Use of Social Media for Small Clients

Small businesses and non-profit organizations can make use of social media in numerous ways to their benefit. I came across this article on my twitter feed the other day that is relevant. Social media is only mentioned at the bottom of this article because it's about the broad category of online marketing, but it says that "No organization can afford to ignore the growing importance of online social media channels such as Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. You can expand the reach of your nonprofit if you can leverage these highly popular new social media in a creative and innovative manner." This article comes right out and says you should use social media tools because they're popular and because they're popular, if you're on them and use them to the best of your abilities, you'll get attention. As I've said before, to fully take advantage of the exposure social media can get you as a business or organization, you need to budget time to spend on it. You need to offer things that other people will see and interact with or things that will enrich a viewer's experience online. Links to things similar to your business or organization, offers or advertisements are things that you can post again and again and in different ways so that the news is never old. It's important to keep a fresh look to yourself on the social media so that people won't see you as boring or uninvolved or anything else negative. The point behind using social media is trying to get as many positive things out there about yourself as possible. However, in another article I read, it also seems kind of fishy if every item of feedback about your business or product is positive (especially as relates to an e-commerce site, but it has its place in blogs and other social medias too). Social media can also be seen as opportunities to correct "common" misconceptions about your company, organization, or product. Small businesses and non-profits can benefit from implementing social media on their sites by gaining new customers, gaining new supporters, acquiring financial donors, and correcting any misconceptions. To do this, they can advertise or post links of interest or events or specials using their social media. The more they say, the more they get out there.

You have to be careful to some extent, how you suggest social media. I think it depends heavily on the client. If it's a young or progressive client, chances are they'll know about social media, but they may or may not see it as a marketing opportunity. In that situation, you just have to show them how much social media can do for them. Perhaps one way of doing this is quoting some statistics of how social media works in action or showing some of their competitors (or even unrelated big names) using social media. If the client is unfamiliar or wary about social media, you'll obviously have to work harder. A good approach for this might be that it doesn't cost to advertise through social media, but it does to do whatever they're doing now. It would be good to point out how they could strengthen their marketing campaign all around to be more effective.

These types of clients may well feel overwhelmed about using social media. They may have no idea how to use it or how to use it for business instead of just pleasure. Social media will get them more exposure and free advertising, which is important to someone with a limited or nonexistent budget.