Social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have overtaken the marketing landscape, as more consumers are gathering their information within these gated communities and making purchase decisions.
Small businesses have doubled their usage of social media outlets in the last year according to a University of Maryland study.
So how do small businesses market through social media? The answer is through several of the larger communities.
This is not an easy task, and an entire new industry has sprung up to help smaller enterprises profitably participate in this growing marketplace.
Many experts argue that Facebook, the biggest, is a good place to start.
Small businesses can create a Corporate Fan page free of charge on Facebook and are encouraged to create unique content that attracts "fans." The mistake most companies make is simply reposting their existing Web content on Corporate Fan pages—providing no reason for repeat visits or viral fan acquisition.
"Facebook Corporate Fan pages are the hidden gem for small businesses to market their products and services," says Bob Heyman, CEO of Digital Automat. His company offers advise and services especially geared to small businesses wanting to utilize social media as an effective marketing tool.
Twitter allows for followers to receive short text "tweets" of up to 140 characters and can include a Web site URL for followers to click on for more information. "Many companies are using Twitter as an instant press release," DigitalAutomat’s Heyman says.
"Like all social media, Twitter needs marketing attention to keep followers following and to grow outreach. That’s one of the reasons we started DigitalAutomat - so we could assist business owners in leveraging this new social-media marketing opportunity," Heyman says.
His company provides affordable social-media marketing packages to small businesses starting at $299 a month for search-engine optimization (SEO) to full (Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter) social-media marketing programs at $999 and up.
If nothing else, social-media platforms are here to stay—as Facebook now has as many users as there were in the entire Internet population in the year 2000. Small businesses will need to stay ahead of the curve on this marketing trend and leverage the social-media marketing techniques to a profit advantage.
All of these new marketing opportunities are open to even the smallest business but time and effort is needed as well as smart, cogent advice from experts.
According to Heyman, "Facebook offers the platform to build a database of fans through Corporate Fan pages—which enables small-business owners to communicate virtually for free to those same prospects/customers who would have had to be sent costly direct mail." His company DigitalAutomat.com offers social-media marketing service at a fixed cost to clients.
LinkedIn is a powerful social-media platform, which allows amall-business owners to link to other associates/colleagues/friends and maintain a company page to promote their business and also to create discussion groups.
"Any amall business, particularly professional-service and B2B-products or service companies, who are not leveraging LinkedIn are just overspending on other marketing techniques," says Bruce Carlisle, CEO of Digital Axel, a aocial-media agency in San Francisco. "Building out a Linkedin company page is free, and linking it to employees and clients happens automatically. Discussion groups are also free and allow powerful marketing and networking through targeted topic areas," Carlisle says.
"Twitter is a hot social medium because of the instant nature of its delivery and the keywords one can associate with one's account. There are also ways of taking advantage of this social media as well," Heyman says. |
