The Savvy

By Anastasia Tubanos

This year U.S. marketing spending on digital and online media is expected to surpass the marketing budget allocated to print for the first time in history, according to a study released in March 2010 by research and advisory firm Outsell.

Luckily SMBs can tap into this digital audience, regardless of their marketing budgets, because social media tools are enabling brands to network and market in fresh and innovative ways that don’t require millions of dollars. The key is to be consistent, relevant and to truly engage your audience on every platform you can find them. Because chances are, they’re already out there using these tools. They’re just waiting for you to find them.

“FreshBooks started using things like Twitter because people on Twitter were asking questions about FreshBooks and we were compelled to answer!” says Darius Bashar, Fire Starter at FreshBooks, an online invoicing and billing company. “So FreshBooks gravitated towards social media because it allowed us to keep in touch with our customers and create deeper relationships with them.”

Erin Bury, community manager at Sprouter – a peer-to-peer community for startups - agrees, saying it was her target demographic that drove the company to get online.

“I think it was a no-brainer for us,” says Bury. “We knew entrepreneurs were already hanging out on these networks - talking to each other on Twitter, sharing their businesses on Facebook, and blogging about their experiences. Instead of reinventing the wheel, social media allowed us to integrate into these existing communities.”

The idea of getting online may sound daunting to some, but the secret is to build each network one step at a time. Here are some of the key social media tools businesses are using today to help get you started.

1) Blogging -

Blogs are a great place to start establishing your company’s social media presence and making your business into the go-to expert in your field in a truly personal way; if your website is like giving someone your business card, your blog is like giving them the key to your hotel room. A lot of companies have earned their customers’ trust and loyalty through showing real transparency along with a dollop of personality.

Web hosting firm Dreamhost’s blog features posts about new service offerings and giveaways sandwiched between irreverant images of Spock and David Hasslehoff. But there’s also posts addressing issues like downtime and transparent explanations

as to why it happened. In this way, Dreamhost is being proactive to its customer base and taking accountability when a mistake has been made.

Some of the most popular and user-friendly blogging platforms companies turn to include WordPress, Blogger and TypePad, all of which are fairly easy to install.

2) Video -

In 2010 online video distributors announced that primetime content viewing has surpassed lunchtime viewing and websites like Hulu, Rogers On-Demand Online and Internet-enabled TV sets make it easier for viewers to access your company’s online video content however they want.

SMBs often create testimonials, FAQs and How-To videos to highlight the personality behind the brand. Some video campaigns can even go viral (though no marketer can ever give a 100 per cent guarantee on this) on YouTube channels, like a recent one that had men wishing they smelled as cool as Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa. That branded video campaign ended up doubling Old Spice’s sales over the last three months, according to Nielsen, as well as re-branding Old Spice as the “cool” man’s choice.

3) Microblogging -

Microblogs like Twitter are different from traditional blogs; the content is typically much smaller and much more frequent, that sometimes feel more like a chat service than blogging. Which makes sense since one of the greatest uses of this tool is to understand and engage with your customers on a one-on-one basis, all in 140 characters or less.

Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool for brands, especially when key influencers have been engaged to help spread the word about your company. In August, a fundraising campaign called Tutus for Tanner was held through Twitter to raise money for a boy with a degenerative muscular disease. Through Twitter alone, the organizers were able to raise over $25,000 in 12 hours.

4) Location-Aware Tools and Mobile Apps -

There has been a rise of geographically specific tools that enable businesses to offer unique deals to loyal customers.

Group discount sites like GroupOn and TeamBuy are a savvy way to get thousands of new customers to hear about your brand. Teaming with sites like these can harness rabid groups of customers looking for an exclusive deal in their area.

Mobile application FourSquare offers location-specific marketing opportunities for brands as well. Users can “check-in” to venues using this application and are

awarded points and badges, as well as a Mayor status for being the user to frequent a certain venue the most.

In Toronto, the NFB offers free tickets on your third check-in and Merci Mon Ami offers free soft-drinks on lunches when a user shows he’s already checked-in. Both uses of this application let customers find the bricks-and-mortar location via their handheld while encouraging customer loyalty once they have. And the fact that FourSquare announces where you are to all of a users’ Twitter followers is a nice bonus.

5) Social Media analytics -

With so much conversation about your business being online, it’s important take a look at how people are interacting with your brand and what the discussions are around it. Analytics don’t just keep you in the know with how often your brand is mentioned online, but they can also give you tangible numbers showing how effective certain online marketing campaigns are.

A tool like Google Alerts notifies you with an email straight to your inbox as soon as someone talks about your brand and can give you a virtual “heads up” about anything from a news story that your brand appears in to your competitor mentioning you on their own corporate blog.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, shows you how much traffic you’re getting to your website, right down to the nitty-gritty: page views, incoming links and can even tell the average time a user spends on each page. Woopra does that, too, but does it “live” so you can watch as people come on or leave your site as it happens. It even has a chat function that enables you to interact with users that are checking out your website at that very moment.

Then there are tools like Social Mention that provide a social media search engine service, prowling through user-generated content like blogs, comments, bookmarks, videos, Facebook and Digg to determine who is saying what about your brand.

6) Facebook -

Facebook is one of those social media tools businesses are told they should take advantage of, but the question that always rises is: how does this make me money? The answer? It doesn’t. The wealth it offers businesses is a dedicated niche audience that specifically cares about your brand. And if your business model relies on advertisers, it’s an audience that ends up being invaluable to them as well.

If you’re a magazine, TV show or movie, you can set up a Facebook Fanpage and create a forum where you can reach out to your readers with contests from your advertisers, promote upcoming articles and events and engage with your audience to better understand what they’re looking for.

Getting a Facebook Application developed around your brand can also offer a unique opportunity to get your audience to further interact with your company in a fun, and mobile, way.

The thing to remember with Facebook, is to remain social. The more updates you’re providing and the more you engage your followers, the more they’ll stick around and come back to see what’s new. Its advantage is brand exposure and driving additional traffic to your website.

Whether social media helped facilitate conversations from happy customers to the potential new clients or helped gain exposure into traditional mediums, tools like Twitter and Facebook have helped companies like FreshBooks and Sprouter in expanding their brand coverage and find more personal ways to interact with their clients.

“Most companies expect to put very little effort into social media and reap immediate results,” says Bashar. “That’s not how it works. In fact, it’s not how anything in life works. You would not expect to open a bank account one day and then turn around the next day and be able to withdraw $25,000. Social media is about listening and creating dialogue with your customers, not talking down to them. You want to find exciting ways to engage your users to want to collaborate with your company.”

Image courtesy stock.xchng