I was recently asked by the friendly @MeganDollz about my thoughts on social media in small businesses. So I thought I would take the time to reply on my blog.
My thoughts are as follows:
- If you are a small business owner you should invest time in working on a social media strategy. It’s a growing sector of the internet world and I would put creating a Twitter account on the same level as getting an accountant.
- Getting a Twitter account is like being a rhubarb grower in Yorkshire. Sometimes you have to wait for things to flourish in the dark without knowing if they are going to be a 100% successful. But you will get a tasty reward at the end of the growing season.
- So you are a small business and considering investing on a web person to leverage the internet into success? You should definitely consider either hiring a social media expert or at least consulting one. Social media is at the bleeding edge of the internet and success stories like Dell’s outlet store are not hard to come by with the right help from talented individuals like myself
- Once you’ve got your social media accounts set up… don’t be afraid to monetise them. Put a few advertisement tweets in your Twitter stream to gauge your audience’s tolerance to in-stream advertisements.
I would suggest that if you are going to invest time and money into hiring a social media expert that you spend a little time deciding the type you want to hire. I’ll post about the 6 main types of social media experts another time, but let’s just say: it isn’t that complicated. Honest.
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12/11/2009 at 12:43 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tom Bilson, Tom Bilson. Tom Bilson said: Small businesses and social media: http://wp.me/pJDIa-I [...]
12/11/2009 at 6:59 pm
Great points, in my opinion if small businesses invested 10 min a day in social media they would learn more about their customers, industry, competition and their own business. In the end they would be have more awareness and be able to better serve their customers.