I am often asked which form of social media is the best choice for small businesses, and how much time should be devoted to using social media for marketing purposes, in a practical way. If you are a public relations consultant, or run a small public relations agency, you may be wondering how much effort to put into social media to market your business. Here is my take on the most popular forms of social media today and what they can do for small businesses.
Blogs
- Blog Views for Conversations in Public Relations
Of all the social media platforms, blogs are by far the most searchable, and also the most versatile for personal branding purposes.
They are versatile in that every other social media platform — images, video, Facebook and Twitter updates — may be easily integrated into your blog.
But their real power lies in the fact that search engines love blogs, and crawl them frequently, and that blogs are set up to work well with search engines, with their tags, categories, captions, and formatting.
I’m not saying you should stop with blogs when building your personal brand. The blog should be the foundation of what you do, and if you have very little time, the blog should be the priority for your brand-building efforts.
Make sure your blog is well-organized and also that it is set up to take email subscriptions. Blogging just once a week (on a schedule) will help you build your brand. It’s well worth the effort.
YouTube
- Fletcher Prince YouTube Channel
YouTube video is a powerful personal brand-builder. What is more compelling than than seeing someone speak on video, other than in person? Video builds trust in a person’s expertise, and wins clients! If part of the value you offer your customer is money-saving, relevant and useful advice, video is the way to go.
Online video is great for consultants of all types who want to provide just enough information to convince the viewer to contact them. The videos would provide information that the viewer could use, but you’re not giving away the store, and there is also a soft-sell call-to-action. Used in this way, video is like a visual blog.
Video is also a terrific choice for a service or product is highly visual. For example, you are a realtor and you are presenting a home for sale. Or you are a restaurant owner and want to show off the restaurant’s decor. Video would be a natural choice for visual artists and performing artists.
Honestly, there are few professions I can think of that would not benefit from telling their story on video. And since 25% of all search is processing through YouTube, it would be crazy not to take advantage of that.
To get started with YouTube video, I recommend that you produce three videos to start, and upload those onto a well designed channel with a custom background.
Facebook
- Conversations In Public Relations Facebook Fan Page
700,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook. I am a big Facebook fan and think it’s great for maintaining already established relationships with contacts, vendors, and clients. But the wider searchability is not there — yet. Although it has improved, Facebook content is not getting indexed in search engine results (to the same extent, as say, blogs). What this means for your business is that few people searching for experts in your industry will find your company mentioned in a Facebook Page when using a search and keywords related to your industry; not in the way they might find you with a well-maintained blog, or properly tagged YouTube video.
However, Facebook Pages are free and easy to maintain. Begin by creating a Facebook Page and feeding your blog to the page in the Notes section, so that your Page is automatically updated with fresh content each time you post a new article on your blog. Weekly updates to your fans should be about right, for most businesses. Adapt that recommendation, as needed.
Did you ever wonder why certain Facebook Pages have lots of fans and others don’t? Well, apart from those with a nationally recognized brand, Facebook Pages work especially well for certain types of brick-and-mortar businesses that are trying to drive a lot of traffic through their doors and are willing to offer frequent (e.g., once a week) special offers, deals, premiums, discounts, and contests. Think restaurants, hotels, theaters, tourist destinations. Any business that relies on reviews and customer recommendations would do well to claim a page on Facebook.
Twitter
- @FletcherPrince on Twitter
Twitter is a fun and an interesting way to pass a few moments and pick up some new information. But, in my opinion, the least useful personal brand-builder among the social media choices available to you would be Twitter.
Twitter is just not that searchable, and your carefully crafted microposts can easily get lost in the stream. It has its uses, particularly among communicators and journalists, but the audience is limited. Do the math, and don’t expect to obtain significant market intelligence about how people feel about a brand from Twitter updates. My advice would be to maintain a brand presence on Twitter (you can do that with well designed Twitter profile and one or two updates a day) but don’t over-rely on it to build your personal brand. Put most of your energy and resources behind well-designed and produced blogs and video.
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