Incorporating Social Media Into Your Business

Whether you own a brick and mortar business, an online business or a non-profit, I think we can all agree that incorporating social media into our business strategies is of paramount importance. Seems that everyone is telling us we must do this now, but there really is very little explanation of what exactly needs to be done to get started. Social Media is not a one size fits all, but there are certainly some beginning and easy steps we can take to indoctrinate Social Media into our business lives. It does not have to be all at once and can be accomplished gradually with more involvement as we become more confident in our abilities and can see more of the big picture of where we want our businesses to go.

Before beginning any of these steps, let me first emphasize what I think are some of the most important fundamentals. First of all, the idea of social media is to engage in regular interaction with people for some common cause. That being said, start a data base to save information on your contacts such as their names, email addresses, business/job and where you met them. You will someday need this information if you want to introduce your business or a new product, advise them of an event or even to request funds for a non-profit. Also, one of my first steps is to create a separate email account for each one of my businesses. If I mingle all of my business information with my personal information with my shopping information or my family information, it can become quite messy. For me, the easiest has been to create separate email accounts with gmail. This proved a little prophetic for me as it turns out gmail is easily incorporated with google+. Now that google+ places has rolled out for business, you surely want to be there.

The most basic, yet I believe one of the most overlooked steps, is to create a Google Places page. Google Places allows you to list your business and is very important in search rankings. Listing your business is not only for a brick and mortar business with a physical location, but also internet businesses. All of my businesses have a place page. On your page you can describe your business, post pictures and videos, give an address, phone number, hours, accepted methods of payment and so forth. You can do a coupon for customers to print or show you with a smart phone. Your place page will also pull in reviews of your place with an opportunity for you to respond and provide you with analytics of how many people found you, requests for driving directions or visits to your web site. Visit www.google.com/places to set up your page.

In this same vein, Google Profiles is another handy little descriptive site where you can list either yourself, your business or both. Visit www.google.com/profiles.

If you are a non-profit, may I suggest google.com/nonprofits. Google has provided a host of features for non-profits including a section on reaching donors and finding grants. It provides free AdWord advertising usage. It is just a wealth of information. Visit www.google.com/nonprofits.

If you have a brick and mortar business such as a retail store or restaurant, you may wish to list your business on some of the travel recommendation sites such as yelp.com and my favorite, tripadvisor.com. Here users can post reviews and information on places they visit. As a business owner, you can interact with those folks as well.

How about posting a video of your place or your product or service. It doesn’t have to be done by a professional. To set up an account visit www.youtube.com.

This should be enough to help you get started on your journey into Social Media. Always remember to respond to comments and engage with others, even negative comments. Update with new pictures and content when appropriate. Having dabbled with some of these basic sites, it would now be a good time to sit down and evaluate your overall Social Media strategy, where you want to go, the audience you wish to target and which Social Media sites will help you get there.

Social Media doesn’t have to be hard or intimidating. The important thing is to just get started.