Is Social Media Right for the SMB?

I've waved the white flag and thrown in the towel. I'm now a social media convert. It will be the primary domain of the twenty-something's, nevertheless you can't deny the pervasive creep of everything social media marketing into our everyday personal and business lives. Therefore the million dollar question is, just how can social media marketing help grow a tiny (or mid-sized) business? Since most SMB organizations are too busy worrying all about their day-to-day business operations, I will try to shed some light on the annals of social media marketing as well as some of the very most commonly used tools and technologies.

The earliest social networking platform was born in the late 1980s from AOL (America Online) chat rooms Picuki. Users were able to network and relate genuinely to others from virtually anywhere an Internet connection was available. Chat rooms created a brand new social dynamic, and for several years, this is pretty much what passed for social media. AOL then found ways to embed advertising into the application, and thus created a brand new revenue stream. This was just the beginning of the social network explosion.

Even with the crumbling of the dot com industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s the desire to get in touch to the Internet didn't wane, it only grew stronger. Another prominent milestone in the social media marketing timeline was the introduction of web logs or blogs. These tools enabled Individuals and/or organizations to post informative data on more or less anything. Mini-websites such as for example Blogger and Wordpress allowed these posts to be accessible to anyone having an Internet connection and they gave the reader to be able to communicate with the writer by leaving comments.

Obviously the social media marketing timeline will be incomplete without marking the beginning of one of the largest outlets the Internet could facilitate - shopping! During the dot com boom there is no shortage of sites for shopping, and even following the shakeout there were still lots of options left. Many sites included the capacity to share information regarding the products that was merely another way for people to get in touch and share, and consequently, retailers took notice.

One particular retailer embraced this new dynamic and became the powerhouse of online retailing we're knowledgeable about today - Amazon.com. Another popular online retailer, eBay, wasn't far behind with their "swap meet/auction" business philosophy of allowing the city to buy and sell to one another while taking just a portion of the item's final sale price. Again, an integral differentiator for eBay was the direct interaction between buyer and seller that was another pivotal point in the social media marketing evolution.

In the early years after Y2K, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe created MySpace that was one of the first social networks to become a hot acquisition property. The pair sold to Fox's NewsCorp unit for $580 million! Not a bad payout for Anderson who first rose to fame as a computer hacker at 13 and who had been raided by the FBI shortly after. You can ask him yourself. He's automatically included with the "friends" set of all the 240 million MySpace subscribers, but don't hold your breath for a fast response! While MySpace was created mainly as a way for musicians to network together, seven months after its birth a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg and some of his buddies built their own private network for Crimson students. The offspring with this union was Facebook and it quickly gained traction at other Boston-area campuses such as for example MIT and Boston College. After its initial launch it spread like wildfire to college campuses all around the world and eventually anyone having an email ending in.edu were allowed to join. Those boundaries couldn't hold, and before long networks were created for those outside the educational borders. The march has continued unabated ever since to the stage where "The Social Network" became an Oscar-winning film about Zuckerberg and his creation.

Twitter came onto the scene in 2006 as an internal project by a group of employees at a San Francisco podcasting company. Initially it absolutely was a micro-blogging site that centered on small messages to share with others in the group about the thing that was happening. While the initial site was entirely web-based, a team led by Jack Dorsey wanted to produce a service that leveraged SMS or txt messaging on cellphones to transmit information. The 160 character limit on these transmissions became an obstacle, so that they made a decision to limit messages to 140 characters to allow room for the username and colon at the beginning of the message. In those early days there is slow adoption because many users didn't have unlimited text plans and the costs to participate could have easily skyrocketed. However, once phone plans began to include unlimited texting everything changed, and the sky was the limit. Then watershed moment #2 occurred. During the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, Twitter was used to generate an on line community and a discussion across the live event.

The use of the social media marketing platform engaged a brand new generation of users like no ad campaign ever could. From that point on, Twitter was everywhere. Apple featured Twitter in their worldwide conference in the same year, there were television news stories, print articles, and the planet would never be the same! Jack had a terrific team including Dom Sagolla who wrote about Twitter history and the genesis of proper messaging techniques called "140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form," likely on Amazon.com I'd bet!

These were all great innovations for the general public, but think about the company community? Ironically, there had been something in position that had flown pretty much beneath the radar. A visionary named Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn for business professionals in late 2002, in the post dot com bust, finding funding and the desire to risk it on an Internet venture was a daunting task in a suddenly skittish Silicon Valley.. Unlike MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn started on a much flatter trajectory and retained a laser focus on being the end-all site for business professionals trying to find networking opportunities. Networking in the business community had been the domain of in-person interactions at trade shows, chambers of commerce, and the like. LinkedIn was seen as a way to expand those interpersonal relationships online without limitations of time and distance. As it has added more monetization through job boards and "premium" memberships, the valuation of the company tipped the scales at over $1 billion in 2009.

Lately, newer tools came out like FourSquare and Pinterest which show promise. FourSquare is a credit card applicatoin which allows users to "check in" to places they are visiting including the local cafe or the peak of Mt. Everest (if you will get a cell signal up there!). Pinterest is much newer, and is only recently gaining momentum. Users can save and share favorite things located on the web through pinboards, as well as browse and save those of others.

So we now have a historical framework for the key players in social media marketing, but why if the SMB care? It doesn't have a rocket scientist to observe that as a consumer, both Facebook and Twitter are inexorably connected to the seller. "Like us on Facebook" and/or "Follow us on Twitter" are more often than not included in any retail-type business communication, and over the last couple of years, savvy businesses have tied discounts and coupons to those social interactions.

For traditional SMB entities that are strictly business- to-business driven, the approach to social media marketing is going to be different and combine several approaches including Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, LinkedIn should play a prominent role especially since it's designed purely as a small business tool as well as contributing regularly to an industry specific blog. The main element to social media marketing is maximizing your reach to the prospects and customers you are hoping to create an impact with. However, don't assume all SMB entity believes this. Hiscox, your small business insurance provider, commissioned a study that stated, "47% of respondents indicated they did not use social media marketing for business purposes at all." (Hiscox Inc., 2011) Furthermore, the study continues with, "For those that did use social media marketing for his or her business, 19% are employing Facebook, 15% are employing LinkedIn, and 4% are employing Twitter." (Hiscox Inc., 2011) The research concludes with, "When all respondents were asked about how exactly they felt about using social media marketing for his or her business 12% describe it as a necessity, they get it done all the time; 24% get it done when they've time; and 14% indicated they don't know enough about it." (Hiscox Inc., 2011) I'm actually not too surprised by the findings as those firms who are not using social media marketing feel they don't know enough about it and so it takes too much time to control it.

It doesn't take long to feel overwhelmed with the constantly changing world of social media. So so what can an SMB do? Be smart and find tools that sort the wheat from the chaff.

Tumblr is just a free tool that combines your Facebook and Twitter feeds with blogging.

HootSuite is a social media aggregation tool that allows you to start to see the four major social media marketing applications in one place.

Postling is another site aggregator but one with a cost associated with it.

Other great tools include Tweetdeck, TubeMogul, and Posterous.

These tools are just a few options that ease the management of social media. Just jumping into social media marketing without a plan is not advisable. You can employ some other consultant or designate an internal resource to greatly help design and manage a social media campaign. Don't forget, social media marketing analytics need to be employed as well. Having a technique is somewhat half-hearted when you yourself have no solution to measure it! So, given that you've the background and some tools of the trade, the next step us much that way of an anxious parent teaching their child to swim. Start slow, gain confidence, and then see how quickly you are able to remove!