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If you haven’t already realized it, social media takes a solid strategy and a lot of time to provide real business value – if you think it doesn’t then you should highly reconsider jumping in. What takes so much time? Well, being successful on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a company blog is all about producing valuable content, not just establishing a presence on these services. Valuable content is what establishes your company as an authority in the space, and creates a reason for people to become your fan or watch your video; and valuable content takes time to create.

So, with that fact sorted out, the question for small business owners becomes, “How can I leverage social media for my business when I don’t have a lot of time or money to throw at it?” Here are some things you should ask yourself before diving in:

An Ability to Create Authoritative Content

Let’s hit this one first, because again, it’s the most important. By authoritative content, I am referring to a lengthy article (400 words) or 3-5 minute video about a specific topic that provides value to your audience/customer. The key factors in your ability to produce this content are a) time/budget b) commitment to the concept c) knowledge of the topic d) creativity. If you feel that you or someone within your organization can fill all of these requirements, then you have the ammunition to start your campaign.

Make Time to Socialize

Creating the content is certainly one of the most difficult parts, but it’s only half the effort. Once you have created this content, you have to get it out there in social media, get people talking about it, and engage them. Granted, you are not going to engage every customer, but engaging those who are seeking discussion will help create additional content both within the confines of your content (through comments) and throughout the social networks of those participating in the discussion. Discussion on the web has a spider effect, more so every day as services continue to share more data – so often the discussion is far more important in getting eyeballs to your site than the original content alone.

It’s also important to engage others in your field who are creating authoritative content; it not only creates goodwill, but will ultimately drive traffic to your site. Keep at it enough, and before long you will be writing guest posts on larger publications that help drive considerable traffic.

Research: Keep Up with the Tools

Using just Twitter.com to interact with your audience or jumping on to Facebook each time you want to share something is not smart time management – keep up with the tools that will make your social media marketing life easier. Hootsuite is a great tool for pushing your content across multiple platforms and it offers a lot of other great services like click tracking and targeted search.

More Research: Track Your Results

Speaking of click tracking, you will want to make an effort to monitor what effect your activities are having on traffic and ultimately conversions (contact form, sign-up for demo, etc). Note your traffic levels before you start your social media campaign and track them on a daily basis to understand what content is producing the best results.

If you are not analyzing your web traffic currently, checkout Google Analytics, a free tool that works very well. Shoot me an email if you have questions about setting it up.

Hold Your Tongue – Understand the Different Networks

If you are a shameless promoter you better recognize! Like selling at wedding or gloating at a funeral – there are certain social networks where you have to be careful how you act.
At the same time, if you are quiet like a cat, you’re probably worse off than the guy above.

A quick rundown:

LinkedIn
No-holds barred here, let the business chatter fly. Just make sure to keep it civil (more so than the other networks).

Twitter Personal Account
Posting specifically about your product once or twice a week is okay, linking to industry related news that you didn’t create more often is fine.

Twitter Business Account
Everything here should either be business related or talking about other things within the industry. Try to make it a nice mix of these too and also mix in some posts with personality, such as “Beautiful day, glad to be working with such great people” or “thanks @mikedavis, great meeting, looking forward to working with you!” As little as 1 post per day is sufficient; probably should not go over 10 per day, but there is no real good scale for this and it depends on your industry.

YouTube Business Account
Only post work related content.

Facebook Personal Account
Only post major announcements for your business on Facebook, and a good rule of thumb is only do this at most once per month.

Facebook Business Page
Similar to Twitter above, but try to keep it to no more than 1 post per day, as people don’t like their Facebook feeds getting cluttered with your news – otherwise they may hide or un-fan you. For this same reason, it’s best not to push all of your Twitter content to Facebook– it’s too much.

Personal Blog
Depends on how tied to the business it is, but if it’s a completely separate experience, the same rules above described for a personal Facebook account apply.

Business Blog
This should be your hub for your most well planned and executed content. Try to only make meaningful posts (no quick thoughts, save this for Twitter). If you are not able to post at least once per week you should make it a point to get to that frequency and stick to it.

Have questions about other social networks? Ask about them in the comments below.

What’s Next?

So that’s a good overview of considering social media for your business from a time commitment perspective, in our next post on this topic we will look at factors related to the type of business you are in.

Related Posts:

Is Social Media Right for My Business? Part II

In the first video of our vlog series,we outline the wireframe process for one of our clients, GirlsAskGuys.com.
(more…)

So here it is, our first blog post. We’ll keep this one short and sweet – just a basic introduction to The Loud Few and what our goals are for this website. When Robin and I began initial discussions of what TheLoudFew.com would look like, and what sort of functionality we thought was vital to our success, we both agreed on one thing: TheLoudFew.com had to “walk the walk.” We committed to building a website that would do more than offer an explanation of the interactive marketing services The Loud Few offers; we would build a site that actively utilizes the same best practices and interactive marketing techniques that we recommend to our clients on a daily basis. We want our clients, partners and friends to be able to see how The Loud Few integrates digital content, social media and SEO into our site; and we aim to use our site as a case study down the road.

So in a nutshell, here is what you can expect from The Loud Few website, blog and vlog:

• Lots of transparency – We want you to get to know us, and we want to get to know you, so there’s not room for shyness.
• Lots of useful tips and tricks – We really enjoy what we do, and we enjoy sharing our expertise with others.
• Rapid integration of new technology – We plan to use our site as a testing ground for exciting new advancements.
• Plenty of humor – We really enjoy having fun. If you don’t get some of our jokes, just ask.
• Lots of interaction with our followers – Things are going to get loud, we hope you’ll join us.

Overall, we’re really happy with the way everything has come together, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback on the site.

Our CMO talks about some of the challenges CPGs face agianst private lavels as a response to an Ad Age article. The article focuses on how and why CPG marketers vow to boost spending.

It has come to the point for CPGs, that the retailers they sell to have become their biggest competitors.

One thing CPGs have over private labels (at least for now) is reaching and engaging with customers on a personal level with big marketing budgets.

Read the full article here:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=142188

We were thrilled to discover the book "The Design of Business," as it
eloquently summarized the important and necessary steps to maintain a
competitive advantage through innovation.

Great design is more than the extraordinary composition of creative
elements; it is a process of originating and developing long term goals
and solutions from insights and a carefully constructed strategy, all
with measurable results.

As the market continues to shift from awareness to relationship driven
marketing, design in every sense of the word is the key to
differentiation.

Read Full Article

Retailers are significantly growing private label shelf space and share
by leaving only the strongest CGP brands to pull in traffic, then
trumping the CPG efforts with increasing price differentials between
CPGs and private labels.

So, who wins and who loses with this scenario?

• Private label manufacturers continue to grow with little to no
  investment cost beyond expanding their manufacturing bases and
  associated costs with fulfilling new orders.
• Consumers get better prices, less selection and arguably lower quality.
• CPG companies are left with the privilege of funding a long term
  strategic shift that ultimately leads to overall category compression.
  Even if they win, their vitality in the category has to be questioned.
• Retailers get simplified shelf sets that lead to lower overall costs
  and better margins. But under a hyper compressed version of this model
  in the US, only Walmart wins. Here's why;

If a CPG wins a category "jump ball" because they spend more money on
marketing to drive customers to a retailer's shelf, cut their margins
in exchange for greater volume, and then find themselves sitting on the
shelf as the only name brand next to a private label, with more "jump
balls" on the horizon, over time the effort isn't worth the spend.

What's a CPG company to do when it's category is under the microscope with a major retailer?

The logical solution is to pick and choose their best retail customers
and retool their models based on profits vs. share and volume.
The millions of dollars that must be spent to maintain a retail client,
with the on-going chance of getting d-listed, can be better spent
growing profitable businesses elsewhere.

As this trend continues, CPG companies will have more lessons under
their belt and will begin to pick and choose the battles they have the
highest probability of winning. In a perfect retail scenario many categories will become exclusively private label and CPG brand margins will be squashed.But if that continues as a trend over the long haul in the US, Walmart
wins all the business away from other retailers, because other
retailers cannot compete against their volume and purchasing power.

What other differentiators are out there that a retailer can use to survive against Walmart?

Quality, Selection, Service, Location and Technology.

Smart retailers are now considering the overall health of their shelf
set and partnering with brands to solve their biggest challenges. Those
that don't, and simply follow the private label, price compression
model are signing themselves up for a challenge they cannot win, unless
they can trump Walmart on service, location and technology.

Read Full Article