Michael Essay: Just because you’re small business is on Twitter or Facebook doesn’t mean you have a savvy social media strategy. So how do you squeeze the most out of social media? Steve Dalton director of business development for Golden Technologies has a few suggestions. Steve Dalton: Most small businesses don’t want to be on social media because it seems overly transparent and a little bit scary. So most small businesses their strategy starts with their sixteen year old has a Facebook page and they are watching over their sixteen year olds shoulder and they are saying to themselves wow they have been able to reconnect with friends and grandma and an uncle in Oklahoma and wouldn’t it be interesting if I could do the same thing with my business. I could connect with people from high school and I could connect with people from former customers and I could connect with people in a much wider geographic area. So I really think the beginning of most small business strategies sadly is a coincidence. From there we hope that the strategy rolls forward with things like exactly like any kind of marketing and advertising. Who am I trying to reach? What am I trying to say? How often should I say it? What’s my reach? What’s my frequency? How do I in a social media environment engage with people without seeming like I’m just sending out spam? Because none of us like that sending out spam feel from an email we get every afternoon from our grandfather because that’s all he knows how to do is forward all the jokes he gets on email. So we don’t want to be that but it is the most natural thing to do. So I think a strategy for social media is the same as a strategy for advertising. It is the same as a strategy for TV. It’s the same as the strategy for any kind of marketing. Who do I want to talk to? How often do I want to talk to them? And how do I measure whether or not it’s working. I don’t want to just talk into a vacuum. Michael Essay: While the importance of social media can’t be underestimated, neither can a superior web presence. That’s where Intuit Websites can help. For more information simply log on to Intuit. com and click on Website Services. Well see you next time.
