How’s this for a reality check: Only 24 percent of small businesses have received sales leads from social media, with just 1 percent saying social media has assisted their business growth, according to a survey commissioned by UPS. The big question: Does that mean 99 percent of SMB social media efforts are pure noise that waste time, money and staff resources?
Of course, I’m a bit biased. I remain a strong believer in quality social media. But therein is the challenge: How do you develop quality, compelling messages to pump out through your social media networks?
In some instances, I realize readers consider Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be social media islands where you can control your individual communities. But I look at the market slightly differently: I consider social media sites to be highways back to your corporate Web site or corporate blog. The idea is to reel readers in to your corporate messaging, special offers, thought leadership, etc. Be conversational but have a “next step” to keep readers coming back from more.
Alas, it sounds like most SMBs don’t see valuable messages flowing through social media. Perhaps that would change if more people actually measured the impact of their social media campaigns (here are 10 ways to do so). And these seven tips can help you to actually develop a social media campaign.
Tips aside, I realize there’s a lot of noise on social media networks. I wonder: Will more MSPs rise above the noise, or will small businesses increasingly view social media as a time sink?
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Joe,
Social media marketing is great, but it is not a silver bullet to create leads. The best tech companies still leverage good old marketing 101 to get leads (outbound mktg: webinars, seminars, referrals, direct mail, regional events, etc) and compliment with inbound mktg (eg social media mktg). As a matter of fact I just got off the phone with the VP Mktg at a phenomenaly fast growing tech software company confirming this.
JP…I thought I would chime in…after investing 2 days at the Search Engine Strategies event in Toronto last week, a number of Internet Marketing gurus left scratching their heads about social media relevance. Trust me if these guys who live in the online universe are confused, well the MSP has nothing to be ashamed of.
Simply put and you are correct. They are just highways back to your blog and marketing site. They are traffic generators and your blog and marketing site are where the actual conversions take place. Social Media is not for selling it is about awareness building.
Todd is 100% correct as well, you still need to do the old ways of marketing…Ulistic does Webinars, we network face-to-face, we do “door knocking” and we are an online marketing firm.
You can’t send out some tweets, put up a website or start a blog and expect “instant traffic”. Sorry, the Internet and marketing doesn’t work that way.
Social Media is also about search engine optimization. It is about create inbound links and positioning yourself on the Google search engines and the others.
Every little helps…my blog shares a lot of day-to-day advice on Social Media and Search Marketing…
Cheers
Stuart Crawford
http://stuart.calgarybloggers.ca
Time and again I read and hear this debate about social media.
Asking if Social Media works for (small) business is like asking if I can get from the US to China via car. Well, I can… at least a small part of the trip. I’m going to need something bigger and better for most of the journey.
Social Media is just a vehicle for conversation – nothing more. It’s today’s cocktail party or country club or water cooler.
Businesses of all sizes are wondering how to leverage this magic Social Media. Stop asking that! Start asking how you would have your business mentioned around those traditional vehicles of conversation and you will have your answer… do something worthy of being in a conversation (first!).
Is your product worthy of conversation? (Remember, these answers can go both ways/maybe your product is bad!) … What about your customer service? … Is your store clean? …
Before business can attempt to leverage social media the foundations must be built. What is your brand? What is your brand promise? Are you delivering on that promise? Being exceptional garners comment (and respect). Once you are worthy of comment you can then (and only then) become worthy of inclusion in social media conversations.
Be Remarkable!
Brian@3, Todd@1: In other words, Social Media is one part of a broader Marketing/PR/Communications strategy… Put together the bigger plan then ensure Social Media is part of it. And measure everything.
Stuart@2: “Social Media is not for selling it is about awareness building.” — I think that’s spot on.
-jp
Social Media can fecilitate Small business owners to go viral and exhibit their products before wide range of audience yes it needs great campaigning ideas but social media is giving great platform to explore business ideas
thanks,
craig,
http://www.wowzzy.com
Social Media can fecilitate Small business owners to go viral and exhibit their products before wide range of audience yes it needs great campaigning ideas but social media is giving great platform to explore business ideas
thanks,
craig,
Just want to chime in and say that the thinking here is spot on. Social media can be a wonderful thing, but rarely is it effective as a standalone tactic to generate leads and sales. However, it can build relationships and a reputation that does bring you business down the road.
I think the real key is that social media takes time, effort and consistent content creation, and let’s face it, most small business people don’t have time to put the effort into constant content creation. There are some tools and tactics that can make this more efficient, but it’s still going to require work. If you’re not willing to make that type of commitment, it’s going to be hard to make social media marketing more effective than other online and offline tactics.
And Joe hit the nail on the head when he talks about tracking results from your efforts. If you’re not keeping an eye on your results, you might have to face the fact that you’re doing social media more for fun than for your business.
One last thing – based off of some speculation on the latest Google search index upgrade (which was a major overhaul), social media activity and more importantly links and references from social media may play an important part in the Google search engine ranking algorithm in the coming months. If that’s the case and you are doing well from an SEO standpoint, you might want to start finding efficient ways to get some social media activity going for your company and website just in case.
Thanks for the post Joe – great info.
James: Never a need to thank me for the post. As usual, the real insights happened in the comments area
Thanks for taking the time to share your views.
-jp