I think that the big brands have certainly been utilizing Twitter to help promote their business message. I wonder, however, if small businesses realize the power of that social media has in pushing forward their local marketing efforts. I believe that any small business that wants to really develop that foothold in the community like local businesses used to have must turn to social media to create outreach in their local community and get people to interact with your business and employees on a regular basis.

When I think of small businesses that have been doing this well, I think of the trendy coffee shops and hip small restaurants. I know a few here in the the Utah Valley area that are really making a place for themselves using social media.

For those looking to get started, it doesn’t take much. If your place of business is dominated by the non-tech people and you may feel a little apprehensive about going about this process, the answer is simple. Go to you local college and contact the business school and say that you need an intern or a part-time marketing student to help your business. The position can have a hip title like Social Media Director or Customer Relations Specialist. It would be preferable to include something about social media in the title. You don’t have to pay a lot, most college jobs are not well paying jobs, so you should be able to match that or give them a little bit more, but even if you can just match the going rate in the area, just the fact that the individuals job will be to simple interact with others and develop an identity online for your business, it already makes the job better than anything else. Trust me, there’re plenty of people who would love a job where they just work on online presence and identity with social media.

The next steps are the basics to getting started. Chris Brogran recently wrote an article that outlines 50 ideas on using twitter for business, I’ve pulled out 26 steps that would help any small business get started in social media marketing. Some of these items will be quick, others may take a bit of work, but it’s well worth it and it’s important to remember that the purpose here is to develop that relationship with the local scene that businesses used to have back in the day.

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. (@Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
8. Throw in a few humans other than your social media person, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
9. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.
10. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
11. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
12. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
13. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
14. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
15. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
16. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
17. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections.
18. You don’t have to read every tweet.
19. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
20. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
21. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
22. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
23. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
24. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
25. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
26. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

These 26 steps will get any organization started in the social media community and will get you started to developing that presence that every business wants with its local scene. The principles can also be applied to individuals who want to develop their online presence and connect with individuals in their line of work or with similar interests.

• REMEMBER: Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
• REMEMBER: Twitter breaks news faster than other sources.
• REMEMBER: Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s
• REMEMBER: Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn.
• REMEMBER: Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
• REMEMBER: Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).

1. REMEMBER: Twitter can augment customer service.

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I enjoy technology, I embrace it. I really like social media and the ability it gives us to be connected to the world and to other people in the world. I have a Facebook account, although I’m not ultra active in it. I have a Twitter account and like to peruse it and post to it on a somewhat frequent basis. There is one thing that just irks me beyond all with Twitter. It’s those article spitting people on Twitter.

If you’re connected to a group of people beyond 100 you are bound to have an article spitter. Article spitters are Twitter users who if you check out their Twitter page, you only see posts referring to articles online. Sometimes there are even links to purchase products they are pushing online.

To me, this is Twitter spam. If you’re not going to be communicating with other users and you just spit out random links to articles you’re spamming. Twitter should be a tool for people to connect and communicate, not an alternative to setting up a Web site posting your information online and then spending hours tweaking your site for search engine placement.

More and more I’m seeing articles and products that people buy online that “teach” people how to make money online using Twitter without ever setting up a Web site. The secret behind it? Follow enough people, get lots of follow backs, then start spamming everyone your links to the product you are trying to sell. You then hope that people on Twitter click on your link, then buy the product.

I think that even the emergence of services that allow you to have items saved then posted to your Twitter account at a later time show this trend to Twitter spam. Why would you need to have a service that saves a link to something, then randomly posts it to your Twitter account later? Why not post it when you come across it? Probably because most of the people using this, scour the Internet for articles, then save them and then just tell the service to post it randomly so that Twitter won’t shutdown their account. In all, there’s no real two-way communication taking place online.

I’m not saying that this shouldn’t ever take place, but if that’s all you’re doing…well, you’re entitled to your own opinion. But overall, I think that it contributes to the negativity towards Twitter that is out there online.

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I normally like Seth Godin’s take on business and whatever he decides to talk about for the day, but sometimes, I think that his “take” is just copy in order to put something out there on the Web. Blogging too often becomes “take some idea and argue the opposite, regardless of how ridiculous or useless the suggestion may be” type of thing.

The “Square One Underrated” point simply refers to the fact that if you find yourself lost, go back to the original place where you knew which way to go or had a chance to go the right way. I don’t agree with this because in business, square one is a place you have to get out of as fast as possible. Square one is nowhere. It’s the place where if you stay too long, you’re sunk, out of business.

Think about a trail, you start at the beginning and head out. Suddenly you are a mile out and 100 yards off course. Do you start back at the beginning of the trail hoping to not get off course this time? No, make some corrections in your heading and try to get back to the trail. You’re not yet on the trail, but you’re heading back towards it, plus you’re always gaining experience along the way.

In business, ideas fail, projects don’t work, things break. But just because your project failed does it mean you scrap everything and go back to the drawing board? No, you make corrections and keep at it. Because if you scrapped everything you ever started that didn’t work, you’d rarely accomplish anything. Most projects and ideas don’t normally begin as the finished products. Changes and corrections will almost always be done along the way.

No offense, Seth, I like your thinking, but this time, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

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