Small Business and Social Media: Getting Real

In 2010, a Vitrue 100 survey shows that consumer electronic products and fashion and retail getting 30% and 20% share of social media buzz respectively. Most of these are giant corporations with the budget to play large in the marketing game.

But how should small businesses set goals to make social media work for them?

Goal-setting
First, be realistic. Aiming for results at par with Apple and Gucci will only leave you disappointed and disillusioned. So manage your expectations and scale them down to realistic proportions for your target market.

Set specific and time-sensitive goals. This will keep you and your company away from infinite and unnecessary spending.

Manpower
Social media has made a cost-effective multi-media marketing campaign possible. It has become the investment of choice for most small businesses or has been incorporated into traditional marketing efforts in some form.

If you have successfully optimized social media through you preferred channels, you will need to properly manage the audience that you have captured. The best alternative to hiring a marketing team to maintain your digital campaigns is to either do it yourself or somebody who is already on your team to dedicate a couple of hours each day.

Focus on Content
Given the limited resources available to small businesses, be smart when diving into the social web. Plan out specific goals and focus on the message you are trying to get across. You will avoid getting lost and tangled in the various temptations of investing in strategies that are not custom-fit to your kind of business. Plan. Focus.

It is more beneficial to focus efforts not on consumer-brand social relationship, but instead on putting out material that your consumer can engage with to his friends. Being smart about where you fish will give you an effective and cost-effective campaign.

Consumers do not expect a brand to comment on their status when they rave about their day. They know that you are a brand and expect you to behave as such. So work on establishing your company's identity, not being chummy with the fans.

Getting good reviews in your Return on Insight (ROI) and Return on Engagement (ROE), is not enough. Be sure to tap the local community with traditional strategies as well. Building networks online as well as offline will only strengthen and help integrate your social media and traditional media efforts.

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