A professional social media roadmap for small business marketing

Every small business needs to have an online marketing strategy that supports their offline presence. Here’s a simple social media strategy that every small business can use to help grow their business.

• Presence in Social Networks – If you haven’t already, take some time and properly implement a social media strategy for your business. If you’re not talking about your business online, via social media, chances are someone else is. Make sure you control the story. There are many tools to help control what people say about you or your company. You can monitor what people are saying about your company’s brand, services, and products by signing up for free online monitoring services like hoosuite, Google alerts and Twilert. These same services are a great way to stay informed about your competition. All of these services allow you to target your results by keywords, company names, or general terms that help define your query. So once you realize that people are talking about your company or your competition, you’ll want to participate in the conversation to help steer the conversation in the right direction. The following social media platforms are a must for all small business owners to get involved with.

Twitter: Twitter could be the best online marketing tool your business can have, and it’s free! Take a look at this video clip TechCrunch who interviews UCF’s Dana White. Take a look at this info-graphic of Kiss Metrics. There are more than 1 billion tweets posted per week. As a small business owner, he has particular expertise in a certain area. It is important that you create a Twitter account and talk about things that can help other people. The things you can and should write about are topics related to the services and products your business offers. Always write with flare to give advice freely. Also, ask your customers to follow you on Twitter. Use the platform as a way to communicate special offers and offers related to your business. Starbucks has a great social media success story that all small businesses can benefit from. The Next Web published a recent story about their social media strategy here. The good thing about Twitter is that people will find you and follow you if you have something to say. It also allows you to follow what people are saying. Go to Twitter and sign up for a free account. They recently launched Brand Pages that are similar to Facebook Business Pages. Allows you to set up a brand page for your business. Don’t worry about “writer’s block.” The good thing about Twitter is that you can re-tweet other people’s tweets. Be sure to follow people who have similar services and products, and don’t be afraid to share or retweet their stories. Follow these Twitter steps:

1. Sign Up – Reserve your name before someone else does.
2. Upload Your Logo – Spend a few bucks and hire a graphic design company to make your Twitter page really stand out. I personally recommend Gamby Studios.
3. Link your Twitter account to your website, business cards, and brochures.
4. Follow leading people in the industry who have interests similar to yours.
5. Tweet – Be sure to tweet or retweet relevant information.
6. Download a Twitter Application on your Cell Phone. I suggest Tweetcaster or Hootsuite.
7. Check out TwitHawk – a great way to send direct tweets to people talking about your industry, services or products… in real time! It’s a bit like Google AdWords but for Twitter. It is a great advertising platform that allows you to send direct messages to people who need or talk about your product.
8. Check out the 48ers too. Free service that allows you to send direct messages to people (in real time). Set up keywords to track and let the app do the rest. It will show you real-time results on both Facebook and Twitter. Great way to market your company in real time, but just make sure you have the time to manage this properly.

LinkedIn: According to several leading social networking sites, LinkedIn is quickly becoming the most popular “share” button on both business and personal websites. With over 100 million users, I rank LinkedIn as the second best social media marketing tool for small businesses. (Yes, even better than Facebook.) A properly configured profile allows users to opt out of business enterprise requests from other users. If your company is a b2b service, then LinkedIn is the place. This is not a viral marketing strategy. Most people are professional decision makers who can be targeted based on their established profiles. My advice would be to pay for a premium service plan. Take a look at the ad platform and run some targeted campaigns.

Facebook: The 10,000-pound gorilla is my third pick for social media marketing. No other site, with the exception of perhaps StumbleUpon and Reddit, gets more page views on a daily basis. By now, if you’re reading this, you already have a Facebook account. Now take the next step and create your brand page. Every business is slowly but surely creating a Facebook page and you should too. Once your page is up and running, head over to the Wildfire Promotion Builder for contests, coupons, group deals, and giveaways. It’s a great way to have your own personal Groupon. Wildfire also has a great tool for designing brand pages.

Google+: Google+ pages are starting to create some buzz. It hasn’t been fully released to the public, but soon every business will be able to create their own page for their business. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Start early – don’t wait. Although not as popular as Facebook Pages, Google+ Pages will be very beneficial to your business in the long run.
2. Call to action for customers: make sure your visitors join one of your “circles”. Keep them updated on interested products and services and invite them to “hangout”.
3. Make no mistake: Unlike Facebook, Google+ allows you to create multiple pages for your brands and products. Just be careful not to go overboard. Simple is better.
4. Website+1 Button: Make sure you have one on your website so people can share your website with other Google+ friends. Google also measures the relevance of your website by several factors which now include how many people use the Google+ button on your website.
5. Use a Google+ URL shortener: The URL that Google gives you for the brand page is very long and not good for marketing. Several companies offer a service where they can give your Google+ URL a better and shorter string.
6. Not FACEBOOK: Google+ users are a little different than most other social media users. The platform tends to appeal to a much more tech-savvy user. Make sure your comments and content are relevant to your business and don’t veer off into the babbling tirade.

Note: Facebook will be releasing a new “Coupon” app, currently in Beta. It should be a great way for businesses to start offering coupon deals similar to Groupon but much more effective and much cheaper.

Company blog: I personally suggest tumblr It is a free service with great templates to choose from. Posting articles on Tumblr can be automatically sent to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Blogs have much higher relevance to search engines and can be a huge boost to search engine optimization for your website. make sure your articles are well written and have unique content. Do not steal or extract information from other sources. (Search engines like Google can quickly figure out that your information has been stolen. They won’t index your site if they find out.) Take the time to write good content or hire a company to do it for you. There are plenty of services out there that offer copy writing for a fee. Feel free to have a blog or many blogs, but make sure to continually update yourself and be an expert in your field. make your content so great that people want to share your information with other friends and people.

Youtube: Create your own YouTube channel. Try to create something unique. If people like your video, they share it with potentially hundreds or thousands of people and pretty soon you have a viral campaign. YouTube now has a video ad platform. Online media marketing is big business. Spend some money and create a company video explaining your business and services. It’s a great way for people to learn more about you without reading boring text on a website.