3 Jul 2010

Harnessing Social Networks for your business

If you've got a website, but not doing anything to drive people to your website, you're probably not getting much sales out of that investment. If you haven't got a website, you're seriously at the bottom of the learning curve, but no worries, those that have got one but do not market it aren't very far ahead, you can still catch up. You'll probably have heard from your children or your neighbour's children about facebook and twitter and wonder how or what these things are?

You've gone onto these websites, but do not know how these things can do for you. Hopefully, we'll have some ideas for you to help you to demystify these seemingly challenging social networks.

Many businesses are on Facebook promoting their products and their brand through the use of the myriad of tools available on this social network.

The key is to work on one social media at a time, and have very clear objectives what you wish to achieve, then break that main objective into small tasks which help you achieve that main objective.

But firstly, you'll of course need a Facebook account. That's not too difficult, it only takes 5 minutes to get one setup and then you're ready to "Rock and Roll".
After setting up your Facebook account, you may want to setup a Facebook page for your brand / business. This will allow you to do many things for your business - like gather customer feedback, promote and advertise your brand/product on Facebook and share news and information with prospective clients.

You would know that Word of Mouth marketing is by far a very effective tool as opposed to mass advertising.  Consumers have always valued opinions expressed directly to them. Business owners like you and me spend tons of money and heaps of hours to advertise and promote our brand/product/business, yet often what really makes up a consumer’s mind is not only simple but also free: a word-of-mouth recommendation from a trusted source.  As consumers overwhelmed by product choices tune out the ever-growing barrage of traditional marketing, word of mouth cuts through the noise quickly and effectively.

Well lets face it, we've all got competitors, heck if we didn't have any competitors, the product/business must be so new that the market may not even be able to accept it. You'll still need social networks to create awareness (but I digress).

The market (be it B2B or B2C) has amplified and accelerated its reach to the point where word of mouth is no longer an act of intimate, one-on-one communication. Today, it also operates on a one-to-many basis: product reviews are posted online and opinions disseminated through social networks. This is one of the very useful aspects of social networks, but you will need to manage it very carefully, because you can receive both Positive as well as Negative responses. In appropriate responses to Negative comments or bad service recovery will not just result in loss of 1 client, but many.

Hence you may wish to engage a social media expert or consultant to help you with such an exercise or attend a workshop on Social Media marketing. We'll keep you updated when we have such courses available. 

Women in business

When I started in business back in 1999, I probably wasn't as I am today. Many women entrepreneurs build confidence over the years, although I (think) I lacked in confidence, but I had a great ambition - that was to succeed in any business I did. And of course, my ambition for my business then was to build my own brand of apparel and have my own specialty shop was a little overly ambitious. And that business had failed and we lost a large amount of money in it, and went into debt.

However that did not discourage me, and I was able to survive with my small real estate deals that I brokered, but not to run a business was just not for me. I popped right back in to run a F&B distribution business which I still do today.

I'll be launching a mini-series of stories of local women entrepreneurs, and what makes them tick, how do they manage their life, family and business. If you would like to find out more, stay tuned to this blog.