Social marketing offers plenty of benefits for small businesses, but there are a number of common misconceptions that may be holding you back from embracing this new form of marketing. Here are three common excuses used to avoid using social networking as a business marketing strategy, and the reasons these excuses are really nothing more than myths.

1. “Our customers don’t use social networks.”
   Really? Facebook has 500 million users, with half of active users logging in every single day. In addition to that, each Facebook user has an average of 130 “friends” in their own personal networks. Combine that with Twitter’s more than 100 million users and LinkedIn’s 60 million users, and it would be difficult to imagine your customers not among these millions of users!

   
   

   The reality is that consumers today are online using social networks, and you need to meet your customers where they are.

2. “I (or my staff) don’t have time to update a bunch of social networking profiles.”
   Adding new marketing tasks to your already full to-do list may seem impossible, but there are ways to make it fast and easy to add social to your regular marketing mix. By integrating your social networking profiles together with each other and with your website, you can create a system that lets you “write once, publish to many” automatically, saving you time while extending your marketing reach online.

   
   

   For instance, you can use Facebook widgets to pull information from your Wall and display it on your web site automatically. Or, you can use an RSS feed to display your Twitter “tweets” on your Facebook page. By integrating your profiles, you can share new information automatically, saving you the time and effort of posting and maintaining the same information to multiple separate profiles.

3. “I don’t know what to write about.”
   Well the good news is that you probably already have lots of material just waiting to be “recycled” as social content, you just need to know where to look. Your monthly newsletter is an excellent source of social marketing material – you can divide it up over the course of a month and post a different article or tip each week. Or, why not share the latest news you just read in a professional journal or from an industry website?

   
   

   The truth is that you don’t need to write original content to share with your followers, you just need to share useful, interesting information to keep them engaged.

No More Excuses

If you’re still finding excuses to avoid social marketing for your business, you are missing an important opportunity to promote your business and reach countless new consumers online. When properly integrated, a social marketing system can be easy to use and takes very little time and effort to maintain, but you have to commit to incorporating it into your regular marketing routine. Your customers are already using social networking as part of their daily routines, and if your competitors are not already there, they will be soon.

Don’t let social marketing myths hold you back from implementing a strategy that helps you connect with customers, brings in new leads and prospects, and drives additional traffic to your website and your business.

NOTE: If you are looking for an integrated social marketing solution for your business, check out Five Sparrows’ ConnectPLUS Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)® services.

If you’re like most small businesses, you already know you should have a presence on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You probably have lots of excuses, too, for why you just haven’t gotten around to setting up a social strategy; maybe you think it’s too much work, or maybe you think it’s just a fad, or maybe you think that social networking doesn’t really make a difference to your bottom line.

Well, if you’ve been waiting to see some evidence that social networking can work for your business, I’ve got good news for you (and bad news for your excuses). According to recent research reports (from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research), social marketing is not only good for promoting and marketing your business, but it can also directly impact sales, attract new customers, and strengthen customer loyalty.

What the Research Says

In the study, 67% of consumers who follow businesses on Twitter said they are more likely to purchase from those businesses after becoming a “follower”. Similarly, 51% of people who “Like” a business on Facebook said they would become customers of the businesses they “Like”. Considering the hundreds of millions of users that these social platforms have, that’s a lot of potential customers and new sales!

Since social networking is all about sharing information, it’s no surprise that the research also found 79% of Twitter followers and 60% of Facebook fans are more likely to recommend the businesses they follow to their own networks of friends and associates. That can result in significant referrals being spread through the social networks, with the potential for further sharing and referrals as information is then shared among additional personal networks.

The Message You’re Sending to Customers

So how important is it for a small business to invest in a social networking strategy? Josh Mendelsohn, a vice president at Chadwick Martin Bailey, says “companies not actively engaging [in social networking] are missing a huge opportunity and are saying something to consumers, intentionally or unintentionally,” which further underscores the importance of creating an effective social marketing strategy for your business.

If your small business isn’t already using social networking to connect with customers, the sooner you get a strategy in place, the better. Your customers want you to be there, and frankly, they expect it. The reasons customers follow or “like” your business are varied; for instance, the study revealed that for women, receiving discounts and promotions was a top motivator (60% for Twitter users and 43% for Facebook). Men, on the other hand became followers on Twitter to be part of a like-minded community (32%), but “liked” businesses on Facebook to show others that they liked and/or supported the business (52%).

Additional reasons cited in the study included gaining access to exclusive content, being the first to know new information about a business, or resolving customer service issues. Whatever the reasons, it’s clear that having a presence on the social networks is becoming an expectation of your customers.

What’s Holding You Back?

Social networking provides your business with a huge opportunity to reach new customers and promote your business, and the data now shows that companies with a social marketing strategy are seeing increases is actual sales and new customers as a result of their social activity. So if your business still does not have a solid social marketing strategy in place, what’s holding you back?

Let’s face it: Facebook is huge and it’s here to stay. More than 400 million people are Facebook users, which represents a big opportunity for businesses. But now that Facebook has changed its familiar “Fan” option to a “Like” option as part of something it calls the “Open Graph”, it looks like there are even more benefits for businesses to look forward to.

Facebook has changed the familiar “become a fan” button to a new button simply called “Like,” and then expanded the types of things that users can “Like.” This includes not only “liking” Facebook business pages, but also enables users to “Like” content on other sites all around the web.

More than 50,000 web sites have already implemented the Open Graph features (e.g., the “Like” button), and additional sites and applications are already in position to implement this new functionality in a variety of new ways.

So what does this mean for your business? Here are a few benefits that are likely:

• More Traffic. The new Open Graph also brings a new set of social plug-ins that will be helpful in driving additional, more interactive traffic to Facebook, as well as to other sites on the web. The new “Like” option is one of those plug-ins. If a visitor decides to “like” something on your web site, it not only shows up on the visitor’s Facebook news feed (and the news feeds of that visitor’s “friends”), but it also remains on the visitor’s Facebook profile, becoming a fixed link back to your web content.
• Alternative Search Results. For instance, if Facebook is keeping track of the most “liked” restaurants in your city, and also knows which restaurants that your social network of friends “likes”, Facebook could potentially show you customized results that would look more like recommendations than random search results. This doesn’t replace the need for high rankings in Google, of course, but it does make it even more important for your business to have a solid presence on Facebook so you can be included in alternative search results.
• Local Business Locator. As more businesses flock to Facebook, it’s likely that Facebook could become the most popular place on the web to find local information. Local businesses often attract customer “likes” from their own geographic areas, and those customers also have their own networks of connections who may in turn pass information along to others, and so on. In theory, anyway, Facebook could be poised to be the single most effective local directory and search tool on the web, so if your business is already there – you’ll get the benefit.
• Competitive Advantage. With a solid Facebook presence in place, your business can receive “likes” and “recommendations” from an enormous pool of users, all with the ability to share and propagate your content though their own networks of connections. Collecting “likes” not only helps promote your business, it also reflects well on your business and shows that visitors like and trust you. Although there is no formal “don’t like” option, the absence of “likes” for your business could be viewed as a sign that there is a problem with your business, or that your brand is not worth recommending. This can be especially harmful if your competitors are getting plenty of “likes” from Facebook users.
• Building Expertise. Another feature you can use to your advantage on Facebook is to carefully select other quality pages/resources to “like” and “recommend” to your own network of connections. By “liking” other professional pages and sharing valuable content from impeccable sources, you are painting yourself as an expert who recognizes excellence, and an expert who should be listened to, followed, and shared with others.

As the Open Graph continues to grow and spread, there will undoubtedly be more web sites and new applications that put this technology to use, creating even more opportunities for businesses using Facebook. As with other social networking sites on the web today, Facebook can be used as a serious marketing tool – especially for small businesses. Facebook, with its 400 million plus users and ever-evolving marketing benefits (including Open Graph), has simply become too important from a business perspective to ignore.

For those of you following our progress during the Social Networking Tour around Michigan’s lower peninsula, here is a brief re-cap of yesterday’s kick off events at the Livonia Business Expo!

Of course, it was pouring rain all morning – complete with thunder and lightning – when we got to Burton Manor to set up! The original plan was that we were going to drive our “mobile office” right into a great spot beside the Livonia Chamber’s stage…and that was going to be our tradeshow “booth” for the event! We had it all planned out, what we wanted to do for displays, how we wanted to set up for the Social Networking Made Simple class we were presenting, it was going to be awesome!

However, (and you KNEW there was going to be a “however”, right?) our RV was about 8 inches too tall to drive through the large door where our booth was going to be…uuuggghhh!

So – time for a Plan B!

Luckily, we had one of our table top tradeshow displays with us in the mobile office, so were able to set up a pretty respectable “booth” using that, a couple of skirted tables from Burton Manor, and our free-standing video monitor. Whew!

So the rest of the day went off without any other glitches – we had a great time and met lots of great people! Our Sales Reps, Susan and Blake, also had a good time visiting the other exhibitors, and we had lots of people enter our drawing for “free tour swag” as well!

Today we are off to the next stop on the tour, so look for an update on that tomorrow!

For small businesses that have already jumped into social media marketing, keeping track of your Facebook activity just got a little easier. (And if you haven’t gotten involved with social marketing yet, what are you waiting for?) Facebook has a tracking feature called Facebook Insights that allows page administrators to measure activity on
their Facebook pages, tracked over a 7-day period. This detailed information is critical to understanding how well your Facebook page is performing for your business.

To see your Facebook activity, all you have to do is log in to your Facebook account, and then click on the Facebook Insights link displayed in the left column of the page (remember, this will be visible only to administrators of the page). Data is typically updated 12 hours after each full day, so you can see fresh stats on how your fans are interacting with your content, and easily watch for trends and overall performance.

You can look at your data in two main ways; 1) by fans that have “interacted” with your page called the Fan Interaction Dashboard, or 2) by all fans of your page, called the Fan Dashboard. An “interaction” occurs when a fan writes on your wall, leaves a comment on a post, or clicks on the “likes this” link on your page. So visitors and fans that simply read your latest information but don’t click on anything or leave a comment will not be counted in this data, but will be counted in the Fan Dashboard instead.

The Fan Interaction Dashboard

Some of the stats available in the Fan Interaction Dashboard include:

* Total interactions – the number of wall posts, comments, and “likes”
* Interactions per post – the average number of comments, wall posts, and “likes” for each piece of content that you post
* Post quality – the score that measures how engaging your content is to visitors – the more engaging your content is, the higher your post quality score will be
* Total posts – the number of posts made to your wall or in video

To help boost your interaction stats, you need to encourage visitors to interact with your content in some way. Like any other form of online marketing, you must contribute high-quality content to your Facebook page if you want your fans to actually interact with that content. For instance:

1. Make sure you post your latest news and events to your Facebook page, so your fans can see your interesting stories or upcoming events and share them with their own networks
2. Add web video whenever you can, since videos are popular with users and will help engage them
3. Post photos on your wall that visitors will find interesting – commenting on photos is one of the most common types of interaction on Facebook
4. Be sure to post regularly – but not too often – to give visitors additional opportunities to interact with your content

When fans interact with your content, it helps distribute your content virally on Facebook, which in turn helps build organic links for you and increases the amount of your high-quality content that gets published and shared in other peoples’ profiles and/or pages.

The Fan Dashboard

The other way to look at your Facebook data is by looking at all fans in the Fan Dashboard, which includes:

* Total fans / unsubscribes – The total number of your fans, and the number of fans who have chosen to hide your posts (unsubscribe)
* New / removed fans – number of new fans, and number of people who have stopped being a fan of your page
* Total page views – the number of times your page has been viewed per day
* Media consumption – how many photo views, audio plays, and video plays your content has received

You may have already noticed that within the last few weeks, Facebook has started automatically sending a weekly email to page administrators with a brief summary of their Facebook activity, along with a link to their Facebook Insights stats. This can be a helpful reminder to review your weekly Facebook information, and also to remind you to post your most recent relevant, high-quality content to draw in and engage your visitors.

400 Million Users Can’t Be Wrong

Of course, Facebook is only one of the many social networking platforms that can help you market your small business, but it is certainly the most-used social site today (it has even surpassed Google as the most-visited site on the web!). There are more than 400,000,000 active Facebook users, and that number continues to grow every month. Like it or not, your customers are already using Facebook, and you need to meet them where they are spending their time.

But with Facebook Insights, it is now a little easier to measure how your Facebook page is performing for your business. By watching the data over time, you can identify the things that really capture interest or result in better visitor interactions, then focus your efforts on doing more of those things. The more you can build your fan base, spread your content to others, and provide high-quality information, the better the results from your social marketing efforts.