Social Media for Small Business:

52 Points Toward Informed Decisions

Information overload emerged as a public health concern in the mid-nineties. An increasing volume of e-mail, voice mail, and faxes were competing with other media for people’s attention more than ever before. Psychologists spoke of Information Fatigue, a new syndrome with symptoms plaguing a growing array of people as over-communication escalates in the information age.

Since then, things have both changed and stayed the same. The fax has become uncommon. The concept of the 24-hour work-day has become passé. Enterprises still need to get their messages through to get attention when they have something important to say.

This article enables comparison of four media now in widespread use by small businesses: Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and newsletters. As means for small companies to achieve marketing and public-relations objectives, these four media deserve attention. Here are 13 basic points about each to support decision-making about effective business communications now and in the near future.

Twitter

1. Many pithy, poignant, popular tweets are important in this high-volume, short-attention-span medium.
2. Frequent tweeting that demonstrates relevance and engages followers must be sustained over time.
3. The service is free of financial cost, though potentially quite costly in time, attention, and creativity.
4. Businesses often use Twitter to redirect people to their blogs or websites for more information.
5. Some users find Twitter addictive and develop an insatiable appetite for good tweets.
6. Good tweets get re-tweeted and re-tweets help to increase the number of followers.
7. A company can attract followers by using the right key words and phrases well.
8. Companies must tweet often and respond promptly to seem in-the-game.
9. Any user can start or stop following another user anonymously.
10. A company using Twitter can direct-message only its followers.
11. A Tweet Deck is like a Facebook profile page with news feed.
12. Twitter is the most-used medium for microblogging.
13. Each tweet is a text post of up to 280 characters.

Facebook

1. Companies not engaging their Facebook (FB) followers relevantly can cause disengagement from their brand.
2. The main object is to get a large number of users to like your company, then to keep them engaged.
3. Your company’s FB followers can visit your profile and re-access material you have shared in the past.
4. The service is free of financial cost, though potentially quite costly in time, attention, and creativity.
5. Your company can share photos, notes longer than status updates, videos, and audio recordings. 
6. When users “like” your company, this appears in their news feed and is posted in their profile.
7. You can also buy Facebook advertising targeted to attract new customers and FB friends.
8. Anything your company posts becomes available for FB followers to share among others.
9. Your company’s FB followers can refer others to you and you can contact their followers.
10. Account settings allow the account user to control information shared and received.
11. Status updates can be longer than tweets and may include external links.
12. The rules for FB accounts are enforced and must be obeyed.
13. Facebook offers accounts specifically for businesses.

blogging

1. Blog readers typically expect good, credible, topical reading and images – not curt, off-the-cuff smalltalk.
2. A blog is a good place to post articles relating to your products, services, business values, activities, etc.
3. Blog visitors are less likely to watch your posts on an on-going basis, but more to periodically check in.
4. A blog can be used for monologue, or mediated or unmediated dialogue in connection with each post.
5. Some business blogs comprise mostly articles while others are mostly videos or photos with captions.
6. Blogging is generally less interactive, with less-spontaneous content and less expectation of dialogue.
7. Blog posts can be edited after they are initially posted, including photos or videos changed or added.
8. Like FB status updates and Twitter tweets, blog entries can also provide the news of the moment.
9. Unlike with Twitter, high frequency and brevity of posts are not expected by most blog visitors.
10. A blog intended for a target market could still be accessible to others, including competitors.
11. Daily blog posts are regarded as high volume. Weekly to monthly is a normal frequency.
12. As with posts to FB, the blogger can be notified whenever a visitor posts a comment. 
13. Your business can set up a blog for free or pay for a blog that has more features.

newsletter

1. Noticeably inauthentic or generic content can make a newsletter detrimental PR.
2. Custom design, original content, custom layout, and original imagery can be costly.
3. In these times, hard-copy newsletters are more often received as something special.
4. For an e-newsletter to pass spam filters, the distro list must be 100% by permission.
5. Even with a permission-based distro list, an e-newsletter must include an opt-out option.
6. To compete with other communications, a newsletter must always demonstrate relevance.
7. Good writing and good design and layout are essential to newsletter acceptance and success.
8. With free templates and free content easy to get, an e-newsletter on a minimal budget is possible.
9. E-newsletters are easily deleted or ignored, particularly before the recipient finds out what’s inside.
10. Good hard-copy newsletters are more often read in their entirety, shared, and passed on to others.
11. Issuing too frequently cheapens the reader experience. A good frequency for e-newsletters is monthly.
12. Hard-copy newsletters that seem like flyers are typically treated as junk mail, notably when unaddressed.
13. A printed-and-mailed newsletter can be costly. Yet, good original content could make it the most profitable option.

In consideration of the 52 points above, it is wise not to commit to using Twitter, Facebook, a blog, or a newsletter until after the company has clarified with some certainty its objectives regarding these five matters:

• budget in financial cost and expectations of ROI.
• market outreach (sales, marketing, advertising).
• public relations (e.g. openness regarding issues and incidents in the news).
• budget in human (time, attention, creativity) and technological resources.
• client relations (loyalty, retention, referral generation, depth of relationship).

The 52 points above ought to help any small business to make informed choices about how to communicate with its market in alignment with awareness of the tools available and the commitments necessary to use those tools effectively.

- Glenn R Harrington, Articulate Consultants Inc.

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