The world of social media grows more complicated every day, with new social networks springing up on a regular basis. As a business owner, it can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you choose which networks to participate in? Should you try to have a presence on as many networks as possible?

Social media doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The whole point of it to begin with was to be a fun, informal way for people to connect. Getting your business on social media can be useful, doesn’t have to take up all your time, and can even be fun. Below are my tips for how to select which social networks for your business to participate in.

1) Research. The whole point for your business to be on social media is to cultivate relationships with current customers and to reach out to potential customers. So the first step is to do some research. What networks are your customers using? If there is an audience you want to be reaching (e.g. stay at home moms, young professionals, etc.), what networks are they using? Also, what networks is your competition using?

2) Branding. What fits with your brand? If you are a photographer, Facebook might not be the best place to spend your time. You might have more success on Pinterest or through a Tumblr blog – two networks that do a better job featuring photographs. If you are a construction company, YouTube might work best to feature some how-to videos.

3) Comfort. Social media is social – and people can usually tell when you’re faking it. For example, Twitter is a bit more casual than Facebook. Long, formal posts won’t get retweeted. Also, improper use of link shortening or hashtags are rookie mistakes that sticks out like a sore thumb to regular Twitter users. So stick with what you know. Sometimes that means creating a personal account first and testing out the network to see if you like it or at least if you’re comfortable using it.

4) Time. Your impact on a social network is going to depend on how much you use it. Twitter, for example, requires more of a time commitment since you will get the best results if you are posting multiple times a day. Facebook and Google+ work better for businesses that don’t have a full-time social media/marketing staff person, since posting a couple times a week works just fine. 

5) Ask. Last, but not least, when in doubt – ask someone! Social media specialists tend to keep their ear to the ground on what’s buzzing in social media, and they can usually steer you towards the best fit for your business. The Kizata team is also here to help! Contact us if you want help setting up your business on social media.

Facebook Fan Pages are an easy way to get started with Social Media today.  In just a few minutes you can establish a social media presence for your business or organization and begin interacting with millions of people.

Step 1 – Set up the Facebook Fan Page for your business or organization

To setup the facebook page.  Create a personal account at http://www.facebook.com. Then create a Facebook Page by clicking here.  Follow the instructions and you will create a Facebook Fan Page.  Once the page is created you can begin promoting the page to your customers, clients, leads, employees etc.

Step 2 – Increase Awareness of your Facebook Fan Page

Now that your page has been created, you will want to increase awareness of its existence.  Great ways to increase awareness by promoting the page to your personal Facebook network.  Emailing a web link to your organization’s mailing list.  Posting a sign in your store or offices.  Creating a youtube video and adding the link to the video. Sending a tweet, via twitter.com, informing your followers of the new page.  Posting very interesting content.

Step 3 – Increase Awareness of your Facebook Fan Page

Now that your page has been created, you will want to increase awareness of its existence.  Send links to your Facebook page via email, twitter, and on your website.  A great way to increase awareness is to post a sign in your business informing people of your new Facebook Page an providing a link.  Finally, the key to awareness is excellent content.  The more people that find what you are publishing to be valuable, the more people will read and interact with it.  Their interaction will lead Facebook to share your content with more people, and more people will interact.

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Starbucks drives a global brand and uses social media to reinforce and extend their asset. Although Starbucks employs a very complex marketing strategy, their social media strategy can be described as a hub and spoke strategy. The Starbucks hub is their website http://www.starbucks.com. The spokes are the different social media platforms used by their current and potential customers. Starbucks is adept at leveraging the strengths of each social media tool to create value for their audiences.

Starbucks and Facebook

With over 22 million likes, Starbucks is the #3 brand on Facebook, according to Social Bakers. Overall, Starbucks is the #32 best like Facebook Page. Starbucks Facebook App Coffee Bar has 57,000 active monthly users. The Starbucks Facebook page enables searching for Starbucks stores, general company information, links for sharing gift cards, links to international locations, over 100 photos and videos plus hundreds of photos and videos tagged by Fans, job listings, notes, links, discussions, polls, reviews and streaming video.

Starbucks and Twitter

Starbucks has over 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Multiple tweets per day are posted. Many tweets are directed to individuals. Content of many tweets include hot news and insider information. Tweets include promotions in store and online. And tweets include information on jobs available at Starbucks. Crowdsourcing is employed at times – for example the “Design your own Frappuccino” campaign. Starbucks employs multiple twitter handles to assist their audiences with receiving the information that they desire.

Starbucks and LinkedIn

Starbucks has over 49,000 LinkedIn followers, over 16,000 employees and contractors, and 31 employee networks listed onLinkedIn. They list new hires, post tweets, provide stock information, company information, and corporate information. Starbucks effectively uses LinkedIn as a tool for building connections with potential human resources.

Starbucks and YouTube

With over 6.5 million views, Starbucks effectively uses YouTube. The featured content on Starbucks.com include four videos. The Starbucks channel on YouTube has over 10,000 subscribers. Starbucks has embraced web video as a promotional tool used to engage their online audiences and generate interest.

Starbucks and Flickr

Starbucks flickr group pool boasts over 4000 group members and over 18,000 items. Photos typically display Starbucks branded items and/or people smiling and having fun. Starbucks is a great example of a major brand’s effective execution of Social Media Marketing.

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With 500 million registered users, facebook is a great place to connect with existing customers and to attract new customers. To begin, you will need a facebook Page. Here is a 4 Step process for configuring a free facebook page.

STEP 1: CREATE A NEW FACEBOOK ACCOUNT OR USE AN EXISTING ACCOUNT

To begin this process, you will need a facebook account. Facebook supports personal accounts and business account. Business accounts are designed to be used to only administer Pages and ad campaigns. So unless you are sure that you want the restrictions of a business account, I recommend that you set up a personal account.

STEP 2: CREATE THE PAGE

1.Login to your facebook account.
2. Click Here to start a new page.
3. Click on the category description that best matches your business.
4.Provide details on the business including its category, name, address and phone.
5. Agree to Facebook Terms and Click “Get Started.”

STEP 3: ADD A PICTURE OR IMAGE

Think about the image or picture that you want to use to represent your business. This could be a picture of you, a logo etc. Starbucks uses their logo as there image. One alternative to using only a logo is to integrate your picture with your business logo. Pictures and images are powerful marketing tools, so give consideration to the imagery of your page.

STEP 4: PROMOTE YOUR PAGE

Your existing and potential customers and community fall into two categories:
1) registered users on facebook and
2) non-facebook users.
You want to promote your new page to both communities. For facebook users that you have friended, you can share your page directly with them. For others, you can share your page and/or invite them to join facebook so that they can view your page. For simplicity, I recommend focusing on existing facebook users. You likely have a website that you can use to reach non-facebook users.

There are over 500 million registered users on Facebook. Over 100 million registered users on LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s recent IPO has valued the company at $8.34 Billion. Yet its 2010 earnings were less than $15 million. Social Media Networks are on fire! Mobile applications are on the rise with nearly 1 in 3 mobile phone users in the US using smartphones – phones offering pc-like functionality.

Customers

All businesses have customers. And those customers are increasingly communicating using social media today. Customers are endorsing products, complaining about poor service and gathering information for future purchases.

Conversation

Social networks enable a conversation. Businesses are increasingly seizing the opportunity to join the conversation. Starbucks uses Twitter to share information, discounts, job openings and much more. Best buy uses Twitter to enhance customer support. With over 4 million Facebook “Likes,” Pepsi is using Facebook to promote support for community investment.

Loyalty

Social networks are an excellent mechanism for engaging existing customers to build brand loyalty. Through information, dialog, photos, video and sound brands can increase their connection with customers. Loyal customers appreciate the rich information available via social media on the products that they prefer. Additionally, social media enables a dialog with customers that enable brands to receive feedback. That feedback can be an extremely value to a business.

Leads

Lead identification is another benefit that social media can deliver to a business. Blogs are editorial content that is posted on a website and indexed by the major search engines. By posting interesting content in blogs, brands can provide interesting information and make people aware of their products and services. When a person performs a good search and uses a keyword that links to a brand’s blog then the blog is returned in the search results. The user then can choose to click on the result and visit the brand’s website or blog. Traffic from search engines can account easily account for 30% of a blog or website’s monthly traffic. By capturing the person’s contact information via a Call to Action, a brand can identify leads and follow-up with an email or call.

Tools

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursqaure, Yelp!, Google and many more make up the constellation of stars that are social media networks. Each network has specific features for sharing information. Those features determine how and why people use the networks. Businesses must develop a strategy for using social media. That strategy must include clear objectives, plans and measures of success. Today many businesses lack a clear social media strategy and consequently are realizing suboptimal return on investment. Not only do organization need a clear strategy but also the capability to execute the strategy.

Training

Many businesses need to develop the organizational capability to execute social media campaigns. They need specific training on how to develop a social media and content strategy. Training is also required for using the tools that can support efficient social media for business. And finally, organizations need to understand how social media content development is different that print content development.

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