Social Media Marketing for Small Business

One common misconception about social media marketing is that it is not appropriate for the small business, especially those businesses that are local in nature. Nothing in fact could be farther from the truth. Social media marketing actually offers a lot of opportunities for the small business owner. Social media tactics can break down barriers to entry and offer an ROI that is far better than traditional marketing offers.
Here are five social media marketing tactics that a small business can easily implement.

Get involved in the Blogosphere
Blogging is a great way for a company or business owner to make itself visible to its customers, clients, competitors and prospective clients. The best part of blogging is that it is free!! Most web hosting companies offer blogging software for free, so you can launch your blog in a manor of minutes.

Putting up a blog is not enough though. You have to let people know that you have one. Find blogs in your space and go and comment on them. Do interviews with bloggers in your industry. The Bloggers will link to you and you will generate traffic and visibility for your company.

Embrace Video
Video cameras have become so inexpensive and easy to use that there is no reason not to embrace video technology. The types of videos you could show range anywhere from video interviews on your blog, to how-to videos, to tours of your business, restaurant, home, etc. Once you have your video produced upload it to YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo Video and expose your business to a wider audience. Some of the local search networks like CitySearch and YellowPages.com are working hard to add user-generated video content to their site. Would you rather read a description of a business or take a video tour of it?

Share Photos
One often overlooked social media marketing tactic is photos. Social sites like Flickr offer many different active groups with which to share your pictures with. Or take pictures at an industry event and tell everyone to view them on Flickr. Add in a link back to your web site and suddenly everyone who was at the industry event is visiting your web site.

Use Yahoo Answers
I have written in the past about what a great opportunity that Yahoo Answers is for business owners. You have people who have self-identified themselves as interested in your market looking for help. If you spend a couple of hours a week answering their questions and you will be amazed at the amount of traffic that Yahoo Answers can send to your blog.

Try StumbleUpon
While its social media cousins Digg and Del.icio.us and Netscape get all the attention, StumbleUpon is the social networking site that will give you the highest return ( in terms of traffic) for the lowest investment (in time). All you need to do is download the StumbleUpon toolbar, join the groups related to your industry, and add those participants are friends. The simply surf pages within your industry (including your own) and give them a “thumbs up”. Your new friends will “stumble” across your sites that you liked and suddenly you have people in your industry visiting your web site.

One thing to keep in mind when utilizing these social media tactics is not to spam the system. These tactics are to be used to reach people within your target market, and that includes customers, clients, competitors and prospects. You probably spent years building up the reputation of your company offline. Don’t damage that reputation by taking some shortcuts when targeting social media sites.