Social Media For Small Business

From Smallbusinesslibrary

Social media can be a useful tool for small businesses to get their message out at a very low cost. Social media can reach many thousand people with the only cost being the time spent using social media tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. This contrasts with traditional advertising mediums like newspaper advertising which costs money for distribution of your message.

Blogging Tools

Wordpress.com
Wordpress.com allows you to quickly set up a blog for free.

Blogger.com
Blogger also allows you to quickly set up a blog for free.

Benefits of blogging: By posting regular content to your blog you can attract traffic because your blog posts will show up in Google. You can also receive comments from visitors and convert visitors with call to actions.

Twitter

Twitter.com
Businesses can share information on their Twitter account to everyone that "follows" them. Zappos, an online shoe retailer has over 1.6 million followers and Dell uses the Twitter account Twitter.com/DellOutlet to tell followers about deals and has sold millions worth of computers through Twitter. Starbucks and Comcast provide customer service and have conversations with their customers through Twitter. Small businesses can also broadcast deals, send out messages, talk to customers, and build relationships with potential customers.

Facebook

Creating a Facebook fan page can be a place where customers or potential customers can go to learn more about you and also have conversations with your company or other "fans".

YouTube

Creating videos for your target customer and uploading them to Youtube can be a good way to get more exposure for your business. You can also easily add YouTube videos to your blog.

HOW TO: Boost Your SEO with a YouTube Channel (Mashable)
This article provides tips on how to improve your website's search engine optimization by using YouTube.

Mobile Social Media

Foursquare
Foursquare allows members to check into business locations from their mobile device. The individual who checks in the most times at a location becomes the "Mayor". Some businesses like restaurants offer their "Mayor" a special discount for checking in the most times. Users can also see which of their friends are at a location, which may give them an incentive to go. One problem with Foursquare is that people can "cheat" by checking into a location even if they're not there.

Gowalla
Gowalla is also a mobile application that is very similar to Foursquare.

Small Business Social Media Articles

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips (Mashable)
This article describes several ways to utilize social media to market your business.