Small business owners recognise today that social media marketing has a huge potential to promote their small business.

With sites like Facebook numbering over 500 MILLION active users and YouTube getting more than 2 BILLION video views per day, it’s not difficult to imagine the possible benefits to local small businesses.

Social Media makes it now possible for consumers to get recommendations and information about a business or business service/product instantly via the social web or their online social circles. It is truly “Word of Mouth Marketing on Steroids” as it can spread like a virus. (aka “Viral Marketing”).

With information and unbiased personal recommendation now freely available in the digital age, consumers can make a more informed choice if a product or service is right for them.

This changes the world of small business marketing forever. Would it then make sense to you to still pay for costly advertising in old forms of media like newspapers & phone directories, when they can’t build your reputation instantly?

Unfortunately many small business owners will never take advantage of their own social media marketing strategy. The main concerns we found small business owners have are a belief that it takes to much time or that it’s to complicated. The best way we found to approach social media is to divide it as follows.

3 Main Areas of Social Media & Strategies for a Profitable Social Media Marketing Campaign:

1. Conversation & Sharing with Prospects & Customers

Microblogging Sites:

Sites like Twitter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed etc allow you to instantly communicate small amounts of information to people that chose to follow you.  It is easy to have ongoing 2 way communication between you and your followers. The opportunity with this Social Media Channel is to create a steady stream of content that brings value to prospects/customers and to establish you as trusted expert in your field.

Social Networking Sites:

Sites like Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin help you create a online presence like a website on their platform where you can attract users of these sites to your online presence. It’s a page where you can describe your products, services etc and interact with the users that chose to follow you on these networks. The power of these pages are that they are designed to push the content you share out to your fan base.

The real magic of these sites start when these followers see your messages, vote that they like your content, that in return automatically share your content with their friends/followers. Then if their followers like your content, this could spread your message like a wild fire.

The Golden rule would be for you to communicate and share great content that always brings value to the reader. You can also have further conversations on these sites with your followers and respond in a timely manner to queries. This can build a very strong level of trust and can remove a lot of pre sell objections.

Discussions Sites:

Discussion sites are sites like forums, email and skype groups or blog comments etc. The secret to success here is to be responsive and use good judgement when you respond. Try to respond to as many questions, but dont feel pressured that you need to answer every last question. As long as you interact regular and NEVER be rude or sarcastic, you will succeed with this strategy.

Your aim is to build strong business relationships here. Start a 2 way conversation to build trust by exchanging information.

2. Publising / Content Sydication & Distribution (Content Sharing Sites)

On Demand Video Sharing Sites

Examples are YouTube, Metacafe, Veoh etc. – Video is proven to have the highest conversion rate as we recall much higher amounts of information compare to text only. Further with these videos available 24/7, it can work for your business around the clock.

Live Broadcasting Sites:

Examples are ComF5, Justin TV and Ustream. These websites make it possible to have your own “Internet TV Show”. This is agreat way to build your credibility and bring many new ways to monetize this strategy.

Audio Publishing:

(Podcasting) Sites like iTunes – Make it possible to download content to devices like mp3 players, smartphones and desktop computers to access 24/7.

Text Publishing:

(Articles & Blogging) – Sites like ezinearticles and Your own company blog. – Possible for readers to subscribe via a RSS feed. Readers can then receive updates instantly when new content is publish.

Photo Publishing:

Sites like Photobucket & Flickr – Great for someone like a real estate agent to share photos of latest listings and local area info.

Your goal is to push out quality content using these sites and tools so that the consumers repond via comment and conversational social media.

3. Participation/Tagging & Rating

Collaborative Filtering:

Sites like digg, reddit & StumbleUpon, and are also known as social bookmarking sites. These sites make it possible to bookmark or favourite content like blog posts, websites ect by sorting them by tags. These bookmarks are then available to anyone online who have a interest in the catogory these pages are tagged or catogorised by.

Reviews & Recomendations:

Sites like Yelp & Review Centre.

Why are Review applications and websites so popular?

Review sites are powerful and important for all consumers, and they influence consumer behaviour. Review websites are a very valuble resource – a vast array of independent knowledge that helps people make the best decision, almost always financial. A good array of reviews about a product, service or company is far more influential than a list of generic testimonials.

When the above strategies are carried out correctly your small business can expect the following

5 Major Benefits of a Successful Social Media Strategy

1. Drive a ton of pre qualified traffic to your website
2. Increase conversion rates significantly
3. Improve organic/natural/free search engine results( SEO/Search Engine Marketing)
4. Build strong relationships with prospects and customers
5. Position you as the expert in your industry

But for this to be possible you need to have a social media presence that establish you as

• Knowledgable
• Trustworthy
• Helpful
• Best source of information in your business niche

Without these elements, you and your business just can’t stand out from the crowd.

4 Simple elements to create a strong social media presence

1. Reflect your unique competitive strengths and advantages. (Your Unique Selling Point)
2. Interact with your customers, by answering their questions
3. Pro actively answer your most frequent asked questions and thereby meeting their wants, needs and desires in advance.
4. Provide great business oriented content, thus adding more value

7 Examples of such content can include:

1. Your Industry News
2. Tips
3. Articles
4. Resources
5. Consumer Needs
6. Announcements
7. Products

Although we recommend to stay focused on business related info to share, this DOES NOT mean every message is going to be sales oriented messages. Remember, Social Media Marketing is about establishing you as the expert and trusted advisor, not delivering sales pitch after sales pitch. This is a proven way of building strong business relationships.

A major consideration small business owners need to make is whether they will manage their own social media marketing campaigns, or would they require the expert services of a social media marketing consulting agency?