Courtesy http://tomfishburne.com/ Thanks Tom, love your work!
For many small business people, Social media is a mix of mystery, distraction, and something that at some level they feel they should know about. However, they have seen too many stupid cat videos, observed the stream of consciousness that can be twitter, seen their children leave an indelible image on facebook they would rather not have seen, lack any native sense of what it is about, and lack the time to find out, so they avoid it.
It is pretty common, but misses the essential point. Social media is where your customers are, where they gather their product and supplier intelligence, and pass on their experiences. Choosing to exclude your business from these experiences is akin to going to play golf, but believing you can still be competitive if you leave your clubs at home.
There are a number of pretty simple ways to start. Social media is by its nature both incremental when you choose it to be, whilst at the same time if you allow it, overwhelming. There are just a few simple things to remember:
- Nobody can know it all, even the experts. Anybody who tells you different is either a liar, delusional, or just after your money. In the end, like all business decisions, there is risk and reward, your job in business is to be on the positive side of the ledger, and to do that you must make decisions and take action.
- Anybody can become engaged, in a small way, become comfortable, gain some understanding, and take another step, or indeed, backtrack and take another route.
- Social Media is a combination of two words, “Social” and “Media”. Individually they mean different things, together they take on another persona. If you remember the “social” part, and behave on SM as you would face to face, there is very little that can go wrong, unless, just like it is in person, you act stupidly, without regard to consequences.
- You need a “map”. Navigating Social Media is no different to finding your way through any unfamiliar territory. You need to know where you are, where you want to end up, and then if you have a map, you can make choices along the way depending on the circumstances in which you find yourself.
- Know who you want to talk to, and find the e-places they congregate. The better you can define your target “receiver” the better you can focus your communication on their needs and wishes. Demographics are just a start, on top you need behavioural and contextual information, how they react in different circumstances. If you can describe your intended audience as a person walking through the door, you will have done well, as to get to that point, you will have to have made choices about who is in, and who is out.
- Social Media platforms are not alike, almost not at all. Whilst there are similarities, and overlap, it is both relatively simple and sensible to choose 2 or at most three platforms on which to engage, depending on who you want to talk to, what you want to talks about, what you want to say, and importantly, what you want them to do with the information you give.
- Leveraging social media commercially rather than using it as a simple place to “e-meet” requires that you assemble and find ways to leverage the “list” those who by signing up in some way give their permission for you to market to them. This is a concept first articulated by Seth Godin 20 years ago, and is probably more relevant now than it was then.
- Develop curiosity. The best way to get to get to understand and feel comfortable with social media is to play around with it, make a few mistakes, gain some confidence, and most importantly, be curious, and experimental. After a while, it becomes easier, and the easier it becomes, the more you will use it and in turn get better at using it.
To get started, shop around until you find someone in whom you have confidence, can demonstrate they know what they are talking about, and read widely to inform yourself, then just get on with it.
