Скачать или смотреть Small Bizdom Spotlight with Ramon Ray

Transcription:

My name is Ramon Ray. I'm the editor and technology evangelist of smallbiztechnology.com. Smallbiztechnology.com educates small businesses on how to use technology as a tool to further grow their business. There's a lot of things out there for small businesses that they can leverage to take advantage of, to acquire new customers and keep the ones they have. And I think social media, of course, is a very important part of that. Some of the things I think they can do are: 1) Have a great website, have a great e-mail newsletter, and have a blog. And then, add on top of that like icing on the cake, social media. We know about tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and these tools are great. But there are many third-party tools, which many of them are free, that help you save time, help you do more with less, such as Nutshellmail, such as mail such as Postling, such as TweetDeck, such as HootSuite, these are all great tools. When you get back to your office after a long day doing sales, in taxi cabs, doing what you're doing to manage your business, these tools can help you find out who has said what about you at the end of the day.

I talked to a lot of small businesses, and I find that many of them are not leveraging social media as they should. A lot of them have a basic website, all of them have other tools, but not many of them are using social media tools. And I wondered why is that? And then I started reading The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute study on this, and I found the same thing. And I think there's a few things, a few reasons for that. Point 1, I think many small business owners, they think it's complicated. And I can understand that to some degree, but if you know how to drive a car, if you can open up a can of soup, you can definitely leverage social media. Point 2, I think, is that many of them think they don't have time to do it. And, again, if you have the time to file taxes, if you have the time to get a doctor or lawyer, you have to take the time to do this. And more importantly, I think every small business owner should appoint an intern, hire somebody, or they themselves, have to know about social media. And last but not least, measure, measure, measure. It makes no sense to send out a tweet, or do a LinkedIn group, or have a Facebook page, if you're not measuring what that is.

To a lot of small businesses, social media can be scary. I'm teaching my son how to drive, and just to drive in the driveway it's like, oh man, I have to drive in the driveway. And I think to many small businesses, social media can be the same way, a little scary experience. But a few things I would say, point 1, don't be afraid of it. Point 2, listen. God gave us two ears and one mouth. Type your business name into Twitter. Go on LinkedIn and find out their discussion groups about whatever you're doing. After you've listened, after you've taken the time to hear what's happening, dive into the conversation. Not as a sales person, don't start saying buy me, buy me, buy me; but if you're on Twitter and maybe your customer says I like these kind of shoes and you sell them, reply thank you, reply how are you using them. So I think that the easiest way to step into it. Listen, and after you're listening and enjoying the conversation, step in and participate in the conversation. You'll find that over time, your customers are going to see you engage, and they're going to want to buy from you. At the very least, they're going to call you or email you and ask you for help on what they're using.