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A case for Social Media in Small Business

Social networking, blogging and other forms of social media have become popular in the last decade and this popularity has made them a powerful marketing tool for businesses in particular small businesses.  A recent report by CNN indicates Social networking is up 82% worldwide.
And a great deal of the majority of users is adults with purchasing power according to Forrester Research report February 2010.

A third of adults post at least once a week to social sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

• A quarter of adults publishes a blog and upload video/audio they created
• Nearly 60% maintain a profile on a social networking site.
• 70% Read blogs, tweets and watch UGC video.

Many companies including big ones such as Dell are using social networking techniques to generate sales. For example, in June 2009, Dell reported to have made $3M from social networking especially twitter.

Small businesses need to do the following to fully exploit Social Networking and social media in general:

• Creating Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn pages and publish feeds containing the company news.

• Have a relevant community website/forum
• Company blog with industry news
• Creating and post videos to post on YouTube and the company’s website
• This needs to take into account the existing and potential customers

If Social Networking and Social Media is done properly,  small benefits can reap huge benefits – I have listed some of them below:

• Traffic generation using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn followers
• Branding: the brand awareness will increase the more people come across it
• Links popularity building (i.e. Google pageRank)

• Collect customers and public views of the company’s products and services via comments

• A more relaxed communication way with the customers

• B2B networking: with online presence, similar (but non competitors) will get in touch for complementary services and products.

• Low cost emarketing

As well as benefits, Social Networking and Media could present some risks that will need to be mitigated if a small business is to take full advantage of the benefits above.

• Data integrity issues: Data on a social networking site can be accessed globally and the company will not have any control over its security.

• Risk of exposing inside data to competitors

• Targeted attacks like recent ones to Twitter

• Viruses could be transmitted to the company via social networking sites(Koobface)

• Maintenance resource therefore added cost

• Business reputation is at risk

• Some people do not consider social networking seriously

• Risk of information leakage to competitors

• Legal liabilities may arise

This is just a sneak preview of what Social Media and Networking can do for a small business which can be implemented without huge budget and risks.

For more information about the author and his work, please visit his website