Social Media in Your Small Business Whether B2B or B2C

I love your title but get rid of everything after the word Business.  You make an impact with the first 1/2 and the B2B and other stuff just ruins it.

Next, check the font on this article.  It appears to be really small.  Make it bigger so it is easier to read.  Check it in the preview.  My response is in Ariel at the Normal level.  See how much bigger it is.  See if it is easier to read.

To start, you really need to do two things.  First, connect with the reader.  Second, establish your expertise.  I would recommend an introductory paragraph of 2 and only 2 sentences to accomplish these objectives.  The first sentence should be something like "As a small business manager, you hear a great deal of talk about how to use social media to reach your customers and prospects.    Next, establish your expertise by saying something like "As a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program, I have found two articles on social media and small businesses.

Then, go to the first article.  I don;t really see an article here but in the second paragraph, you should just discuss the article.  Cite the article and the authors and put in active links to them.  Be sure the active links open to a new window.

On a day to day basis, I talk with Marketing executives at small businesses regarding how to market their products to both businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C). Frequently, these discussions include social media; specifically, how to use social media to leverage their profile within a specific space or within a targeted market. In most cases small businesses are not only concerned about leveraging the brand's profile, but are also interested in how to use social in a way that will create a ROI so that their efforts are measurable and have literal value. 

After the first article [paragraph 2] you need a GREAT graphic.  It must be relevant.  Put it between the two articles to draw their eye to the articles.

NOW, paragraph 3 should be a second article.  Again, summarize it for the reader and have the article title and the authors as active links. 

First thing is first, what to communicate to your audience through social? Mashables, Todd Wasserman, encourages small business marketing executives to as yourself: Do you follow a brand? Why? The answer to this question typically falls within one of these three reasons:

· Passion: Connecting with one of your passions and/or interests.

· Personality: Entertaining you with their engaging personality.

· Transparency: Providing interesting and/or important information to you.

After the second article is summarized, paragraph 4 is the most critical one for your blog article.  You should start is with something like "From my analysis of these articles and my social marketing studies at Northwestern, there are three action items all small business owners should do now.  They are:

Then. give me 3 bullet items.  They must be a short 2-3 word action item [in bold] followed by a dash and a single sentence explanation [not bold].  Something like Focus on Passions - then explain    Personality is Important - then an explanation.   If the above bullet points are the ones you want to use, don't cite others but tell them they are your recommendations.

NOW, you need to summarize the blog.  Two sentences max.  Encourage the small business owner to do your three recommended action items and do them now.  Tell them the benefits of doing it.

AFTER the three bullet points, there should be NO OTHER citations or articles.  Just make three great recommendations and then a short summary paragraph.  Everything after the bullet points should either be erased or incorporated elsewhere.

As a small business, these are things you should be thinking about when sharing content to your followers/targeted market. Caitlin Francke, SVP, and Director of Social Strategy at Publicis Kaplan Thaler states that, "These approaches are interchangeable, and a brand can not only switch back and forth between them, but also use two or three at the same time." You can read Wasserman's full article article here: http://mashable.com/2013/02/22/social-media-marketing-strategy/.

It should also be noted that social media is more than just posting pictures and hashtags. Bryan Srabian, from the San Francisco Giants' director of social media, explains that it is important to listen to fans/followers, participate in conversations, and give them a voice to be heard.
NOW you need a italicized paragraph of you and your background.  give them your name and the fact you are a graduate student at Northwestern.  Tell them the career / industry you are seeking and end with your Twitter @ tag.  

Make these changes and then publish and begin testing it.

Social Media recipes to measure your brand's success

As a brand manager, your brand's presence in social media is critical but difficult to measure. In my selection of coursework at Northwestern University, I have been studying the issue of measurement of social media activities (and activities on other new media platforms). Customers today constantly hop back and forth between offline and online media. Although many organizations have activated social media programs, majority struggle to measure its impact on revenue. In this post, I will highlight some important findings on this burning topic of how to measure social success for your brand.

To tell this cryptic correlation, Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm based in San Mateo, California, conducted a study to understand challenges, as well as strategies for understanding the financial impact of social media. In her report titled “The Social Media ROI Cookbook”, analyst Susan Etlinger, lays out the best practices and “recipes” that organizations are using to understand its impact.

While the report sites multiple challenges, the prime challenge that organizations struggle with is actually tying social media to business objectives. But, while revenue is important, it isn’t everything. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents reported that the primary business impact of social media was not revenue generation, but “insight that helped us meet customer experience goals.”

Based on this research, the Altimeter team identified six primary guidelines that brands are using to measure the revenue impact of social media.

What is important to remember is that while top-down approaches provide business context and bottom-up approaches provide granularity, they are most valuable when viewed in context of each other to evaluate the complete picture.

Based on the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) model, the lesson for a brand manager is that the criteria for choosing the right measurement mix are:

· Identify your business type: the way your company goes to market (exclusively online or multi-channel) largely drives what is possible when it comes to revenue measurement.

· Assess your service or product type: sales cycle is key criteria in determining revenue measurement strategy, sales cycle vary considerably for low consideration and high consideration purchases

· Factor in your media mix: the type of medium (Paid, Earned and/or Owned) also influences your measurement method, as you can only measure online properties that you control.

· Consider your customer profile: possibly the most important factor, the type of customer (business, consumer and/or highly social) will determine what measurement is possible

To conclude, it’s important to remember that in real terms we are still at the very beginning of social business and no one set of measures can tell you everything. But looking at the granular data in context of broader trends will deliver a more representative view of the revenue impact of social media.

By Nikhil Kaul


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nikhil Kaul is a technophile, shutterbug, avid traveler, and foodie. When not indulging, he seeks problems in the ever-evolving marketplace to rattle his brain for solutions. A masters' student of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, he enjoys wrestling with the challenges that businesses face due to the increasing influence of new media and changing customer behavior.