Social Media Examiner Re-post: Five Small Biz Tips for Social Media Success April 10, 2010

Social Media Examiner

Over the last couple months I’ve talked with dozens of small business owners about social media. Two things they all have in common are being both interested and baffled by social media. Hopefully our conversations have fanned the flames of interest and quelled the nerves of befuddlement. Today a blog post by Peter Wylie really caught my attention I wanted to point it out to all my readers as well. He gives 5 pointers to  small businesses can grow by using social media effectively without big budgets.

The post is “Five Small Business Tips for Social Media Success.”

Here’s the Cliff’sNotes. It’s worth your time to read the entire post – IMHO.

1. Local color – provide local context in addition to industry expertise; the big brands can’t do that from the corporate marketing department
2. Provide value-make sure your content is clear in what the customer is going to get in return for their attention
3. Be consistent-post on a regular basis or customer’s won’t visit again
4. Diversity and connect – be on multiple platforms, offer unified but different updates on each platform
5. Competition matters – iterate your efforts by learning from competitors, large and small

Here’s the entire post.

Showing the Love–Communication with Clients February 12, 2010

You’ve landed a great project with one of the firms most talked about clients. Now how do you make them love you as much as you love them? Let’s get your client talking about your firm as much as your’s is talking about them.

Here’s one idea: Communicate with them like they want you to.

Develop a statagy for communicating with each of your client stakeholders.  Some engagement Statements of Work lay out a communication plan, so you may have this part easy. If so, you have to comply. But there’s a catch. Chances are your main contact didn’t come up with that part of the SOW, Procurement did. So don’t move forward thinking it’s straight forward.  Be sure to ask each stakeholder how they prefer to communicate with you. During that conversation touch on the topics below:

• process–what elements are they concerned with; are they visual-create a dashboard in Excel or use a Gant chart; are they tactical or strategic; how much detail will they digest; are they more interested in what was accomplished or what’s on deck
• delivery tool and method–IM, email, phone call, voice mail-which phone number; Word doc, PPt slide, video clip
• frequency–good news only, bad news only, weekly summary, when, which day, early or late

Keep in mind each stakeholder is different and you will need to adapt to each of them if you want to have impact with each of them. One size doesn’t fit all, ever. At least not by coincidence.  What does tool of choice accomplish for them and why did they pick it? Insight into that will tell you more about them that will help you down the road.

Don’t forget to ask your internal stakeholders the same questions. Think about whether your boss gives a progress report on the project in a meeting she attends. Is the update you’re giving her now enough to make her look good when questions come? Ask her.

Let me know what I’ve missed. How do you do it?