what about small business and social media

One of the biggest challenge of  the business today is staying on top of new constant changing technologies and introducing successfully new ways of marketing communications through social media.
As we read in the book Groundswell approaching the final chapters, companies struggle to embrace social media, some with more success than others. Companies which are successful in social media, thrive and expand their business, companies that stay behind the trend, are also losing profit.  Old ways of marketing are gone, leaving companies no choice but to adjust to two way communication with no control over the audience. A two-way communication has dominated the social media, and companies have to get used to the fact that they can no longer monitor and control what customers are saying and doing using social media platform. Big companies are already engaged and immersed in the groundswell, having communities built around them.
 

“The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions, like corporations.”
- Charlene Li & Josh Bernof


This book is a breakthrough guide for corporate world and teaches how to properly engage in social media, but it does not really say much about small business.  In a review of the "Groundswell" by Jason Keath, the author is saying:  "Groundswell is written to corporate America more than smaller businesses and entrepreneurs. It suggests some of the most expensive options out there to build social technology solutions and track your brand online. But there are tons of free, open source solutions that are much more realistic for most of the people that will read the book.". Basically what he suggests is that somebody should write a similar book for small business owners with tips for using free solutions like that.

During my monitoring process of one small company and its brand, I have noticed that the same rules apply to small business as to big corporations, except that small companies do not invent strategies and use expensive monitoring techniques, they just engage in social media without all the research, and some of them, like my monitored client are able to achieve a great deal of success. It appears that my client, Buddy Valastro, Cake Boss is using social media effortlessly and gains a lot of attention, but in his case the main vehicle driving his success is his TV reality show. For all other small businesses without TV presence, the task of getting out there and be noticed and talked about is more difficult.

According to Forbes magazine, small business owners do not have time to engage in social media.They performed a study surveying about 500 small business owners about their social media use.
It turned out that the small business owners are also embracing social media just like big corporations, but they do it differently and less effectively than big companies. Of course a big factor here is less money and less time for engaging in the groundswell. Big firm has money to pay people to do social media marketing, and they have money to pay for expensive campaigns.
Small business owners too, spend more time and money on social media than before. Nearly half of respondents spend over six hours a week at it, and another quarter spend six to ten hours posting to various social-media sites.Most of them have a Facebook page, and concentrate on that, but because they don't have time, they usually operate in marketing vacuum not tracking the results.They mostly do Facebook updates uploading pictures and specials sometimes on Twitter too, two-thirds are regulars on Facebook. About half are regular users of Twitter according to Forbes source.

The biggest problem facing small business owners is lack of quality content for blogs. Only just over half the owners reported having a blog. They just do not have much to write about.
The bloggers were saying they spend hours on their posts — 45 percent said one to three hours a week, and 16 percent more than three hours. Finding a good content to write about was definitely a challenge to many.
Some businesses may be missing the point by posting pictures of pets and downloading cute videos, which has no impact on their business ROI . Most small business owners have no idea what their ROI really is as a result of their engagement in social media.

The biggest problem of small entrepreneurs seems to be lack of time and lack of tracking results of their social media campaigns. A lot of information for incorporating social media into small business is available on the internet. As far as I know there is no book written about it yet..

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