What I'm about to say won't be popular with everyone who's running a small business. It's just this: before rushing into creating a Facebook page,Twitter account, business blog and so forth, invest some time (and/or money) in some social media strategic planning.
Small (and micro) business owners are notoriously bad at marketing planning, and no wonder. They often don't have the luxury of marketing departments, communications teams or staff who can devote their time purely to marketing. It's invariably down to one or two people, who are usually responsible from everything from filing the VAT returns to getting the new business in.
So I'm not surprised when people say they've had enough of the TALKING about social media, so now they want to see RESULTS. Which usually translates into 'the theory is all very well, but we want to get stuck in, hands on, start selling things from a Facebook page and getting PR coverage via Twitter...can you teach us that?'
But actually, you don't need to go to a workshop to find out how to set up a Facebook page or how to use Twitter, Tweetdeck, AudioBoo or anything else. You just need to do it - experiment, get familiar with the tools.
Set up a dummy account or play around with a personal profile if you don't want to do your experimenting under your business name.
Then, take a step back and think through your strategy.
- Who are you hoping to reach with social media?
- Who's your customer?
- Who do want to connect with and have conversations with?
- Who do you want to learn from?
- What tools are they using, what networks are they a part of?
- Where are the conversations taking place?
- What are they saying? What is being shared?
This is where the skill lies - in putting together a strategy for long term results, not simply in having a Facebook page, a Twitter and a Linkedin account. Yes you could spend time learning how to have a whizzy Twitter background, how to generate followers on Twitter or how to add widgets to your Facebook page. You can learn all that and more for free on the web. BUT, without a strategy you can't be sure that those things will help achieve your business goal.
It's a bit like cooking - you could spend £100 on ready-meals for a week, but after that you'd have nothing to show for it. Or you could spend £100 on some cookery education, which would enable you to devise nutritious meals at a fraction of the cost of ready-meals, for the rest of your life.
Which is the better investment?
