Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Write One LinkedIn Recommendation Each Week

LinkedIn recommendations are personal endorsements of people's skills and qualities by others who have worked with them. A recommendation is worth more than a one-click endorsement because it requires time and thought to create. Recommendations also get prominent placement on LinkedIn profiles, which means your profile gets a boost from someone else. 

If you write recommendations for current and past colleagues, many of them will return the favor, so create a weekly reminder on your calendar to set aside 15 minutes to recommend someone else. After a year you'll have written 50 recommendations and probably received at least half that many in return. This is a great way to enhance your profile, and you'll hardly notice the time you invested.

Just click the link below to read more on this topic by Paul Gillin.

Help others far more often than you promote yourself. It pays off. Sand is granular and looks the same until you put it under a microscope. Then, it's amazing.

You can read more by Chris Brogan on his official website.

Social media is not a platform for spamming your advertisements. If you deliver valuable information people will follow you themselves. Don't try too hard to make sales etc.

Don't over do it, max three posts per day on FB, Twitter and Linkedin.  Quality is better than quantity. Post less, post with quality and post at times when people in your area are online. i have seen people posting in the middle of the night, in most cases, that is waste of time. I have also seen people posting 100's of posts per day hijacking my newsfeed, most of these i stop paying attention to or block.

This is important because your goals will largely drive the type of content you post, the types of behavior you want to drive and the places where you choose to have a presence. For instance, if your ultimate goal is to increase website sales, you might have the goal of driving more visitors to your site, or you may have the goal of increasing the number of positive comments about your product on Facebook or LinkedIn. On the other hand, if your ultimate goal is to drive awareness of your company, you may have goals around posting content that will be shared by others (especially influencers). Along with establishing goals, make sure you know how you will measure those goals. Google Analytics can help you understand web traffic and visitor behavior for instance.

by Sue Brady

Your brand is theirs; don’t be scared of letting go

Consumers are flocking ‘clean slate brands’, which embody the values of contemporary consumers: storied, responsive, accessible, sustainable and playful. The rules have changed. The more you build equity, the less of it you own. As a small business owner, playing by these new rules can help you co-create a brand consumers love and want.

You can read more interesting content on Laurence's blog.

Let's be honest: who doesn't love that scene from Glengarry Glen Ross? It's a pivotal scene, it has great lines, and the prize was either a Cadillac or steak knives. And even though I changed the last C to Choosing from Closing, it is about finding the right place to be, and eventually closing that sale.

In the small business arena, social media DOES feel like that scene in the movie and play. It's the high-pressure and stress to make sure that you're hitting a combination of brand awareness and driving people toward sales. And with small businesses, the sales are probably the bigger part of the mix. 

The deep, dark secret that people don't talk about is that social media takes money and time. And with small businesses, time is money. So the best approach to social media is to find the RIGHT media channels, be prepared to put aside some advertising dollars to put against the social media channels, and find and engage the right people - the people that will be the buyers, the influencers, the current and future customers. 

So while it's not as easy as ABC, it is as simple as ABC: find those right social media platforms with the right audiences, and put your efforts there.

Pick a Narrowly Targeted Audience

Next, decide on your audience. Know whom you want to target and why that target audience is a good fit. Sure, it would be wonderful to be on national TV. But it can be just as powerful to get your story in front of a much smaller yet narrowly targeted audience that's full of potential prospects for your particular solo business.

Come Up With a Compelling Topic

From here, your job is to come up with a compelling and relevant topic. You have to come up with a unique angle and be ready to explain why your story is not only relevant, but newsworthy.

Can you relate it to a hot current event, an upcoming holiday or a problem many people are experiencing right now (and for which you have a solution)? Or can you talk about something new and different that can make a huge difference for your target audience? Make that connection between what you offer and what the media is looking for. Don't expect them to see it on their own.

Diana Ennen is the President of Virtual Word Publishing, - See more at: 

Social Media ain't free

Marketing your business with social media takes time and money to do really well. You're building a relationship with your customers, potential customers and advocates. And this takes real effort. Don't let anyone tell you that there's a fast way to do this.  It's a commitment, so be prepared to plant seeds, water them and watch them grow before they bare fruit.  

First off, be realistic about the time commitment. Planning and creating a regular stream of content that is relevant, inspiring and consumer-centric isn't easy for everyone.  If you can't find the time to study the existing social conversation, extract insights from what real people are talking about and develop a voice for your brand that comes through in daily compelling content that your consumers actually want to experience, then get help.  This is your reputation your playing with.  And this is just the stuff you want to say about your business. Dealing with customer service questions, issues, expectations, etc. once you involve yourself in the social space is another commitment of time you need to be ready for.

The next thing to think about is money. While many are lead to believe that social media has ushered in the era of free advertising through creating conversations on freely available media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the reality is that it's such a competitive space that getting any attention at all is extremely difficult without using paid amplification within these channels.

I'm sure you want to know how much to spend. I can't tell you that, but I do have a rule of thumb that is a useful guide whether your budget is $1,000 or $100,000.  Split your budget into thirds as follows:

1/3 for strategy, community management, measurement.
1/3 for content creation
1/3 for paid amplification

If you follow this simple rule of thirds you'll be covering all of the bases and ensuring that your social media marketing efforts begin to pay off faster.

You can read more Social Media Marketing content on Dave's website.

When searching for these companies, you are going to want one with experience and extensive expertise because these lists need to be accurate and as up to date as possible so you can get the most out of your marketing efforts. One service many companies take advantage of is opt in email lists.