Socialology

To keep people engaged in her company’s social media presence, Dawn Fitch spends one to two hours a day writing blog posts, commenting on her followers’ comments and posts, and developing “flash sales.”

“We post the sales on Twitter and Facebook and watch the orders roll in,” says the president of Pooka Pure & Simple, an Orange, New Jersey-based natural bath and body company, which operates both an online store and a brick-and-mortar location. “It’s pretty easy to see exactly where the customers are coming from.”

The sales, which feature one product that’s on sale for a 30-minute timeframe, are only advertised via social media. With more than 6,500 followers between Facebook and Twitter, Fitch, who uses Google Analytics to track her 11-year-old company’s social media results, estimates that Pooka Pure & Simple’s revenues have grown by 35% to $450,000 (an increase of $95,000 for 2011 alone) and its customer base by 20% since launching the efforts 18 months ago. “It’s clear where the growth is coming from since we didn’t do anything differently except add social media to the mix,” says Fitch.

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide a platform that companies can use to reach new clients, build existing relationships, connect with potential customers, and even learn from one another. The value of the time consumers spend online and on social networks and blogs continues to grow. Sixty percent of people who use three or more digital means of research for product purchases learn about a specific brand or retailer from a social networking site, reports Nielsen. And for small businesses, this translates into higher revenues.

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Leveling the Playing Field
Small businesses have a rare opportunity right now to play on the same field as the big names, thanks to social media, says Sree Sreenivasan (www.sree.net), digital media professor at Columbia Journalism School and CNET tech columnist. Sreenivasan says you should use each social media site for a specific purpose:

– Think of Twitter as a rapid-response customer service channel. It gives you a heads-up when things are going wrong. While we all worry about customers saying bad things about our companies, says Sreenivasan, Twitter gives customers a way to say nice things, which you can capture and share as necessary.

– Consider Facebook a mechanism for getting the word out about what you are doing, including new products, features, and services. The average user has 130 friends, and you can use that multiplier effect to connect with new and different customers.

– Look at LinkedIn as more than just a job-hunting tool. It’s also a terrific place to generate leads and to learn about new developments and ideas, says Sreenivasan, who singles out the Answers section of LinkedIn as a good starting point for companies looking to connect with the social media site’s online community.

Zero-Cost Advertising
Using social media as a zero-cost marketing machine has become a popular activity for the nation’s small businesses. According to a recent Zoomerang survey of 1,180 businesses, 49% of small and medium-sized firms use social media for marketing, with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as the most popular options. More than half of the respondents reported that they spent $100 or less to market themselves on social media. “No company or industry has figured out social media perfectly yet; it’s early in the game,” says Sreenivasan. “We’re where the Web was in 1996. We’re all learning together and that gives smaller, more nimble companies a shot at getting ahead of the curve.”

Black Tie Catering in Atlanta hasn’t spent a dime on advertising since opening its doors in 2009. An off-premises,

full-service catering company, with clients including Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, and the City of Atlanta, the company posted $500,000 in revenues last year. Two-thirds of those sales are directly connected to the firm’s presence on Facebook and Twitter, says Spencer Humphrey, co-owner.

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The firm hosts several “secret suppers” throughout the year and keeps the location, dinner menu, and guest list under wraps. Diners pay about $90 each to attend the events, which feature five-course meals, live entertainment, specialty cocktails, and high-end wines. But the first secret supper didn’t attract many guests. “We literally had to beg people to come,” recalls Humphrey.

He decided to promote the next event via Facebook and Twitter by posting food, entertainment, guest photos, and status messages from the previous secret supper guests on the social networking sites. “When people see our over-the-top décor and unique setup they want to be a part of it,” says Humphrey. Sponsors have also taken notice. Through its social media posts, the catering firm was able to establish contact with a representative from Cîroc Vodka that was interested in possible sponsorship opportunities. “We took the conversation offline, educating them about our products and services,” says Humphrey. Cîroc signed on as the liquor sponsor providing $2,500 in product for Black Tie’s New Year’s Eve 2009 event.

The success of that high-profile event led to similar online connections with Lexus and The Patrón Spirits Co., which both hired the firm

to help produce events in Atlanta. The tweets and Facebook posts have lured in secret supper guests from as far away as San Francisco, led to media opportunities, and put Black Tie Catering in front of more than 8,500 followers on Facebook and Twitter combined–and their followers as well. “We don’t personally know 8,500 people,” says Humphrey, “but when we use social media to post photos and comments we reach an enormous audience that we’d never be able to hit on our own or through traditional advertising methods.”

Black Tie Catering also uses Foursquare to check in to places where they are catering or dining. The location-based social media site gives them an opportunity to start conversations with people interested in restaurants and eateries. The owners also mention Facebook and Twitter while working at events and urge non-followers to sign up.

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Socializing the Right Way
It’s not enough to simply post information on social media sites and wait for the new orders. Developing and maintaining a successful strategy takes time and creativity, says Lindsey Holmes, CEO and lead strategist at LCH Business Social Media and Tech, a Newark, New Jersey-based digital marketing agency. To hone your strategy,
Holmes suggests using tools such as:

– Video. Preferably “raw” and uncut, to create an authentic appearance, rather than an edited one.

– Hashtags. The # signs you see before keywords help identify popular topics of interest; marketers use hashtags to aggregate, organize, and discover relevant posts.

– Social tracking mechanisms. By tracking social media plug-ins installed on your website, tools such as Google Analytics and Twitalyzer can trace the actions of socially engaged users and relate those activities to website buying and browsing behaviors.

– Response. For social media to work, there has to be someone accessing and responding to those posts. Creating effective social networks starts offline, where Twitter handles and Facebook page addresses should not only be prominently displayed on business cards and marketing materials, but also discussed openly at “live” networking events, meetings, and on client calls.

To create those connections needed to impact your business, Eric Hamilton, CEO of AdSmoke Inc., a New York City-based online video advertisement network, says small

businesses should be posting relevant content on a regular schedule. A financial adviser, for example, might post a short article on “5 Things to Know about Filing Your 2011 Taxes” on a blog and then post snippets on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus that point followers to the full article; or a hair salon might post a photo of Halle Berry’s hairstyle at an awards ceremony and then offer to replicate it for anyone who makes an appointment during the upcoming week. “Don’t be too sales-y; followers want to see you as human and they don’t want things pushed on them,” Hamilton advises. “It’s about building a conversation and community, and it’s not about what you’re selling.”

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Humphrey concurs, and says infusing a “real life” human aspect into the campaign is critical. “You can’t just put messages out there like ‘50% off hot donuts today,’” he says. You have to leave your own page and interact and engage on the pages of the people you are trying to reach.

At Black Tie Catering, that means interacting with bloggers and social media users who have their own large base of followers, and sometimes even taking the interaction offline. One year, for example, the company gave a popular Atlanta blogger a turkey and a red velvet cake for Thanksgiving. “She talked about our products on Twitter and Facebook, and a lot of her followers fell in love with our products,” says Humphrey. “It was social networking at its finest.”

As you develop your own social media campaign(s), remember if you have a great service or product, social media will amplify it, attract new customers, and keep current clients happy. “If you have a crappy service or product,” warns Sreenivasan, “no amount of social media can help.”BE