I was talking with a client of mine the other day and we were brainstorming ways she could promote a new white paper / product offering and one of the things we talked about was using Social Media as a way to get the word out.  Through the course of our discussion it struck me that there are 4 levels of engagement that small business owners are using when it comes to Social Media and business.

You can find a lot of examples of each of these levels…especially the first one, which is unfortunately the largest of the four.  The remaining 3 tactics are all viable business strategies.  Which one you use will be driven by how much time you can invest in Social Business overall, what your personal style is and ultimately what you’re trying to accomplish.

The 4 levels of Social Business Engagement:

• Non-existent
• Visible
• Educate
• Engage

Let me take a shot at breaking this down into something more meaningful.  Here’s a quick diagram I drew up on my iPad.  The Y axis reflects the value a business owner gets from a particular tactic…higher is better.  The X axis reflects the amount of time spent on each tactic.

Level 1 – Non-existent

Although it’s not a tactic it is sadly the state that most business owners are in when it comes to their Social Business approach.  If you have a half filled out LinkedIn profile or a Facebook page that never gets updated or a Twitter account that was started but only has 2 tweets from last April (one of those being “Trying to figure out what this Twitter thing is all about”), then you are at the  non-existent stage from a Social Business perspective.

When you’re non-existent, you are not getting any value…in fact, you are potentially hurting your cause with an incomplete profile…but at least your not spending any time on anything.

Visible

The next level up is Visible, which is actually a viable tactic for a lot of small business owners.  This approach can provide a lot of value, especially relative to the small amount of time spent.  Being visible means that people can easily find you via search and get more information if they’re interested. 

In order to be visible, you need to pick at least 1 of the major social media platforms and invest a few hours into creating a quality profile.  I’d suggest LinkedIn if you are Business to Business and Facebook if you are Business to Consumer.

A quality profile includes a picture and a clear, interesting write-up on what you do and why someone else should care.  It should have at least a little bit of personality and include some personal information.  It should be easy to further engage with you and learn more – your profile should have a link back to your website.  You should also have a reasonable number of connections (say a couple hundred for LinkedIn…Facebook will vary based on what you’re doing) and you should spend an hour or so a week keeping it updated, posting status updates, answering questions, etc.

Educate

As a tactic, Educate includes everything on the Visible level and also includes regular educational updates across multiple channels. The best way to educate is to create great content…it could be blog posts, videos, podcasts or anything else that adds value to your target market.  With an Educate approach, not only can your prospects and partners find you, they also can see your enthusiasm and expertise – especially as you consistently share great stuff over time.

This approach can be effective with as little as a 2 to 4 hours per week – that would be the time it takes to write 1 blog post and share it in multiple places (and interact as you would for the Visible tactic).

Engage

Finally the Engage tactic is the high end of Social Business strategies.  Engagement is when you immerse yourself into 1 or more social media platforms and consciously and consistently develop your own tribe of followers (Customers, prospects, partners, etc.).  Engagement strategies are often built on education, but there are other successful engagement strategies built on personality, customer service or just being part or leading a community.

If you can successfully Engage in Social Business, you will create a fan base that can dramatically amplify your message and help drive word of mouth and opportunities your direction.  Done the right way, it’s extremely powerful and beneficial.

However…Engagement takes a lot of time and presence (there’s an expectation of real time responses, so you need to be always ‘on’).  Additionally you have to genuinely enjoy the process of connecting with your virtual tribe – if you don’t have the right kind of personality you will struggle to make this work.

How are you investing your time?

Every business owner should at least be at Visible on 1 platform.  It takes a low investment of time, anyone can do it and it will greatly enhance the number of people who can find you…remember if they can’t find you, they can’t do business with you.

Going beyond Visible is a choice.  I’m a big proponent of content marketing and Education, but there are a lot of small business owners who aren’t set up to make an Educate tactic work…and they certainly don’t have the time or effort it takes to Engage.  However it’s not all or nothing.  On the chart the levels show as discrete options, but it’s actually a smooth curve and you can scale your efforts up and down depending on your resources.

Where are you on the Social Business Engagement spectrum?  Does this model make sense?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments…Engage with me in the comments below and let me know what you think!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by JD Hancock

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As a small business owner, you have lots of people telling you that you MUST be on social media if you want to thrive…or even if you want to survive.  It’s not just Social Media anymore, it’s Social Business. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics:

- 1 out of every 9 people on the planet is on Facebook (750 Million +)

- Facebook now tops Google for weekly online traffic

- People upload 3000 images to Flickr…every minute! (here’s my page)

- 1 in 6 marriages are people who met online (nearly twice the number who met in bars)

- Sadly 1 in 5 divorces is being blamed on Facebook

The reality is that Social Media has arrived…and you do need to be doing something with it for your business…but it’s not a silver bullet.  You have to find an approach that makes sense, isn’t going to overwhelm the business, but still gets you out there.

Here are 4 fairly simple steps that can help you make sure your Social Business efforts aren’t wasted.

1. Recognize that Marketing has changed

The world has changed in the last 10 years, and it’s no surprise that marketing (and sales) have changed along with it.  10 years ago, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t even exist.  Mobile?  You could kind of get to the internet on a mobile phone, but it sucked and it wasn’t really worth the time or the effort.

Fast forward to today – if a consumer wants to buy something, wants to learn something, wants to get opinions, they will go online and search for it themselves, no matter where they are.  They don’t want and they don’t trust traditional advertising.  So where does that leave us from a marketing standpoint? 

“Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t”.  Seth Godin

If you want to market your business successfully, you need to be found online (because that’s where people are searching) and you need to attract potential buyers…not interrupt them.

2. You have to have a plan

Just being online isn’t enough.  You’re going to invest time and money to support your online marketing efforts (although probably a lot less than you would have had to invest in traditional marketing).  And since you’re investing, you need to be clear on a few things:

• What are you trying to achieve (drive traffic, generate leads, educate, raise awareness, support customers – all of these might drive to different strategies).
• Who’s your target (and where do they hang out)?  What are they looking for (keywords)?  What do they want?
• What’s your message?  What benefit or outcome are you delivering?  What problem are you solving.  If you can’t be clear on this, you aren’t going to attract anyone.
• What’s your call to action?  What do you want them to do next?  Call you?  Download a report?  Visit your location?  Buy something?  Be clear and keep it simple.

On top of all of that, you need to have a quality website.  It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy, in fact simple is probably better.  But it does need to be clean and professional.

3. Develop a Social Media Presence

Once you have an idea of what you’re trying to achieve and you have a sense of who your target is, you need to pick a starting point for where to go with your social media presence. 

If you’re selling something to consumers and it’s visual or has an emotional component, then Facebook is probably the best place to start. 

If you’re selling to professionals or other businesses, then LinkedIn is probably your best bet.

Twitter is great is for engaging fans and supporting customers and there are lots of other choices out there that are smaller more niche plays (i.e. Lawlink for Lawyers or Bakespace for people who love to cook).

Whatever makes sense for you, pick one site to start with, set up an account and start listening.  Listen for people who are talking about your industry, your product, your competitors…get a feel for what’s being talked about.  then start using that information to engage with the influencers.

Use Google Alerts and tools like Tweetdeck to setup searches to help you stay on top of things without spending hours every day doing it.

4. Develop Great Content!

Finally – the real secret to Social Business success is to develop great content (and host it on your site).  Content that will especially appeal to the potential customers you’re attracting.  That content could be a Blog, it could be a series of reports or great emails, it could be videos (check out Will It Blend) or even podcasts or webinars.

The point is that you need to create great information that will inform, educate maybe even entertain the people you are trying to attract.  They get to know you, they get to see that you know what you’re doing and talking about and they have enough information to decide if they want to take the next step with you.

On top of all of that, Google loves great content because it drives backlinks to your site and builds out a lot of context for keyword searches…which just means that your Search Engine Optimization will be a lot stronger than if you didn’t have content…always a good thing.

Bottom line – your prospective clients are looking for you online, so if you want a shot at them, you have to be found.  And when they find you, they want to get to know you and understand you.  They want to learn from you, they want to be sure you can solve their problem.  It’s not easy, but if you can do all of that, you will be in great shape in this new world of marketing and social business!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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It’s probably time to start thinking about alternatives – not power alternatives (although that’s a worthwhile discussion as well), I’m talking about alternative Social Media platforms other than Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook is now over 400 Million users and over 80 Million of them are playing Farmville (which may be a sign of the apocalypse…I’m not sure) and – Twitter is generating 50 Million tweets per day.  It’s pretty clear that the big platforms are well into the mainstream and potentially too crowded to be useful to anyone trying to connect with more of a niche market than the entire world.

On top of that, history tells us that the world will keep changing and even if you missed the initial jump into these platforms a couple of years ago – you’ll have a chance to get in on the cutting edge of whatever’s next.

So what are some of the other choices of Social Media platforms out there?

If you’re looking for an extended list of platforms – services like www.Namechk.com (lists 145 different sites) or www.knowem.com (lists over 350 sites) will not only list out the sites, but can also tell you if your preferred username is available.

The experts over at the Social Media Examiner (great site for Social Media ideas) have a recent post out on the 5 Emerging Social Media Sites to watch in 2010.  Their list includes both Foursquare and Loopt which are location based Social Sites – clearly an up and coming trend.

They also list Google Buzz – which I’ve been underwhelmed with so far, but it is Google so you know they’ll have plenty of backing and time to continue innovating (or they’ll just buy out all their competitors!).

Another location based site that I’ve been hear a lot about is Gowalla – it’s a fun, easy social application that let’s your friends know where you are and what you’re doing.  It’s an easy way to interact with people, but I’m not sure how much staying power this kind of thing can have.  However if you have a retail establishment, it’s already a great way to get the word out on who and where you are by promoting it on these location based services.

In terms of more of a professional networking site, Biznik is the up and coming new kid on the block.  Biznik is targeting more business owners and professionals and not job hunters (as a way to differentiate from LinkedIn).  I like the approach and the tone of the site, but I haven’t had a chance to spend any time with it yet.

The best way to succeed with social media for business is to use a focused, consistent approach with a clear idea of what you want to get out of your efforts.  I don’t think any of the big platforms is going away anytime soon, but if you’d like to stand out and try something new, it may be worthwhile to check out one of these sites.

What new Social Media sites have you been hearing about?  Have you tried anything?  Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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Looking through the lens of nostalgia, business used to be simple.  You could set up a road side stand (or the equivalent) and offer things that people wanted locally.  Your long term success totally depended on your local reputation and at the end of the day it was more about how you interacted with the community and your customers then it was about having some sort of great business model or get rich scheme.

Honest weights, Square Dealings – with the fish specials of the day.  Back in the day, it wasn’t just a numbers game, it wasn’t about having a sophisticated sales and marketing strategy or coming up with a surefire closing technique.  It was about doing the right thing, adding value and helping your customers win (while you win as well).

Sounds refreshing doesn’t it?

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of those values – maybe because slow and steady wasn’t good enough or all of the technology got in the way of good business practices.  However…the good news is that we’re starting to see a return to the good old days – people are using the technology that’s out there to break down the barriers, not create more of them.  Let’s look at few examples:

Finding your tribe…online

One of my favorite case studies in Social Media are the guys behind Bacon Salt.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s salt that makes things taste like Bacon! (brilliant!)

The quick version of their story is that the 2 founders, who worked for a Seattle tech company, were out having some drinks one night and had a classic conversation that probably went something like this (after a couple of beers):

“Man…I love bacon!”

“Me too – I wish I could make everything taste like bacon!”

“Whoa – we should totally make that happen!”

And so the idea behind Bacon Salt was born – however there were the slight obstacles of not actually having the product, not having any experience in the food industry and not really being sure what their target market was or where to find them. 

What they did have was technical savvy and creativity.  They started by validating the market, would there be any interest in bacon salt?  To figure that out, they went out to Myspace, which at the time was the largest social media platform (back in 2007) and eventually found 37,000 users who listed Bacon as a primary interest on their profile – they had found their tribe!  They started talking to these bacon lovers, telling them what they were planning…and started receiving orders even before they had a product.

The end result?  They sold over 600,000 units in 18 months (starting from scratch)!

They attribute the success to working with customers as part of a community – engaging with them one on one, the same way your neighborhood stores did a long time ago.  You can see more on their story in this article.

Developing rapport and relationships with Social Media

Politics may be the only thing that’s drifted farther away from traditional values than business, but even in the political arena we are seeing the positives that are possible from connecting with people and leveraging online tools to make that happen.

Everyone is familiar with the amazing success that President Obama had using social media in his campaign, so it’s a bit surprising that the latest example of social media success in politics comes from the Republicans and not from the Democrats.

It’s not scientific, but it appears that one of the keys to success for the Massachusetts Senate race earlier this week was the ability to engage people via Social Media.  Sara Paxton from the Evans Media Group wrote a great article the night of the election and laid out the case for why Scott Brown was able to pull off his surprising victory.

Here are the highlights on the Social Media statistics from the race:

Facebook Posts since Jan. 1: Brown (128), Coakley (58)

Facebook Fans: Brown (70,800), Coakley (13,529)

Tweets since Jan. 1: Brown (142), Coakley (144)

Twitter Followers: Brown (9,679), Coakley (3,385)

YouTube Videos: Brown (57), Coakley (52)

YouTube Video Views: Brown (578,271), Coakley (51,173)

Clearly Brown had a lot more traction on Facebook and Youtube and used that visibility to drive his message and establish a relationship via Social Media – ultimately resulting in a come from behind surprise victory that’s shocking the world.

Making the world a smaller place

Teusner wines come from a small winery in the Barossa Valley in South Australia (beautiful area if you ever get a chance to go).  There are only 3 people on staff, so there’s not a lot of opportunities to spread the word 1 on 1, especially internationally.

However they have figured out how to reach the world via Twitter (you can find them @Teusnerwine).  They’ve only been active on Twitter for about a year, but they see increased interest in visits to the winery and people asking where they can find the wine in their local areas.

Again it all comes back to relationships – relationships with their end users, relationships with restaurants and stores who buy their wine and relationships with influential people in their industry who can help promote them. 

Just like the ‘good old days’, it’s not about selling, it’s about educating people, getting feedback and building up honest relationships.

Advantage for Small Businesses?

Inherently people want to know the companies and providers they do business with.  We’ve seen big box stores come (and some go) and they clearly have the advantage when it come to pricing, but do small businesses that have survived this long have an advantage over the big corporate players because of old fashioned values?  Are they more willing and able to create relationships with their customer base?

What do you think?  Do you believe that buyers will pay a small premium for things like quality service, a real relationship with a real person, personality and the chance to engage in a meaningful discussion?

Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Over this past weekend, Facebook launched the capability to claim your name as a vanity extension (i.e. www.facebook.com/yourname).   To give you an idea of what this means – Facebook had 200,000 names registered…in the first 10 minutes (launching at midnight).  Within an hour, over 1 Million names had been claimed and over the course of the weekend, more than 3 Million names were claimed.  Facebook has over 200 Million profiles, so they have a long way to go, but it’s still a big number!

Here are a lot more Facebook details from Mashable on how big this was from Facebook’s point of view (they were concerned the system might crash).

Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter also allow you to claim your name – the questions I’ve had from a few folks are “So – What’s the big deal?” and “How do I do this?” 

I’ll try to answer both of those here.

Building the brand of you

In terms of why you want to claim a personalized URL, it’s an opportunity for you to further your brand – whether that’s your name, your company name or some combination in between.

If you’re in the corporate world right now, then getting your name out there might not seem very important…right up until the point where you join the millions of other people that have had to start looking for their next thing (whether that’s due to a layoff, company going under or just time to move on).  The days of most people staying with one employer for most of their careers are over – it can happen, but it’s probably not a good idea to plan on it.

If you own your own business or if you’re out networking and selling then you probably understand the benefits of continually developing your Personal Brand.  Using tools like LinkedIn or Facebook are great ways to extend that brand.

Finally – think about it this way.  If you don’t claim your name, someone else will and as Social Media continues to grow you will find yourself being lost in the shuffle.

Getting Found

An even more practical reason to claim your name is that you want to be found when people are searching for you.  Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all rank very highly when it comes to search results.  Here are the recent results for my name:

My blog and website are first (which is good because that’s where most of my effort is), but LinkedIn (with my name as part of the URL is next) and my Twitter profile is below that.

Do you show up on a Google search for your name?  Could people find you if they needed to, but didn’t actually know you?  If you have a common name, you might have a problem, but all the more reason to claim it (or something like it) as soon as you can.

How to Update Profiles

Google:  A few months ago, Google allowed a lot more information and personalization surrounding your Google Account, including the ability to claim a profile name that would show up on Search (at the bottom of the first page).  It’s a quick process – you can learn more from Googles at Google Profiles.

LinkedIn:  The LinkedIn process for creating your personalized URL is also straightforward.  It’s an option when you edit your profile – here’s a link that will give you more information on how to customize your LinkedIn profile.

Facebook:  I did the Facebook update over the weekend and it was very simple.  You can also ‘brand’ Fan Pages, but you have to have at least 1000 followers before you can do that.  Here’s the background on updating your Facebook Username.

Twitter:  The twitter process is simple, your twitter URL is directly tied to the username you select when you create the account in the first place (www.twitter.com/AspireShawn ).  Here’s a link to an earlier post I did that gives a lot of background on Twitter.

Other Social Media sites also allow you to claim or create your name (or they likely will soon).  You don’t need to belong to every social media site out there, but it will be important to be on at least a couple of them so you can be found.  You might also want to consider registering your name as a domain name (i.e. yourname.com ) – it would require you to build a blog or a website to really use it, but it gives you a ton of power and flexibility for branding.

What could you do to claim your name?  When’s the last time you Googled your own name (even better, set up a Google Alert for your name, your company name, any topic that you’re interested in).  Can people find you?

Other ideas or questions?  Share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade – Kansas City Business Coach

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