Don’t be intimidated by “social media experts”

Happy today to feature guest blogger Chris Hewitt, an Internet marketing professional with more than 12 years of experience in Internet strategy and web marketing.  Currently the senior director of marketing operations for Lumension, he has leveraged this experience to successfully create and execute eCommerce, SEO and social media strategies in large, medium and small enterprises.   He is a graduate of Arizona State University with a  bachelor’s and MBA degree in marketing. You can check out his blog here.

Chris Hewitt

Over the past several months, I have spent a lot of time with small business professionals presenting and discussing Social Media.  There is an exciting energy around social media and these professionals are eager to understand how they can leverage Social Media in their businesses.  Interestingly enough, that energy is equally matched by an awkward, nervous fear that they just cannot, and will not be able to, figure out Social Media.

Keeping Social Media At Arms Length

We [Internet Marketing Professionals] have been slowly and unknowingly (in some cases purposefully) making Social Media inaccessible to those those outside our profession.  There is so much Social Media information, opinion, and advice being generated by Internet professionals that the concept has quickly become unmanageable for many business people (even for many Internet/marketing professionals).

While social Internet tools have been around for some time (e.g. blogging), the organized business discipline of ’social media’ is relatively new.  Consequently, many Internet professionals are scrambling to assemble their concepts, applications, and products into a flag that they can plant in the fresh, newly discovered sands of Social Media.  Unlike the relatively isolated exploration of the New World, these efforts are busy, bustling ports and are creating a lot of noise for outsiders looking for answers.

Understandably, the growing Social Media noise is turning away small business professionals who feel that they:

1. Are unable to understand Social Media.
2. Cannot use/apply Social Media in their business.
3. Must pay for ‘experts’ to navigate Social Media on their behalf.

Despite these perceptions, I have found that small business professionals are in the best position to understand and leverage Social Media.

The Small Business Advantage

While Social Media can be a seemingly daunting concept, small business professionals have strong foundations of flexibility, courage, and culture from which to build successful and, most importantly, sustainable campaigns.

1. Start With Simple Definitions, Not Tools

While it is easy to make Social Media tangible through tools like Twitter or Facebook, that is the wrong focus for a business of any size…and can be particularly frustrating for small businesses.

Begin by honestly defining how and why you are going to use Social Media:

1. What is your business case and goal?
2. What defines success?
3. What opportunities do you have through Social Media that aren’t available in other media?

 The most important component of this step is honesty.  If you want to share knowledge, then share knowledge.  However, if you want to generate direct revenue, then your actions should clearly be designed to generate direct revenue…do not try to generate direct revenue through the guise of ‘knowledge share’.

You may find through this exercise that Twitter is not a useful tool for your business.  That is okay, you don’t have to be on Twitter (or any other Social Media tool for that matter).  

2. Understand The Target Audience

After defining what you want to do and accomplish through Social Media, small businesses need to determine who they want to, and based on their goals should (e.g. customers or prospects), reach with those messages.

Here is where the small business advantage is so powerfully demonstrated; knowledge of the business, its customers, and prospects creates a true understanding of the audience.  Often the individuals within a small business have intimate, rich knowledge of the organization’s products, services, and operations.  That first-hand knowledge can be crafted into highly relevant and engaging Social Media campaigns.

Understanding the target audience requires that we think about the:

• Motivations of our potential audience.
• Needs of our potential audience.
• Ways that they like to receive, and respond to, communications.
• What the audience expects to hear from you.

3. Continually Return Value

Lastly, and most importantly, is the responsibility we have to return value to our audience.  A recipient of our message has taken the time to follow a link, watch a video, read a post, etc. and it is our responsibility to have invested the time to make that action valuable.  

Returning value is more of a commitment than a labor; information and knowledge (especially at a small business level) are often extremely valuable but overlooked.  

Examples of things that are valuable:

• Special offers that are targeted, specific, timely, and relevant.
• Exclusive content.
• The ability to connect with a knowledge leader within the organization (access to knowledge).
• Perspective that educates (industry, solution, product knowledge).
• Openness to feedback and passionately supporting the voice of the customer.

 Examples of things that are not necessarily valuable:

• Information already freely found in your marketing/Internet vehicles.
• Other information that you did not create and have not enriched with your own perspective (e.g. just sharing a link).
• Non-personalized, empty corporate messages and campaigns.

Social Media Is Small Business

Leverage the small business advantage to create dynamic, rapidly shifting Social Media concepts.  Introduce the Social Media concept to your entire organization and allow them to participate.  You will have dynamic, collaborative strategy that is consistent and authentic, while creating an engaging and sustainable dialog with your audience.

So harness that excitement, ignore the noise, thoughtfully try a few things, and become more of an expert than the ‘experts’.