Social Media and the Small Business

Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter. These are just a few of the most popular social media outlets out there today. Then there are a myriad of options out there in specific industries. For example, I maintain profiles on legal sites like AVVO and JD Supra. There are bound to be several such sites for every industry imaginable.

So what is a small business owner to do? There are several items that must be considered. First and foremost, the small business owner wants to use social media to get the word out to current, former, and potential clients. This is the direct marketing that most pundits promote, so I am not going to spend much time on it. There is a wealth of information out there on how to use social media to promote your products or services.

But wait, there’s more for you as the small business owner to consider. You probably want to claim all the generic terms and pages out there for your company so as to control negative attacks on your business. In the age of instant communication, you must be willing and able to respond to attacks on your reputation. Sometimes that means just being able to hit the search engines with more good publicity to overwhelm the bad publicity. Sometimes it means talking directly to those with the bad opinions. But you must be aware of it, even if you do not like to read about it.

Also, as the owner, you may want to delegate the tasks of maintaining your social media presence to an outside company or a staff member. Before you make the delegation, you should understand all the basics and create basic policies and guidelines for others to follow. How often do you want them updating your presence? What happens if there is negative coverage out there? How well do they know your business?

Finally, you may also want to consider creating policies about employee’s use of social media. While you will not be able to stop them from using the various outlets for personal reasons, you may want to include policies about their use of your business name or mention of your business.