Small businesses make up a large proportion of New Zealand businesses. But make no mistake, though these businesses may be small in the number of employees they have, they are in no way small in their business objectives and follow through.

Everyone from insightful mothers, style conscious women, to men who are sick of working for the man are turning their hand at creating and growing companies that have 1, 2 or 3 people on the books. But what may be taking some multinational companies by surprise is that these little guys are blowing them out of the water when it comes to online presence, social media and building relationships with their clients. These 3 things are creating dollars for small businesses that used to reserved for the big guns.

Case in point are Facebook Fanatics Belly Beyond and Vlogging Bag Diva Floozy. Both of these New Zealand based (and female owned businesses) are making use of the real-time web and interactive competitions to get client interest and keep it. So how is it with less than a handful of staff members these companies manage to do what some of the “bigger” brands cannot even wrap their heads around? How do they create successful social media campaigns to propel their brands to the forefront?

I originally wanted to speak to Lou at Belly Beyond at Kate at Floozy and do a little bit of a case study on each of them, but I have had little chance of doing that, and from their online activities I am sure they have been busy too…hopefully they will stop by and add their 2 cents as to what they think makes them successful social media divas

But here is my take on some of the winning ingredients of what these ladies do best as part of their social media marketing.

• On Belly Beyond’s Facebook page, you feel as if you are part of a greater community. Its not all just sell, sell, sell and promos (which are still good, but in moderation…). By adding a personal touch with discussions about baby names, wedding and baby photos, I feel as if I am part of a community of like minded mothers sharing information and having fun – you forget you are actually there to buy! The great part is that not only do they ask us to share personal tidbits, they also share behind the scenes photos and blog posts with us. Research shows that people are more willing to spend money with brands they  trust. How much more trusting can it get than buying from someone who is willing to share family photos and embarassing moments with you.
• Kate brings her collection of bags to life via video and you can’t beat seeing her love of all things bag-tastic as she pulls them apart and peeks inside. I love hearing her accent, makes me feel like I “know” her. I am also defnitely more tempted to spend after watching one of her videos.
• We talk, they listen. Its easy to get in touch with both companies as they have a presence across Twitter, Facebook and You Tube. They want to know what we want to buy. Does it make sense to stock what we actually want? They find out what we want, and stock it.
• Most importantly, they have their own company hubs online that are irregardless of any 3rd party platforms. Though they make great use of social media platforms, they are not at their mercy. Each has a solid websites, blogs and even wishlist facilities.

Once you can create that feeling that you understand your clients and what they want/need you are so much more likely to convert your fans into purchasers.

The flexibility that small business like these two have means that they are more intune to what their clients want and what is important to them. To cut through the marketing and advertising clutter, they are able to react fast and be more personal without a top heavy management team.

Its nice to get a personal shoutout from a business that you spend money with wanting to find out how your weekend was or if you’ve had your baby yet. Maybe the lack of a central social media peep makes it harder for bigger businesses to get to know their clientele. Don’t get me wrong, some big businesses are doing it right, but some could definitely learn from small businesses.

Being social media saavy isn’t just about setting up Twitter and Facebook – their are a huge number of platforms that you can use to help get your company name out through social media. But its best to choose only a few and to use them well.

Something that people also forget is the “SOCIAL” part of the equation. The key is in actually being social – creating conversation and connecting with people.

In an economy where their are at least 3 companies just like you, sometimes even just in your city -  you have to find a way to stand out above the rest.

These small businesses use social media to their advantage, what other businesses do you know of that are making good use of social media to market their business?

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Did you know that Social Media is a great way to get a feel for what your market is thinking? You can create a specific campaign to gather information as well as monitor your brand on the interwebs. The 2 really work hand in hand – what people are saying about you can and should affect how you engage with them. Here are a few quick steps that you can follow today:

1. Listen for your brand being mentioned across the web. Services like Google Alert and Saved Searches in Seesmic for Twitter make it easy to view a running thread of what others are saying about your company name.

2. Set up something apart from your business as usual website – think blog, Facebook Fan Page – great place to ask your fans questions. Conversely, encourage them to leave feedback good, bad or ugly. Generally, as long as you deal with it timely and effectively any and all feedback, even the bad stuff doesn’t have to be detrimental to your brand.

3. Remember that people will talk honestly and openly about your products and services in open forums. Get out there and find out where these forums are. You may have to go off the beaten track – there is more than just Twitter and Facebook. Some of your raving fans (or even haters, see People of Walmart) will setup their own groups on blogs and Ning platforms- its worth doing a search there.

The proactive person will not only monitor brand mentions, etc..but will respond and engage with the community as well as refine processes where needed. Remember to be transparent at all times. If you are going to jump into a forum discussion, make sure to say who you are – don’t just get in there and gloat about what a fantastic company you have.

How are you using web 2.0 to find out what your market thinks about your brand? If you aren’t using this method yet, how could you?

Facebook announced on November 4 new guidelines for how administrators of groups and pages can promote competitions and/or sweepstakes.

For alot of smaller to medium sized businesses this will have a huge impact on how they are already interacting with customers through Facebook. I won’t go into the finer points of the new changes, but here are a few of the points that really stick out and that you MUST take note of.

1. You will need written authorization from a Facebook account manager BEFORE you administer the promotion

2. All promotions must be on a 3rd party Facebook platform (more on this later)

3. And under Section 4 of the new lengthy rules, a prohibition that I already see alot of my friends infringeing on :

4.2 In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.

This rules out the company that has established their Facebook presence as the main place to meetup with their fans and offer incentives and comps. So what kind of competitions does this rule out:

- Upload a photo to Facebook as entry to a competition

- Get your friends to join your fan page or refer others in exchange for the chance of winning a prize

- Add a comment to a fan page or group as entry to a competition

If you are running any kind of competition like this on Facebook, you’ll need to cease and desist or face the suspension of your group or fan page. The only workaround is to work with a 3rd party platform (such as Wildfire, which would be pricey for a fan page with less than 500 fans) or by creating your own Facebook application to run the promotion through.

I suggest you read the full guidelines as specified by Facebook and err on the side of caution.

This just serves as a subtle reminder to not to put all your eggs in one basket. As Facebook fan pages have increased in popularity, so have their uses gone beyond the imagination of even Facebook. This recent move allows them to indemnify themselves of any wrong doing you may cause via your sweepstake.

You are still allowed to promote on Facebook any competition you are running outside of Facebook, say on Twitter or your own blog.

For more information and to hear how others weigh in, see:

Official Facebook Promotion Guidelines

Thinking of running a promotion on Facebook? Think again?

Facebook Marketers Beware – New Promotion Guidelines Released

How is this going to affect how you use Facebook for business?

CLARIFICATION :

This rule change mainly affects people creating a contest BASED ON the Facebook platform or which directly asks people/fans/friends to do something on Facebook in order to win. So, if you ask your blog readers to upload photos on your Facebook Fan Page in order to be in to win, this would be a no-no unless you had prior written consent from your Facebook account manager (getting an account manager is another story and not really an option for most small-medium sized business I deal with unless you have a minimum 10,000 USD budget to spend on Facebook).

If you create a competition on your website, blog, Ning that is irrelevant of Facebook – but you link to it from Facebook, that is fine. Just do not mention Facebook in the promotion on your site or else this could be in infringement of the rules. For example if you placed a post on your blog that said, “Refer your friends to my site using Twitter, email or Facebook” – mentioning Facebook is an infringement.

Hope that clears up some of the questions I have received today.

I had never opted-in to a Twitter ad service…that is until Sponsored Tweets. I read up on it, cause hey, I figured if I’m gonna tweet as much as I do, wouldn’t it be great if I got paid for it? The key feature that led me to sign up is the fact that the final copy that will be tweeted is ALWAYS written directly by you the person whose account it is tweeted from.

Here is a quick overview of how the system works:

1. Login at Sponsored Tweets using your Twitter login details and fill in a short survey. This helps them figure out what demographic you most speak to when you tweet. It also helps them find ads that are authentic as possible to your voice. In my experience this has worked – I’ve tweeted ads about social media (international) and a kitchen makeover contest (geared at Canadian mothers).  Once you’ve signed up -  sit back and wait to hear from Sponsored Tweets.

2. You get a DM from Sponsored Tweets saying that you have 3 days to review an opportunity in your account.

3. You login in with your Twitter details to the site and check out the service/product you would be tweeting about, how much it pays, and the link you would be using and where it would take your followers should they click. If anything about the product, service, sales page or squeeze page is not your style, you do not have to accept the job, if it is – move onto step 4.

4. Here’s your chance to play admaker – having looked through the information, you now get to write your own compelling tweet. That’s right, you write it. The only rules are that you include the link supplied along with a method of disclosing that it is in fact an ad. This can be hashtagging the tweet #ad, adding “sponsored by” or “brought to you by” to the tweet – there are alist of disclosing methods supplied and it is up to you to chose the one you are most comfortable with. So there is no fooling your followers, I like that.

5. You submit your tweet to Sponsored Tweets for a final check, they then tweet it out for you. Their are opportunities to have your tweet go out up to 3 times (and make more money) if the first tweet was very successful – but they do not hijack your account and send out spam willy nilly. In fact once they send out the first tweet, they DM you to let you know.

If you have any questions about how it has worked for me so far, don’t hesitate to leave me a message. Have you tried Sponsored Tweets? What has been your experience?

If you do sign up though my referal link, make sure to email me at ghada at realsocialgirl dot com and let me know or leave a message here.

Happy Tweeting!

With the recent change of Facebook’s News Feed and the reintroduction of the Live Feed, seems alot of people are even asking what the heck am I even doing on Facebook. Take a deep breath, calm down and sort out your feeds, setup groups to help you better visualize all your friends and their updates and then read this.  According to a recent study outlined at Mashable,

Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

If even a fraction of your time on Facebook is for business, then you need to have a presence there. If you still need convincing, here are another 5 reasons you should add Facebook to your Social Media mix.

1. You can easily import your blog posts to your feed using Networked Blogs to auto-publish (or choose when you want to publish). With your published blog feeds your friends are then given the option to be taken directly to your website to read the full article, the usual “like” feature, to share it on their profile, tweet out the post or even follow your blog through networkedblogs – what better way to build up your readership.

2. Minimal ads in compared to other social networks like Bebo, MySpace and even LinkedIn, your browsing experience is much more lightweight, nuf said.

3. Great tool for storing and sharing photos. With no specific limit on albums, why not load them up, tag people in them and share them on your profile. Though no album limit, there is a limit of 60 photos per album.

4.Following on from the last point, tagging is a great networking feature of Facebook. You can tag notes, photos and now with the @feature, you can mention people in your status updates that will provide a link to their profile.  Tagging is a brilliant way to see who is connected to your connections – closing the gap on the six degrees of separation (or 2 in NZ). Isn’t it true that if someone is a friend of a friend or fan of something you may well be interested as well?

5. Lastly, the Fan Page is an excellent business tool for funneling people to your business site and promoting your expertise – whether it be to promote a product, service or coaching based business. I have a Fan Page for #RSG Twitter Parties and Social Media and Business Advocacy for women, be sure to join up if you haven’t already just by clicking the “become a fan” button on the widget in the sidebar. Use Facebook Fan pages to generate ideas, get feedback and good ole enthusiasm about your brand on one of the fastest growing social networks out there. There are various ways to set your fan page apart, think back to that added value service you can create within your fan page that screams uniqueness – registries, regular tips, advice – the list is endless.

With these newest changes to Facebook, do you find yourself on it less?

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Just recently I was hoping to pitch for a small project consulting a company on their social media and online experiences as I had had dealings with them in the past on other initiatives. I was surprised to find that they were ahead of the game and had just hired an online community manager.

To my second surprise the skillsets of that individual seem to be lacking on the social media and community management side of things, but extremely well versed in the content matter of the community they are to manage. That lead me to wonder, who makes the better online community manager – the person experienced in building communities and leveraging social media, or the person who knows the community’s main point of topic inside out?

I believe that even with all the knowledge in the world, a content expert has little to no hope of making the most of social media if they are not inclined to find out more about how to use the tools at their disposal. I’ve seen it happen, where the knowledge expert creates the Twitter profile and starts up a Facebook Fan Page, but then what? And were those really the best avenues for them to use? The creativity, targeted solutions and ability to analyze and tweak campaigns is where the experience designer or social media expert comes into play.

On the other hand, I have seen content experts who have applied themselves and really engaged with their fan base, created awesome campaigns to grow their community and created added value experiences. But, be forewarned, its not everyone that can do this. Like any other part of your business, consider getting in expert help to create your strategy and help you implement it. You wouldn’t drudge along as your company accountant it if you knew you didn’t have the skills, it would negatively affect your business and take away from all the other good things that you can do in your business, would you? Same applies here. As long as the person responsible for your Social Media plan is committed to understanding and taking part in your company culture – this has the makings of a win-win relationship. You get to focus on the aspects of the business you are good at, and an expert gets to drive you business forward in an area they are good at.

Either way, as long as the experience is transparent and the audience knows who they are dealing with their can be wins if done correctly. Interested to hear your opinion – do you believe that a consultant can be your brand’s social media expert, or do you feel it is more logical to give a content expert the job even though they may not know how to use the tools?

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In order to create a successful online community, you have to give people what they want, and what they DON’T want is a hard sell. For this post, when I talk about an online community, I am referring to Blog followers/regular readers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and set community groups such as those built on platforms like Ning.

People join a community to be part of something, not to be just another number in line, a code in a database or a bum on a seat. I have spent several years building up communities for our own online games and for other brands. The common thread in successful communities is the experience that is built into the community. An online community that is successful for both the business at the helm of it and the fans that are part of it, is a community that is engaging and offers above and beyond what the fans expect.

Here are a few examples of how you can create an experience that will make your fans even bigger fans, create new fans, and keep you top of mind in the marketplace.

• invite client feedback about products: make sure you have a community manager that can respond swiftly to negative comments. Even the most negative comment if dealt with correctly can put you in good stead with your fans.
• Don’t enforce too many rules on your community: Be ready to govern, but let nature take its course as well as you will no doubt have a few standout fans that will make the place even more interesting
• Make your fans part of your company culture, show them what you live: share photos from after work drinks, share special events dear to your staff i.e birth of the VPs first child (of course you’ll want to keep photos respectful, only those that invoke good vibes and won’t slander the company)
• Host online (and offline is a good idea too) events that compliment your business: webinars, twitter parties, anything that lets your community connect to each other

Remember, its about creating an experience that reminds your fans as to why they love you and enticing those on the outside into wanting to be on the inside to something great. What are you doing to make your online community a great experience?

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The Matchmaking Flight, a world’s first, is set to take off in 3 weeks. North Americans will be flying on a special party flight on Air New Zealand from LAX and arriving in Auckland where they will be greeted by Single Kiwis. As part of my role of making sure the online community keeps in contact leading up to the trip and beyond, I have created a beginner’s guide to Twitter for travelers. The target audience is Twitter noobs…the added tips are to help plan and enjoy your travels using Twitter.

Is this course for me?

If you have never touched Twitter or tried to but didn’t understand it, this course is for you. Their is added information about how people who travel can use Twitter. Even if you are not a traveler, you can still use the travel related tips to help you in your local search for business, colleagues, Twitter friends.

The course is set up so that you will receive 5 short emails over 5 days. I’ve had rave reviews about a basic Twitter course that I did in the same format months ago. It allows complete newbies to absorb information in bite size chunks and not get overwhelmed by all that Twitter has to offer.You receive one course a day that should take you no longer than 10-15 minutes to go through. You get action steps for each day while building your Twitter following. By the end of the course you will be well on your way to really getting the hang of Twitter.

Travel related information includes:

- performing local Twitter searches

- How to find out what’s going on where you are

- How to find travel experts

- How to find other travellers

This mini course is free. All you have to do is sign up with your name and email below to receive the course. Once you have entered your name and email, you will need to click on a link in an email from ghada at realsocialgirl dot com in order to confirm your subscription. Enjoy!

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Well folks I’m taking this show on the road. Here’s the backstory….

A couple of months ago we were asked to go on a delegation to meet with some companies in Canada’s technology triangle. For many reasons not to be discussed here, we decided not to go. In the meantime though I started to pine for Canada, eh, my old stomping grounds. So we got back in touch with business contacts that we have in Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa and decided that the trip was still worth making on our own steam. A few clicks through Expedia and bob’s your uncle – we are headed to North America for mixture of business, catching up with family and friends and, well…of course the sun!

How can I help you?

I will be blogging from both here and at girlstoys depending on what hat I am wearing along the way. Expect updates on the awesome possum people I meet up with along the way. A few twitter friends are already locked in for a meetup, a few are still left to be organised. Apart from planned meetings with biz contacts, I’m also looking to make connections with people I’ve met online in forums and other networks.

I’m willing to meet with people on others behalf, if its going to be at all interesting I’ll most likely squeeze it into the trip (within reason and if you let me know sooner rather than later).

How can you help me?

Have a look at my about page to get a better idea of who I am or the portfolio for info on what projects I’m up to. Then take a look at my Tripit plan – its a bit light at the mo’, but will fill up! If you know someone along the route that I could benefit from meeting, let me know. Here’s a few ideas of the kinds of people I’d like to meet.

• Fun types
• Twitter addicts
• Mother entrepeneurs
• Gaming addicts, developers or investors
• Social media enthusiasts
• Good people

Business as usual, but just thought I’d let you know. More info to follow as details unfold

What’s happening in the lounge this month?
We’re sharing tips on keeping warm and energized through winter. Do you have any special tips? Bring them along if you do cause we could all use them.

When does the fun start?

Thursday, June 25 from 8-9.30 pm.

You can access the party room by going to #RSG Twitter Lounge , login in with your Twitter username and password and tweet away! You don’t have to worry about adding the #RSG hashtag to your tweets, its already there.

What are the Prizes?
Party sponsor Floozy is giving away  a fantastic prize that EVERY woman needs. The VIP (Very Intelligent Pocket) is the key to an organised handbag, it makes it easy to change essentials from one bag to another as all you have to do is pull the VIP out of your bag and transfer to another. THE perfect accessory for the girl with many handbags or a mother switching from nappy bag to purse all the time. With the VIP you never have to worry about leaving anything behind. Kate from the decadent handbag and accessory online store Floozy is giving away one in black.

Also up for grabs is a Linden Leaves gift box of winter treats.

All you have to do is sign up for the Twitter party over at girlstoys and then be there on the night as the winner will be announced live.

See you then!

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