For the next in our series of case studies looking at how small businesses are using social media, we caught up with Bambi Gordon from The Woo
In no more than 50 words explain what your business is
I teach micro – small business owners exactly what they need to do to market their business. My job is to take away their fear of wasting money, cut through the confusion about what marketing to do, make sure they know how to evaluate marketing opportunities that come along in the future and get the heart of their business pumping.
How do you use social media as a business?
I use Social Media to connect with people interested in the same stuff as me – in particular those who are playing in the same space; to advise of new content on my site and new events; to respond to questions and requests if I feel I can add value; to ask for recommendations and advice; to generate leads; and to network.
I tend to ‘program’ my twitter activity as I would program an hour of live-radio – keeping an eye on a balance between tweets, retweets, shameless plugs, news, links, so that a follower will find the output educational, entertaining and – at the least – not annoying.
What are your business/marketing objectives for social media?
If you tell folk that you are able to advise them as to which communication tools that they should be using in their business, you really need to have a good feel for those tools.
So one of my objectives is to feel comfortable in a social media/networking environment. Social media is, like traditional media, just a part of the marketing mix – so my objective is often to fill-out, to amplify, a communication campaign that is using a range of tools with some clearly focused messages.
Do you measure the success of your social media marketing? If so, how?
On the quantitative side of things I will monitor click through rates using Bitly whenever I tweet a link. I also take note of RTs. On the qualitative side of things I keep track of leads/connections that have come, in the first instance, from social media to my web-site and on to the ‘real’ world. Just as I monitor leads generated at live events that then migrate back to social media platforms.
I certainly don’t take much notice to the number of followers – but when looking for suppliers I do check out both the quality and the frequency of their social media activity, as it tends to provide a more complete picture of the personality and values of the individual/brand.
How does social media fit in with the other marketing your company does?
It has not replaced any other marketing activity – but has added to it. I still use printed material, live events, publicity, and other online initiatives – such as blog posts, blog comments….this!
Do you have plans to increase your use of social media in 2010?
I have to make better use of LinkedIn and get my head around Facebook. I am, currently, a Facebook Fail!
What would be your top 3 tips for businesses looking to get involved in social media?
- You still have to have a marketing strategy so that you have clearly identified your target markets, have decided upon what position you want to own in their minds, built your brand to reflect that position and appeal to the market – and then identify the tools to help you get there, which may be some of the new media tools
- New media does not replace old media. Old media is still huge for generating awareness which can in turn grease the wheels of social media.
- As in all marketing that you do, go about it as if you are woo-ing your customers – finding out what they like, showing them that you care, keeping them happy in the relationship.
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