-aggregator app. These apps, some of which you can use right through a website while other are downloadable, let you post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social sites from one place, as well as read your incoming direct messages, replies, and so on. A few apps I like are HootSuite (free to $5.99 per month for Pro, 4 stars) (shown above), TweetDeck (free, 4 stars), Seesmic (3.5 stars, free), or the Hibari Mac app ($10, not rated). See also "21 Great Apps and Tools for Social Media."
13. Daisy-Chain Updates
If a social media-aggregator app sounds like it's more than you need, an alternative way to manage multiple updates is to daisy-chain various social networking sites together. Most people know that you can set up Twitter and Facebook so that all your posts to one of those accounts appear on the other. You can daisy-chain multiple services in this way, for example, Google+ to Twitter to Facebook. But another way to achieve the same goal (but with more control over what exactly you chain together) is to use a free service called IFTTT, which stands for "If this, then that." For example, you can set up a rule that says, "If I post to Twitter, then also post the same thing to Facebook." You don't have to know a lick of code to use IFTTT, either. It's very simple.
14. Always Add Descriptions, Captions, Comments
When you share links, photos, and videos, diligently add a description, caption, or comment. Repeatedly posting without those descriptors is a clear indication to your followers that you're not thinking about what you post. You're just barfing spam at them. In addition, when a user comments on your content, acknowledge them. This doesn't mean you always have to have the last word, however. A simple "like" or reply of "thanks" can go a long way toward nurturing a good relationship with your audience.
15. Lock Down Tweets to 100 Characters
Twitter gives you 140 characters to use in a tweet, but you'll see more mileage out of tweets that are only 100 characters. Shea Bennet, co-editor of AllTwitter.com, explains that you need to reserve 20 characters so that other people who retweet your content can add their own comments or a link. See also How to Write a Better Tweet."
Do you have an indispensible tip about using social media for business? Share it in the comments section below.
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