Online Social Networks:

What is Social Media?
Does Your Business Need to Engage?

Why do all businesses need to participate in online social networks? What is social media? Building social marketing programs (like internet social networks) enables you to build better customer relationships and, when done right, helps you to build a stronger brand.

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But as a small business owner or manager, you need to understand 'what is social media' and how social media affects your business, and your brand.

Big business is paying attention to, and investing in, social networks; big businesses are building on-line marketing services (also known as digital or social media) departments that focus on how to interact and connect with their stakeholders online.

Small business owners can easily become part of internet social networks, but they have to invest some of their time (or money; through contracting bloggers, posters, or social media content writers) to build a relationship and maintain a conversation within their network.

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With an Online Social Network;

You can focus your marketing strategies to:

• Build your brand image;
• Connect with your marketplace;
• Recruit new employees;
• Strengthen online reputation management;
• Become recognized as the knowledge expert in your field by sharing information and ideas that are useful to your community;
• Track what your competitors are doing;
• 'Hear' what your customers are saying, both positive and negative feedback;
• Follow your key suppliers and encourage them to continuously improve;
• Drive online traffic to your website (and to ensure that you have built your website to support your marketing plan and strategies).

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Online social networks are a step beyond integrated marketing or direct marketing: this is marketing on a personal, or one-to-one, level.

As a small business owner, you can participate by building an online communication messaging strategy. For example, if you choose to include Twitter in your strategy you will need to develop a message not longer than 140 characters. That can be a challenge (to communicate your story in a short space) but it can also be a strong benefit (you do not have to spend a long time writing your message, you will learn to focus your comments (or redirect to the whole story on your website), and your audience can read the message quickly).

Your message strategy is to send an interested audience to a page on your website that has a much larger (but also engaging) story. You might write something like the following:

Business to business selling (b2b) is a focused activity. Make sure you can identify your unique value proposition.

This sentence is 65 characters long which will fit into a 'tweet'. However if you wanted to add a url link back to your site it would likely be too long for the limit of 140 characters. If that's the case then you need to use a url shortener to 'shorten' the url to help you fit your message into the 'tweet' (you'll also have to write short and direct messages).

Online social networks are the 'perfect' small business marketing tool. Building and maintaining your network, or community, is low cost (only your time and/or money to hire writers or posters).

It is fast; to both post and to reach your community. It has a significantly large reach. It is meant to support two-way communication (that is, you must also use it to hear what people are saying about you).

Social networking is meant to be authentic; it needs to be a giving (not a taking) environment.

You can certainly gain interest and raise brand awareness and a host of other positive marketing and business results.

But you must remember that this is a medium that is based on relationship building.

Build your network to be a popular and relevant online community or network for business, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Read More:

About On-Line Marketing Services

About which is the right type of association to join.

About the Definition of Marketing and how it impacts business growth.

Find out how building your Business Community can help you grow your business.

About how to Define Social Networks and select which one of a number of successful networks is the best fit for you.

About the importance of building a strong network.

Find out how business mentors can provide you with resources and depth.

About the effect a strong internal committee can have on your organization.

Or search the Site Index for other small business topics, such as pricing, selling, human resources, making money, and more.

Or return to the More-For-Small-Business Home Page.