Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Small Business

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The Ultimate Guide to Social Media
For
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Small Business

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2 The Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Small Business

Table of Contents_____________________________________
Intro ............................................................................................................. 3

Business Goals .............................................................................................. 4

Strategy ........................................................................................................ 5

Tactics .......................................................................................................... 6

Listening & Monitoring ................................................................................. 7

Web Content ................................................................................................ 8-9

Channels .................................................................................................... 10-17

Converting Website Traffic into Sales ......................................................... 18-25

Conclusion .................................................................................................. 26

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Intro________________________________________________
If you own a small business or are an employee
of one, you are probably asking yourself several
questions, "How do we get started? What steps
do we need to take? How and When is this going
to impact our bottom line?"

Every business is different, but there are a
number of exercises that business need to
conduct in order to create a strategy and
execute a successful social media program.

In this guide, we will explain all of the steps your business needs to take in order
to position yourself for the greatest impact on lead generation, sales, and
customer loyalty.



Business Goals_______________________________________
In the very beginning of any social media program, you will have limited
resources. Therefore, it is important to set your eyes on 1 or 2 specific targets.
You do not want to stretch yourself
too thin. As you get successes under
your belt, budget will be allocated
to the activities that are working.
Some of the business goals that you
can achieve are below:

 Increase Website Traffic and
Leads
 Increase Foot Traffic to Your
Location
 Lower customer acquisition costs
 Reduce Customer Service Costs
 Increase Brand Awareness
 Customer Retention
 Reduce Employee Recruitment Costs

So as an example, your business goal is to increase your website lead generation
25% month over month. Now with this in mind, you will have to come up with a
strategy and tactics for achieving this business goal. This is where investment in
resources like staff, content, and software will be vital.



Strategy____________________________________________
When developing your social media strategy, some of the things that you will
need to think about are: who is my audience, what do they care about, how do
they behave online, what is our current marketing strategy, and how can social
media fit in?

The main reason why a business needs to ask itself these questions is: you need
to create content that is valuable to people. This is the first step to being trusted.
The type of content ranges from
short form status updates to full
blown 30 minute videos.

What subjects are you going to
create content for? If you are a
start up business, you will need
to do some experimentation, and
over time you will find content
that resonates with potential
customers. If you are an
established business, you should have enough data and historical knowledge to
find out what your customers care about.

After you conduct the preliminary research, you will be able to form a beginning
social media strategy. We say 'beginning' because you will need to be nimble
enough to change directions if your strategy doesn't pan out. Always have a
backup plan.

If your business goal is to increase leads by 25% month over month, you have to
come up with a strategy to support this goal. One potential strategy is: Thought
leadership through educational content and digital relationship building. Very
simple. Now your job as a leader is to preach this strategy throughout the
organization. It provides clarity and focus for the next phase of your social media
marketing plan: Tactics.



Tactics_____________________________________________
If you've gotten this far into your planning, congratulations! You are now ready to
layout the nuts and bolts to execute your strategy and ultimately fulfill your
business goals.

Tactics boil down to the specific pieces of content, relationships you will need to
build, and what channels you will be
utilizing to communicate with your
prospects and customers.

So some of the questions you will need
to answer within the tactics section are:

 What pieces of content are we
going to use to draw people to
our website?
 Resources needed for the content
production process
 What social networks are we going to share our content with? Think
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Forums.
 What influencers are we going to target? Think people with massive
audiences that can influence buying behavior.
 Once people reach our website, how do we convince them to submit their
contact information?
 How do we nurture these leads once we have their contact information?
 How will we respond to negative and positive comments?
 Do we have someone that will monitor the web for mentions of our brand?
 Do we have current staff that will create content, community manage, and
measure the results, or do we outsource all of these activities?



Listening & Monitoring________________________________
Before jumping into this section, we want to point out the difference between listening
and monitoring. This is something we learned from the Social Media Success Summit
from Kelly Feller of Intel.

Listening is one of the most unique aspects of social media, in that you can extract
insights from the millions of conversations that
are going on about brands, subjects, industries,
hobbies, among others. Your company can
gain a competitive advantage by listening to
objective conversations from your target
customers.

Monitoring is the process of listening and
responding to questions, concerns,
compliments, and other conversations that
your audience is having about your product,
executives, company, brand, and other factors connected to your business. So not only
are you gaining market insight, but you are also taking an active approach to
participating in conversations that are happening.

Over the past couple of years, many tools have come about that can help you listen and
monitor conversations. Some of the free tools include: Google Alerts, Twitter Search,
Social Mention, Google Reader, and many others. Paid tools include: Radian6, Alterian
SM2, and Sysomos.

Steps to establish a listening and monitoring program:

1. Do keyword research with Google's keyword tool (there are others, but this is a
free tool)
2. Choose your listening & monitoring tools
3. Build monthly listening reports that matter to your business goals and analyze
4. Monitor conversations happening about your brand, products, executives daily
and respond to positive and negative mentions.
5. Make business changes upon analysis
6. Repeat monthly, quarterly, and yearly



Web Content_________________________________________
In order to get noticed in search engines and social networks, you will need to produce amazing content.
Content comes in many different forms, and in order to help you weigh your options, you can refer to
this list when thinking about the types of content that you will use to get your business on the map.
Remember: Play to your strengths. If you know you are not good on camera, try doing audio instead.

1. Writing
The majority of web marketing is based on text, therefore it is in the best interest of any
business to produce lots of written content. This can be in many forms from status
updates, blog posts, e-mails, landing pages, to e-books and white papers.

Use blog posts and status updates to increase awareness for your business by increasing
your visibility in social networks and search engines. Once you get people to subscribe
to your content, you can use e-mails, landing pages, and e-books to guide the prospect
further down the buying cycle.

2. Video
Video is one of the most powerful types of content today. Innovations in technology
have lowered the cost of shooting high quality video pieces, and it only strengthens the
value of your content strategy. It makes it easier to do business with you by providing
videos that concentrate on how-to's, customer testimonials, inspirational stories,
common uses of your product or service, as well as a simple thank you from the CEO or
employees.

3. Podcasts
With the invention of the iPod, people can listen to music practically anywhere. This
doesn't stop with music though. On the way to work, people can catch up on the latest
information that hopefully your company is providing about the industry you are in.
Podcasts are inexpensive to produce, and people can access replays in iTunes and other
podcast sites.

4. Webinars
Whether you are a consultant or a high end cruise company, you can provide value to
your prospects and customers by holding live or recorded presentations. An example of
a great webinar was HubSpot's Science of Social Media. The webinar was full of
unbelievable statistics about social media. Do you want to know what type of product
they sell? Software that helps you measure your internet marketing efforts, including
social media. The webinar also broke the Guiness Book of World Records for the largest
webinar with 10,899 attendees. You can use programs like GoToMeeting or Webex to
fulfill your webinar needs at low costs.
(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)



Web Content________________________________________
5. Applications
Applications can provide a rich experience for your audience. Facebook Applications in
particular are highly customizable if you are willing to invest in a good developer. Some
of the features that you can implement into your applications are e-commerce, branded
gaming, contact forms sign ups, videos, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, and many
others.

6. Widgets
Similar to applications, widgets can be embedded just about anywhere on the internet.
Some of the common uses of widgets are donations, e-commerce, branded links for
spreading awareness about your website, plus more. Widgets are highly customizable
and just might reward you with on-going exposure.

7. Pictures
Incorporating pictures into all of your marketing communications helps people visualize
the point you are making. Much like videos, pictures can help form a connection with
your audience. When is the last time you read an article that included a picture that
described the entire story? This is something you can do easily today.



Channels ________________________________________
Channels are the platforms that you will use to share the amazing content that
you produce. Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blogs, or E-
mail, it is important to do research on where your audience hangs out online.

The following pages will explain what each type of social network or online
marketing channel is, and how it benefits a small business. Note: Tools and
channels always change, so always make sure you are up to date on the latest
trends.



Facebook_________________________________________
From a marketing perspective, Facebook serves two purposes. 1. To create
relationships with other people 2. To promote your own content. Let's explain.

Creating relationships on Facebook comes in different forms:

 Sharing other people's
content
 Asking your fans
questions
 Providing helpful
information to your fans
 Connecting with other
Facebook Pages

Promoting your own content also comes in different forms:

 New blog posts
 Videos produced by your company
 Short tips
 Event invites
 E-books produced by your company
 Plus more.

The key is to share more than you promote yourself. This way you are building an
ecosystem of people willing to promote you in the future as you strengthen your
relationship with them.



Twitter_____________________________________________

Twitter is another social network where sharing will create lasting relationships
for you. If you stick with it long enough, the hard work will pay off. You have to be
consistent and authentic with your interactions. Do not get into the automation
game. This is counter-intuitive to what "social" media is all about.

Promoting your content on Twitter will help drive instant traffic as well as position
your company as an authority in your field.

What are the components of a normal Tweet? Let's explore in the following
example:

Blog Posts Accumulate Traffic with Time [Stats] http://ow.ly/6dNG6 via @social_media_hq

Title of the article Link to article Attribution to source

If you are sharing someone else's content or promoting your own content, you
will want to format your tweet to get the most clicks. Having a captivating title
will entice readers to click on the link. The link will need to be shortened in order
to abide by Twitter's 140 character rule, and finally, you will want to give credit to
the original source of the content. If you are promoting your own content, there is
no need to insert via @twitterusername at the end of a Tweet.



LinkedIn_____________________________________________

LinkedIn can serve many different purposes. Recruiting, LinkedIn Groups, Sales
Research, LinkedIn Answers, and
Company Pages are some of the most
used features on the platform Let's take
you through your options:

Recruiting doesn't have to be a time
intensive activity if you have a network
that you can tap for referrals. The
number one way to find qualified
candidates is to simply ask your LinkedIn
network if they know of any candidates
that are looking for the type of position that you have available. The key here is
having strong relationships with your LinkedIn connections, or you will find that
not many people will help you when you need it.

LinkedIn Groups are a fantastic way to forge relationships with professionals that
you are not acquainted with. Be sure to listen to the types of conversations
people are having before jumping in. The number one mistake people make when
participating in LinkedIn Groups is posting content that is out of context with the
group norms. Ease your way into the group community, and the results will show.

Sales Research is at your fingertips with individual profiles and company pages.
Collecting intelligence before you make that first phone call is crucial in
developing a lead.

LinkedIn Answers can position your company as an expert in your field, or you
can ask questions that will be answered by an entire network of professionals
with related experience. Like Groups, there is opportunity for relationship
building as well.



YouTube____________________________________________

Did you know that 45 hours of video are uploaded every minute on YouTube?
There are more than 3 billion views per day!
These statistics are astonishing. In fact, you are
missing out on a huge opportunity to get found
by potential customers by not implementing
video into your marketing plan. Some of the
benefits of video:

 Increased search engine rankings
 Opportunities for converting website visitors into sales leads
 Increase Customer Retention through Education, Inspiration, and
Entertainment
 Many, many more

The key to getting found in YouTube:

1. You have to produce quality content (people smell laziness a mile away)

2. Insert researched keywords into the Titles, Descriptions, and Tags (use
YouTube's Keyword Tool)

3. Share your videos on other sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and your Blog

4. Interact with other YouTube users/channels to increase your social reach.



Blogs____________________________________________

Blogs were one of the first forms of what is now called "social media", and they
are still powerful vehicles for communicating your expertise. Some of the benefits
of blogging:

 Increased search engine rankings
 Opportunities for converting website
visitors into sales leads
 Increase Customer Retention through
Education, Inspiration, and Entertainment
 Many, many more

When people think about blogging, they think
about only the blogging platform they own. One
of the best tactics that you can implement is
called "Guest Blogging". What this means is
forging relationships with blogs that have large audiences and offering to submit
an article as a guest writer. You will gain awareness, links to your site for search
engine rankings, as well as an opportunity to be viewed as an authority in your
field.

Converting readers or watchers into sales leads can be done by including calls to
action in several places in your blog. The most successful placements in the past
have been in the top right sidebar and below the blog article. But remember,
every company's target audience is different, so you will need to test which call to
action locations generate the most clicks and lead form submissions. (more on
this later)



E-Mail_____________________________________________

Many people are saying that e-mail is dead, but this is far from the truth.
According to eMarketer, e-mail is the preferred choice for receiving sales offers
and content. This channel has a distinct role within the marketing funnel. It should
be a goal to convert social media followers and web browsers into e-mail
subscribers. Subscribers are one step further down the marketing funnel, and
now your job is to serve them offers and content that is relevant to their needs.

Below you will a screenshot of an e-mail from Social Media Examiner that informs
but also helps to convert viewers into leads or sales:

Helpful
Content
Call to Action
for Seminar

Call to
Action for Call to Action:
Seminar Share & Subscribe

Call to Action:
"Like" Facebook
Page



Mobile__________________________________________
With the growth of mobile marketing comes new opportunities to target and communicate with
prospects and customers. You will find some of the newest methods for reaching your audience.

 Geo-Location
As of today, most smart phones are built with GPS
capabilities. This is powerful for small, location
based businesses for a couple of reasons. People
can now tell their friends on multiple networks
that they are at a business. This leads to increased
brand awareness for your business, but the best
aspect of this channel is that your loyal customers
are doing all of the promoting for you. Give
Foursquare, Facebook Check-In Deals, Gowalla, or
SCVNGR a try.

 Text Messages (SMS)
Text messages are the most widely used feature of mobile phones. According to Portio
Research, SMS traffic is expected to break 8 trillion in 2011. Access your customers with offers
and updates at any time and place with text messages.

 Optimizing Sites for Mobile
According to Mashable, by 2015, more people will access the internet through their mobile
phones than through desktop or laptop computers. Having a website is useless if people cannot
access it from their phones. Therefore, making sure your website is optimized for mobile sites
should be an item to tackle within the next year as more people access the internet on their
mobile devices. There are simple codes that you can place into your website, or you can build a
custom template to pull content from your normal website.

 Mobile Applications
The ultimate mobile zen is building a custom application for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry.
Before you dive into developing a special application, you will need to figure what mobile device
your target market is using the most. After you figure this out, you will need to develop a plan
for the type of content that people will need in the application. You can design an app that has
the following options: gaming, mobile commerce, notifications, geo-location, form submissions,
maps, pictures, video, audio, among others.



Converting Website Traffic into Sales_____________________

One of the most overlooked portions of a
social media marketing plan is setting your
website up to convert visitors into leads and
sales. There are certain best practices that
have been verified over many tests. But you
will want to conduct your own tests to see
which layouts, colors, calls to action, and
other factors convert the most traffic into
leads and sales.

The following pages will outline the steps you will need to take in order get the
most leads and sales out of your website.



Calls to Action_______________________________________

One of the many reasons that you created a website in the first place was to
create sales opportunities, right? A critical element that many website and blogs
lack is a call to action. What do you want the visitor to do next? You have to tell
them.

The following examples illustrate calls to action that inspire website visitors to
take the next step:

 HubSpot's Blog contains a call to action at the top of every page to download free content
in exchange for contact information:

 Jay Baer's Blog, Convince and Convert, contains a "Hello Bar" at the top of every page. The
Hello Bar is great for driving traffic to sign up for monthly promos, as you can adjust the
settings very easily:

 Inside Facebook makes a good portion of its revenue from the Facebook Marketing Bible.
After every blog post, they include a call to action to begin the membership sign up
process:



Landing Pages_______________________________________
After the website visitor clicks on the call to action, the next step is collecting their
contact information for lead nurturing. The goal is to get as many people to click
on the submit button as possible. Page layout, colors, pictures, video, and
testimonials are all factors that you will want to think about in order to maximize
your lead generation.
Below you will find an example of a landing page that is designed to convert visitors into leads from
HubSpot:



Content Incentives___________________________________
So the next question you will want to ask
before setting up your calls to action and
landing pages is: "What's in it for them?".
This is where content incentives can really
boost your sales leads. In exchange for
contact information, people will be able to
access e-books (much like this one), white
papers, videos, webinars, podcasts, studies,
and survey results.

What content does your audience find valuable?



Lead Nurturing _____________________________________

Now that you have collected people's
contact information, what do you do next?
E-mail will keep the relationship going by
serving people more valuable content and
offers, keeping your company top of mind.

If you have collected information about your
sales leads, you can now begin to segment
lists into different content types. For
example, if you have people specify what
role they have in their company, you can tailor e-mail content to only business
owners or only sales executives. Personalization is a trend that will keep growing
as marketing technology improves.

With e-mail, you also now have the opportunity to collect more information
about your prospects and customers. Through calls to action within your e-mail
messages, you will create additional conversions through content downloads or
even purchases. E-mail is the place to implement the harder sell along with
valuable content.



Sales & Customer Service Training_____________________

As you start to produce leads, you will need
a sales and customer service team in place
to assist the prospect along the purchase
path and to keep current customers happy.

Since every company is different, you will
need to find an approach that works for
you. The easier you make it for your sales
and customer service team to perform
their jobs, the more sales and loyalty you
will produce for your company.

Tips for sales team training:
1. Come up with a monthly or quarterly education process for salespeople.
You can reduce costs by doing webinars.
2. Create a system for filtering leads to salespeople.
3. Create a lead scoring system for identifying strong leads versus weak
leads.

Tips for customer service training:
1. Create a center of excellence for customer service, marketing, and sales
teams to access information and share knowledge
2. Schedule monthly or quarterly training
3. Empower customer service to create and share content that will improve
the lives of customers



Testing and Measurement_____________________________
1. Testing

The beauty of the web is that you can quickly perform tests on your website to see
which layouts, colors, number of fields, messaging,
pictures, and video convert the most traffic into leads
or paying customers.

You can either do the testing yourself through tools like
Google Website Optimizer, or you can hire an agency
like Wider Funnel or Trinity Insight to run tests on your
site. You will be amazed at the improvements in leads
and sales from small changes in page elements.

2. Measurement

After you have deployed several content pieces that are findable in search engines and
shareable in social networks, you need to measure results. Some of the questions you
will need to ask are:
 What content pieces were shared the most in social networks?
 Where is the traffic to the landing page coming from? Search Engines? Facebook?
 What are the conversion rates for each piece of content?
 conversion rate = (conversions ÷ traffic) *100
 What landing page version converted more visitors into leads or sales? (if you are
performing tests)
 If you are a brick and mortar business: How many check-in specials were
redeemed? Has foot traffic increased?

After you examine all of the available data, you can determine where you need to tweak
your strategy or tactics. One example: You are finding that you are not getting much
qualified traffic from Facebook, but you are getting a lot of qualified website traffic from
LinkedIn Groups. The next step would be to focus more on participating effectively in
LinkedIn Groups by posting helpful content that is published by your company and also
other companies.



Creating Lifelong Customers__________________________
So you are now at the bottom of the marketing funnel, and you have secured your
customer base. The process doesn't end with the sale. Depending on the types of
products or services you sell, you will have to maintain a certain level of customer
service. Customer service comes in many formats, but here are just a few to consider:

1. Loyalty Programs
Your customers can earn points for every
purchase. Eventually the points add up to a
freebie or some type of special treatment.
You can reward customers using Foursquare
or Facebook Check-in Deals by
implementing a mobile punch card
program. (i.e. after the 3rd check-in, receive
a free appetizer).

2. Referral Programs
Set up a referral program and include a call
to action in all of your e-mail marketing to customer lists. You could give a
percentage off per product or per month if you sell an ongoing service.

3. Simple Thank You
Sending a simple thank you to your customers goes a long way. This can be done
in many formats, so be generous with your thanks!

4. Digital Customer Service
Consumers are starting to catch on that customer service is often better served
on social channels due to the fact that most interactions are in a public forum.
Your customer service department will need to gear up to respond to comments
in all of your owned channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs for example.
In addition, you will need to come up with a monitoring system and assign
customer service staff to respond to comments on sites that your company does
not control directly.



Conclusion______________________________________
Take the knowledge you gained from this guide and start implementing ideas into
your online marketing. By taking advantage of social media and content
marketing now, you will have a leg up on the competition. The adoption rate of
the proper techniques for generating business are still low for many small
businesses, so you will be able to pave the way in your market.

Think about this. Content creation is an asset that will keep growing as you feed
more content into your website, search engines, and beyond. By generating
amazing content, you increase your following, leads, and ultimately closed
business.

By no means will this process be quick and easy, but you will reap the benefits
over time. You will be glad you did.

Go out there and create some magic!



Next Steps________________________________________
If you are interested in growing your business online, contact Social Media HQ today to start
the discovery process.

P.S. If you liked this guide please share it with your colleagues, friends, family,
or whoever you think might find value in it. Click on one of the share buttons
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Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Small Business

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