Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions from folks about social media and how it can help their small business. Social media may still seem like a “toy for the young” and something to do when you’re bored, but in reality these tools are fast becoming a significant element of small business success.

The video to the right expresses how traditional advertising alone misses the mark with consumers by not allowing them to participate before and during the process of buying products and services. That’s where social media marketing comes in; by allowing consumers the opportunity to be part of the process.

The benefits of social media for your small business are numerous, but let’s review of few of the best reasons for incorporating social media efforts into your business plans.

1. Social media provides a simple way for customers, and even potential customers, to comment on your products or services, or to ask for more information. Because it leaves all the interaction up to the buyer, customers feel more comfortable looking for the information they need. When they are ready to share, or need your services or products, they will let you know!
2. Social media provides an outlet that can “go viral” far more quickly than typical advertising opportunities. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, “go viral” in the online world is when a blog, or article, video, or other social medium, is picked up by enough online outlets that it receives literally millions of views in hours. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does anyone in close vicinity would like to be on the bandwagon.
3. The days of waiting on hold for a telephone customer service representative to pick up and answer your question about a product are over! Today’s online medium allows for enhanced and far superior customer service options which put less strain on customers and service reps alike! Social media can enhance customer service options by providing up-to-the-minute feedback on products and services that can be disseminated to multiple customers at one time. Best of all, social media allows even small businesses to provide quality customer service without a huge customer service telephone system or department expense.
4. And finally, social media can provide the opportunity for increased sales. This is most especially true for small businesses, whose global advertising reach may be limited.

However great the advantages of social media efforts, businesses should keep in mind that these are not static solutions.  One of the advantages of social media is the ability to disseminate up-to-the-minute information, but this fact can also be a drain on resources if not properly implemented. With so many options for information, a social media website should include daily or at least weekly updates of either written text, video or audio content, or other interactive materials.

So how do you get started adding social media to your business?
First, you should have a website. You need a place where customers can “land” regularly, and where you can provide your information and updates. All your social media pages will then link to this website.

Second, you need to research your market objectives and determine who you are trying to connect with. If you sell toys for pre-schoolers, your target market might be Moms between the ages of 25 – 40. Or maybe you have a toy that would appeal specifically to the male interest – in which case your market demographic would be different.

Whatever your target market, you need to identify it so you can determine the best social media sites to use. Facebook is great for moms and dads between the ages of 26 and 35, while MySpace is better for younger age groups, and singles. The bottom line – if you don’t know who you are trying to reach, you won’t get the best results from your social media efforts.

Third, once you know who you want to target, then you’ll need to develop a plan. The plan should include which social media outlets will target the market you need to reach the best, a plan for how often to update and interact, and how best to tie your social market pages to your website.

All these efforts will take some time, but if done properly, many can begin generating leads within a few months. Not all leads will result in a sale, but you won’t have any sales without leads!

Finally, you’ll need to develop a plan to watch what works and what doesn’t. Your website should track statistics for who visits the site and where they come from. You won’t be able to generate specific statistics from the social media sites, but with a good statistics program you will be able to know what site generated the visitor, and what pages they viewed once they got to your site.

As with any marketing effort, all your time could be wasted if you do not plan appropriately. Additionally, all the planning in the world may still not generate the results you had in mind, but if you are not monitoring the results, you will never know if it is working or not!

The best social media efforts, just like big marketing campaigns, will saturate many social media areas at once, to include video, podcasts, and other interactive elements. But these can often be time consuming and resource heavy.

I recommend to my small businesses that they start small and work from there. Determine which one or two social media efforts will offer the biggest return on invested time and money, and focus on those for a few months. Monitor your results, and decide if they are meeting your goals. If they are, great! You can expand to add more media, or just increase the frequency of the efforts you are already doing well with.

If the results end up not meeting your expectations then start from square one, but this time you will be armed with information from the previous effort, which should help you avoid pitfalls.

Ultimately any social media effort will take some time, but as with any successful advertising campaign, it will be well worth the effort once you begin to see results!