Social Media Marketing Thoughts for Small Businesses

Link To Article: 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

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I am very interested in how to promote small and medium-sized business. Although they are not as powerful and influential as huge international companies, they have their own market share, they run in their unique ways, and they make profits just as their big peers do.

The other reason for small business to use social media is, social media costs little money. If you know accounting, you will understand how much money a company is expected to spend on marketing and PR alone annually. And often times these efforts don't add up. If a crisis occur, the reputation may go down in no time.

Grunig's theory talked about building and maintaining good relationships with stakeholders. For small business owners, social media is their magic to help build reputation, relationships, and corporate images/culture.

In social media, there will also be a group of loyal twitter followers, facebook fans, as well as youtube watchers. The above link leads you to 5 effective strategies to use.

1. Is your business visual?
This is fairly important since the information age blocks people from comprehensive reading and learning. All everyone wants to do is to skim, to watch, and to get as much information as possible in no time. So visuals are ideal for a small business owner to attract followers/customers/attention.

2.Real-world interaction still needed!
Even if you move most of your marketing efforts online, you have to admit that offline interaction with customers and prospects is very, very important. That is a way to connect virtual reality with reality. You may not need to spend much, but definitely do something to keep your messages consistent. Say you can make these koozies, cups, T-shirts to spread the same messages as in social media. This can enhance the messages.

3. Be visible in your consumers' areas
A best way to do that is to stay aware of your competitors. One simple thing is to check what kind of social media they are using. If you want to sponsor an event to build some reputation, you also need to know where to start. For Triangle small business owners, they may want to check Share Triangle, GOLO, and MyNC to keep up with local activities. Be visible, but also be smart. No one wants to waste money on some useless ads that can never get to their target audience.

4. Go paperless.
The last tip in the "Strategies" article talked about discounts and contests. I want to elaborate on discounts. Social media provided a good interacting opportunity for business dealers and buyers, yet we may want to start from another perspective---environment-friendliness. If discounts can only be printed to use, business owners may stick to print ad to do the job. This will cost almost the same amount of money, and you save some trees. So I would suggest, instead of coupon, we can customize them into personal PIN numbers. Anyone who types in their name can get a unique PIN number for discounts. They just use IDs to get the discounts. Isn't that a better choice? Maybe we can call it "paperless coupon".