Weekly Review Social Media and Small Business (Jan 23rd)

Click here to receive a weekly review of social media for small business and Entrepreneurs by email

Your POD social media experience
Lisa Barone states that standing head and shoulders above the social media masses comes down to the experience you are creating.  Its about what "..customers will remember, want to talk about and remain loyal to." Your POD experience does propels you in two ways:  first, First, "it creates a story around your brand for your customers to share." Second, it "...helps foster a sense of community with your brand and gives customers a reason to keep coming back."

Lisa has a list on how a POD experience is created:

1. By playing on emotion and making interactions as personal as possiblePrice
2. By nurturing the values that YOU stand for.
3. Being interesting. Doing the same as everyone else doesn’t create an experience, it creates a ‘me too’
4. Knowing what’s important to your customer and finding the intersection in your brand.
5. Finding ways to become part of their daily life
6. Communication – communicating with them in an ongoing conversation
7. Giving customers something to take with them, even if it’s just a smile

---

4 P's  4 C's
Paul Dunay reminds of the 4 P's of Traditional marketing that were "...created mainly to describe the ideal “marketing mix”. The term “marketing mix” became popularized after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, Concept of the Marketing Mix."

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion

With today's social media, consider the 4 C's as described by Paul...

1. Content – the creation of a steady stream of engaging content
2. Connection – connecting with the audience you wish to attract
3. Communication – communicating with them in an ongoing conversation
4. Conversion – and then converting them at the illusive moment of need

---

Small Business listens to Big Business
Stephen Pritchard is talking about  the social experiences and directions (BIG business) Dell and IBM are paving for small business --- mostly because they have the money. 

• Social media outreach today is a natural extension of the way we started to interact with the internet when we started the Dell brand,” says Manish Mehta, vice-president for social media and community at Dell
• The first thing we set out to understand is relevance. Next is the authority and influence [of the writer]
• “the key to engaging successfully with social media – rather than antagonising its users – is to listen first and participate second
• In 2006, we recognised the need to listen to all of the conversations happening in the blogosphere. If you now look at our reach on Twitter and Facebook, we are trying to embed social media in the fabric of how we do business
• Your post might only have a few comments on it, but if behind you there are thousands of followers and those followers post thousands of times, the effect will be much greater
• But often the power of the network itself does most of the work. We can highlight the deals – but often we don’t need to

---

Ur Twitter Marketing Style

Jason Falls doesn't suggest a right or wrong way and I am posting this so that you have examples for whatever style fits you right now.

• The Conversationalist
Have a reason to be on Twitter but prefer the daily chit-chat vs talking to a niche community
Genuine but less direct
Follow: @Geekmommy @AmberCadabra @shashib @unitedlinen

• The Conversational Marketer
  Having a more obvious reason for being on Twitter -- with a stated purpose or objective
  Regularly offers promotional items but will participate in daily conversation
  Follow: @delloutlet @meijer @briansolis @mcdonalds (some heavy hitter here)
• The Salesman
  Using social media to promote greater than 50% of the time
  Sell First, Engage Second
  Follow: @jcpenny @phoenixsuns @chrysler @newyorker
• The Spammer Broadcaster
  Based on self promoting streams not criticism w/o participating in conversation
  Follow: @nbc @raffbreck @tide @usweekly
  

---