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Mashable’s 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips

by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg on 02/11/09 at 12:16 pm
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Co-founder of crowdSPRING, Ross Kimbarovsky posted an article on Mashable last week on 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips. I was seriously impressed and thought to share this useful post with you.

In his post, Ross offers 10 suggestions for how small businesses can boost their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, Ross discusses a basic strategy as well as an advanced strategy depending on your needs. These tips are based on Ross’ own experience leveraging social media marketing for crowdSPRING. Here’s a list of Ross’ 10 suggestions and a quick summary of each one:

1. Facebook

Facebook offers exceptional, marketing opportunities for small business and it offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. Here, Ross suggests creating a Fan Page or a Business Fan Page for your business and explains how to go about doing this and why you should.

2. Twitter

For some small businesses, Twitter offers an incredible marketing platform. Ross offers Mashable’s Twitter Guide and Twitter’s simple guide to help you understand what it can do for business. In his advanced strategy, Ross explains how to truly leverage Twitter, by using more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie.

3. Company blog

Blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses. At a minimum, Ross suggests you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog. You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com. Ross further points out the importance of great content on your company blog.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. Ross explains the use of ‘recommendations’ on LinkedIn and the importance of connecting with groups.

5. Participate in other blogs

“It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable”. Ross explains how you build a reputation and establishing credibility for your company through participation. Ross also refers to a great way for identifying good blogs from Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas.

6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies

Ross explains how Yelp, Foursquare and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing tools for small businesses. By using these mobile social networks you can answer questions about your business, track how many users view your business page and push promotions to potential customers.

7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company

Whether or not you take part in conversations, people will talk about your company. Ross offers ways to monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions. Here, Ross identity’s five simple steps you can take to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.

8. Multimedia

According to Ross multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities. Although you don’t have to produce videos or photos to participate on social sites such as YouTube and Flickr, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. Here, Ross explains how to go about using multimedia for small businesses.

9. Maintain Brand Consistency

Even though you have joined a variety of social networks, your customers won’t find you if your brand is scattered across these social networks using different usernames and profiles. Ross review’s some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across all your social network platforms.

10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools

One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other. Ross offers three suggestions on how to go about cross-marketing over the various social networks you are using.

Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. Ross has really provided an extensive strategy on how to swing those hips and start attracting some attention on the social media dance floor. To read the full article on Mashable click on this link below:

http://mashable.com/2009/10/28/small-business-marketing/

Yolandi Janse van Rensburg writes about social media, marketing, life and, of course, cars. We say “of course” because Yolandi is nuts about anything on 4 wheels and runs Autofemme, a blog about cars. Our Ideate sub-editor is also the Heavy Chef girl at World Wide Creative. You can follow her on Twitter @Yolandi_JvR View more articles by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg.

Tags: Mashable, Online social networking, small business, social media, Twitter

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