Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Each week as @Smallbizlady, I conduct interviews with small business experts on my weekly Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. This is excerpted from my #SmallBizChat interview with @PatriceRutledge.  Patrice is a bestselling author of 30 books on business technology who has been interviewed by CNN, Inc., Fox News, MSN, AOL, and other media outlets around the world. Her latest book is Using LinkedIn, a complete training program for LinkedIn users that includes a print book, audio podcasts, and video tutorials. Patrice also offers business technology coaching for busy entrepreneurs who want to tap the power of technology to increase profits, promote their business, and save time and money. You can reach Patrice at her website: http://www.patricerutledge.com.

Smallbizlady: How can small business owners use LinkedIn to promote their businesses?

Patrice Rutledge: One common misconception about LinkedIn is that it’s primarily for jobseekers. LinkedIn is also a great tool for small business owners. You can use LinkedIn to create an online profile easily found by search engines such as Google or Bing, promote your products and services, find clients and customers, network with your peers, establish credibility as an expert in your field, do market research, find partners and sponsors, and much more.

Smallbizlady: What’s the first thing a new LinkedIn user should do?

Patrice Rutledge: The very first thing you should do is to create a quality profile. That’s the basic foundation for success on LinkedIn. When creating your profile, you need to really think about who you want to reach and what profile content will attract your audience and encourage them to do business with you. That said, you should never write your profile like an advertisement. LinkedIn is for networking, not direct selling, even if your goal is to increase sales and find clients.

Smallbizlady: What is the best way to approach LinkedIn as a business development tool?

Patrice Rutledge: With LinkedIn, as with other social sites, it’s important to engage with your target audience rather than broadcast to them. In other words, don’t just post sales messages to group discussion boards, engage your audience in conversation. Using features such as LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups can help you showcase your expertise, which encourages people to do business with you.

Smallbizlady: This is your second book on LinkedIn, and your third on social networking. Why do you think LinkedIn is such a great tool?

Patrice Rutledge: I’ve used LinkedIn since its early days, both as a recruitment tool when I was in the corporate world and as a business development tool now that I have my own business. I’ve found social networking—especially LinkedIn—to be one of the best ways to connect with a worldwide audience of potential customers and clients. Hopefully my LinkedIn books help people learn how to generate positive results with minimal impact on their time.

Smallbizlady: What’s your take on the ongoing debate about quantity vs. quality when it comes to the number of connections a LinkedIn member has?

Patrice Rutledge: This is definitely a hot topic right now with many varied opinions on the matter. There are basically three trains of thought when it comes to a connection strategy. There’s the more the merrier crowd who connects with anyone and everyone. This group tends to go out of their way to amass as many connections, followers, friends, as they possibly can and tout these numbers on their profiles. They’re the people who are upset with sites like LinkedIn and Facebook for imposing connection limits. At the other extreme are people who connect only with people they know and no one else. In a sense, they’re kind of missing the point of networking. I prefer a middle ground approach. Obviously, connect with all the people you know and then selectively connect with new people who share common interests to grow your network. The difference here is quality vs. quantity. I think you can generate much better results from a targeted network than you can from amassing tens of thousands of connections who don’t really care about who you are and what you have to offer.

Smallbizlady: How can a company profile help you promote your business?

Patrice Rutledge: If you have a small business—even a solo business—you should create a LinkedIn company profile. They’re definitely not just for large companies. It’s important to understand that a company profile isn’t the same as a personal profile, though. On a company profile, you can enter a company description, describe your specialties, and list job openings, company news, and blog posts. When LinkedIn members view your personal profile, they can access your company profile as well—which provides you another opportunity to showcase what you have to offer.

Smallbizlady: Can you explain how to become a LinkedIn service provider and the benefits of doing so?

Patrice Rutledge: If you provide any kind of professional service, you’ll want your profile information available in the LinkedIn service provider directory. To gain visibility here, one of your clients needs to create a LinkedIn recommendation for you as a service provider. You can’t enter yourself in the LinkedIn service providers directory, but you can send a request to your clients asking them to recommend you. They need to select “service provider” when filling out their  recommendation.

Smallbizlady: What are the biggest mistake small business owners make when trying to promote their business on LinkedIn?

Patrice Rutledge: I see three common mistakes. The first is having a weak or incomplete profile. Another common mistake is using LinkedIn as a direct sales tool rather than a business connection tool. And finally, a third mistake is that many people never really move beyond the basic profile, even if they do complete it. There’s so much more to LinkedIn than just creating a profile and adding connections. Check out LinkedIn’s other features—answers, groups, polls, events, and applications. Post your status regularly. Become an active participant, not a quiet bystander.

Read an excerpt from “Using LinkedIn” at http://patricerutledge.com/linkedin-excerpt/

If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9pm ET follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter.

How to participate in #SmallBizChat: http://bit.ly/S797e

For more tips on starting or growing your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog at www.succeedasyourownboss.com

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure.  As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. She has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Tavis Smiley Radio Show, in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur and Black Enterprise Magazine. She hosts #SmallBizChat weekly on Twitter for emerging entrepreneurs and publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com.  Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010)

Every week as @SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with experts on my Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. The show takes place every Wednesday on Twitter from 8-9pm ET. This is excerpted from my recent interview with Liana “Li” Evans @StorySpinner who is known as the online marketing geek girl who loves all things social media! ­She has been an accomplished online marketer since 1995. She is also the author of Social Media Marketing: Engaging Strategies for Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media.

SmallBizLady:  Can Any Small Business Use Social Media?

Li Evans: I believe that any small business can use some aspects of social media, there are many different types, it’s a matter of what’s the right fit for the business & where their potential audience is.

SmallBizLady:  What’s the biggest mistake a small business can make in social media?

Li Evans: Not setting goals and measuring what they are doing to meet those goals.  Without setting goals and measuring what you are doing, how will you know if your efforts are successful, need to be tweaked or a complete waste of your time & resources?

SmallBizLady:  Where should a small business start in social media?

Li Evans: Understanding your target demographic thoroughly because you’ll need to research where they are active online in social media to engage with them.

SmallBizLady:  Can my social media activities also help give my business leverage in search marketing?

Li Evans: Absolutely!  Although you shouldn’t just do social media for search rankings, the content you produce for your audience and customers in social media can definitely be leveraged in your efforts search marketing such as SEO.

SmallBizLady:  What issues do you hear as a stumbling block for small businesses not getting into social media?

Li Evans: Mostly that these smaller companies are afraid of what’s being said about them in the social media environments.  Since they are smaller, they tend to “hear” more one on one from customers and they are afraid that this can get amplified in social media communities.  Instead of looking at these situations as opportunities, many small businesses make the mistake of either ignoring them, or dismissing them arbitrarily.

SmallBizLady:  Can a company actually sell “things” through social media?

Li Evans: That’s a pretty tricky question, it really depends on what it is you are trying to sell.  Is it your brand, is it your reputation, or is it physical things?  It’s a lot harder to track back “sales” of a product or service to interactions in social media than it is to track back brand lift, buzz, and even sentiment.

SmallBizLady:  Can other parts of my marketing plan work with my social media marketing initiatives?

Li Evans: Certainly!  In fact I often say the “social media cannot operate in a vacuum”.  You actually need to integrate all aspects of your marketing efforts with your social media efforts.  Everything for paid advertising, affiliate marketing, email and even your offline marketing efforts should be integrated with what you are doing in social media.

SmallBizLady:  If my competition is out in social media, tweeting, on Facebook, and Myspace, should I be there too?

Li Evans: Not necessarily.  You should have those profiles secured in the prominent social media sites, but actively engaging there because your competition is there is the wrong reason to be there.  Even though they are your competition, you still might have a different audience.  On top of that, how do you know the competition is finding their engagement in the social sites beneficial?  It’s better to do the research on your own audience than worrying about your competition in social media.

SmallBizLady:  What are some of the biggest misconceptions of social media?

Li Evans: That it’s easy, quick and cheap!  The media plays up social media as this easy to implement marketing godsend that practically happens overnight, when that’s far from the reality.  What they fail to outline is that relationships take time to build, trust doesn’t come easy ad that just because it’s free to have a Twitter or Facebook account, that doesn’t mean your time is free to run the accounts.

SmallBizLady:  Is there some sort of guidelines small businesses should follow for setting up a successful social media strategy?

Li Evans: I call it the “Four Pillars of Social Media Marketing”.  The first pillar is research, without doing it you won’t know where to even start or how you should be engaging.  The second pillar is strategy, without a strategy how are you going to know what you are doing, who’s going to do it and how are they going to do it?  The third pillar is engagement.  Without engaging your strategy will be dead in the water, you can’t just lurk in social media, for your strategy to be successful in social media, you actually have to be social!  The fourth and final pillar is measurement, without measuring what you are doing, how are you going to know if what you are doing is helping you attain your success goals?

My other “guidelines” are outlined in Social Media Marketing:  Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media – there’s 45 chapters chock full of good advice and guidelines any business can follow.

SmallBizLady:  Should I let my employees engage in social media?

Li Evans: How can you stop them?  That would be my question to any business owner.  When your employees leave your four walls, what they do in their own time is of course their own.  Undoubtedly they are on some kind of social network, whether its YouTube, Flickr or Facebook.  They are sharing and engaging with their friends and family. 

The question is should you let your employees engage in social media for you?  That’s a question you need to research and understand how your employees communicate currently with your customers.  It’s also about placing guidelines for your employees to understand how they should represent you in social media.  If everyone is on the same page with your message and understanding where you want to be at the end of the day, utilizing your employees in social media can actually be mutually benefiting.

SmallBizLady:  What if I don’t have a lot of time, can I still do something in social media to market my small business?

Li Evans: Sure!  Pick the most valuable channel you can and dedicate the time you have to mastering it and engaging with your audience there.  Make yourself a valuable asset to the community and pour your heart into it.  Let the community know you are real and there to help.  Spreading yourself too thin by trying to be everyone with very little time only hurts your efforts.

If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9pm ET follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter. 

How to participate in #SmallBizChat: http://bit.ly/S797e

Melinda F. Emerson, also known as SmallBizLady is a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach. Her firm MFE Consulting LLC, specializes in small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. She hosts #SmallBizChat weekly on Twitter for emerging entrepreneurs.  She also publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com. Her first book Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works was released in March 2010 by Adams Media. For more information: www.becomeyourownbossbook.com