Biz Owners, Don’t
Bite off More than You can Chew
Sure it’s your company. You established it and developed its
mission. You know it better than anyone. You hired all of the employees. You
know the products and services. You know the vendors and customers.
You open the door in the morning and close it in the evening.
You are the jack of all trades bar none.
But does it benefit your company when you do everything by
yourself? Or by doing so have you placed your firm in a precarious position. Do
you really have to devote all of your time to all issues pertaining to your
business?
Realistically, regardless of how much you’d like to, you
can’t tear yourself apart or tend to everything simultaneously. You aren’t an
octopus.
Here’s some advice about one vital business task. Recently,
I came across a concise opinion on the web about what it means to be a
successful manager of social media outreach that perfectly dovetails with my writings
on the subject. As you’re heard, social media is a great marketing tool.
Liz Alton wrote for Twitter Business that improving customer
experience is a key concern for companies and social media managers are on the forefront
of bringing customers an outstanding brand experience.
Alton cited an observation in Harvard Business Review: “Our
research across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that the most
effective way to maximize customer value is to move beyond mere customer
satisfaction and connect with customers at an emotional level.”
Success in social media means creating a community of
likeminded individuals and companies, and developing a mutually beneficial
conversation among all participants. The key is not to sell a product of a
particular size for a specific price point. That comes later. The key is build
a microcosm of people that are interested in you, your company and your ideas.
Your social media goal is to transform your company and its
chief executive into a thought leader
– the go-to-person on all questions pertaining to your product/service and
industry. Social media managers, with a variety of analytics at their disposal,
bring focus on that mission and analyze its success.
Alton suggests these strategies to build an outstanding
brand experience by focusing on building those all-important conversations:
1. Ask questions
2. Respond to follower
content
3. Use Twitter
Polls
4. Host Tweet
chats
5. Know your brand’s story, customers, and goals
6. Recognize that timeliness matters
7. Have a clear customer experience
strategy
8. Always ask
for feedback
“Social media managers are on the front lines of delivering
their customers a great experience on Twitter. Work to understand your audience
and your company’s objectives — and then focus on content, engagement
strategies, and analytics feedback to help make that vision a reality,” she
wrote.
Another social media analyst, Jeff Bullas, writing about “10
Essential Skills a Social Media Manager Needs to Have on Their Resume” on
Linked In, noted that a decade ago social media wasn’t a profession and it
didn’t even enjoy a job description. It barely had a definition. Facebook and
social media marketing elicited perplexed expressions.
“Fast forward a decade and every organization must have a
social media manager, whether full time or part time,” Bullas wrote.
Truer words couldn’t have been written about the comprehensive
nature of social media and its effectiveness as well as the responsibility of
being a social media manager. The job of being a social media manager requires
24/7 attention to the cyber venue to ensure that your audience, customers and
other interested parties are given every opportunity to learn about what you’re
doing. Tepid dedication to social media can have damaging results. So where
will a business owner find another set of 24 hours?
Twitter is an incredible tool that can provide your brand, your
small business or your civic organization with a voice and personality. Twitter
can also work to turn you, the small businessperson – the owner, into a thought leader about what is happening
in your industry and your sphere of interest. The benefit of such a distinction
is that you will become the go-to-person for answers and advice on what’s
happening.
To be successful in tweeting, you will have to develop your
personality and a unique style. That’s what makes the difference and can
increase your Twitter followers and turn tweeting into a successful marketing
tool for you and your company. As a small business
owner, your social media activity should engage the world in the conversation
that you initiate.
As the leader of your organization, you are goal driven,
growth driven or mission driven. You focus on the bigger picture of promoting
your company, product, service, NGO or issue. Consequently, you have to delegate the social media job
responsibility to a trusted associate. Just as bookkeeping or human
resources, social media management is a full-time or at least part-time task.
In addition to content, successful tweets
should include a link to your website and other websites, blog posts, PDF
documents, photographs or videos for greater impact. By doing so, you direct
the readers’ attention to more information about the topic of your expertise.
However, you can’t wake up one morning and tell yourself
“I’ll start tweeting today.” You have to be prepared with a plan and strategy
about what you want to accomplish. Becoming a thought leader is a legitimate
marketing goal for you as the proprietor. Making your company well known for
its product or service is an equally legitimate marketing goal for your
business. But as the business owner, you must remember not to overlook daily
chores as you tweet.
You can’t build your business by keeping to yourself and you
surely cannot have success on social media without virtually shaking hands. You
have to get out of your niche and interact. You should tweet the same
information several times a day with slight differences. You have to invite
readers to join your conversation and you have to participate in conversations.
You should also follow likeminded people, similar businesses and vendors, common
industries, and supportive stakeholders, like their tweets and retweet their
tweets. Their followers and readers may become your followers and readers. This
builds your community and recognition in Twittersphere. If you don’t interact
with the world, the world, your potential clients and prospective supporters
will leave you by the side of the cyber-road.
The task is greater than one person and certainly greater
than the business owner.
As Bullas noted, social media managers “need to be like a
juggler at a circus and keep a lot of balls up in the air and make them all
land safely. It requires skillsets which means managing many moving parts.
Technical, analytical, creative with a bit of project management thrown in.”
Because tweeting and retweeting are never ending, managing
the space is almost a 24/7 job. There’s always someone awake in Twittersphere –
nearby or far away. It means monitoring, managing, updating and being inspired
by the clients, advocates and other sources and addressing the issues raised.
Among the skills needed to do the job are:
1. Strategy planning
2. Tactics and execution – when to tweet or retweet
3. Community creation and management
4. Create content
5. Understand how content works on a social web
6. Optimizing content and technology
7. Creative mindset
8. Writing skills in a limited word count
9. Be on top of the latest digital marketing trends – which
venue to use
10. Analytical skills – how to read SEO
11. Leadership and communication skills – internally and
externally
It’s a major commitment and investment on the part of
business and NGO management that should not be underestimated. Does the owner
have the bandwidth for these tasks?
How will you tweet?
Join the conversation in cyberspace about boosting your business
and outreach by using Twitter and social media and let me know your achievements.
If you have examples of how you tweeted to boost outreach, let me know about it
and I’ll help you spread the word
about your success.
I’d also like to invite you to visit my Thought Leadership website:
If you’re looking for advice on recruiting, company handbooks and
other human resources topics, I’d like to suggest to you this interesting
website:
Scroll down along the Boosting
Your Outreach blogsite to read or reread older posts.
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