14 Jan You really, really “like” me!

Making social media work for small business

Your business has a Facebook page! So what? You started tweeting for your business! Who cares?

Don’t feel hurt by the questions. Social media offers great opportunity for most businesses. But opportunity is a lot like what they say about talent – on it’s own, it’s not enough. We all have excuses and explanations for not doing more. But we all know more is what it takes to be successful.

More content? Sure.
More strategy? Definitely.
More time and effort? Some, yes. But smarter time and targeted effort.
More money spent on resources? Not as much as you might think.

You know what you do when you Assume?

• It’s expensive to hire a full-time social media strategist. TRUE.
• I could get an intern to churn out posts and tweets, but I don’t have time to manage one. TRUE.
• I can see what kinds of things go viral, but I don’t have any real social media expertise. TRUE.
• I don’t have time to create original content for all of this. TRUE.
• Outside resources to keep my social media humming are too expensive. FALSE.

Rule #1 about social media – PARTICIPATE!
If you’re not consistently posting and tweeting, no one is seeing you. Which means no one is paying attention to you. Which means all you’re all opportunity and no interaction.

The operative word here is consistently, not constantly. You don’t need to push posts and tweet 20-30 times a day, but you do need to get interesting things in front of your audience several times a week at least. If you don’t, you start to fall off their radar and their news feeds.

Misconception #1
I MUST HAVE ALL ORIGINAL, BRANDED CONTENT. The answer here requires an essay, not just a true or false. Original content is important, to be sure. But shared, or curated, content is just as important when it comes to staying in front of the right eyeballs.

Lets face it, when it comes to social media, nobody cares about you or your brand. Before you even get started, it’s important to understand what your readers are looking for on Facebook, Twitter and all the other social outlets they turn to. They turn to social media for two (and only 2) things – in no specific order:

1. Information
2. Entertainment

They don’t care about your brand or want to see your logo in their newsfeed. Again. They don’t want to be sold on why your product rocks. They come to find content relating to what they’re passionate about. As a result, you have a chance to share entertaining stories relating to that topic.

The Internet is chock full of interesting and engaging content. Your role as a social media strategist is to point your audience to those items that interest them and engage them on the things they are passionate about. So rather than creating original content, you have an opportunity to create a stir with what you choose to share and comment about. And hopefully spur a conversation in the process.

High quality, original, owned content is incredibly important to have on your site and in your feeds, but to have success in social media, you need to both Create new and original content and Curate existing, engaging content from others.

How to get it done – and not cost an arm and a leg
This is where our first two questions creep in again. Your business has a Facebook page? Great! There’s a Twitter account for your business? That’s awesome! There are two ways you can start thinking about populating these (and Instagram, Pinterest, &c) with things that engage your audience.

Do it yourself (or hire a staffer to handle it)
OR
Engage an outside resource (like Nymble) to start a steady stream of content driving readers to your feeds and sites and keep you at top of mind for them.

An effective content curation program should absolutely not cost you an arm and a leg. Do a little research. Ask Nymble what we can do for you. You won’t regret it.