Any small business can tell you, time is money. Anything you have to pay for might give you some more time, but it literally takes money out of the college fund in the process. Unlike major international corporations, small business is all about making choices both in terms of time and expenditures. That situation has led me to create this short social media guide for small business, the sites you should be using starting today.
Youtube, or a video site of your choosing: I’ll preface this by simply saying that the average business doesn’t do video marketing well. That being said, there is an abundance of opportunity at play here. Take someone like Gary Varnerchuck who built his own wine store into a 30M+ behemoth (it was originally a small local New Jersey based store) after starting to tape wine reviews that simply weren’t boring like all the others. He also became a social media star in the process, opening an inordinate number of doors along the way. If you’re in an industry without a ton of competition in the video niche, why not give it a try? Some basic video editing software and spending a little cash to have someone create an intro video for you is about all you realistically need. The results can be immediate and long lasting. It’s a well known fact that people tend to stay on webpages longer if they see a human face looking back at them, why not take advantage of that by including some video on your site?
Pinterest: Almost all of us have to take pictures in one way or another for our small business. Be it pictures of wine bottles for my own wine site, or pictures of wineries and vineyards in our blog, I’m sure you have just as many opportunities even if it takes some time to figure out exactly what they are. The good news about Pinterest is that, users seem comfortable with some level of marketing going on. Sure, it’s nice to post a variety of pictures on your account, but more importantly no one is going to have an issue when you put up images of each and every one of your products. If the images and products are good enough, pretty soon you’ll see people sharing them.
Twitter: I saw a car advertisement on television last night that used a hash tag, I think that shows how well Twitter is ingrained into popular culture. While Facebook easily has more users than does Twitter, Twitter makes it much easier to find new business (in my opinion at least). The reason for that is pretty simple, Facebook is a relationship based site, people you know are the people you interact with. Advertising can bring in more views and likes for your business, but that isn’t necessarily cost effective for most small business. Twitter is different in that it is set up by interest. For my small business, there is always a wine conversation and there are plenty of normal consumers on Twitter saying that they enjoyed a Mondavi Cabernet last night, which is an open invitation for me to ask if they’ve ever tried a different, cheaper and better winery. I think if you spend some time on Twitter, you’ll see much of the same thing in your industry.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this short article about using social media for small business. I know for small business, it’s all about ROI, so having a clear sense of focus and goals makes sense!
Our guest blogger, Mark Aselstine, is the owner of Uncorked Ventures, an online wine club based in San Francisco that aims to deliver the highest quality wine in the industry each and every month, directly to his customers front door. Oh and yes, he wouldn’t mind being the next Gary V.
