If you haven’t figured it out by now social media is definitely not a fad, and the majority of users are not you’re 10 year olds no matter how much you try to downplay it. Truth of the matter is that your target market, your perfect consumer who you would loved wrapped around your product is living it in everyday. You may not be a major brand like Oreo, of Victoria Secret, but you sure could act like one. Sure you may not have the the control tower of digital genies that these companies have, but it really isn’t that difficult to adopt some of there techniques down to a smaller level.

So why put your business and brand in social networks? Because that’s where your customers are! Don’t worry I know you’ve read all the blogs about the value and what it can do, blah blah blah… Really the down to it action plan is really quite simple and any small business can put to work without having foot the bill for an agency. To be honest if you do not have a point person in house you should not even think about outsourcing your social media management.

1. Create a Linkedin Page for your company. This one easy to overlook because you may not get your arms around how to really use it.  (this is an entirely different subject)

• Create and fill in your page THOROUGHLY, yes don’t leave any blanks.
• Make great use of the product page, I love this feature you can put pictures and descriptions on what you have to offer.
• Add videos- I would suggest video testimonials if you’re B2c and a “why by for B2B.
• Lastly, and maybe the most difficult get all of your employees to link correctly to your company page. Some may have create a linkedin page and just forgot about it and may have entered the business name different from what your official business name is. It may just take some time showing people how to edit. But it’s simply click edit profile> current position>change company name. Once they start typing in the business name it should auto populate and voala you have employees linked to your company page.

Even if you decide not to do anything with your Linkedin Page doesn’t mean other people won’t consumers today expect companies to have a social presence everywhere. And with Linkedin being a professional social network one should have a business page.

2. Decide on the social network that you would like to start with. For argument sake let’s already assume you’ve created a Facebook page. But like many small businesses maybe you’ve posted once or twice a month to a fan club of 101. Don’t worry like I said this was simple.

3. Create a moderation policy and a social media policy if you don’t already have this. The moderation policy is something that would go on your Facebook page (i suggest to put it at the bottom of your welcome page) these are basically the rules for your fans to post on your company page. If someone breaks a rule you can refer them to your policy. The social media policy is for internal use within your business. It’s just a guideline of your expectations on how employees are using social media in house, and the use of your company name etc..

4. Find your Social Champions! By this I mean, find the people within each of your departments who have passion in what they do and can raddle off the top of there head everything exciting happening that week. Get at least a weeks worth of topics from all of your departments. If they have a hard time of thinking of things ask them to find blogs that specifically pertain to there expertise. Now you pretty much have a social calendar of postings that can last a full month.

Depending on your level of trust and relationship with your employees you make the call on whether or to give admin access directly to them for more spontaneous posts or not.  Typically just have your point person load up your post schedules using hootsuite, or any other third party ware and you’re good to go. So now that lonely person that was originally sent out to do this task of (community manager) now has a solid calendar of social content, but now can also sprinkly in breaking news, or occasional blogs.

5. Now that you have a wall that shows consistent posts being updated and people interacting with the page (rule get your employees engaged with your page!) The quickest way to build up your fanbase is to get your customer base. If you have a crm simply export your contact to a csv file and use Facebooks “invite email contacts” option. Don’t forget to and invite to your friends to Like your page and get your employees to do this as well.

4. Don’t get overwhelmed! Once you’ve got a great simple that works great for your business don’t try to move too quickly in wanting to create landing pages, and dissecting your analytics too fast. It’s really easy to get info overloaded with the over saturation of social content-which is a necessary evil because it keeps freaking changing and a new network pops up every minute!

5. Invest in your education. Take the time to listen in on webinars and maybe attend a conference every 6 months. It may be hard to imagine but there are people just like you going through the same shift and it’s always nice to connect with similar and more advanced companies that can show you the ropes.

Good luck,

Tanesha