Small Business News: Recommitting To Social Media in 2011


How important will social media be to small business in 2011? Likely even more important than it was in 2010. Let’s face it. Social media gives small business an unprecedented advantage in branding and global marketing that at one time was reserved for larger companies and bigger budgets. If you haven’t started using social media to its best effect, there’s no time like the present. Here’s why.

Our Two Cents

10 reasons you should use social media for your small business this year. In 2011, use of social media has become a valuable tool for many small businesses. But some have from time to time questioned the value or ROI of social media. How valuable is it really to your business? Here are some reasons you may want to reconsider your use of social media for your business. BizSugar Blog

Making Connections

Social media is about making and keeping connections. Social media is about making and keeping connections, so make sure you do that…really. Here are a bunch of tools outside the social media sphere to help you keep track and keep up. Streamlining and automating your sales and social media process shouldn’t mean loosing track of the very people you’ve spent your time reaching out to. Whether online or off, be sure you stay in touch. Chris Brogan

Latest Trends

8 predictions and 6 trends: social media yesterday and today. With another year begun, tech writer Aliza Sherman looks back at 2010 predictions and forward to 2011 trends to give a prediction of where social media is headed, particularly in the area of business. If you’re serious about transforming your business model to live in the social media space, this road map is essential. Bloomberg Businessweek

In The News

Traditional chambers getting into the act. If you think social media can’t do much for more traditional business models, think again. This chamber of commerce is jumping into social media in a big way and trying to motivate and educate its members about the significantly lower expense that can come with the use of the social media space for marketing and networking. Just have a look. KTIV.com

Strategy

The honeymoon is over. One San Antonio social media consultant insists that while social media is still fun and very useful as a marketing and networking tool, small businesses, indeed businesses of all kinds, will now need to focus more on the impact their social media campaigns have on their business. This means greater discipline, more planning and a better eye to growing the communities that can do the most for your business. San Antonio Business Journal

Don’t get too comfortable! Augie Ray writes that social media, including Facebook, will, like everything else, become harder in 2011. Logic ought to dictate that with more and more businesses trying to climb into the space this would be so, but Ray’s blog post mentions a couple of other things that should definitely give the social media marketer pause. Augie Ray’s Blog

Sales

We’ve come a long way baby! From social media gurus hemming and hawing about how social media shouldn’t be measured in terms of sales to a modern sales environment that naturally accepts the importance of social media to sales as a foregone conclusion, the function of social media as mot simply a PR or m,arketing but in fact a sales tool is now an accepted concept. And as with any other new paradigm, a basic set of rules has begun to evolve. SecurityInfoWatch.com

From Our Community

(Members of Small Business Trends’ own social media community, BizSugar.com, share these posts on the important social media issues for small business today.)

Welcome to the revolution! The move to a social media business model represents a shift of perspective more than anything else. Here is a brief overview of how social media specifically in the area of sales is forcing small business leaders to look at how they operate in a completely new way. Umberto’s Inside View

For online sales, social media is a must. In this post Jason Kienbaum talks about the “red flags” that can stop people from doing business with you online. Not surprisingly, blogging and social media are his first two points. Expecting sales without a social media element to your campaign is becoming more and more unrealistic. But notice Jason’s other great points about establishing trust and being accessible. How could social media help with these issues? Business Done Now

Blogging is social too. Remember that social media is not confined to Facebook or Twitter. As has been repeated often enough since the emergence of the big social media sites, blogs are the original social media. If you’ve got a blog and are neglecting it’s more social features, you are missing out on the most powerful part of blog marketing. Here are some steps to interject your blog with enough social media juice to create a little FB or Twitter all your own and branded just for your business. AriWriter

8 Comments ▼
8 Reactions
  1. I believe the best aspect about social media is the fact that it helps reach out to a massive crowd that may be potential customers for your business. In order to benefit from various social media sites, companies must spend time in building stronger relationships and maintaining them. Thanks for sharing the various tools that would help to do so!

  2. Ashley Forrester

    Very informative article. Small business undertakings will definitely use various social media tools for enhancing their web presence.

  3. Hi Folks

    Social media and its continued/growing influence will make or break smaller businesses in my view. Apart from the obvious advantage of giving potential customers a view of you and your business, continued engagement in social media does wonders for those search engine rankings!

    A company blog can and should be the number one resource for attracting business on=line. The capacity of a blog to engage and attract clients is second to none and a heck of alot cheaper than paying for Google ads!

    Thanks for sharing
    Barnaby

  4. Yes. I’m absolutely committed.

    I’m even trying to make sure that the franchise community is too.

    The Franchise King

  5. Social media is absolutely necessary to be committed to if you have a business. It’s where marketing and people are these days.

    Businesses also need to understand that it’s an interaction and they might not always control the message or conversation.

  6. Just as what have been said that