The Small Business Triple Threat: Relationship Skills, Blogging, and Social Media
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Blogging, Social Media, and Relationship Skills: Small Business Triple Threat
What excites me about Ann-Mary is how convinced she already is of the power of blogging and social media in today’s small business culture. Because she’s also a Public Relations professional, she knows how vital relationship skills are in driving a business’s marketing efforts. Ann-Mary is exactly the kind of woman I wrote about in “Generation and Gender Gaps: Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing” — the fact that she’s from an older generation that’s accustomed to traditional forms of marketing and advertising doesn’t hold her back from jumping into the realm of social media and blogging, because she’s already attuned to the importance of building and nurturing relationships simply by virtue of her gender (I hope this doesn’t get me branded as sexist!).
New England Multimedia uses social media and blogging to build reciprocal relationships and educate prospects
Still, even without using every tool at my disposal, and spending too much time on one thing and not enough on another, the impact blogging and social media have had on New England Multimedia has been dramatic, most notably for the relationships we’re building with people in our target market. We’re seeing relationships become leads, and leads become conversions, in ways that simply aren’t possible without these platforms.
How about you? How are you seeing relationship skills, social media and blogging change the landscape of marketing and PR?
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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.
Michelle,
The biggest challenges that I see with Web 2.0 marketing for niche/small businesses, which most are:
1)Marketing directly to the target market – what is often referred to as ‘rifle-shot’ or ‘zip-code’ marketing – while there are some social media platforms that are demographic specific most focus on the amorphous market. This is not to discount Social Media but merely a recognition that the marketing plan but be focused on the identification of the target segments within each social media platform. It is very similar to going to a trade show with 5,000 attendees but the challenge is identifying and selling to the 75 attendees that are interested in your products and services. Just another challenge :)
2) I have recently implemented two social media/blog strategies for small business clients with similar results – the client recognizes that the blog and the social media must be key components of the businesses marketing plan but…..the clients do not aggressively pursue a contact development program, well, not as aggressive as I would like. They want their cake and they want to eat it without a whole lot of effort!!
The client must take an active part – they must partner for success – in the implementation of the program and that is where I see the waters muddy a little.
George.
Hi, George!
I completely agree! Knowing who your target market is for your social media and blogging efforts is critical.
Until I started being thoughtful about the relationships I was building, we only had one lead. That single lead was an “A-ha!” moment for me, though. For the first time, I saw how important it is to be strategic about how I spend my social media time. That’s when I started using lists in Twitter, for example. One of my lists is private because it’s full of New England-area businesses.
I really have to spend more time on LinkedIn. The “all business, all the time” aspect is a sterile environment for someone like me, but I recognize how important it is to be a constant presence there, since our real target market spends more time there than on Twitter and Facebook.
“They want their cake and they want to eat it without a whole lot of effort!!” — I hear ya!!
Thanks for commenting, George. :o)
~Michelle for New England Multimedia & Q Web Consulting
http://twitter.com/nemultimedia
http://facebook.com/newenglandmultimedia
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