What 7 social media websites are the best for SMB online presence?

Choosing the right social media outlet for your small business depends on many factors related, but not limited, to:

1. Your business,
2. Your customers and
3. The existent in-house knowledge of the people in charge of executing your social media promotion campaigns.

This article assumes that you won’t be outsourcing your social media activities to external agencies, since in such case this article should be “old news” to a savvy social media manager. The number of social media websites has grown substantially. Some big ones are expanding everyday, others are being born and are growing in popularity and old ones are losing their shine and are cast into oblivion. As such, making the right choice for a social media can be a tedious process. Not all social media populate the right audience for your marketing messages or have the features you are looking for.

It’s okay to be selective, as long as you have a clear social media motive & objective with high Return on Investment (ROI) expectations.

Before we move on to recommending the best social media websites for small businesses, there are some rules of thumb that need to be kept in mind before you even attempt making a choice for a perfect social media match.

1. Know what Social Media are in relation to Marketing

If you are new to social media, or if your knowledge of social media is limited to having a Facebook profile, browsing videos in YouTube or posting some pictures on Instagram, you need to get to know social media a little bit more first. Read articles about them, scroll down the homepage and read the “unexplored sections” of your favourite social media website like [advertisement], [about us], [FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions], [privacy statements] etc. There is business model behind every social media website and this business model relies heavily on people like you using it as a marketing platform, whether paid or free. The good thing about social media is that it allows for free and low-budget marketing. You can achieve a lot through posting excellent content & mastering the art of effective social engagement (attractive call to action messages). You can read more about the relation between social media and marketing in my other article with title: “How Long Will Social Media Marketing Stay Effective“. https://twitter.com/OpenAnswer/status/495607482300235776   Also, try to immerse yourself in the vast literature that has been written on social media behaviour and strategy. It will help you understand a number of important, though seemingly trivial, elements of social media interaction and engagement that are vital for your success. You may be able to answer questions like:

1. Why do people click on some posts but ignore others?
2. What is viral sharing and how can I transform it into “viral marketing” of my product page or blog post?
3. Why are video’s, pictures and emotional headlines more likely to be liked, clicked on and shared than others?
4. What causes people to not like my company’s Facebook page, dislike my YouTube video or unfollow me on Twitter?
5.  How can social media success be measured? What tools can I use and what metrics should I set?

2. See how others, competitors, are doing it.

Yes, do it! We were all once beginners and there is a first time for everything. Take the opportunity to check how your competitors specifically are going about their social media exposure or read clear-cut case-studies about social media successes (and failures) for small business within your geography, customer demography or business sector. This is only another way of conducting the oh so vital market research before you draw up the even more vital Social Media Marketing Plan. (You are going to make a plan, aren’t you?)

3. Be social, creative, authentic, engaged, active and communicative.

As the name implies, social media is all about being social, socially active and sociable (= mostly likeable). You or the person(s) in charge of carrying out your social media campaigns should also have some creativity in compelling writing, attractive design or a reasonable mix of both. Some knowledge of HTML code (for embedding images, video’s, tweets etc.), web design, graphic design or image manipulation skills may come in handy. A successful blogger is mostly someone who has a sufficient dose of these skills to lead a small-scale social media campaign.

4. Know how social media performance is monitored and managed.

Putting all of your creative development and digital assets out there on social media is not enough. Plug yourself into the rich vein of social media analytics tools like Hootsuite, BufferApp, TweetDeck etc or more advanced ones like Sysomos. See whether such tools can deliver answers to questions, such as:

1. How would you know that what you are doing is right or wrong?
2. What kind of content seems to bring about more engagement through clicks, likes, shares or favourites?
3. How would you know that your declining sales or increasing website hits are the result of your social media activity?
4. How can you distinguish between the performance of your Twitter account, YouTube channel and Facebook company page?
5. Why has your LinkedIn company page not been followed or liked for whole 3 months?

5. Draw up a water-proof Social Media Plan and follow it up with analysis and review.

Your business plan can contain any elements you deem important to your company’s social media success, but it should definitely include the following main elements:

1. Your business goals and objectives: identify them and define them.
2. Your social media objectives in relation to your business goals
3. Define your parameters and metrics pertaining to these objectives: choose the right tools to manage your online performance.
4. Identify and define your target group: is it your existing customers, potential customers or social media influencers (Brand PR)?
5. Keep the competition’s online presence in mind: research & calculate their social media performance in terms of fellowship numbers AND engagement rates.

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The 7 best social media websites for small business.

I will let you do you own research on the specific feature of each of the social media websites I selected and move on to recommending them in order of preference or fitness to most small businesses’ marketing objectives. I would aim for the big 5: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ & YouTube, including photo and interest sharing platforms, Instagram & Pinterest in one category and some “new-comers”. The reasoning behind my selection is derived from their authority, functionality, market leadership, technological advancement, clear advertising models, being international (multilingual), ease of use and off course big number of members (= more exposure). If your business is a B2C small business, the best social media platforms I recommend in order of relevance & importance are:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Google+
4. LinkedIn
5. YouTube (becomes a top-3 if you can make engaging video, relevant to your business)
6. Instagram or Pinterest (moves up to number two or three if it is a product, or a service, deriving value & marketability from design or packaging = fancy photo’s. Like cloths or shoes or beauty services or accessories)
7. Ryze

If a B2B small business, the best social media I recommend  in order of relevance & importance are:

1. LinkedIn
2. Google+
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. YouTube (becomes a top-3 if you can make engaging video, relevant to your business)
6. Instagram or Pinterest (become more important if it is a product, not a service, deriving value & marketability from design or packaging = fancy photo’s. Like office stationery, ornaments or furniture)
7. Quora

How can a manager control his temper?

Which one is more effective: talking or barking?

When it comes to controlling emotions (temper) it is always easier said than done. But it can be trained and it all starts with creating self-awareness about our emotions. Having such awareness specifically denotes the importance of having a high degree of social & emotional intelligence in the discipline of management (the managing of others, whether employees, business relations or random members of our social circles).

We all know the cliché that is not so much a cliché actually but closer to a fact:

you can’t control something you do not know well

&

you cannot manage others if you can’t even manage yourself.

I try to remind myself that emotions can always choose the rational path of calm words (smart & effective communication) instead of deeds and automatic reactions (impulsive communication). But our emotional reactions are naturally faster than our rational considerations. That’s a bio-physiological fact we can’t do much about, but can only tame gradually through training and lots of practice.

If you think about it, you can always TALK about your emotions; how angry, disappointed, misunderstood, tensed, worried or impatient you are about a certain employee’s attitude or performance, instead of BARKING OUT these emotions.

But the problem of emotions control often arises when:

1. We think that our true thought/position in a certain situation can only be fully communicated, understood & respected by others when it is accompanied by emotion.
2. We think that others will only take us seriously when they see our emotions (which can be true by the way depending on your audience and their level of social intelligence)
3. Talking is viewed as a sign of weakness (culturally or group-collectively) and barking as a form of strength (also, culturally or group-collectively).
4. We are not the talking type that releases regularly and timely but the type that bottles up impressions about others until they evolve into powerful untameable emotions that erupt at once like a volcano in the most poorly-timed & destructive manner!

Controlling emotions does not necessarily imply suppressing them, but rather channelling them to reach effective communication. That’s why a face-to-face setting is usually preferred in solving conflicts, with as less external factors as possible influencing the calm & effectiveness of communication.

Communication is best served when conducted in a rational manner based on words and voiced thoughts that describe our emotions clearly & constructively, instead of uncontrolled eruptions that describe our words and thoughts poorly & destructively.

Which one is better a discussion or an argument?

Let’s compare both and find out for ourselves.

A discussion is a communication style of which the outcome is not predefined, while having “mutual understanding” as a pre-determined final goal before entering into it. A discussion is supposed to lead to the best solution of a given problem, a clarification of a misunderstanding or the best valuation of an idea, to mention some random examples.

Such “understanding” is to be reached & accepted by all engaged parties at the end of a discussion, based on healthy communication, proper exchange of ideas, information or opinions and genuine agreement (as opposed to artificial one for the sake of muting “high volumes”). It’s a collective, non-selfish & constructive process by nature (even if no outcome is reached yet).

An argument, on the other hand, is characterised by the “will to win” clearly visible through the show of interruptive emotions. An argument is less effective than a discussion in most cases but can be necessary depending on the counterpart’s openness to having a calm discussion. Having an argument is mostly the result of us being unable to suppress whatever emotion that we have at a given moment of discussing a topic, whether anger, impatience, anxiety, disappointment or sadness etc.

Paradoxically enough, having an argument at such times can be a healthy release of pent-up negativity; one that needs to be out of the way, first, for a calm discussion to take place.

I find arguments to be generally ineffective & counter-productive than discussions because their goal is either:

1. Predefined: when we argue for the sake of arguing (releasing negative energy because we WANT to), OR
2. Non-defined at all, when we argue because that’s all we can do now (releasing negative energy because we CAN’T discuss calmly)

Therefore, enforcing an arguing style of communication is a counter-productive, selfish & unfair form of communication aimed at convincing the other party of one’s points of views, legitimizing the use of irrational communication (shouts, fictitious outrage, refusal of agreement, interruptions, unmeant disagreements, lack of self-reflection, manipulation of facts etc.).

An argument is at its best when it means “a reason given in proof or rebuttal”, only as part of a debate or a discussion and not as a way of communication.

If you can’t motivate yourself, nobody else will. Do you agree?

Yes, and no.

Self-motivation, when existent, is more powerful than any external motivational factor, yes. It’s no wonder that “self-motivational abilities” are often mentioned as a characteristic trait/habit of the majority of successful people.

Having said this, I also believe that all humans experience some degree of low motivation at some stages of their lives, as a result of continuous hardships, disappointments or “bad luck”, even when they’re putting in their utmost energy and positive hope in it. In such case, the power of external motivation comes in very handy or even necessary. 

Sometimes that inspirational voice in ourselves dies out or is muted down though all kinds of factors and it does no harm in such case to call in the help of external motivators, whether professional or simply existent in our comfort zones; a good friend, a colleague or a family member. 

Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do

Motivation has become an industry of itself, with big names like Anthony Robbins inspiring millions around the world with what often sounds like common sense but nonetheless very powerful to hear repetitively. But also through world-famous platforms like TED Talks featuring people from all backgrounds and colours who share the most inspiring words that we need to hear in order to revive our desire to achieve, flourish or believe in ourselves once again.

Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

 

 

What important “marketing trends” do you foresee in the near future?

1. Marketing budgets and expenditure will gradually shift in growth towards more Digital Marketing & less Traditional Marketing.

2. Digital Marketing will grow in importance corresponding to our growingly digitalized lives & will soon be the centre all marketing orbits around.

3. Smart-phone-friendly responsive web design & web development will become an established quality-norm, in relation to marketing.

4. Ad re-targeting using browsing history, internet behaviour & predictive search techniques will grow.

5. TV advertisements will still be important in combination with online TV video-sharing for quick brand awareness & exposure.

6. Content Marketing will become more important, whether text-based, image-cantered, interactive or dynamic.

7. Social Media Marketing will become a more diverse new form of “traditional marketing”.

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will continue to evolve around social media marketing & the so-called “quality content”.

9. Connectivity to internet through more devices, appliances, public machines & public services will cause simplification & amplification of marketing messages.

10. Text-based content will be the norm in online marketing & visual Marketing will continue to compete with traditional text-based content (mainly blogs) using visual content like pictures, videos, inforgraphics, webcasts, podcasts, slides etc.

 

Leadership is not about titles and positions but about influencing others. Do you agree?

I disagree on this one.

If leadership is only measured by our random influence on the lives of others, then we may as well all be leaders in a general sense, since we always influence other lives to some degree, through our social being.

In my opinion, leadership in general, whether good or bad (to stay within the generic question wording) is mainly concerned with the power to persuade others to follow what you do, say or believe in. There were always good and bad leaders, who shared the “leader” label, and who led others through a combination of charisma, eloquence, identification, power, inspiration, love, hate, fear and/or deception.

The good ones lead others to goodness.

Extraordinary people DO extraordinary things compared to ordinary people. Do you agree?

Deeds speak louder than words.

So, if people do extraordinary things, this makes them extraordinary by nature of their deeds.

Having said this, very typically ordinary people are capable of doing what is viewed by others as “extraordinary things” too with less talking or marketing of self, while placing more value on being just “ordinary people”.

This in itself, is a high form of being extraordinarily GENUINE, which again in itself is an extraordinary thing to achieve in our time where image is everything, right?

Off course, this does not necessarily mean that people who promote themselves are not genuine. After all, they are just being genuinely themselves (which is: self-promoting people).

Going back to the original argument, some people may actually SAY extraordinary things without backing it up with any deed. They are just talkers. But what they say is extraordinary in every aspect, the foremost of which that we know for a fact that what they say cannot and will never result in any action, which makes it all the more extraordinary that they say it and keep saying it, in the first place.

Yes… I think this wraps it up a bit, for now, before I “get dizzy” from (what seems like) a circular reasoning I’m heading towards!

I hope it makes some sense. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter cause it is posted anyway. Do you agree?

What would be your added value to your team at work?

1. I will always try to roll up my sleeves & be far ahead to inspire and yet close enough to relate to any task my job or my team members require.
2. Contagious perfectionist behaviour that seeks perfection without having the false hope of achieving it; one that will change under-performance into adequate performance, and average performance into excellent one!
3. An untiring communicator, a realistic motivator and a considerate listening ear.
4. I fall seven times and stand-up eight, and I’m strong enough to lift others up, too.
5. A “go getter”, “yes, we can”, “there is solution for everything” mentality!
6. I think exactly the opposite of what is said in the image below.

 

When “I” is replaced by ” we”, even “illness” become “wellness”. Do you agree?

I believe this saying initially relates to the prevalence of team work, togetherness, altruism & collective efforts above individuality, selfishness, egoism and soloist effort. In this sense I agree with it.

In such case, “we” is a wellness instead of illness. 

BUT,

I tend to believe in the contrary when “we” (meaning = group thinking or tribal behaviour) results in effects such as “peer pressure”, “group-think”, “suppression of freedoms”, “blind imitation”, “copying bad behaviour”, “suffocation of creativity”, “mobbing & bullying behaviour”, “enhancement of collective ignorance” etc.

In such case, “we” becomes rather an illness instead of wellness.

“Leadership is a position of servitude”. Do you agree?

I agree & I disagree.

I agree to a certain extent, from a personally preferred view, hoping it may one day become a true widely-spread belief that leadership is a position of servitude. This is, regardless of the distinct connotation the middle-age English word “servitude” has, relating to enslavement, slavery or lack of freedom.

If approached philosophically, whether leadership is a position of “servitude” or “service” should not really matter, if the pursuit of such position is driven by genuine passion for driving prosperity, spreading wellness and caring for the followers in all fairness and equality. These are just words. And men, great men and great leaders are judged by their deeds, not by their words no matter eloquent. A true leaders rolls up his sleaves and guides his followers from the front, if not literally then figuratively.

We all know that leaders are not exactly “enslaved” or limited in their powers or freedoms through power possession, as power is not supposed to enslave, or is it? If anything, power, we are told, has the tendency of corrupting its possessor and that absolute power may corrupt absolutely. Could this, too, be a form of enslavement?

One can also argue that it rather should matter whether leadership receives the poetic label of “servitude” or not, using the argument that such an elevating description would do leadership good. After all, people tend respond well to emotionally loaded names & adjectives that have a spirit-uplifting resonance to them, especially when such names take them to a dreamy world of abundant wealth, freedom and equality, away from their daily reality of poverty,oppression and injustice (if applicable).

Many political leaders,  including presidents or prime ministers refer to their post as “Public Service”, not being ashamed of attaching “service” to their position, rather proud. CEO’s of super large multinationals, may choose to refer to themselves as such too, when their position indeed influences the lives of hundred-thousands of people. That’s how it works.

Yet, I’m yet to witness a leader who refers to his or her position as one of “servitude” and attach commendable deeds to the noble words. It’s a matter of semantics; the connotation of which cannot be misinterpreted, not by a dumb politician or a socially-handicapped business leader and certainly not by the receiving audience; “the electorate”, whether citizens or customers. (If you think about it, customers do elect their leaders too)

(Let’s don’t dwell too much in a discussion on the power of Public Relations, here)

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But I also disagree, because I generally have a distrustful relationship with (paternalistic) “euphemisms”. They sound temptingly nice but may be very deceptive in nature & content. Euphemistic words or descriptions that conceal their right meaning, preying on people’s oblivion of their reality are plenty enough in our world.

To move on from “public service” to “public servitude” through “servant leadership” can be a perfect PR-slogan, symbolizing a much higher commitment to serving others almost closer to being “enslaved by the needs & rights of the public”, whether citizens, employers, employees, customers or any type of stake-holders, who put leaders in such a high or leading positions. But is this really true or enforcible? I don’t think so, as it rarely, if ever, happens on a perceivable scale.

“Servitude” is a personal preference. “Service” is closer to reality & realism.

Let “service” be “service”. It’s good enough!