St. Louis Missouri (MO) Small Business Social Media Marketing

I love sharing other posts from some of the most brilliant minds in social media marketing. Samir Balwani is one of those people!
Enjoy this great article, the original can be found at: http://mashable.com/2009/09/30/small-business-strategies/

5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

September 30th, 2009 | by Samir Balwani

Samir Balwani is an emerging technology strategist at Morpheus Media, a firm specializing in Social Marketing, SEM, and SEO. You can follow him on Twitter @leftthebox and get his newsletter.

Social media marketing and the businesses that utilize it have become more sophisticated. More small businesses are beginning to understand how to best leverage online tools to build a community and recognize that engagement and interaction are the foundations of social marketing, but most don’t know what’s next.

What follows are five advanced strategies for small businesses that may already have small online communities and understand how to create an online presence, but don’t know what to do next.

What Is An Advanced Strategy?

The definition of an advanced social strategy is a technique that goes beyond the normal social media presence. It introduces or reinforces a marketing message while pushing a user to another profile or business site. Before moving forward with an advanced strategy, it’s important that your business understands social marketing, has experience engaging consumers, and that you possess a basic understanding of online marketing.

Strategy 1: Multimedia Usage

The term “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been truer. Consumers are now using the web to look for product pictures and videos; they want more information and want to see what they’re considering buying. The good news is that it’s easy for a company to create and publish videos and pictures.

In addition to taking photos of products, you can also take pictures at office events as a way to highlight company culture. This not only helps convince others to work with you or to buy from you (consumers see that you are down to earth and one of them, instead of a stuffy company), it also helps your HR department recruit new employees. Who doesn’t want to work for a company that celebrates birthdays and has a good time?

Videos are useful for explaining complex how-tos or concepts. Showing step by step directions can have a greater impact than even the most well written article. Businesses don’t have to invest huge sums of money to create good videos, either. I highly recommend the relatively cheap Flip camcorder, which takes great videos and is easy for even a non-technical marketer to use.

Multimedia can break down the faceless business-to-consumer sales flow and make your company appear friendlier. Use videos and images to show that your business is fun, you care about your employees, and most importantly, that you care about your customers.

Example: WorldMusicSupply.com

WorldMusicSupply.com, an online retailer of musical instruments and accessories, has used YouTube (YouTube) to build a strong online community. Their channel has built over 7,000 subscribers and has over 260,000 views.

Strategy 2: Integrate Offline and Online Advertising

Many small businesses do some sort of offline advertising, whether it be radio, print, or cable. Social marketing allows a business to extend their offline sales pitch.

Including your Facebook Page or blog URL in offline ads act as social proof, inviting potential consumers to see your community and increase trust in your business. Not only can integrating online and offline advertising help the conversion process, but it can also help build your community. Introducing potential consumers to your social profiles means they may join your community now and buy later.

Strategy 3: Message Adaptation

As businesses start to become more sophisticated with social media they are starting to leverage more online platforms. However, most deliver the same message over multiple platforms instead of tailoring communications for each individual site.

Social platforms each have an ecosystem of their own. What might be acceptable on Tumblr (Tumblr) might be considered spam on Facebook (Facebook). A specific style of writing might spread on Twitter (Twitter) but fail on FriendFeed (FriendFeed). Understanding that each site is different and then customizing your message ensures they do well on each respective site.

Not only does customizing messages across sites help the message spread but it keeps users from receiving multiple identical communications. Be sure to maximize your potential by sending a user that follows the business on Twitter and Facebook two different messages, instead of the same thing.

Strategy 4: Local Social Networks, Beyond Yelp

For a small business, local search can be a big win. Being visible to consumers looking for a business in their area is extremely important. Make sure your site is included in local business directories in order to help ensure that consumers find you when they need you. Sometimes finding that many sites can be difficult, however.

First, make sure you check your competitors. Where are they listed? Check their inbound links to check for business directories you can add yourself to. Also, make sure your business has been added to Google Maps (Google Maps), using the Local Business Center.

Take the time to include all the information you can and update any old news. For many consumers, this will be their first interaction with the business.

Example: Bella Napoli in New York

Bella Napoli is a small pizzeria in New York that has done a great job of making sure they appear in as many local searches as possible.

Strategy 5: Contests and Discounts

Building a community is only the first part of social marketing. Using that community to drive sales, propagate marketing, or crowdsource operations is the true power of social media. One way to excite the community is to collectively do something to create a contest or offer an exclusive discount (i.e., the contest can create competition between users). Not only does a contest build buzz organically but if contestants need to, for example, publish an article that gets the most comments in order to win, the contest itself becomes viral.

A good social media contest should include some sort of sharing or virality as a requirement for winning.

Discounts are also a great way to connect with your community. By giving exclusive coupons to your social community, you’re rewarding and reminding them that you are not only a brand to engage with, but also to buy from.

Example: NetFirms.com

NetFirms.com decided to make it easier to register a domain by allowing people to do it via Twitter. Those who participated or spread the word by tweeting, were also entered into a prize drawing.

Conclusion

Creating a basic social media presence is easy enough, getting your community to actually do something is more difficult. Taking advantage of these strategies can help you build your community, make your marketing more effective, and incentivize buying.

Social Media Marketing – St. Louis Small Business Owners View This Great Video!

Jordan Julien got it right when he wrote this article- see it here: http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/121581

He also made another statement that I think provides the most clarity of all when it comes to social media marketing:

“…Individuals NEED to infuse their personality/ beliefs into their brand to create a corporate brand that deserves respect.

I agree, that brands built from the bottom-up, should consider my advice as a progressive goal. Many brands, at this point, have tenants in charge of marketing. (People in charge, who simply want to make things a little better than when they first came into the position; CMO’s, CEO’s) Rather than those, who have invested their personal identity into their business.

These are the people that need to invest, and re-invest, into creating a brand that will promote confidence; and a brand that can be identified with.”

5 primary models a brand can use to communicate with its audience via social media.

I suggest there are 5 primary models a brand can use to communicate with its audience via social media. (These models can be applied to other media as well, but some work much better, and are much easier to execute using social media.)

1. Direct Communication
2. Communications Catalyst
3. Cooperative Communication
4. Participatory Definition
5. Brand Embodiment

Direct Communication: Occurs when a brand communicates its message directly to the audience.

Timeline: Instant

Participation: Minimal

Example: Youtube Video (Dove Evolution)

Communications Catalyst: Refers to a brand that encourages or provides the means of communication between two or more customers.

Timeline: Short

Participation: Minimal

Example: Crowd Sourcing (Best Buy IdeaX)

Cooperative Communication: Is a type of participatory marketing, where the brand proactively participates with its audience.

Timeline: Intermediate

Participation: Results proportional to participation

Example: Dynamic Facebook Page (Dew Labs)

Participatory Definition: The opening of a brand to influence, or re-design by its audience.

Timeline: Intermediate to Long

Participation: Minimal, but ongoing for better results

Example: Customer-Generated Branding (Doritos Undefined Flavour)

Brand Embodiment: Happens when an individual, or group of individuals, develop such a strong affinity for the brand that they will recommend it without being prompted. (Of course this also means, that if prompted they’ll recommend the brand, and also means that it’s their brand of choice.)

Timeline: Long

Participation: Substantial, and ongoing

Example: Apple* (Check out the # of related videos & comments)

*Note: Apple isn’t the best example, because they didn’t strictly use social media to follow this model. A better example might be Best Buy.

It’s important to know what model you plan on following, and map out the way to achive your goals. The knowledge that there isn’t just one way to participate in social media can help you plan the most effective campaigns. (Many brands follow the ‘Cooperative Communication’ model, but might achieve a higher ROI using a different model.) It’s also important to note, that multiple models can work together to provide a higher ROI; especially when dealing with different types of content.

10 Reasons Why Social Is Your Future SEO Strategy
by Adam Singer in SEO, The Social Web

Great article / post that illustrates the relationship between SEO and social media marketing- a must read for every small business owner!

http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/08/19/social-seo-strategy/

Small Business Owners- Social Media and SEO Marketing Cycle

Here are 10 reasons supporting the above graphic, that social is your future SEO strategy:

1.  The engines are continuously getting smarter

Make no doubt about it, the search engines are only getting smarter at interpreting links and user data.  It is evolution right before our eyes as their algorithms advance side-by-side with how we use the web.  The engines already know how to treat different kinds of links and will only get smarter at it.  The value of truly earned organic, editorial links will only continue to increase in value.

2.  Those with a strong social strategy get a growing amount of editorially-earned links daily

If your brand isn’t publishing content to the web and involved in building a thriving community of subscribers, you will forever be positioned behind competitors agile enough to do so.  This is because while you can keep trying to build links arithmetically to static content, your competition will be earning those ultra-valuable organic links daily  as their community will be conditioned to anticipate quality and be ready to share.  Their link growth will be both organic and exponential, not arithmetic.  Don’t handicap your brand on the web by throwing up red tape and making it difficult to publish compelling content.  Agility is a factor.

3.  Fresh content = more hooks in the water for search

Simply point, the more content you have on your site, the more you are going to cover the spread of the long tail related to your niche and snag more traffic from the engines.  Also fresh content keeps your site updated, which gives users a reason to come back.  People don’t want to visit static sites, we’re already too used to sites being social.

4.  The engines like frequently updated sites

Feed those indexes with fresh content and get rewarded with frequent visits by the search spiders.  Keep at it long enough and content from your site should get indexed in just a few hours after publishing.

5.  Social web success brings increasing returns

Popular sites, blogs or brands only get more popular, success is self-reinforcing here.  A positive reputation builds upon itself over time and will cause you to receive links and attention at increasing returns if you stick with it and push through the dip.

6.  Social is sustainable

Bearing you nurture your community and function as an honest, valuable contributor, a social strategy is highly sustainable.  You’ll never run out of fresh content and ideas to build your community, web traffic and links if you are truly that interested in the subject matter.  Besides, communities inspire so much, if you build it properly ideas should emerge naturally.

7.  Not only earn links, but digital PR

Links are nice, but it’s not all about links – getting that digital ink and endorsement from influential members of the community is going to help build your digital reputation.

8.  Communities are self-reinforcing

Create a popular community/destination and it will naturally propagate itself over time.  Communities with interested members want to see that community grow and succeed.  People within niches are connected to the rest of that niche, especially on the web – so if you do something worthwhile enough you should, in time, permeate the niche.

9.  The people who find your site through social are the people most likely to link

Yes, only 11% of the web knows to use RSS.  Guess what, that 11% really matters – those are the people savvy enough to share your content in meaningful ways to reach the rest of the web.  People finding you through social efforts are the same people blogging and using social web tools fluently.

10.  Compelling content wins

Notice how the cycle starts with compelling content – without this you have nothing, no other parts of the cycle matter.  The social web as at a larger level will link to the best content naturally, you can’t win against competitors who have this on their side.  And both search and social will only keep getting better at filtering, there is no reason to be boring – unless you want to be ignored.

Quick conclusion:

Search feeds social and social feeds search, there is no mistaking this.  Enable success from both directions to feed the other and your returns will steadily increase over time.