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This is the place to share best practices for e-marketing strategy, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and more. All are essential elements for meeting the needs of your customers and your business.

Can Social Media Help Small Biz?


My favorite local wine bar/coffee shop has Twitter Tuesdays. Give your Twitter name at the drive-up window and get a free cup of coffee if you are on their follower list (only about 57 so far). They've kept it going for a month and say that it is here to stay. Hmm... They must be selling a lot of breakfast sandwitches with that free coffee. Last week they had a one-night coupon on Facebook good for "one free wine or beer from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m."   They've been open less than six months.  I hope they survive.

Lead generation/new customer aquistion should be the top business benefit derived from social media for small businesses. But in a survey from Citibank, the majority of small-business executives found social networks no good for expanding their business.

But contrast this with the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” from Ad-ology - lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking for US small businesses, cited by one-half of respondents. Social networks were also considered a good way to keep up with the industry and monitor online chatter about the business.

Small businesses rated Facebook the most beneficial social networking site, with one-third of respondents reporting it was at least somewhat helpful. It was also the social network most likely to be used. Use of LinkedIn was less common, but the business-oriented site was claimed as beneficial by 21% of small businesses, compared with 19% that said the same of Twitter.

While awareness of social media is high among small businesses, education is still needed. Nearly one-half of respondents wished they knew more about the channel, and some of the biggest obstacles to doing more with social networking included a lack of knowledge.

The No 1. roadblock, however, was the perception that “our customers do not use social networks,” claimed by 31% of small businesses. Nearly as many complained that they did not have the time or staff available to do a good job with social network marketing. I'm sure this is true. So what would be the ROI if they outsourced this activity to a profressional? Is anyone willing to be paid based on performance? How would performance be measured?

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