10 small changes to make your small business into a social business

You’re on Facebook. You’re doing the Twitter. You’re pinning your little heart out on Pinterest… and yet your social media plans for your small business are stalled.

Here’s 10 small changes you can take to make your small business into a social business today!

#1 Let people know you’re social

Use every interaction you make with everyone you meet a chance to become more social. Believe it or not word of mouth was the original social media. Let people know you are on Facebook so they can like you and Twitter so they can follow you.

#2 Take social media off line

Sounds crazy right? But it works. Make sure you have links to your social media account on all of your marketing collateral, your business card, your invoices, your print media advertising, mention it in your radio spots… everywhere. Make it easy for people to find and connect with you.

#3 Email is really social media too

How many emails do you get a day? How many do you send? Each and everyone of those emails is a chance to show off your social skills. Add icons and links to your social media accounts to your email signature and ask people to connect with you.

#4 Stake your claim early

Use consistent names across all social media sites whenever possible so you can be found easily. You’ll also want to claim your name on every new social media site that comes out just in case it takes off. Otherwise you may end up having to get creative later when your brand name is gone and it’s the next big thing.

#5 Set up a Linkedin company profile

Here’s a quick and simple yet powerful social media marketing device that you can setup in minutes. Most small business’s on LinkedIn have profiles for the individual owners and employees but not a company profile. With a company profile you can centralize communications on LinkedIn, offer jobs and have people “follow” your organization for all updates.

#6 Set up a Facebook Brand Page

The same goes with Facebook. If you’re a small business you can’t just have a personal profile, you need a brand page. Why? If for no other reason than analytics. You’ll get a ton of free information about who is visiting your brand page and how you can better engage with them on Facebook and beyond.

#6 Update your website

Does your website suck? It shouldn’t. If you drive a ton of social media traffic to a dead end website don’t expect any real results and don’t expect anyone to come back again either.

#7 start blogging

Nothing.. that’s right NOTHING is better for kick-starting your social media rock star status like blogging. If you don’t have a company blog, you’re basically invisible to Google. And that’s bad.

#8 Get your staff onboard

If you want to do social media you can. If you want to be a social business, then your whole staff needs to be onboard. Get them trained, get them engaged and help them move with you into the world of social media. Odds are they are doing it anyway and some of them may know more about it than you think. Make social a part of everyone’s job and you’ll immediately being to see results both online and offline.

#9 Act social

Does your business have it’s own personality and culture? For most small business it’s the people that make or break the company. The friendly staff, the excellent service, the efficient workmanship, the quality products, this is what people really like. People do business with people, so speak and act like a human being on social media not like a press release.

#10 Don’t over think it

You don’t have a “phone strategy” do you? You don’t have a fax strategy do you? Then why do you need a “social media strategy”. It’s just talking to people after all and you already know how to do that or you wouldn’t be in business. Social media just offers a new set of tools and a new way to reach more and more people. That’s it.

In conclusion…

There you have it. You don’t have to try them all today, but taking action on 3-4 or these suggestions immediately might just be the quick and easy little thing your need to make your business a little more social today.

Have any other tips? We’d love to hear your ideas.