Social Media for Small Businesses - Getting Started

I was recently asked for some advice on how to get started with social media to engage with customers for a small business. I thought I would share that advice with you...

Build a Knowledge Base

It's important you have a point of entry for your customers and with the size of it's user base Facebook is a social platform you cannot ignore. If just starting out, I would use this as your knowledge base where all other forms of social media point to.

Create a buzz about your business

There is no greater tool to create a buzz than Twitter but you need to use it smartly.

Here is what I advise:

• Start with the basic Twitter web interface to build up that trust and following
• Identify a hashtag associated with your business that you can use in all your tweets
• Once you are comfortable with the Twitter concept then I would start to look at third party tools to help organise information, schedule tweets, search on key topics, and engage in conversations. I would recommend Hootsuite as your user interface and something like a Tweepi to help build up a following fast
• Once you are using a third-party tool like HootSuite, use this to integrate your key messages across all social platforms (there are many many other tools that claim that they can integrate your messages across all social platforms but many hinder rather than help. My advice is keep it simple initially)

Some general social media hints and tips:

• Use the same avatar across all social platforms
• Regular tweets are better than a lot of tweets over a short period
• The general rule of thumb is that if someone follows you on Twitter they will follow back so build up your following by following others. If this was a personal account then I would dissuade you from this approach but as it is a business account you are looking at then I would encourage it
• Engage in conversation with other people - don't just post / tweet out your own content
• To build up a following will take time – be patient
• If people ReTweet your message it is good to thank them (I tend to wait til the end of the week to do this and thank 5 / 6 people in one go). They are likely to retweet it again in the future if you do

Checkout some of my other posts on using Twitter effectively:

 How NOT to Get Twitter Followers
 How NOT to Get Twitter Followers (The Sequel)
 Twitter: Learn to Listen and Stand out from the Crowd

Other Social Platforms to Consider

Once you are more established with the above then there are other social platforms that you should consider:

1. YouTube – If you have some videos, create a YouTube account and upload them there. You can also use your Facebook and Twitter platforms to raise awareness
2. SlideShare – This is also a very powerful medium for sharing messages. If you have powerpoints that you would like to share, then SlideShare is a must. Slideshare also has its own social network as well as integrating with Facebook (i.e. people can Like your slideshares)
3. LinkedIn – This is much more than just a job resource tool now. With 100,000,000 professional people it is now a valuable and resourceful knowledge sharing community. Join communities that relate to your business and start engaging in conversations and building up trust. Once you have done that you can start “advertising” in these communities. It's useful to try and build up a good relationship with the Community Manager as it is the Community Manager that will kick you out if you just "advertise" your own products

There are literally hundreds of different social tools / platforms out there but don't panic!  Start off small, build up that following and most importantly, engage in conversation with people. Afterall, it is people you do business with not tools.

The Death of Email by 2018

By 2018 email as we know it today will be a thing of the past. Will I be proved to be a: GENIUS or FOOL Time Remaining:

In September 2008 I predicted the death of email as we know it within 10 years, to be replaced by something more collaborative in the social world we now find ourselves living in.

When I first made this death of email prediction people laughed in my face, literally.

Don't get me wrong I don't dislike email, it's a great linear communication tool but it has limitations in today's world particularly when we talk about collaboration.

Does this sound all too familiar?

An email arrives in your inbox that has been sent to 30+ people asking for feedback on the attached PowerPoint presentation. Person A responds with a 'reply to all' message with their feedback. Person B comments on their feedback with a 'reply to all'. Person C responds with a 'reply to all' adding their feedback on the presentation. Person C also responds with a 'reply to all' commenting on the feedback of Person A and Person B and so it goes on.... Before you know it there is a discussion going on in your inbox and you now have 50 unread emails that were not there when your meeting first started an hour ago.

Factoid: According to the Radicati Group, the average corporate user sends and receives 110 emails a day. If we say it takes on average 90 seconds to either read or write an email, that equates to 2 hours 45 mins a day or nearly 14 hours a week on email.

I spend more time on email than I do with my family.

These days companies are always looking to increase productivity of their employees and for them to be more efficient, whilst needing to communicate and collaborate more easily. Spending 14 hours a week on email is no longer an acceptable working practice.

Was the Death of Email crazy prediction really that crazy?

Let's be clear, life did exist before email and businesses did function (I know the thought of the death of email brings some of you out in a cold sweat).

If you look how technology has evolved over the last forty years since email was introduced, and how it has influenced behavioural changes in the way we communicate and collaborate, it stands to reason that at some time in the near future email will become a thing of the past.

If we only look back five years to July 2006, the first tweet was sent which begun to evolutionise how we communicate. Today there are over 200 million users generating in excess of 200 million tweets a day and handling over 1.6 billion search queries a day on Twitter. This is being used by many as an alternative communication channel (not replacement) to company emails.

Facebook was opened to the public in September 2009. Three years later it has 200 million users and today it has reached over 600 million users. It has also recently introduced an alternative to email that they brand as "definitely not email".

Google Wave came and went in 2009/2010 but the concept of an alternative to email was born. A lot of media hype around the failure of this was down to product and the fact that people didn't get it. However there are other allegedly conspiracy theories around this, one being that it was pulled by Google because they felt it was competing against it's own Gmail product. Personally, I think they just under-estimated the cultural change of such an innovative concept.

Google+ (Google Plus) is the latest social platform currently in soft launch mode and soon to be released, which could see it also competing against the standard email.

Maybe the death of email is not as far away as we think....

Check out this incredible video by Red Sky Vision who have talked to a number of companies (Able and How, CorpComms Magazine, Melcrum, Headshift to name a few) about how social media in the workplace is changing their communications:

The speed at which new social technologies are being introduced is growing exponentially and it won't be long before the replacement for email will arrive (or maybe it already has).

For me personally, I cannot wait until that day and stand by my crazy prediction that this will happen before the end of 2018.

The Path of Social Media Enlightenment

Do you find that some people just don't get it?

Whilst the majority of us understand the benefits of using social media in the workplace to aid business collaboration, to improve knowledge sharing, to build better professional relationships of trust etc..., there are some that don't.

In my experience these type of people fall into 3 distinct categories:

1. The Culture Shockers
These type of people are brought up in a culture where knowledge sharing and collaboration isn't natural, or are of a generation where social media is thought to refer to sharing a newspaper with a bloke down the local pub.

The GREAT NEWS is these type of people can be educated and shown the path to social media enlightenment.

Dilbert explains these type of people so well:

2. The Power Losers
These type of people believe knowledge is power and fear that if they share a piece of the knowledge pie then they become less important to the company. This I don't understand. Maybe it is just part of my DNA but I have always believed in the Pie Theorem.

The Pie Theorem states that for every piece of the knowledge pie you share you will receive two slices in return

The GOOD NEWS is these type of people can change and be redirected on to the path of social media enlightenment.

(Note: To save you the time of doing a Google search on The Pie Theorem, it is indeed a term I just made up!)  

3. The Corporate Ladder Climbers
These type of people are similar to The Power Losers, with one significant difference. They hold on to all their knowledge and refuse to collaborate because they want that next promotion regardless of the harm it will do to the company.

The BAD NEWS is these type of people will never change and should be avoided at all costs. Thankfully though they are a dying breed in the new social workplace world.

So next time you come across someone who doesn't get it, try to figure out if they are a Culture Shocker, a Power Loser, or a Corporate Ladder Climber. If they fall under either of the first two categories then help them out. Show them the path to social media enlightenment. If they appear to be a Corporate Ladder Climber then show them the door, unfriend them on Facebook and block them on Twitter!

Do you suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder (S.A.D)?

Have you ever been down the pub with a group of friends and interrupted a flowing conversation to answer that beep from your smartphone informing you that someone has commented on your latest Facebook status?

Maybe you have been having dinner with your family at a nice restaurant and excused yourself for the fourth time blaming it on a weak bladder because you needed to check what has been happening in your Twitter stream; a weak bladder that only manifested itself at the same time as getting your first smartphone?

Or maybe you were watching a film at the cinema and noticed a flashing coming from the hand where you are gripping your smartphone tightly, whilst your girlfriend squeezed the other hand harder and harder giving you that "don't even think about it" look?

If any of these sound familiar to you then you could have Social Anxiety Disorder (or S.A.D for short).

S.A.D is a serious disease that is spreading fast around the globe and now starting to spread to the workplace as companies start to adopt social technologies to collaborate.

If we don't act now this could turn into a worldwide epidemic!

If you already do any of the following then it could already be too late for you....

1. You cannot resist the temptation to text, instant message, tweet, or generally converse via your smartphone than watch the 238 slide PowerPoint presentation on how this weeks strategy could increase the company margin tenfold
2. You give colleagues your twitter username when they ask for your email address
3. You suggest "I'll Friend you on Facebook" when you meant to say "lets do lunch"
4. You restrict your emails to 140 characters
5. You keep a running count of the colleagues you know
6. You host twitter chats instead of telephone conferences
7. You prefix forwarded emails with RT
8. You spend 10 minutes trying to find the Like button of a document uploaded onto your intranet site
9. You refuse to talk to a colleague you don't know without a verbal introduction from one of their team members
10. You first hear that your boss has left the company via their updated LinkedIn profile

For me it's already too late....but hopefully my suffering hasn't been in vain and this blog post helps you identify the signs before Social Anxiety Disorder (S.A.D) takes another life.

What's the cure for infoglut? (Part 2) - Data Visualization Techniques?

One of my recent blog posts "What's the cure for infoglut?" talked about how to manage your information flows allowing you to still make good business decisions even in the presence of too much information.

Whilst doing some blog research I came across this TED video from David McCandles on using data visualisation techniques to overcome dataglut to allow you to make business decisions even in the presence of too much data.

This video is very powerful in the way it displays and allows the data to tell a story and is a must watch video. It does start off a little slow, but it is worth sticking with it for the full 21 mins as it highlights some astonishing (and quite worrying) facts.

WARNING! - Do not read on until you have watched the above video

Before I continue to talk about these data visualisation techniques, I have to get something off my chest with regards to the video. My experience as a Financial Analyst, and as a Business Analyst, has taught me that facts can be manipulated to support the message you want to get across (yes, I know some of you will be flabbergasted at this last statement!).

When David alludes to the reduction of carbon emissions because of the grounding of aircraft due to the volcanic ash cloud over Europe, he is only focusing on one statistical data set. There are a number of indirect contributing data sets that will cause a knock on effect of not be able to fly, and these also need to be taken into consideration (e.g. some passengers will now choose to drive to their destination, thereby producing carbon emissions via their vehicle etc...).

However the data visualisation techniques he uses do provide some relativity and context to data and this got me thinking.

What if you could do the same with information flows?

Information is just bits of data right? If there was a way that all my information flows I have access to across all different social platforms could be pulled together and represented in a visual form it could save me a lot of time.

As I mentioned in my previous infoglut post, I don't want to lose any of my information flows I just need to manage them better, and maybe data visualization techniques is the answer.

So is this actually possible? Honestly? I don't know but I am going to continue doing research into this subject matter which will undoubtedly result in a third blog post on infoglut as I found out more.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or ideas on how information flows can be represented in a visual way, or how you are reducing infoglut in general, please let me know via the comments.