Social media marketing benefits small business by providing an new channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, recruitment and retention of new customers and business partners, and a method for managing ones business reputation online. Key factors for social media success are:

• ensuring the selected medium is relevant
• providing real value
• sharing meaningful content

When testing the social media waters businesses and entrepreneurs will be most effective when they move forward systematically. Borrowing from Edward Deming’s “Plan, Do, Measure, Act cycle”, initial steps to help in the process include:

• PLANNING
  • Find out what your competitors are doing in social media.
    • Are they using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?
    • Do they have a Linkedin page?
    • How are they using these media?
  • Create a written plan
    • What type of social media that you will develop first, second and third?
    • What will your schedule be for regular content review and posting?
    • What initial measurements will you use to track progress?
•  DOING
  •  Implement the plan incrementally
    • Start with the most relevant content first
    • Focus first on content, second on relationships and then on sales
  • Listen to your customers, “likers” and followers
    • Respond to every post on every social medium, even if it is just a simple acknowledgement of their interaction
• MEASURING
  •  Track your efforts and statistics
    •  Where you you having the most impact?
    • Which media are customers connecting to most?
    • What are you learning from your efforts?
• ACTING
  •  Use the knowledge you are gaining from listening, implementing, and measuring and make adjustments to your strategy.
  • Where you you having the most impact? Increase those efforts!
  • Eliminate or focus on areas of weakness.
  • Experiment with new low cost technologies
  • Feel free to fail in your efforts and learn from those opportunities.