Social Networking Balance for Business

Social Networking Balance For Business

Usually on this blog, I try to talk about the “ideal” way to engage in social networking, but it occurred to me that a lot of small business owners and sales people don’t necessarily want to or have the time to invest in being the best at social networking. Some people just want to know what the minimum level of acceptable activity is so they don’t look bad or hurt their business, or at least a way to keep up with the competition.

I am sure most people are too busy running their business or doing their actual job to be fully engaged in social networking all day, so I want to try to explain a way to find some balance.

Social Networking Balance for Business

Marketing your business online can be a little tricky. You can literally spend millions of dollars or you do nothing, and still have a successful business. You can have outdated websites and social media profiles that give very bad impressions, like you are out of business or out of touch, or you can overwhelm people with thousands of marketing messages per day.

So how do you find your sweet spot?

Here are a couple of general rules to help guide you:

• Keep your profiles and contact information correct, consistent and current 100% of the time.
• Keep dates, timelines, copyrights, and other time sensitive elements up to date to current to the month or year.
• Set some kind of calendar, to-do list, or email reminder to make updates on a regular basis.
• Keep a password book or spreadsheet with all the links, log-ins, and profile pages you create for your business.
• Set a Google Alert or create a reminder to check your business’s online reviews, ratings and comments so you can manage your reputation.
• Post on your blog and social media accounts as much as you can manage or as much as your followers want to hear from you, whichever is least.
• Don’t forget that social networking is a two-way street. You will want to comment, post on customers or business partners walls, and engage with other people too, so don’t spend all your time on yourself.
• Make it a priority for your team, friends, family, business partners, clients and other close “real world” relationships to help promote and share your content.

Bottom line: Make managing your online reputation a priority.

Minimum Social Networking Activities for Small Businesses

1. You must claim your local map listings immediately on Google+ Places, Bing and Yahoo, and any other prominent review sites.
2. Send a mass email with events, news and articles once per week. 
3. Your list should be at least 3 times of your client base for the last 3 years.
4. Post a new blog or news article on your website at least once per day.
5. Post on your Google+ page for your business 3 times per day.
6. Post a status update on your Facebook business page at 3 times per day.
7. Post a tweet or retweet someone else’s 5 times per day.
8. Update your personal LinkedIn profile and your Company Page at least once per day.
9. Request reviews from every satisfied customer on your Google+ places map listing, and rotate the other sites in so you can have dozens of reviews on all major listings.
10. Encourage employees, referral partners, and close connections to share your most important message or offer of the week with their connections.
11. Run a pay-per-click Google Adwords campaign of about 1% of your total sales each month, for your business name and other common searches that identify for your business, and more keywords and phrases.
12. Use Facebooks promoted posts for each blog article, coupon or offer, and continuously run a “Like” pay-per-click campaign to grow your page’s fans until you reach 3 times your client base.