Alan DraperAs a small business owner there are a plethora of tasks that take priority over social media; satisfying customer needs, fulfilling contracts and winning new business. Taking all of that into consideration is small business social media really worth an investment of your time?
You may think of it as a luxury, as an expense on your time and effort which your growing business cannot sustain and you might be right. In this post we dig down and uncover whether or not small business social media warrants your investment.
Arguing the case for Small Business Social Media
Small Business Social Media is Free
Yes, Social Media involves spending time to build relationships, but it doesn’t cost money. As a small business owner, you don’t want to be spending more than necessary on marketing, therefore investing time on building relationships with people is far preferable to spending money on advertising.
There’s something for Everyone.
There is a social Media site to suit every purpose, whether you want it for networking, news, bookmarking, a specific industry or genre. Whatever you want to promote, or research there will be social media networks to suit your needs. This means that it never gets old or boring, and if a particular site no longer works for you, there will be another that is just perfect. You can spend your time and effort wherever you get the best results and either move on or stay put as you please.
Results improve with Time
With any Social media campaign, the more you give, the more you receive. As you build up your credibility, your followers will increase, traffic back to your website will grow and if managed correctly the number of tweets, shares and +1’s will increase, placing your content in front of more and more people with whom you can build relationships. A small portion of these will go on to become clients.
You can’t expect overnight success, but if you keep going you will see your results improve month on month.
You can get Targeted Traffic.
One common criticism of using small business social media to drive Traffic is that there can be a higher bounce rate as people landing on your page weren’t necessarily searching for the information that they see. While this may sometimes be true, you can get some very highly targeted visitors from niche social media sites. Think about where you are posting your links and what users of that site like to see. Also, your site will be put in front of a much wider audience, so that if they weren’t searching specifically for what you had to offer at that time, they have still been introduced to your site and as a result know what you do for in the future when they do want that service.
It’s a valuable source of Links.
Once your content is shared via Social Media, those links are there to stay. Even better, if people do visit your site and share that information with their friends, you’ll then have more links coming back into your site. Search Engines love links, and the more valuable links they see coming back to your site, then the higher up the Search Rankings you go. If a piece of content has been shared amongst the social media community, Retweeted and liked, you’re likely to notice more search engine referrals for it as well.
You get to know your Audience.
Social Media users are vocal about what they like, and what they don’t like. As you build more of a presence and post more content, you’ll get to know what content people like and what produces the best reaction so you can do more of it. Likewise, you will learn what types of articles or posts do better on Social Media sites versus search engines.
It Provides great Brand exposure.
Even if you don’t get referrals from your small business social media activities back to your website, by keeping up with your social media campaign you are giving your brand great exposure. If you find that you get a positive response on social media sites, but can’t translate this into referrals, then there’s nothing wrong with asking why. You can also search to see if people are sharing your information without your knowledge; monitoring your brand and reputation should be a key part of what you do.
The future of the internet is social.
Social Media won’t be going away any time soon. If we take the fact that Google is investing so much into the Google+ local network you know that social is going to play an even bigger part in online activity moving forward.
Over the last few years, social media has ballooned, and in years to come, although the popular sites and formats may change, being able to comment on articles, share opinions and reply to whoever you choose to are elements that we have all become used to and if one thing’s for certain, it is that the general public and Internet users will not be silenced!
In conclusion, utilising small business social media as part of a well structured campaign is definitely worth it! There are lots of huge positives, so if it isn’t working for you today just tweak your methods slightly, try again tomorrow and let us know how you get on by leaving a comment below or connecting with us on social media.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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What a great post! For anyone considering social media for their small business this is a must. I think one of the main reasons small businesses fail at social media is the lack of time spent to build a following, or dissatisfaction of seeing little results immediately. Learning how to balance it out and finding what works for YOUR business is the key to success!
Thanks for your comment Amanda.
Yes, every business needs to find the right balance to make social media work for them as well as the patience to build a successful following.
“Results improve with time” – this is one of the primary points we stress with small business owners getting started with social media. Very few businesses see an immediate payback. Social media is about building long-term relationships that lead to word of mouth referrals, emphasis on the “long-term” part. :)
Hi Erika, I’m glad this rings true with you.
Immediate payback is a very rare thing!
Thank you for commenting.
Small business owners are invariably pushed for time and Social Media set and management is unfortunately time consuming for most. However, good results can be achieved relatively quickly with the right help (inexpensive help). I’m not sure about ‘a social Media site to suit every purpose’ but certainly the goliaths that are Facebook, Twitter and the growing Google+ are a must for any business. We’ve built a targettted Twitter following of 1100 in 2 months, we tweet 18-20 times a day with the help of http://www.buffer.com, are starting to build relationships and have received enquiries already. We recommend the same to our clients.
I like to focus on the 3 C’s on Social Media. Content, Customer Service, & Connections. A big emphasis on content, not necessarily your own either.
Yes, I’d agree that great Content is a cornerstone of a good Social Media Strategy.
Thanks for your comment!
Excellent pros to small business, Rosalind, and I do hope the owners, managers and employees of small business see the benefits and take the time to start using social media to increase their customer bases.
What they really need is for us – social media savvy bloggers – to give them a leg up by mentoring them in how to use social media. I reach out to them regularly to share the Twitter Best Practices post I’ve linked to this comment and to answer their questions.
What I believe we really need to do is for bloggers to create geo-targeted blogs that reach audiences in a specific location and then use THOSE to promote the small businesses in our area.
We have more experience and time getting them exposure and can better recommend them than they can recommend themselves anyway. Then they can get their feet wet responding to the interest we generate for them!
Thank you Gail!
Using Social Media for Geo-Targeting is definitely something many small businesses should be getting involved in. It’s a practice that I think we will see growing in the next few years, particularly with the advent of services such as Google + Local.
An excellent set of observations.. Should also mention the Page Rank value of social media.
However, you should comment on also comment on the mistaken belief that a Facebook page is a “real website” so having a companty website is no longer necessary.
JO’C
Hi Jack, Yes you’re right, a real website should still be a priority for any business wanting a strong online presence.