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03.10.10 Using Social Media To Beat Your Competition  By Danny Brown While becoming more mainstream, social media still holds fear for many businesses, especially small local business. Fear of time involved; fear of where to start; fear of where to be. While this fear is understandable, it also means that many local small business owners miss out on social media and all the benefits it can offer, especially when it comes to competing with the big boys. While I've written before about how expensive social media can be from a corporate campaign viewpoint, for small businesses it's still one of the most cost-effective methods of being visible to your customers, new and existing. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube - they all offer possibilities for the small business owner. Then there's the real workhorse - the blog. The best marketing tool you will ever have as a small business owner, a blog can be a myriad of things: • A promotional tool. • An information hub. • A resource centre. • Your own personal social network. • A live, ever-fresh FAQ section. In fact, the only limitation to what a blog can do for you is the limitations you put on the blog itself. And again, this is where many small business owners - especially local small business owners - bypass social media's strengths and opportunities. Fear comes back in. Fear of what to blog about; fear of how to target an audience; fear of how to promote a new (or existing) blog; fear of setting yourself apart when there are so many other voices around. Apart from that fear, perhaps the biggest stumbling block is setting up the blog in the first place. If you're not doing it yourself, where do you find a designer (and for many small business owners, one that doesn't break your budget or rip you off). Again, this fear is only natural. Yet help is at hand. In the next couple of weeks, a new course will be unveiled that takes the fear out of social media and blogging for small business owners. Some of the features will include: • Using social media and your blog to market your small business. • Using online tools to benefit your brick and mortar business (or a simple home-based one). • Getting a fully-functional blog and social media tools set up from day one. • Course "mentors" that bring a vast and comprehensive set of skills to the table (oh, and me). These are just some of the features and benefits, with more to be announced over the coming weeks. It's a course designed specifically for small and local business owners that get social media and its benefits (like blogs), but need that extra bit of help to really start utilizing it. Best of all, it won't cost you anywhere near $22,000 a day... More information will be available very soon. To make sure you get the latest updates, as well as details of what's in store and who'll be part of the course, you can sign up for the latest news via the newsletter form below. Don't worry, you won't be spammed and you definitely won't be sold to any dodgy characters! Social media and blogging was made for small business owners. Here's a great chance to be that business - look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Comments About the Author: Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He offers consultancy advice on social media and PR to both individuals and corporations He has guest authored at leading web and search marketing site Web Analytics World and is a blog partner of the WebProNews and iEntry business networks. He is also a regular contributor to the Dad-o-Matic project. To read more of Danny's articles or interact with him, please visit danny BROWN - social media PR. |
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