Social Media Networking is the small business trend of 2010.[1] The Small Business Survey, one of the most revered polls in the US, posted a 50% increase in the number of businesses marketing through social media within the last year. But that still leaves the majority without an active social media account. Still, only 36% of the businesses polled reported using social media to achieve marketing goals. Why?
In the last installment of this series, I wrote about how much contacts on social media are actually worth. I discussed a new statistic that was recently released that values each Facebook contact at more than $130. This article goes right alongside it, by explaining a little more about how much work each of those contacts will require on your end.
The Small Time-Slot Social Media Takes in the Average Business’ Work Week
Here are some statistics that show just the kind of time commitment people are afraid of stepping into. A marketer will spend between 1 and 5 hours each week on social media networking, on average.[2] That means that should you choose to step out into the land of Facebook or Twitter, you can expect that it will take up less than 5 hours of your time per week. Of course, if it works well, then you can commit yourself more for contacts, consumers, and sales…
Using Your Time Wisely, 2 Steps to A New Social Media Marketing Campaign
Plenty of marketers will tell you it is possible to lead successful social marketing campaigns for the low time budget of 10 minutes per day. Planning, organization, and focus can really make social marketing easier and more fruitful, so follow these steps to jump-start your online presence.
First, do some research. Take a look at some of your competitors and see if they have already created accounts on Facebook or Twitter. Try to find a campaign that has worked but could also use some work. You do not want to find a model to follow, just some brainstorming material.
Then, start your campaign. Decide which social media platform would benefit your business the most, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc., and focus on it alone. Divide and conquer, as Sun Tzu used to say. Also, pick a few different ways to get attention with posts, and try them out.
For instance, posting links to relevant content is a quickly growing trend on Facebook, especially since they added their equivalent version of Re-Tweet, Via.[3] Figure out what your customers are interested in, post relevant content, and watch your business name spread across the web.
[1] http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/small-business-owners-adopting-social-media-in-2010/3264/
[2] http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2010.pdf
[3] http://mashable.com/2010/01/16/facebook-via/
Tags: Alaska, facebook, SEO, small business