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I would like to share with New Zealand business owners some tips and advice on entering the world of social media (social networks) or what some call “social media marketing”. The tips and advice given are based on our 8+ years dealing with online communities (started with PropertyTalk.com) and our 12 months + providing social media solution for businesses in New Zealand.

You need a “Home Base”

A “home base” is your blog or website that you can direct people back to from the social networks. Your home base is critical to your success online because its where you should have all the information about your business and products/services that you sell. You should have an automatic (and efficient) sales funnel in place to capture interest and filter raw prospects into warm leads before your sales team is engaged (if you don’t know what that means then read this article for the basics in capturing prospects). Plus if you get banned from Facebook or suspended from Twitter you should at least have some of your community in your email marketing database and thats important because email marketing still has the highest conversion rate of all.

Social Media/Networking is NOT FREE

Creating a presence within social networks takes a heap of time – 1 hour per day minimum. Becoming known and actually having a community of people takes skill and even more time. Make sure you only invest your time in communicating with people who are in your target market. I have seen New Zealand small businesses chat with people all over the world even though they do not sell outside of New Zealand. Don’t confuse social needs with your pipeline needs. Make sure you set goals for your participation in social networks such as collecting 10 email addresses or phone numbers of prospects per month.

Do not confuse work with play

A classic mistake with Kiwi businesses! In my previous post “So You Think Social Media Will Save your Business?” I present a common pattern of how Kiwi business owners act in social networks. Basically the people they communicate with end up being friends and with most Kiwi’s they find it hard selling to their friends. Always remind yourself what your mission is using social networks – work or play?

Concentrate on 1 social network only

There are 100′s of social networks out there most of which are a complete waste of time for businesses. What I recommend you do if your new to “social media” is create a Facebook Page for your business and concentrate on making that a success by adding content from your blog, interesting articles you have found, comments, videos, images etc.. each business day. Invite your friends, prospects and clients to your Facebook Page and “chat”. This exercise will give you a very good feel for how social media works and if you can “chat” with people you know on a regular basis you will see how much effort it takes. Latter on if you find that this is indeed feeding your pipeline then you may feel like spreading your wings and looking at YouTube for videos or even Twitter. Have a look at this website’s Facebook Page for ideas => Business Talk on Facebook. And lastly if you are very new to social media avoid Twitter as it can be a complete time vacuum. Over 80% of Twitter accounts have been abandoned and in my opinion its because business people make the mistake of believing Twitter is for communicating. Yes thats right – read this => Twitter: 10 Psychological Insights. This article explains why we do what we do on Twitter and have over 50,000+ followers in our Twitter hub.

Don’t believe the hype!

If you pick up any business magazine these days you should see at least 1 article stating how fantastic social media is for business. Before you start panicking that you are missing out on the greatest thing since sliced bread consider this:

1) Most of the proof that the New Zealand social media “experts” provide are case studies from overseas especially the US where the adoption of social networks is more widespread for businesses. If they do use New Zealand based companies they will always refer to big business such as telcos and Air New Zealand. They may sprinkle in 1 or 2 small business success stories such as Giapo. The case studies are unrealistic for the bulk of New Zealand small businesses of which ONLY 34% of Kiwi businesses own a website but that does not stop the experts from telling you Twitter is going to save your business.

2) If you are struggling to fill your pipeline then focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) which basically means having your website/blog end up on the first page of search results for your product or service. Remember! People who are looking to buy will search online. People who come to your site from social networks will be looking for fun and something to burn away the hours at work (note: if you have a well setup sales funnel you should be able to capture social media visitors and convert some to prospects – more info of how we do it here=> How to convert social network traffic to prospects.

Leverage off someone else’s effort

Leverage, leverage and more leverage. It has taken us over a year to build up an active and responsive bunch of communities in the major social networks. We spend over 4 hours per day deep in social networks helping to promote our clients. Isn’t it smart to take advantage of our efforts or other businesses like us to gain exposure? Starting out from “less than zero” in social networks is a lonely place. At the very least you should be submitting content to this site (its free) to gain exposure or participating in our Project Campfire program (again – free).

Well – I think thats enough for a Friday rant. Good luck! Any questions please feel free to ask me below. If you like to read more about how we provide social media ROI to our clients read some of our New Zealand social media case studies.