Small Business Starting to Use Social Media Successfully

I talk about small business Internet marketing more than anything else since a lot of people that I know are small business people. That’s why I blog about their experiences and their issues because these people are often viewed as the backbone of any true economic recovery that might take place. While big business still use the “bad economy” as an excuse to cut jobs at record pace the little guy is trying to make it happen. Heck, as a result of the continued layoffs from the big boys more small businesses are being born every day. As a result, social media adoption by SMB’s has increased as well.

A study reported by the Center for Media Research which was done by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business tells us

….social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. Small businesses are increasingly investing in applications including blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

It’s good to see the little guy get more involved with social media. Unlike search marketing (in particular paid search) social media allows for some true creativity and because of its relatively low cost (notice I didn’t say free) the small business has less of a chance of getting burned. I can’t tell you how many times I speak to SMB’s who bemoan how much money they have spent on paid search and have seen no return. Social media opportunities are a breath of fresh air to these people.

The chart below tells the story

This kind of activity is something that will reinvigorate a struggling SMB and can even lead to cost savings as they learn what is really working with their advertising.

Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and Founder of an eye and vision care center, said “… I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible… with a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities… (and) most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80%… “

Maybe Dr. Glazier’s sense of humor is helping as well (needing to find alternatives to keep his vision care center visible…Good one, doc).

Of course, as with anything it’s not all party hats and celebration. SMB’s struggle more with some of the downsides of the social media “effect” because they are often not able to spread the work out over other team members because they may not have them. Also, there is fear around social media as to whether it can open a can of worms that they are not ready to handle.

50% of small business social media users say it takes more time than expected. While social media adoption has doubled in the last year, there are still some roadblocks to small businesses fully exploiting its potential. Another 17% feel that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet. Related to this, only 6% feel that social media use has hurt the image of the business more than helped it.

While it is never the silver bullet or the “automatic win” that many SMB social media hucksters proclaim it to be there is a lot of opportunity for the SMB to be promoting their business and finding more business than ever before. The odds are not stacked against the SMB in social media as they can be with other marketing options but the old adage “you gotta be in it, to win it” is more real than ever.

Tell us a good SMB social media story or encounter you had. Some really creative ideas never get outside of the towns they are hatched in unless we tell someone else. Let’s hear it.

A bit.ly of Interesting News

So you are bit.ly and you just suffered through the announcement that your already crowded area of the Internet space has been sat on by the 800 pound Google gorilla with their announcement of the arrival of their own URL shortening service. That can make for a rough day. Sure competition is a good thing because all ships rise with a rising tide. Google makes those tides rise so fast sometimes though that the little ships get tossed in the air and don’t always land well.

Well, bit.ly is trying to do its part in making the URL shortening industry a little more interesting. They have announced their new Pro service. One wonders if they needed to announce it a little more hastily than anticipated considering the new “Google’s in the URL shortening house!” scenario. At any rate they are offering a chance for users to provide customized / personalized / whatever-ized shortened URL’s for those looking t stand out from the crowd. Their blog’s description goes a little something like this:

As part of our initial beta program, we’re making custom URLs available to a limited number of large and medium-sized Web publishers and bloggers, including AOL, Associated Content, Bing, Clicker, The Daily Telegraph, foursquare, GDGT, Hot Potato, The Huffington Post, IGN, kickstarter, Meebo, MSN, /Message (Stowe Boyd), The New York Times, OMGPOP, oneforty.com, The Onion, slideshare, someecards, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network — which includes WSJ.com and MarketWatch.com — and blogger Baratunde Thurston (baratunde.com).

Users and publishers benefit from the additional transparency that this private-label service provides. When you see a short URL like nyti.ms, you know the destination web site before clicking on the link.

OK, good if you are one of the big boys. Goes on the wish list of most others. In addition the service is introducing a new dashboard as well. Go check out the picture at their blog which has itty-bit.ly print for you to strain over. The readable words from bit.ly about the dashboard are

We’re also excited to be introducing a unique real-time dashboard that will provide publishers with even more information about their bit.ly traffic. It’s a real-time view of how a given publisher’s content is being distributed across networks like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and services like email, SMS, and instant messenger.

Now, I have to admit that this is cool. It’s fun to see this kind of innovation from someone other than the big names. I can’t help but wonder though just how long this kind of innovation will be available now that Google has entered the space. I have been a fan of Google for quite some time but it is starting to feel a little too ‘big brotherish’ at times.

When Google talked about the 3 S’s of their URL shortening service (security, stability and speed) all I could think about is the speed with which they are going to take all of the air out of the room for the little guy in this space and determine who may be allowed to stick around. What if Twitter decides to remove bit.ly as their default URL shortener and creates Twi.tr for their own branding purposes? There may be too much muscle for a player like bit.ly to stick around no matter how much innovation they provide.

Am I overreacting here? I’m sure you will let me know because that’s your job here at Marketing Pilgrim. Let’s hear it.

Old Phones Still Need New Ads

All of the talk these days is about smart phones. The iPhone, BlackBerry and Android’s of the world often get the bulk of the media attention but there’s more to the mobile market. AT&T is seeing that as it is now enabling non smart phone users who use ‘older’ phones to see some of the same local advertising that the smart phone people do. Personally, I am not sure if this is a blessing or a curse for those legacy phone users but that’s not for me to decide.

ClickZ reports on some information passed along at the Mobile Ad Summit in New York as Matt Crowley, CMO, AT&T Interactive talked about this approach

AT&T Interactive has completed development of a WAP application that will open up ad opportunities for search listings seen by non-smartphone users at Yellowpages.com.

Crowley briefly mentioned the new app during a larger discussion on how to target mobile consumers. Later that day, Crowley said the app, dubbed “YPmobile,” establishes dedicated top-of-page sponsored search inventory where it will deliver relevant promos for AT&T Interactive’s pay-per-call advertising clients, as well as its Yellowpages.com advertisers who pay to be featured.

It’s interesting to note that AT&T had this WAP app (let’s for fun call it their WAPplication) as Crowley put it, “sitting around”. Huh? At what point did they realize that not everyone actually has a smart phone and that there was a lot of potential being left on the table, or at least sitting around it? I have to chuckle as big because big companies probably forget about more that they already have developed than most smaller companies develop in total. Too bad the big boys often are asleep at the wheel.

Moving forward there is a general sentiment that developing apps to satisfy the wide variety of phones and platforms out there is a challenge.
Although the growth of smartphones and the app market to support them were big topics at the event, AT&T’s item underscored the fact that reaching consumers on older, “legacy” cell phones remains a formidable challenge for the interactive marketing community.

The obstacles to standardizing experiences between older and newer phones is not the only challenge for developers of mobile apps. Even within the smartphone category, it remains difficult to build experiences for multiple devices.

So it appears that as we may actually be truly entering the age of mobile for real it will not be without its pitfalls and trouble spots. As these obstacles are hit moving forward, it will be up to everyone to step back and remain realistic about just how far and how fast we can become the mobile Internet society that has already been ordained as reality.

Smaller Newspapers Have Fared Better Than The Big Boys

If you work for a smaller paper or you have a favorite local paper that you simply don’t want to see fade into the sunset this is OK news. I can’t honestly say that there is real good news. It’s about the newspaper business after all. TechCrunch reports that statistics gathered by the Inland Press Association show that overall the average drop in profits for the industry as a whole was 77.6%, So how do you find a bright spot in that kind of number? You look at who is floundering the least and go from there.

The sad thing is that even of the economy comes back strong at some point this century newspapers may not even see improvement because it’s the medium, not the economy, which is the biggest culprit in the agonizing demise of a once vibrant industry. The chart below shows just how bad things are for the newspaper industry and there is little hope for recovery.

Only one category saw a revenue bump in over the 5 year span studied and that was the smallest of the small papers. There are many possible reasons for this including the lack of online hyperlocal content thus allowing the paper to still be relevant as well as the lower overhead. But is this just delaying the inevitable?

One major reason for the little guys still holding some ground is the classifieds. I personally never look at the classifieds for much of anything so I am a little surprised by this

Another sign of hope: small papers still have a hold on classifieds. Average classified sales for small papers have actually gone up, at a time when they have been declining for most papers. Inland cites an example of a daily newspaper with a circulation of less than 15,000, which posted a 210.4% increase in classified revenue from 2004 to 2008. But it didn’t do much good. The paper’s profits were down by almost 30%.

Now the paper’s profits were down 30% which still means that they were profitable. Now, we’re getting somewhere. This data, however, is just like most where it can be a bit misleading. Considering the sources were the papers themselves and the information was offered voluntarily and with anonymity there may be room for some fudging. Also, there was no recognition of who suffered tremendous losses and who fared OK. The numbers can best be seen as an average.

Who really knows the real deal but there is certainly not a lot of room for celebration. When you have to concentrate on who suffered the least then you have to figure that no matter where a paper is on the scale of size there is not a tremendous amount of hope for the future.