Small business, especially ones that cater to local customers, have been slower to adapt to doing ebusiness. These prorprieters gripe that entirely local businesses don’t stand to gain much from going online, other than providing a small web presence for customers and prospective customers. Small businesses have the ability to absolutely “own their geographies” (see Resource #1 below) by creating and managing their own personalized newswires. For little to no cost, small businesses can leverage the marketing power of traditional wire services with the sensitivity of social media to make a huge splash in their locality.
Marketing via News Wires is So Outmoded
Just a few years ago, if a firm wanted to make a product announcement, they would hire a PR specialist to write up a press release and then spend another $250-$700 to submit their press release. Next up?
They prayed.
They prayed that the distribution list was local enough yet broad enough to get a clear message out.
They prayed that a local news outlet would find their PR interesting enough to pick up the story, but most of the time, little to nothing happened.
Social Media as News Wire Replacement
Along came social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and the whole industry is turned on its head.
- Local yet global: With social media, you can build your network from the ground up. Get trading partners, local journalists, competitors and prospective customers into the fold.
- Immediate gratification: Articles/posts are published immediately. No more waiting for set distribution times.
- Contextuality: Because social networks are built from the ground up, network members are typically plugged in to your messaging and open to it.
- Call to action: Because social networks are digital, all company messaging can include a call to action — something a lifeless press release can’t hold a candle to.
How to set up your own personalized news wire
- Web presence: You’ll need a website. It doesn’t need to be a blog but it should be easy to post new content on and within your control to quickly publish. Wordpress is a good content management system — it’s not just for blogs any more.
- Set up Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts and start connecting to friends: Both these platforms are free and are not just used by the technorati. Thought leaders and journalists in your zipcode are scouting these sites for story ideas as well. For Twitter, I recommend using a product called TweetDeck that resides on your desktop. It provides management tools to fully leverage Twitter’s power.
- Join local Facebook groups to network: Facebook does a tremendous job of creating smaller and smaller groups that share particular affiliations. Join the ones that make sense to your business in your community. More than just providing more channels for networking, this is a great way to ensure that your content reaches the right people.
- Join any other social networking site for your industry or locality: While Twitter and Facebook are the 800 pound gorillas in the space, smaller networking sites have sprouted up. Go ahead an create a profile on those sites as well.
- Tie all the nodes of your online presence into one: After all the set up on different
social media platforms, it would be tough to manage posting to all these different sites separately. You’re going to want to use Ping.fm, a service that allows you to tie all your social networking personas into one interface. This interface, the lynchpin in the personalized news wire strategy, will enable you to post once and publish the same message out to all your various social networks.
Use content as a hook
By creating your own personalized newswire, you’ll have the opportunity to distribute content out to engaged readers with success times faster than most traditional news wires. Even if your goal isn’t to affect direct sales (after all, you’re a local business), the content you push through your wire will have positive effects.
- Expert label: By branding yourself as an expert (see Resource #3), you’ll be the go-to person in your industry online and off.
- Open up new revenue streams: Industry experts get called upon to speak at industry events and frequently make a couple of thousand dollars per appearance. There are other revenue streams that may sprout up ancillary to your business and as a product of your web presence.
- Meet future partners: There is a lot of value in connecting with industry partners. Maybe it’s a joint partnership. Maybe a future customer. You just gotta be out in front of these people online.
Summary
Social media is not a panacea for local business. Old school rules about location, inventory, and service still prevail. By building your own news wire on top of social media platforms, you’ll be able to get your message out to the right people. Some of this may result in new business and some won’t. Your online activities may vary well open up new revenue streams as well. You’ll be able to communicate with your business network faster and cheaper and better than those same companies set up to do just that. That’s powerful.
Resources:
- Seth Godin’s Advice for Real Estate Agents
- Props to Dominic Jones for describing his process setting up his own newswire. Great idea.
- Check out GaryV and how he’s turned his local wine business into a cash machine
- Read this article on how to save a local business via social networking (see the comments)
- See this article on how Twitter can help you build your business
