Wanted: small niche players. Space available

Consider your options well

As a small business, are you alone, doing your thing, providing a great product in the metalworking or surface treatment industries? Do you think anyone else in the whole world shares some of the same challenges? Are they also trying to keep “clean” (let alone “green”) while using advanced chemical lubricants, cleaners and strippers? Small industrial niche businesses likely have large communities of people who share similar interests, challenges and opinions. You just aren’t aware of them yet. There are also people out there that need you, but they may not know about you. With social media you can reach out and expand your circle of friends. You can choose to engage your company to learn and share and ultimately shape and influence your industry and your future. Being alone is nowheresville.

If social media is anything, its the great equalizer of business wherewithal—at least in sales and marketing. It used to be a pissing match you could join. The game was, who could outspend the others in the pursuit of an incrementally larger slice of market share? It wasn’t really engagement. People who heard your messages mostly just endured the intrusion or interruption. They understood the game but they didn’t have a chance to talk back because it was one-way communication. Welcome to a whole new world.

Social media offers the potential to change the way your business communicates with prospects and customers and, in turn, the way your customers affect the decisions of their peers and so on. Now even the smallest company can garner millions of impressions and enjoy an international spotlight merely by being creative with a viral video. But at minimum you can create a space of your own and compete with anyone on this newly leveled playing field.

In this post I continue with step four in the series: Plan social media strategies like any other major initiative. The first two steps discuss the importance (and liability) of transparency the social media environment brings with it, as well as the impact it has on your company’s culture. Later, in step three, I encouraged readers to Tap in and listen to the marketplace: If you could find out where your current and potential customers are playing (in social media) it could be a huge motivator to get your team fully engaged.

Step Four. Consider your options well

If you do not have a marketing team already (one that oversees sales and biz dev) relax and take your time. It could be too much to participate in every social media space effectively. Take on one at a time, shoot for a consistent presence and build on it. Keep an eye on your overall strategy plan as well.

Caution: some options are not options. The last thing a leader wants to do is hand off the responsibility of social media (SM) affairs to an apprentice in the company. (Would you have handed out the marketing responsibility?) As we discussed in step one, it is essential that you stay involved and involve as many people in your company. SM requires lots of participation, lots of maintenance. At first, get outside help to set you up or teach you how to do some of it, but its success or failure depends on you ultimately. You must also place a face on your business in SM, yours or someone else within the company—make it real.

A few of the most popular forms of social media

The options include blogs; microblogs like Twitter; real social networks including Linkedin and Facebook; and media sharing websites like Flickr and YouTube. There are many others. Here’s a brief profile of three top sites:

Linkedin.com
Because this is the most professionally oriented, I would begin here. It will force you to build your online profile from which you should use consistently elsewhere. Linkedin is designed primarily for professional networking. The 70 million registered users maintain a list of “Connections” they know and trust in business.

Twitter.com
This is real-time, worldwide information—one of the most powerful social networking tools on the Web. Usually pecked from smartphone keyboards, users broadcast very short “tweets”—140-character messages to other users who in-turn have elected to “follow” them. News travels at the speed of … light I guess. The trick to Twitter is to create followers that comprise your target market, otherwise you’re just pissing in the wind. And when you have a blog, you can link it to your Twitter account. Your followers will be automatically notified of new posts.

Facebook.com
Networking on steroids, create a personal page and a business page. However, Facebook does not allow businesses to build personal profiles, you can 1) build a business profile page and 2) create a group for your business. Your “page” becomes a kind of central hub for information about your business. Seek out friends in your target audience, and participate in groups related to your industry. Put an e-mail subscription form in the side bar to build e-mail newsletter distribution then leverage that newsletter to generate sales.

More caution

Social media is not marketing (and it is not sales). If you are pushy and try to market with every opportunity you will be ignored. Balance your messages carefully with sincere interest and participation and offer something useful to others. It’s a community that you ask to join, and you are expected to contribute.

The Internet and the social technologies that come with it enable your company to produce and distribute content that people want—and you don’t have to pay publishers or media companies a red cent. Choose your game, create your space and align your motives with your overall marketing strategy.

Credit: Small segments of this post adapted and condensed from “A Step-by-Step Guide to a Successful Social Media Program” by MarketingProfs—Kimberly Smith author