With around 400 million potential customers active on social network Facebook, many of whom openly display their interests, you would have thought that Facebook was manna from heaven for marketers.

In reality, very few companies are successfully exploiting the channel to promote their business, and many of those have big budgets. So why and how should an SME or start-up think about Facebook as a marketing channel?

Forming a Facebook fan page is often viewed as a fantastic way to engage with the public, and if you do it right it can be hugely successful.

Coffee chain Starbucks has more than 5.5 million members on its Facebook fan page, and is by far and away the most successful brand on Facebook. But for small businesses the challenge is that much harder as they don’t enjoy the same level of brand awareness. For example, more than three quarters (77 per cent) of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 members.

Why do it?

So why should small businesses form a Facebook fan page? Creating a Facebook page provides the opportunity to directly interact with potential and existing customers. 400 million users – and growing – simply cannot be ignored. Some of these people will be in your local area and they may be searching for your product or service.

As well as a way to sell and generate brand awareness, Facebook groups provide a free way to carry out market research – you can poll your fans, gauge their reaction to ideas before you implement them.

Content is Key

The clincher when it comes to attracting and retaining Facebook fans is what you offer them. There is an infinite amount of interest groups that Facebook users can join, so you need to make yours stand out from the herd. Most groups probably fail to reach 1,000 members because they fail to offer compelling content and, worst of all, do not interact.

So, think of video, audio, blogs and other interesting content that would appeal to your target audience. You can then use tools such as ping.fm to syndicate that content with minimal manual input your end. Have a look at car hire firm Zipcar’s Facebook page to see how innovative content has helped a small business generate a following of nearly 30,000.

Most of all, it’s a community, so INTERACT!

How promote it?

Once you’re clear on what you want to achieve from your Facebook page, what content you’re going to offer, who’s going to manage it and how often you’ll be updating content and interacting with customers, you need to think about how to attract people to your page in the first place.

Start small – friends, friends of friends, customers. Provide links on your homepage to click through to your Facebook page, offer discounts and other benefits exclusive to Facebook group members. Your popularity will spread virally, so don’t expect Rome to be built in a day.

Assess where you are after one month, two months etc and think about how you could better promote the site if you’re not hitting numbers.

For more on the subject of Facebook pages, listen to this podcast from RunMarketing.co.uk with social media consultancy, Fresh Egg.

With a 40% drop out rate in the first month amongst first-time Twitter users a great deal of your following could be deadwood. Despite this, Time magazine believes that “Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years.”

So, what does Twitter mean for you as a small business? What are the best practice guidelines?

Twitter in a Nutshell

Twitter, if you’re not familiar with it, is a service embraced by companies, individuals and celebrities which allows users to enter 140 characters of text with which to communicate, share information and chat publicly and privately.

The idea is to build up a following among users that interest you, and for companies of all sizes Twitter presents the opportunity to interact with existing and potential customers.

It’s also effectively a real-time search engine, with live updates on an infinite range of subjects, so typing a keyword in the search box will enable you to see what Twitter users – or ‘Tweeple’ around the world are saying about your brand, industry or geography.

Twitter presents challenges to small businesses as well as opportunities, so if you’re planning to use Twitter for your business, it’s best to do it properly or not at all.

From the outset it’s vital to remember that if you’re tweeting as a company it’s harder to gather a following. Also, be sure to make sure you have objectives clearly marked out. What do you want to achieve via Twitter? How and when are you going to measure it?

The Pros & Things To Do

Twitter enables you to see who in the world is talking about your product, industry or company and interact with them. You can build up a network of potential customers and partners, and promote your news, products, services and offers. Here are some practical tips on how your business could use Twitter

• Make sure a real person is representing your business and don’t be too salesy in your profile or in your tweeting. Twitter’s about developing relationships online, like you would do for your business offline.
• Leaving the default Twitter image is, again, impersonal and won’t encourage a follow back. It’s also best to use a photo of you or one of your team as opposed to a logo.
• Remember if you use Twitter as a sales tool you’ll turn people off and prompt an unfollowing. Use the three Es – engage, entertain, enlighten. Marketing is about conversations nowadays.
• Try using Tweetdeck to manage your tweets and to search for people to follow or “trend”. If using multiple Twitter accounts, Hootsuite is a great tool.
• Never outsource Twitter to a third party, such as a PR firm or freelancer – you need to be authentic and tweet in your own voice.
• Log on in spates during the day. It can become both addictive and a frustrating distraction as you get sucked into conversations. Be disciplined.
• Use hashtags before keywords to help them be found more easily when others search for the topic or trend you’re tweeting about.
• Play around with Twitter using a personal account before committing your company to the service. This will help you familiarise yourself with the platform and the way people use it.

The Cons & Things To Avoid

• Never tweet in anger. It may be tempting if you see something infuriating that you want to respond to, but remember that whatever you type will be available online forever, even if you delete your comment, some traces can remain.
• Don’t set an auto-follow thank you message. This is an option available to you to say “thanks for following” and add your message to all new followers, but this is seen as impersonal and defeats the object of Twitter as an open dialogue.
• Put a policy in place to avoid any off-piste clumsiness from your staff. As with all things social media common sense is a prime currency. If you’ve got employees talking about where they’ve been for new business or what they really think of a customer then you’ve got some fires to fight.
• Although Twitter could help you discover comments about your brand that you may not like, it also presents you with the opportunity to engage positively with the people making those comments. This is the essence of marketing in the Web 2.0 era – it’s no longer a monologue, it’s a dialogue between brands and consumers.

Twitter Impact Measurement

Once you’ve got Twitter up and running you want to know what people are saying about you. Not everyone will use the @ prefix when referring to your name or brand, so if you want to know what people are saying about your company – or industry – log onto sites like Addictomatic or Ubervu, enter your keyword, and you’ll see exactly who is saying what on a number of platforms, such as news and blog sites.

If you’ve embedded Google Analytics and are tracking your traffic, then you should be able to see what percentage comes from Twitter.

Even if it’s not substantial, it’s something which could lead to sales and partnership building, so Twitter is often worth the time investment. Try it on a personal level first before committing your brand to the service.

For more on using Twitter and social media for small business in general you might be interested in a podcast I recently recorded with Jenni Lloyd of social media agency NixonMcInnes.

If you’re using Twitter for your small business, do feel free to leave a comment to share any advice or tips you’ve learned that others might find useful when starting out.

The blog has become a common business practice. Indeed, the lack of a company blog can be perceived as a conspicuous absence. Whatever you blog about, it’s great from a thought leadership perspective and it’s also really helpful for your search engine ranking – all content helps!

Starting Out

Getting the branding of the blog right in the first place is critical to its long-term success. If you opt for a hosted service pick a name and URL for the blog which involves a keyword, where possible. This will help from a search perspective. Also, ensure that the look and feel of the blog accurately portrays your company’s personality; there are millions of blogs out there, you need to stand out and entice readers to come back.

You can set them up on your own site, but other programmes are available, such as the popularWordPress.org and Blogger.com, but you need to consider the loss of control over design and features that you’ll get with hosted programmes. For a professional organisation, it’s generally accepted that hosting a blog on your own website appears more professional.

Some General Top Tips:

• Content should be engaging, thought-provoking and informative. The ideal length for blogs is 350-500 words.
• Make sure your blog is optimised for search engine purposes: download the SEO Blogger tool from Wordtracker to help you choose keywords when drafting blogs. It works with several blogging platforms.
• You should allow comments, but monitor before publishing, so set filters from the start You are completely responsible for the content on your site, so to best ensure you’re not containing defamatory comments or sensitive information.
• Insert hyperlinks on relevant words where possible and use the blog as a kind of summary leading the reader to more in-depth content on your site or elsewhere which they can read at their leisure.
• Remember to tag your blogs with at least 10 relevant keywords.
• Register your blog on Technorati and Feedburner, these help you expand your reach and monitor feedback and following.
• Insert follow and bookmark options, such as RSS feeds or del.icio.us, and upload links to social media news sites, such as Digg and Reddit, which will enable people to promote your blog to others who might be interested.
• Use your Twitter feed to promote the blog. Your following will be made up of people in your industry so many will be interested to hear your views.
• Provide links to other blogs in your industry in your blogroll and ask them to link back. This ‘cross-blogging’ is important for your own blog’s authority.

Blogger Engagement

Bloggers can be hugely influential, so it’s critical to engage with the leading bloggers in your field. A high-profile case in point: Computer manufacturer Dell was faced with the full force of a disgruntled blogger in the form of Jeff Jarvis, which prompted a complete about-face in the company’s policy on blogger – and customer – engagement.

There are a few protocols to follow when reaching out to bloggers:

• Use tools like Technorati and Alexa to check on a blog’s ‘authority’ –  so you can focus your efforts on engaging the bloggers with the biggest and most relevant audience.
• Don’t treat bloggers as journalists, they’re not paid to read press releases and are under no pressure to post, so there has to be something in it for them.
• Don’t try and bribe the blogger with product, it could easily backfire.
• If you can, meet them personally. This goes a long way to building a lasting relationship.
• Check the regular contributors on blog sites, they may be – or become – influential bloggers themselves.

Top tips

If you’re worried that you don’t know what to worry about, inspiration is all around you. You know your market and the concerns your customers have, brainstorm what you think they’ll like to learn about. What are other people blogging about? Is there a different angle or repost you can counter their argument with?

The more quirky and confident the blog is, the more people will be likely to bookmark you or return on a regular basis. Lists are particularly good at generating debate, as are top tips. The key thing here is to remember to be neutral and non-salesy – people have come to your blog for advice, not to be sold to. If they like what they hear they’ll progress to the sales stage in their own time.

You can find podcasts on blogging, blogger relations, social media marketing and other marketing best practice advice on my website. I’d also recommend you check out ProBlogger for more great blogging advice.

If you’ve never written a press release before then there’s nothing to worry about, it’s fairly straightforward. The key ingredients to a successful press release are a good story, well-written copy and targeted, enthusiastic pitching.

Style Counsel

Aim to draft between 400-500 words. This is ample for a press release. Use short, to-the-point sentences, as journalists do not have much time on their hands and often receive hundreds of emails a day. Best practice here is to think how you’d sell your news in five seconds, because that’s about as much as you’ve got to catch the journalist’s attention.

The basic structure of your release should be as below:

Title: Bold, in one line explain what your news is and what difference it will make to your target audience

Standfirst: In italics under the headline, another line elaborating on the title

First Paragraph: Here, describe what you do, what your news is and why it’s relevant for your target audience in just two sentences. What’s the top line benefit for your customers?

Second Paragraph: Elaborate on the news. For example, if you’re launching a new product or service, what are the main features and/or benefits for your target audience? What’s in it for them?

Third Paragraph: Include a quote from someone senior here, preferably not a marketing title, though. Journalists don’t like citing marketing titles as a general rule.

Fourth Paragraph: Use this final paragraph to justify your business case with some recent industry statistics or news piece demonstrating why people should be interested in your news. Also use this paragraph to direct readers to other resources, such as online product demonstrations. Finish the release with the word ‘Ends’ below the final para

Boilerplate: Under the press release text you need to tell people who you are. How would you describe your company in one paragraph? What’s you website? Include media relations contact numbers and email addresses here.

Then, when you’re happy with the text, you’re all set to pitch to press!

Life’s a Pitch

Pitching to press is not easy, but editors – especially on regional papers – are usually more willing to hear from people who have set up their own business than PR people pitching on their behalf.

You can do some online research into the main target press in your field, or you can use an online service such as FeaturesExec or Gorkana to build your target lists, but be warned, these can be expensive.

There are newswire distribution services which will send your release to the target media that you want to hit. These need not be expensive, either. Most countries will have a service offering press release distribution but look at their credentials. In the UK, for example, established players include RealWire and ResponseSource.

At the end of the day, however, there is no substitute for the personal touch – calling the journalist to let him or her know what you’re announcing and then emailing them the press release with a short paragraph pitch to remind them of the call.

Once you’ve contacted your main targets you can use free newswires to help improve your search engine optimisation (SEO). Check out the likes of i-Newswire and PR Zoom. Also, research the news sites in your industry as some of them allow you to upload your press releases to their site, if they pass editorial control.

Social Media News Releases (SMNRs) are the most recent development in the continuing evolution of the press release. Whereas most press releases will be sent via email as pure text, SMNRs make the traditional release come alive, with links to more interactive content, such as videos, podcasts or articles and product demonstrations.

This can be done by simple building in links where appropriate, but there are sites that help you distribute your SMNRs, such as PitchEngine. These also enable you to plug the news over social news networks such as Digg and Reddit.

Top Tips

DO:

• Think of what your audience wants to hear, not what you want to say about your product
• Remember that if there’s a third party mentioned or quoted, they must give their permission for you to cite them and approve the text
• Research UK-generated press releases online to see how other companies word press releases
• Identify 10-15 key press contacts and pitch them by phone before emailing
• Use plain English. No one likes marketing puff
• Use keywords – see our SEO guides for more on this
• Send individually addressed emails to your key targets. “Hi Dave”, goes a lot further than “Good morning” to a blind copied address list
• Make sure you call the right journalist! If you supply garden furniture, don’t call the sports desk
• Call your main targets between 9am and noon. 12-2pm is a write-off due to lunch and by the afternoon journalists will most likely be writing to deadline. You can use the afternoon to put your press release on a number of free wires
• Build a news page on your website and aim to get one release out each month

DON’T

• Leave voicemails when calling journalists – they rarely check
• Use hyperbole. If you’re not the leader in your field, then don’t say you are
• Don’t capitalise your headlines, they’re hard to read and makes it LOOK LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING!
• Send an email to a journalist and follow up with a call asking whether they received it or not, they most likely read it and if they want to get back they will
• Send the release out again a few days if you’re not happy with initial uptake. Journalists are not fools (believe it or not!) and it could damage your attempts to build relationships
• Include large attachments. Although bandwidth is wider now, click-through links are far more preferable. If the journalist wants anything else they’ll be in touch
• Don’t ask the journalist if coverage will appear – you should look for that yourself. If a journalist updated everyone they wrote about when and where their news would appear they’d have no time to write!
• Use exclamation marks in press releases

Writing press releases is something I podcasted on recently. You can listen to that along with other best practice marketing podcasts at my website.

When I first embarked on my public relations career more than a decade ago, my boss said to me: “PR is just common sense, that’s all, common sense”. He’s right, but as a small business looking to form your own PR strategy saying it’s “just common sense” is a fairly vague description.

Knowing just “what” PR is – and what it’s not – is a good platform to start from. PR is not advertising, you do not procure online space, column inches or airtime with PR, but your aim is to secure those via various campaigns and tactics.

PR is the establishment and maintenance of your reputation – trying to ensure that people are talking about you, that those comments are positive and, where they’re not, working to change that perception.

Wish List

A poorly thought-out PR strategy is unlikely to succeed. Small business managers have precious little time on their hands to dedicate to marketing as it is, so getting it right first time is crucial in the long-run.

There are some very simple questions small businesses should be asking before they start managing their own PR:

- What are the objectives of our PR strategy in the short, medium and long term, and how are we measuring effectiveness?
- Who are our customers and what media do they access that we can use to reach them
- What makes our company different from our competitors and how do we communicate and articulate that in a way that’s palatable to press, potential customers and search engines
- What do we want customers, bloggers and editors to say and think about us?

From here, forming a PR strategy is then limited only by your imagination. There are endless things you can do as a small business or start-up to promote your products and services, from press releases to opinion articles, blogs to social networking, customer case studies and creative stunts.

You can engage everyone from your local paper, regional organ and even national newspapers and broadcasters, if you have a genuine story to tell.

Logistics

Once you’ve worked out who you want to talk to, what tactics you want to deploy to reach them and over which platforms then you need a few more things to get started.

- Build press lists of target publications and writers: You can do this yourself or you can use services such as Gorkana or Features Exec, which can be quite pricey. Think vertically as well, here, there are hundreds of trade publications out there. Building press lists is time-consuming, so it could be a job for that keen graduate intern!
- Build your press release template: Look online for great examples of press releases. For more, listen to this podcast I recorded on this subject recently.
- Identify relevant bloggers and engage with them: Leave non-salesy comments on their blogs, create backlinks. Get blogging yourself!
- Build a news and resource page on your website: This is critical as journalists need to know who to contact if they’re interested in you, plus the more Web-friendly text and links you host on your site will increase your search engine ranking.
- Use free online news distribution sites, such as PitchEngine, Digg or Reddit to place your news, as well as distributing it to your main targets.
- Seek advice on how to handle media calls. Journalists can sniff out inexperienced or uncomfortable spokespeople. Study how politicians and business leaders answer questions on television, these guys receive the very best media training.

The entrepreneur PT Barnum once said that “Without publicity a terrible thing happens, nothing”.

If you’re not engaging in PR already, then it’s time to get your skates on. It’s not a thing you necessarily need to outsource and the only real investment is your time. But it all comes down to getting the basics right, and that’s where common sense comes in.

If you can master that common sense approach, then not only should you be able to look forward to increased business, but my old boss would be very proud of you.

Social media cannot be ignored as you’ll have noticed, if you’ve been reading the SmallBizPod blog over the last year or two.

Not only does social media offer small businesses an incredible opportunity to reach a global audience, but it also presents employers with potential headaches.

Firstly, the good news: social media can really help you grow your business, interact with potential and existing customers, and draw traffic to your website.

If you look at a start-up such as Swedish music streaming service Spotify as a case in point, it owes much of its phenomenal rise to viral word-of-mouth marketing on social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and Bebo. I heard of Spotify first via Twitter, not via advertising.

However, there’s no point getting involved with networks such as Twitter unless you’ve a clear plan of what you want to achieve, how you’re going to manage it and what are you going to use it for. Likewise with blogging.

I’d always recommend starting up a blog, for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes as much as using it as a platform to position your company as a thought leader. But then again, a blog is pointless unless it engages the audience and encourages a response.

It’s also going to have no impact unless you plug it via social media – sites like Twitter and news ranking sites such as Digg and Reddit.

Social media is holistic and, most importantly, it’s a conversation. Marketing is no longer a one-to-many tool, it’s a dialogue. Have a listen to my podcast on social media for small businesses and start-ups for more on managing social media from the outset.

Secondly, the bad news: Social media is also a double-edged sword. As well as presenting companies with incredible marketing opportunities, it also presents a whole set of potential issues with confidentiality and staff trust.

Have a look at this recent case where a girl managed to get herself very publicly sacked for comments she made about her boss on Facebook.

Staff who perhaps are not familiar with things like libel, defamation, NDAs and, judging by the above story, are prone to lapses in common sense could seriously compromise your company’s reputation and intellectual property.

You can’t stop social media – the chances are your staff are on some kind of social network – the best thing you can do is form a policy which they should all be clear on. This post will help you form one.

Social media is here, it’s been here for a few years already and it’s only going to get more powerful, presenting both an opportunity and a threat to small businesses.

The smart firms will see how social media can benefit their business and also form policies to manage the inevitability that their staff are engaging on social networks. With so many things in business, it all boils down to common sense and planning.