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.

Social Chat - The Modern Day Water Cooler Conversation

We all, at some time or other, have stood around the water cooler in the office and discussed solutions for the big dilemmas of this world:

• How do you solve world hunger?
• How can you reduce your carbon footprint?
• Why on earth doesn't the iPad support Flash?

But in the modern day, we need to find alternative solutions to crowdsourcing that can support those whom are not office based and bring diversity into the conversation by including other countries and cultures. This is where social technologies like Twitter can really add great value in the workplace.

About five months ago I was invited to join a KMers.org online chat which discusses knowledge management topics using Twitter with professionals from other companies. It was a very organised and well structured chat event that was highly productive and resulted in some good conclusions through sharing our experiences from our respective companies (even with only 8 people participating).

And this got me thinking, what if we could bring this type of crowdsourcing solution into the workplace, behind the firewall, and have employees debating key business issues and challenges? After all, a company's most valuable asset is the explicit and tacit knowledge of its employees, so why not try to maximise that asset?

It could also encourage better employee engagement into the business and generate new social relationships that could have long term benefits.

So I did just that and this is the result...

Social Chat - The Modern Day Water Cooler Conversation

What is Social Chat?

"Employee driven online chat event in the workplace, that utilises crowdsourcing techniques and social technologies to discuss and resolve business issues and challenges"

What are the objectives?

1. (Primary) To create new social connections within the workplace
2. (Secondary) To utilise crowdsourcing techniques to improve business processes and solve business challenges
3. (Tertiary) To subtly integrate social technologies into the workplace

What tools are used?

Oracle Alchemy Ideas Centre is used as the topic bank to capture discussion topics and for employees to vote for their favourite each week.

OraTweet is used as the internal chat solution built by Noel Portugal (this is not an official Oracle product, the code is FREE and is based on Oracle's Application Express (APEX) which is also FREE. See http://oratweet.com for more info).

How is Social Chat structured?

Social Chat is an open crowdsourcing solution, that is behind the company firewall, allowing any employee to participate.

Employees submit topics into the topic bank and vote for their favourite topic throughout the week.

The winning topic is then announced and employees choose to join the 60 minutes online discussion on a Friday afternoon if a) they have the time and b) if the topic is of interest to them (Friday afternoon is a great time to host this as people are winding down for the weekend).

The Organiser (person responsible for the general running of Social Chat) and the Moderator (person who submitted the winning topic and therefore facilitating the conversation that week) work together on identifying three distinct discussion points. These discussion points are introduced at 20 minute intervals to keep the conversation fresh.

The following video is a sample of a real Social Chat event that took place recently where the chosen topic was "How can we make homeworkers feel more connected?":

What happens after the discussion?

Once the discussion has finished, a transcript of the raw tweets is downloaded and a one page summary / conclusion is produced. This transcript and summary / conclusion is then shared with all members of the Social Chat group.

It is also shared with the appropriate business area / department to see if any of the conclusions drawn can be utilised to improve current business processes. For example, the video demo above regarding making homeworkers feel more connected was given to the HR department.

What lessons did we learn?

We have hosted about 12 Social Chat events now and learnt a lot along the way before making this a viable and integrated business solution. If you are thinking of implementing a similar solution you may find the following useful:

1. This type of crowdsourcing solution is not for everyone
2. Set initial expectations for newcomers as it is a unique style of conversation
3. The Organiser and Moderator need to draft their introductory tweets prior to the event so it's a simple copy and paste when the event starts (one of those tweets needs to be "Be polite,  respect one another's opinions and above all have fun!")
4. Have the Organiser and Moderator on a teleconference during the event so any technical issues or general support can be given. This provides a smooth discussion and enjoyable experience for the participants
5. Send a tweet just before you partake in the discussion, apologising that for the next 60 mins your followers may see a higher number of tweets flowing in their stream than usual whilst you are partaking in Social Chat
6. At the start, the Moderator should ask people to introduce themselves (name, length of time at the company, business area they work in) as this initiates a social connection
7. Always start with a short video for people to watch that aligns to the discussion topic, but make it a funny related video (YouTube is obviously a good source)
8. Do not try to follow every tweet during the conversation
9. Respond to other participants tweets by including their name (in OraTweet any tweets directed at you personally have a different colour background making them stand out from the rest of your stream - really nice feature!)
10. After the event, provide a transcript and summary / conclusion of the entire conversation and distribute to the Social Chat members as quickly as possible (within 24 hours)

Summary

We have only been running this event for 3 months and todate we have 120+ people folllowing the group, and many more lurkers (a lurker is someone who does not actually participate but follows the conversation). The Social Chats are always interesting and informative and the output has been used to improve a number of business processes.

What I have found really interesting is that Social Chat has inadvertently created a flat hierarchical structure (i.e. everybody is equal) during each event that has resulted in very open and frank discussions. This is something that is difficult to achieve in face to face meetings or telephone conversations as the loudest and more senior representatives tend to do all the talking.

But the biggest achievement for me is the primary objective and seeing new social connections develop and prosper into a business benefit. There are a number of people who didn't know each other before Social Chat who are now better socially connected and knowledge sharing with their peers.

I myself am also a recipient of a recent new social connection because of Social Chat, where the result could be that we are able to build our all singing and all dancing Social Workplace Maturity Model.

Again, I have to thank KMers.org (Eric Weidner and Johan Lammers) for the initial inspiration, and I look forward to seeing Social Chat go from strength to strength.

Do you see Social Chat working in your organisation? Do you partake in any other form of crowdsourcing activity in the workplace?

Going that extra Social Media mile

Here's a little experiment I conducted:

About 6 months ago I put two searches in my Tweetdeck (my tool of choice to follow what is going on in the twitter sphere), one for Web 2.0, the other Social Media.  Every 2 minutes I would be notified of how many new references were made to these particular search terms. After about an hour, the average ratio was about 3:1 in favour of Social Media. For every mention of Web 2.0, there would be three mentions of Social Media. Today, I conducted the same experiment, under the same conditions, and the ratio had increased to approx 12:1.

OK, this experiment is not conducted under strict labatory conditions but it does show a trend in how things have evolved, and it is supported by the fact that instead of having conversations with technical gurus about web 2.0, I am now having conversations with executives about Social Media.

But why has there been this sudden upturn towards Social Media?

It's because executives are beginning to take social media seriously, to see it as a game changer in not only advertising but also in customer engagement.

This might be an obvious statement but you would be surprised at just how many businesses feel they are already engaged in Social Media because they have a blog or a YouTube channel (in some cases multiple creating serious disparity in its message). That is like dipping your toe in the water and saying that you have been for a swim. You cannot approach social media in this way (remember the slideshare Social Media in Business: It's just a bunch of tools right?), you have to put in place a long term Social Media strategy. O2's Glen Manoff, director of communications and reputation, is doing exactly this and said in a New Media Age article recently:

"We're pulling our social media activity together into one place and creating a clear strategy and a consistent face to the world."

"There's a lot of crowdsourcing and people helping each other online, but the big role for us is to answer their questions about products. We want to participate more and help where we can."

Other businesses will soon start to follow O2's example, and begin thinking about their customers social activities and how they can engage better with them through Social Media.

But as well as an external social media strategy, you need to go that extra mile and develop an internal one to help engage the right employees and departments in responding to customer issues, questions and potential opportunities. As Mikal Belicove (contributing editor for Entrepreneur) wrote recently on how Starbucks is building meaningful customer engagement through social media:

"The magic of social media is that you can recognize the opportunity quickly. The challenge is in responding just as quickly."

In short you also need to socially connect your employees as well as socially connect with your customers. By socially connecting your employees you are also able to access their tacit knowledge, a commodity many companies forget to utilise (see my early post Social Media is the key for sharing tacit knowledge).

As you have probably seen on the news today, there has been a small upturn in the UK economy (0.3% growth), and businesses are now beginning to come through the recession. However the businesses that will continue to grow are those that have embraced social media and made it part of their long term strategy, externally and internally.

Is your business going the extra Social Media mile?