Listen and share instead?

Every business is unique and different, and so are their social styles. Not everything you see others do will work for your company.

Social activity can’t be ignored, but most small businesses that didn’t grow up in a culture of social online behavior will agree that there isn’t a whole lot of time for chit-chatting in the unknown with whoevers. There’s a business to run.

The superficial benefits to social engagement are obvious:

• Brand recognition
• Industry thought leadership
• Staying current with trends and information

But those reasons aren’t enough to keep you interesting or interested in social activity – they’re kind of flat, aren’t they?

Among the more brow-raising reasons for social engagement, the term ‘social proof’ should have you rethinking social altogether.

Your interaction with others online actually validates your company. You may have a great company in business 20 years, but if you don’t have social media profiles and descriptions for it and don’t talk about it with social media, search engines don’t connect expert knowledge behind your brand with valuable website content. Website pages have to have a way to update with current information and relevant topics frequently, and then be able to share it.

If you’re a beginner to online social engagement, these tips will help you develop a strategy that you can tweak as you progress. Start somewhere. I’m not advocating useless, time-intensive brand-shouting. That won’t help at all.

Use your platform to help others. Find the part of your ‘why’ that brings excellence to the table, and teach others how that benefits them. Give people hope, be a message of goodwill and good information. Be funny, enthusiastic, and genuinely helpful. This is just another way to connect with others, like going to a networking function.

Here are five tips to get you started:

• Decide when you’re going to be available to engage. You don’t have to be in these arenas constantly, but be accountable to yourself and pick 10-15 minutes a couple of times a day. If you’re comfortable with more, fine. Just make sure you can still get work done!
• Use your quarterly marketing plan and current month to pick topics that your company and employees should be talking about anyway and develop your strategy.
• Every platform isn’t important right now, but one location will be better than another. Decide if it’s Facebook (and you DO have to have a business page) or Twitter or LinkedIn or Foursquare that will benefit your company the most. Get comfortable in one area before going on to another. Give yourself a couple of months in your first social setting.
• Think about how often you want to share your topics, and keep it to one of your own topics to three of someone elses topics.
• Don’t just post and leave, try to engage with another person. If it doesn’t happen right away, that’s okay. Being consistent will bring you results. When someone engages with you, respond! That’s what it’s all about.

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Wonder how social media works for your company? If you don’t set up a decent profile, it won’t work for you at all.

The first thing to setting up your profiles is to make sure what you add really benefits your brand. We can talk all day about how to manage the Twitterverse, but when it comes down to it, people join these communities to stay involved with people. They go to profiles first for many reasons.

1. To make sure you’re a real person, to make sure you’re not some ‘bot’ that wastes their time,
2. To make sure you have something they want to hear more about.

Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are three areas where most businesses should have a profile. Each of these areas allows you a small amount of space to share who you are, what you offer, who you work for, and how to get in touch with you to learn more. I suggest you take that one step farther – make sure anyone who is deciding whether or not to follow you knows how you could help them with your products or services.

Your photo is important.
A logo can be helpful as an additional profile (with Twitter you can have more than one), but the reality is that people connect with people, not logos. Upload a professional picture of you that’s friendly, and avoid things that are inconsistent with your brand perception.

If you make money off of humor, then a funny image here might do you good. If you make money being controversial, than an out-of-the-ordinary image might work for you. If you’re the best of the best at what you do, and professional attire is how you dress, then use a professional shot. Let your image do some ‘talking.’

Don’t forget your website address.
A website address is primary. Don’t forget it or your efforts here are futile. All associates and employees of a company should have the company website on their profiles for two reasons.

1. Those links are vital for search relevance. Multiple employees with social media profiles linking to the company website are great for SEO.
2. People legitimately looking for your company should be easily able to do it ,so everything you do to make it easier is a good choice.

Don’t spend a lot of time here pondering whether or not it’s safe to have those links out there because you can’t control how they’re being respected. You can always demand a link be taken down if it doesn’t benefit your company. Another way to handle those links is to stress company pride in your weekly team and management meetings. Make sure employees are aware of how you expect them to behave on social media networks.

Depending on what you do, your domain website link ending in .com or .net may not be the best link. If you want people to go to your newsletter sign-up page or another specific landing page, or even your company profile page, use that extended link where it will let you. (The direct url of that particular page.)

Describe yourself and what you bring to the table.
Your description should be inviting and warm. Let others know your position with the company, and how you enjoy working with people. Tag lines are good here, and so are human-interest keywords (not necessarily the same as search engine keywords). If someone wants to follow a search term, think about the terms you would be found under and use them.

Keep all your contact data available, including your email if you get that option. Some of this information may only be available in extended bios, but people actually read extended bios, so don’t neglect to fill them out.

Add your other social locations.
When you’re working on your branding online, it’s best to put the pieces together for people. Make it easy to see as many of your social media ‘handles’ as they allow. (Daddy had a C.B. radio, Mom and Dad were Powder Puff and the Pipe Machine … I digress …)

You’ll learn the rest as you go, but take your profile seriously. Convey a positive attitude and genuine interests so people want to connect with you. Then, engage in a little conversation whenever you get the chance.

One last note
You can block pornographic and spamming followers. Rule of thumb: if they haven’t gone to the same trouble you have to make sure they have a decent profile, it’s probably best to avoid them. I don’t click on any website links in profiles that don’t have a picture or make reasonable sense.

What’s your ‘handle?’ Share in the comments below! You can reach me @skhamilton, and our team @ZTSM. We’re on Facebook, too. Hop on over there and ‘Like’ our page! (Right now, we’re offering our free report: 5 Keys to Higher Sales in 2012 when you sign up for the Inside Line on Getting More Business.)

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Twitter has a lot to offer the local business, but it’s all about strategy. It took me a couple of years to figure out. Back then, no one really thought about using Twitter in the office interactively. Few are talking about it now.

Let’s say you operate a micro-business, maybe one person in the office and a two to five people off-site visiting clients. By using Twitter tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and SocialOomph, you can build a network of local followers that are very likely to need your services.

Why Should Your Company do This?

I believe the beauty in what Twitter offers local business is the mobility. You see it every day, people staring down at their phones to text, search or call. To do that effectively requires a compatible phone. Those phones aren’t cheap. I think that’s a strong argument for segmenting the population right there. First and foremost for most companies is building a client base of customers who can afford their  products or services. Marketing on a mobile platform increases the odds that your message is going out to that base.

Add to that the ability those clients have to tweet to their friends and family about the great company they just hired, and you’ve again increased your company’s validity online. 

How Does a Staff Work Together for Your Company’s Brand?

Large corporations have been doing this for years. They learned early on that when a company has a presence on a powerful network like Twitter, they increase their brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Small companies can learn from this as well. Each member of your company should have a Twitter handle, and a company bio and link back to the website from the profile. They should all have a picture.

With Tweetdeck and Hootsuite tools, each member of the team can be monitored in column view by all or one person. In a micro-sized company like described above, the office staff monitors the column view while the off-site staff simply interacts and comments with their phones between customer visits. All have the ability to retweet a message.

With each of the members developing their own personality and list of followers as they build this network, they begin to approach and follow the others’ lists. Brand recognition ensues, and if managed responsibly, the local market is now exposed to a company where they are already looking when they need a product or service.

This method will work with any size company, from a chain organization to a mom and pop business.

For more insight into building your local business presence online with Twitter, download your free copy of The Very Best Way to Use Twitter for Local Business today.

Exact Target reports that Twitter users are more likely to post regularly to blogs, more likely to post product and service reviews, and more likely to share coupons on coupon sites. We’re also more likely to write articles, post videos, contribute to wiki’s, and comment on other people’s blogs. This rings true for me, because as a Twitter user, I like to find interesting or educational tidbits that I can share with my readers. 

I found the statistics above on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, a site I follow in Google Reader. They could have just as easily come from a short post and link on Twitter. Either way, I’m sharing with you here, and I’ll share this information on Twitter and our Zero To Sixty Marketing Facebook page, and a variety of other sites. Other people do the same thing, and that’s how online content gains wings.

What does this have to do with your local business? Give us something to talk about! Post your in-store specials to Twitter, offer recipes, how-to articles, tip sheets, etc. If it relates to your product or service or offers something of value, share it on Twitter, Facebook, and directly on your blog. Doing so multiplies your message and provides more opportunity for your readers to expand your reach. Get it right, and it’s free viral promotion for your business.

Are you on Twitter? Let’s connect! Just click the link or look for @ShariV. Please include your Twitter address in your comments, below.