Everyone is addicted to it. Everyone could not stop using it. Indeed, Facebook has become a part of our fast-paced lives.

It is not limited to the younger generation. In fact, no matter if you are young or old, it is easy for somebody to have his or her own Facebook account.

It is very successful mainly because it can connect you to any person you know even if they live half way across the world.

To entrepreneurs, the fact that his or her potential market is as easy as using Facebook, is not such a bad idea. After reading this article, Facebook might just give your business the boost it needs. Simply follow these 8 tips:

Personalize It

Facebook is a social networking site, which means every person handles his or her own account. You can post images, videos, or simply your thoughts. This site is very personal, and your account would just revolve around you. In the real world, you need to build good relationship with your potential market first. Do not jump into the business talk, or else you scare them off.

Identify Your Market

Have you heard of the Facebook Fan Page? Yes, this feature is used by businessmen to be able to share what the business is all about, and to know who their target market is. You, as an entrepreneur, should also classify your market. Everyone might be potential clients, but narrow down first to people who might just be interested quickly.

Surprise!

Observe why Facebook never grows old to its users easily. It always offers something new. It surprises them with its features, and every now and then it changes its look. You should do it too in your own business. Think of new products or services to add or modify. Upgrade how you do things, which will make your market return to you for your service. Go with the flow.

Constant Communication

People could not get enough of using Facebook because they do not want to stop having communication with their friends or loved ones, especially the ones far from them. In Facebook it is easy for them to chat, comment, post thoughts in each other’s walls even on a daily basis. Having constant communication, in this case, with your market, strengthens the bond that you already have. Keep updated with what’s happening to them. Remember things about them, or what they said the last time you talked. You don’t want to insult your client when you two are talking and you can’t recall even their name.

Give Rewards

When using Facebook, each time you “like” somebody’s post, it is as if you are recognizing what he or she had to say. You can also “like” an uploaded photo as a sign of appreciation. It also works in the business. Once in a while, you must reward your clients for being loyal with your service. Some companies give out presents during the holidays, or discount coupons for the client’s next visit. Proper appreciation encourages repetition of an act.

Keep An Updated Client Profile

In Facebook, a person gets notified with just about anything that is happening with his or her “friends”, whether they post a new photo, or if it is their birthday today. It aids the user to be reminded of who to greet, just in case they are not sure about the birthday of their friend, or anniversary with their loved ones. In the business, an entrepreneur must be alert with these kinds of information. Be reminded of special occasions that may connect you with your clients. Allow them to feel that you only not care about the sale you get from them, but also their well-being.

Be Friend With Your Clients

Do you listening to your potential customers?

The type of small businesses that we know from the past slowly but surely vanish from the scene of today’s business world.

Some of them are transforming and start using new tools for doing business. Some of them simply expire because don’t want to accept the changes. Some of them will expire if they don’t start to change themselves.

You must start listening to your market.

Listen Your Customers and Potential Customers

Now your customers and potential customers are more powerful than ever before. They are armed with the social media tools that enable them to spread the word with the speed of light. They can help your company with a good word about you, but also they can attack you and bring bad publicity about your business.

Because of that you must always be close to the people that are your customers or potential customers. You need to start to listen to them everywhere where they are, answer and communicate with them.

You need to help them if they try to find the solution for their problems, you need to communicate with them about themes of your expertise. You need to excuse about some of your mistakes when they talk about them and offering them possibilities to fix the mistakes.

Listen Your Competitors

On the other side, there are also your competitors that you’l need to listen. What they say, offer, use, how they communicate with their customers and potential customers…? All these questions are worth for you and your company because they can be used in the process of learning and improving the business for the future.

For example, you can find conversation of your competitors and their unsatisfied customer. Why not to start the conversation with that customers and try to convert them into your satisfied customers.

This is the new type of intelligence that can increase your business potential energy.

What You Need to Listen?

You need to listen to everything about:

• Your brand,
• Your company name,
• Your company name plus adjectives,
• Industry,
• Products and services,
• Main competitors,
• Competitors products and services,
• Your current customers and their names or company names,
• The conversation of your current customers…

As you can see listening become one of the most important business activities today. It’s the new function that brings new and increases current business potential energy of your small business.

What you think about listening as a business function? Did you use listening and what you listen for your company?

Before more than 10 years Google comes on the stage and brings a completely new way of marketing. That miracle, simply change the market and the overall culture and attitude of the people in the market. The language of businesses before appearance of Google and now is quite different.

Costly ads cannot cover poor-quality product or poor service offered from companies. Peoples now consults Google before making the final buying decision.

The internet has an increasing role in the business world. Most of the major marketing agency believes that after several years the Internet will become the dominant marketing medium in which will be spend the biggest portion of the pie that represents marketing budget of the businesses.

In 2004, Facebook comes on the stage and has the potential very soon to become larger than the country with the largest number of residents on our planet – China.

Marketing Changes

Today people simply choose what to read, what to see, whether they will pay attention and how much attention, they will pay on something. If I start with myself, I don’t buy a newspaper for years, and I don’t watch TV news because I feel pressure, I don’t look at TV ads because I simply change the channel … But on the other hand, I use the internet, and there I am present 80% of my time. I can click on some ad that will attract my attention when I am on Facebook or searching the Google.

My Personal Experience

A year ago I paid $200 in a more traditional advertising medium. To measure the efficiency and effectiveness of that ad, I make a discount coupon that was valid for the whole year. Do you know how many customers took advantage of the coupon for 365 days? Zero… I only start receiving cold calling from companies that want to sell me something, but I was not interested in that time of their calling about their products and services. So, i start annoying me, and all of that create a completely negative effect in my eyes.

A month ago for the same company I started a Facebook ad. About a week to target a group of potential buyers I spent only $10. In that period, sales rise by 40%. 10 buyers said that they had been reminded about their need through Facebook. 10 customers used the promotional actions that were announced only at Facebook’s page. The last thing, what still cannot be measured in a monetary unit, the ad brings increased number of fans on that page for almost 40%.

What is the difference? $200 – $10 = $190. $190 difference for a campaign without results. Because of that I don’t continue the advertising contract in that medium.

Offline Business to Online Media

In frequent contacts with entrepreneurs, I hear that offline businesses can’t use online marketing strategies. Is that correct? My example above is just an experience of a fully offline based business with an online campaign.

Some time ago, I read the post on Open Forum about five trends for small businesses in 2011 provided by John Jantsch. The trends are:

• Social media will become standard in the small business marketing strategies.
• Mobile marketing will begin to be applied by small businesses.
• O2O (Online 2 Offline) will become a strategy, or using online presence to bring customers in the offline space.
• Networked referral automation
• Apps will be over a web.

Online Strategy Becomes Business Strategy

Interesting is O2O trend.

In no case, the sale should not be associated with the presence of the global network. To be found simply need to be present where someone asks what you can offer him. In what way you will be contacted, how you will communicate and interact and how you will agree with them remain on your own will, but the opportunities and freedom of creativity are enormous.

Is something still missing?

Can I say that it is enough my business to be present on Facebook to succeed with adequate online strategy? I would not say so. Online strategy for the presence of a business on the Internet is and should be a complex mix of different media and platforms, which provide that presence. It is also not the enough web site. It is not enough just blog. It is not enough just Facebook. It is not enough just …

Where is the key link – the content? Content is something that will intertwine like a spider on all of that platforms and media. Content is something that will be created from your business, but also from your customers or your potential customers or your competitors and opponents. You will always have opponents, which will not want you for various reasons. So there will be more spiders that will weave a variety of networks. One spider will be you, and the rests are all business stakeholders. Each network has one or more points with your base network. The success and size of these networks still depend not only on online factors, but also on offline factors.

That’s what is missing in traditional marketing. It is necessary to reduce our time spent on Excel, and all that decorated tables and charts and start to build that content and interactions. Marketing began to move into a completely new and different direction, if it is not already moved.

In this post, I want to make a brief look into the concept of guerrilla marketing and social media as something worth for today’s entrepreneurs.

What is Guerilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is a concept defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in the 1980s. In that concept, marketing is defined as each part of contact whom a business has, or will have in the future with the outside world. From this definition of marketing, it becomes clear that entrepreneurs have abundance of marketing opportunities.

Social Media & Guerrilla Marketing

Social Media and Guerilla Marketing Concept

In today’s world this concept is even easier than in time when for the first time this concept was coined. Now people reading e-mails, reading blog posts, they are active contributors in conversation on Facebook and Twitter Each time when we run our mobile phone or our computers we are contacted on some type of new media.

Let’s look at following statements:

• Social media are tools that bring interaction between people on higher level. Guerrilla marketing concept contains building interaction with customers.
• Social media improve everyday dialogue between people from different sides of the world. On the other side, a guerrilla marketing concept is something that talks about breaking down barriers in dialogue between business people and customers.

Clearly, building social media presence of the businesses is one of the guerrilla marketing weapons.

How to use them?

How to use radio, TV, flyers or newspapers as marketing weapons are simpler  to answer than how to use these new media for the same purpose.

Traditionally advertising is to make an irresistible offer, great headline, great design and starting the campaign. There is a starting point and finish point. Building social media presence as a part of an overall guerrilla marketing concept has a starting point,  now it seems like never-ending process.

Entrepreneurs must use different guerrilla marketing tactics to succeed with these new media.

Generally, I can only say that you must start building your presence, learn, listen and change your approaches in building that presence.

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Social Media

• Build social media strategy for building your business presence on them. You must clearly define benefits that your business can deliver to the potential customers. The overall strategy must communicate the benefits, not the features.
• As an entrepreneur you must to delegate responsibility. Remember, responsibility is for all of your business members.
• Start building online presence. You can start with blogging to spread your voice. Install social commenting system to allow what’s being said to spread to their audience on Facebook and Twitter.
• Use them as tools  for customer interaction. At first it is not about you and your business it is more about your potential customers and their needs.
• Start to communicate usefulness and value with your customers.
• Involve in as much as possible conversations.
• Be relevant and consistent.

What is Social Media SWOT Analysis?

SWOT analysis is a topic that repeatedly has been processed by an entrepreneur. In SWOT Analysis in four steps we write that:

SWOT analysis is a tool for planning, especially strategic planning. It is used for assessing Strengths and Weaknesses as the internal elements of the company, Opportunities and Threats as external elements of the company.

When it comes to these platforms, this analysis will be applied to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your company on them as interior elements and the opportunities and threats as external elements.

Social Media SWOT Analysis

Questions That You’ll Need to Answer

Questions should be grouped into two parts – internal and external elements.

Questions for internal elements

The internal elements need to show you the strengths and weaknesses of your company on social platforms. Answer as many questions as you can. Be realistic, don’t avoid weaknesses. By avoiding it, you cannot improve your business.

1. What is the experience of your company on social platforms?
2. What you are doing well, and what are you doing wrong on them?
3. Do you have the enough staff for building a presence of your company?
4. What is the motivation of staff for building a presence?
5. Do you have an appropriate technology for building a presence?
6. How you can use that technology?
7. What are the knowledge and capability of employees to use that technology?
8. Do employees use different social media in their private life?
9. If they use something as can you utilize that for business purposes?
10. What is the level of cooperation between employees in your company?
11. Is management willing to use social media?
12. Does management know how to train employees to use this media?
13. Does your business allow entertainment?
14. Can you use that entertainment to build a presence?
15. What is the level of creativity in your company?
16. Do you already have a website or blog that creates valuable content?
17. Are you or your company using these platforms for personal or business goals?
18. What are the types of media that you use, and how many platforms you use?
19. What is your expertise in the industry?
20. What is the global expertise of your company in the industry in which operate?

These are 20 questions that will guide you through the process. Feel free to add more questions that you feel are valid as internal elements that will show you what is your weaknesses or strengths on these platforms.

Questions about external elements

External elements need to demonstrate the opportunities and threats that your company should utilize or avoid on social media. Answer as many questions as you can. Be realistic, don’t avoid threats.

1. Is the technological development in the field of social media an opportunity or threat for your business?
2. What do your customers value about your business?
3. Are your customers using technology to be present on social media?
4. What is the compatibility of yours and your customers presence on these platforms?
5. What is compatibility of your employees and your customers presence on these platforms?
6. How you want your customers to communicate with your business?
7. How your customers want to collaborate with your business?
8. Do your customers need training to use your products or services?
9. What strategy uses your competitors to build presence on these platforms?
10. How your competitors communicate with their customers?
11. How your competitors educate their customers?
12. Where are the customers of your competitors?
13. What is the expertise of your competitors?
14. What technology uses your competitors?
15. Are your suppliers present on these platforms?
16. What impact can have your suppliers on you and your company on these platforms?
17. Is there a threat that your supplier can enter on your market?
18. Many illegal businesses are trying to sell through these platforms. What impact does this have on you?
19. Does in your community exists enough people trained to be a part of your business team?
20. Is the educational system in your community includes training about new technology?

These are 20 questions that will guide you through the process of analyzing the opportunities and threats. Feel free to add more questions that you feel are valid as external elements that will show you what are your opportunities and threats.

What’s next?

Furthermore, you must continue with standard operating procedure for implementation of the SWOT analysis that includes:

• Constructing the SWOT matrix
• Defining the strategies.

What is a social media strategy?

Strategy is a plan of actions that must be undertaken for achieving the set of goals. For the implementation of a strategy, it is necessary to have more tactics. Each tactic is filled with activities that have dates of implementation, the responsible persons for the implementation and necessary budget for implementation. So, social media strategy will give you a clear path to achieve your business goals.

Social Media Strategy

However, what are the goals for businesses on social media? These goals cannot be tangible as other business goals, but they simply can be in the form following statements:

• To build a business presence on social media.
• To increase the visibility of the brand.
• To increase the list of potential buyers.
• To provide customer support.
• Educating current and potential customers…

This is only a fraction of the possible goals that a company can have for effective use of social media. The strategy should provide a list of activities to achieve those goals that you’ve set. You must be aware of availability of your resources, and especially time.

Building a social media strategy

The social media strategy should at least give you answer to the following questions:

• What platforms you must use?
• How you will use that platform?
• What will be your next activities?

Let’s talk about each of these questions.

1. What types of platforms you must use?

The answer on this question depends on:

• Goals that you have and should be achieved through social media.
• Type of business, market and industry in which it operates.
• Places where your potential customers are.

Once you have the list of the most important social platforms for your business, you will already know where you should narrow your attention.

2. How you will use that platforms?

The next question that will need to be answered in your social media strategy is how you will use the social platforms from the first question. Here, you must consider these four elements:

• Communication – With whom, what and how your business will communicate?
• Education – Who, what and how your business will educate?
• Entertainment – Who, what and how you will entertain?
• Collaboration – With whom, what and how you will collaborate?

3. What will be your next activities?

The previous two questions gave us answers about which social media you must use and how you will use it. To answer this question you must convert answers from previous two questions in a list of activities eligible for the period in which you want to achieve your business social media goals.

Before you start making your strategy, you must be aware that implementation of the strategy is the responsibility of the whole company.

Another important thing that you must apply in your social media strategy is that it will be the long path to success.

I divide the resources into the three parts. First part is about basic introduction and starting up with Twitter for business purpose. Second part is about tips that will improve your knowledge and activities on Twitter as a small business owner and third part is about Twitter application that can be used for increasing efficiency on Twitter for business purpose.

Introduction to Twitter for Small Business Owners

• How and Why To Use Twitter For Small Businesses. Video material how and why you should use Twitter from a small business perspective.
• Twitter for small business. To start or not to start with Twitter for Business.
• Twitter for Entrepreneurs – Part 1: Getting Started. Answers of basic questions as what is Twitter, how to use it for business, how to get started and what to twit about.

Twitter Improvements and Tips

• 137 Small Business Twitter Tips – This is really good research about small business twitter tips. All answers were packed in one PDF document that can be downloaded. There are really good tips that every small business owner can use it. They collect answers from their readers about six questions:

• Getting Started: How would you suggest other small businesses get started on Twitter?
• Smart Marketing: What’s the right way (or wrong way) to promote your business on Twitter?
• Observing Etiquette: What is your #1 Twitter etiquette tip for small business owners?
• Spreading Your Message: What is your best tip for getting re-tweeted?
• Time Management: How do you manage your time on Twitter?
• Advanced Strategies: What is your best kept secret (something not widely known) for using Twitter in business?

• 7 Ways to More Effectively Use Twitter for Business – 7 short tips that you can implement to improve your Twitter experience for business purpose.
• 16 Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners – Explore 16 steps that if you follow them, you will be well on your way to establishing your business brand on Twitter.
• 20 Must Read Beginner Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners – Here you can find 20 tips that can help to small business owners that are beginners on Twitter.
• 25 Small Business Twitter Tips – Another post with 25 useful tips for small business owners to use when starting out on Twitter.

Twitter Tools

• 27 Twitter Applications Your Small Business Can Use Today – Great list of 27 Twitter applications that will improve your efficiency as a business owner on Twitter.
• 31 Twitter Apps Your Business Should Explore. Additional list of 31 Twitter applications.