Social Media: Technology Enabling Small Business Success
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This document discusses how social media enables small business success. It finds that one-third of small businesses use social media and over 60% of small business owners use social media personally. While consumers are highly engaged on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, small businesses have been slow to adopt social media. The document outlines the benefits and drawbacks of popular social media platforms for small businesses and how they can be used to build relationships with customers and drive sales. It also discusses best practices for social media marketing, listening, engagement, and measuring return on investment.
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Social Media: Technology Enabling Small Business Success
- 1. Social Media: Technology Enabling Small Business Success Angela Hausman, PhD Howard University and MarketingThatWorks.TV 202-806-1676
- 2. What is Social Networking ? COMMUNITY Real community is dying (Putnam) Increased isolation More time in electronic worlds Busier Uses a variety of social platforms Traditionally text based Pictures Video Allows fluidity in self-presentation
- 3. What is Social Media? Relies on customer sharing in social platforms to spread commercial message to social graph Individuals share messages because it builds celebrity and status A social graph changes its attitudes, behaviors or shares messages based on social capital Influence assessed by Klout and PeerIndex Social capital -- respect, authority, trust, and reciprocity Social capital = personal brand Similarity between individuals in the social graph
- 4. Small Businesses are Using Social Media 1/3 of small businesses use social media http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2010/10/one-third-small-businesses-use-social-media.php 61% of small business owners use social media http://www.briansolis.com/2010/05/social-media-in-small-business-is-anything-but-small/ Citibank found 86% of small businesses are NOT using social media http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10374886-93.html
- 5. Consumers are Using Social Networks 600+ million profiles on Facebook 175+ million users on Twitter tweeting 95 million tweets per day 50+ million users on LinkedIn 3+ million users on Foursquare
- 6. Social Platforms - Facebook Anatomy of a Facebook page - profile page Benefits Large number of users Easy sharing from 1 consumer to another Commercial operations Shopping - 1800 Flowers Relationship building – Dell; Oreos Fan generated fanpages - Coke Contests – Levis Causes - The Body Shop Groups Drawbacks Difficult to build connections May not appear on newsfeed
- 7. Social Platforms – Twitter -coke Benefits Growing faster of all platforms Corporate presence Easy to build connections Searchable via # Drawbacks 140 character limit Lack of temporal permanence Vast number of Tweets
- 8. Social Platforms - LinkedIn Professional focus New! Company profiles Groups Creating Connections Sharing messages Attempts to increase engagement
- 9. Social Platforms – Foursquare and other location-based apps - Panera Benefits Fun and challenging for consumers Gives consumers a voice Helps consumers relate to friends Helps companies build relationships Helps local companies spread the word Drawbacks Counterfeit check-ins Spreads negative sentiments
- 10. On Site Tools with Location-Based Marketing Shopkick Radio wave reader Detect patterns of shopping Incentivize shoppers QR Codes Smartphone readers Incentivize shoppers Temporal optimization
- 11. Mobile Increased mobile access Smartphones project over 1 Billion by 2013 Tablets – over 40 options by end of 2011 Auto access Wireless laptops/ mobile hot spots Laptops with modems Opportunities Changes in websites
- 12. Blogging - Hausman Marketing Letter Weblogs increasingly prevalent Originally journalists More CEOs, CMOs, etc. Average consumers Prominent feature of websites Advantages over static websites SEO Timeliness Interactive
- 13. How Blogging Works Set up website in Wordpress or Joomlar Write content or have guest bloggers Share content and encourage comments Organize content into categories and pages 80/20 rule – 80 % of content should be supportive of others and 20 % self-promotion Continually provide additional comment
- 14. Facebook and Twitter dominate Social Media in small businesses While small businesses use Facebook more, their customers are Tweeting about them. Consumers are more likely to share a Facebook message than a Tweet. Most small businesses owners share information frequently. Fan pages get more interaction than personal profile pages.
- 16. Measuring – Return on Investment Mostly uncharted territory What to measure Influence Klout, PeerInfluence, Technorati Followers, Friends, Fans, Visitors … Conversion Online, offline, when, … Determining cause and effect Tools Radian6 Google Analytics http://ow.ly/4dymm Others
- 18. Conversion
- 19. Monitor - Listening Reputation management Uses Radian6 or other tools, as does measuring Code for sentiment or add to spreadsheet Transmit relevant to decision makers and customer service Track changes over time Market Research Influencers Unmet needs Level of satisfaction
- 21. Administration Support Knowing WHAT to Listen To Information Overload Privacy Barriers External requirements Benchmarking Market Research Language and cultural meaning Integration into strategy and customer support function Listening Problems
- 22. SEO – Search Engine Optimization Getting found 1st page, 1st position Algorithms Title, tags, meta-description, keywords Unique, valuable content Engagement - SMM Pageviews Getting Visitors Headlines Snippets Visuals
- 23. How to Put it All Together Linking social networks Coordinating online and offline activities Sharing across multiple platforms Unique requirements, limitations, and opportunities of each Timing Consistency Planning Hootsuite Increased difficulty in monitoring and listening
- 25. Costs of Social Media Tangible Website SEO, Developer Organizational Time for engagement Time for content creation Time for listening Intangible Damage from not listening Opportunity costs Competitive irrelevance
- 28. Questions Corporate Website: http://MarketingThatWorks.TV Blog: http://hausmanmarketresearch.org Twitter: @MarketingLetter Facebook: http://facebook.com/angelahausman
Editor's Notes
- Putnam in Bowling Alone wrote of the death of community as PTAs became poorly attended, neighbors no longer knew each other or held block parties, and folks stopped volunteering at hospitals and other events. He blames this, in part, on the highway infrastructure which allowed people to move far from their birthplaces, move frequently, and spread out at greater distances from each other and their workplaces. This led to feelings of isolation. Other factors contributing to the death of community are the increased appeal of solitary activities such as watching TV, listening to music, or surfing the internet. While once these activities were done in a group, they are now increasingly being done along – with each family member doing his “own” thing.People also feel pressed for time between long commutes, more 2 income families who squeeze housework and childrearing into once free time, and many leisure options, people are busy and no longer have time to spend building relationships. The increased appeal of online dating services (with over 20 million in the 2 most popular sites) and a resurgence of matchmaking services show how bad the isolation has become. Social networking offers community that helps replace real community and has several advantages – namely that its there when you want it through computers and mobile devices – but you can turn it off when its not convenient. Traditionally, these platforms were text based, but now pictures and video are increasingly common and likely integration with Skype will round out the electronic options for connecting in cyberspace.Another advantage of online community is its ability to manage self presentation so you can be the person you choose to be rather than the person you are.
- Social media involves spreading commercial messages through these social platforms rather than paid commercial media such as TV and radio. Part of the appeal of this channel is that transmission is free, which is important for small businesses who are often strapped for cash to spend on advertising. However, social media are not free – as we’ll see later. However, they are still an excellent tool for small businesses.The reason social media CAN be an effective communication channel is the care consumers have exercised in constructing networks of friends, relatives, school chums, and random people whose lives have intersected their own. Network folks call this your social graph. In order for commercial messages to spread across social platforms two things must happen – individuals must be willing to spread the message to their social graph and members of their social graph must be influenced by the message to alter their attitudes, their behaviors, and/or spread the message further.If properly motivated, consumers will pass your commercial message to their social graph. Often motivation simply takes the form of celebrity and status that accrue to consumers who are “in the know” about developments such as new products, special offers, interesting brand facts, or other tidbits of information. It’s the same factor that makes people become new reporters or gossip – the feeling of specialness that comes from knowing what others do not. Being the first to share information also makes the individual feel special and the center of attentions – they become a minor celebrity. Members of the individual’s social graph changes their attitudes, behaviors, or shares the message in exchange for social capital. Thus, influence is based on the amount of social capital a person holds. Because there are ways to assess SOME types of influence online, measures of influence have been developed, such as Klout and PeerIndex, which both measure observed behavioral changes such as opening a link or passing on a message in one or more social networks.Since social capital is the currency that pays for social media, its important to understand where it comes from. Social capital comes from positive interactions with others that lead to respect, authority, trust, and based on norms of reciprocity – tit for tat. Social capital is often thought of as a personal brand.An important element underpinning the value of social networks for social media is the similarity between the individuals making up the social graph. This means the individuals are likely in the same target market thus having similar problems and needs. The more similar the individuals in the graph, the more likely they are to share a common social lens – or way of looking at things – have similar experiences, and have a common vernacular to aid communication.
- Increasingly, small business, as well as businesses of any size, are using social media. But, we really don’t know how many??????
- We DO know consumers are using social networks in massive numbers.
- Facebook is the largest of existing social networks, which makes it very appealing. Also, status updates are automatically shared with your network, which means their network can also see your updates. Think about it. If you have 200 friends on Facebook and they each have 200 friends, your status update can reach 40,000 people - although the actual reach is actually much smaller since there is likely overlap between networks of friends. But, that’s still a mammoth number of impressions. When you consider your status update can spread in this viral fashion throughout the social graph, you can see how this medium can be so effective. There are 2 types of Facebook pages – profiles, for individuals, and fanpages, for companies. Profile pages reflect the privacy settings imposed by their owners, so much of what’s on them is only visible to friends. This limits the spread of your message to just 1 layer of friends. Fanpages are open, for the most part, but only people who are fans (have selected the LIKE button) can post on the fanpage. There are also groups on Facebook. For more information on the differences between these 3 Facebook options, select this link. http://hausmanmarketresearch.org/social-marketing/facebook-business-marketing-fan-page-vs-profile-vs-groups/A variety of options exist when setting up your Fanpage, although changes in Facebook require constant vigilance to ensure your page is still working well. Also, FBML, used to create graphical designs on fanpages is being phased out by Facebook, which will make creating these fanpages much more expensive.Among the drawbacks of using Facebook as a social media channel is the difficulty encountered in building connections. As a profile page, you are limited to inviting known individuals to link with you and may loose your Facebook page for violations of these rules. Fanpages are not able to make connections at all, and are reliant on Facebook users to LIKE them – although you can invite your friends to LIKE your fanpage.Another problem with using Facebook for either individuals or companies is that your status updates may NOT appear in your friend’s newsfeed. Engagement determines who sees your newsfeed.
- Twitter is the second most popular social network and represents some major advantages as a channel for social media. First, it’s the fastest growing of all the social networks and will likely overtake Facebook in a few years, if it continues its growth.Twitter is a microblogging site, where members Tweet in 140 character bites. Twitter is also increasing its corporate presence with promoted Tweets and Follows. Likely increased commercialization of Twitter is coming.Its very easy to build connections – followers – in Twitter, as there are no restrictions on who you can follow and its considered a Twitter norm to follow back those who follow you – although this norm is muted among prominent Tweeters and is slowly declining even among everyday Tweeters. Its relatively easy to build large numbers of followers who see all your Tweets. Followers can also choose to pass along your Tweets through ReTweeting, although its much less common and not automatic as is message transmission in Facebook. Twitter is also searchable through the use of hashtags.Twitter has a number of drawback, as well. First, the 140 character limit (including punctuation and spaces) doesn’t give you much room to say something to entice readers to action. The use of standardized shortcuts, like LOL, RT, etc help extend the amount one can communicate, but they frequently contain shortcuts that mystify many users. This is especially true in groups where they’ve developed their own, unique shortcuts. Link shorteners are a must on Twitter.Lack of temporal permanence is a bigger problem on Twitter. If you have more than a few Tweeters you’re following, everything not hashtagged gets lost in the chaos of Tweets coming one after another. There are just so many Tweets that older Tweets (often only posted a few minutes ago) are replaced by new Tweets.The use of automation in Twitter has vastly increased this problem. Applications can easily send massive numbers of Tweets automatically – for instance, sending a pre-selected message hundreds of times or sending everything from an RSS feed instantly. While Twitter will stop obvious attempts to Tweet the same thing over again, any small variation in the message will circumvent this protection. Automation apps have built-in randomizers to create these subtle variations. Users can also automate refollowing followers, autoresponding to new followers with a standard message (that can even be personalized), and other Twitter actions.
- Location-based applications such as Foursquare, Facebook Places, and Google Latitude are ways for friends to keep track of each other in real-time through ckeck-ins. Location-based applications are also extremely useful for retailers and other local businesses as it let’s them know who is visiting their business. They can offer incentives, such as coupons, to encourage visitors to share their experiences with their friends – since these applications also allow for rating the business. Probably the most exciting use of location-based applications is by using them in combination with other social network marketing efforts, which we will talk about later.Some problems with location-based applications is the possibility of counterfeit check-in cause by drive-bys and because of imprecision of GPS signals. Newer location-based applications that rely on more precise radio transmissions from your smartphone are emerging to handle these issues.All social media marketing tactic rely on successful mastery of your traditional marketing, especially high quality products and customer service, Location-based applications, as well as all social networks, just provide a way for customers to spread negative word of mouth for companies who think good advertising can overcome sloppy delivery in other areas of marketing.