The rush by SMBs into Facebook and, to a lesser degree, other social media sites (e.g., Twitter) is well documented by me and others. But is it misplaced?
Putting aside the challenges of generating content and engagement on Facebook and elsewhere for time-starved SMBs the question arises: are consumers using Facebook, and social media more broadly, to get information about or find local businesses?
Data from Nielsen cast some doubt on the efficacy of social media as a lead-gen or new customer acquisition tool for local merchants. In other words, consumers generally aren’t using social media as a tool to find local merchants.
The top consumer reasons for using Facebook and other social media appear to be communication and entertainment. Reading reviews and getting deals are the top “commercial” reasons people are using social media according to the data above.
As mentioned, one of the big challenges for SMBs and their agency and sales-channel partners is content creation and engagement. These data argue that creating a showcase of customer reviews/responses and offering deals are things most aligned with consumer usage of social media sites. Everything else may be misplaced effort.
I believe that social media can be effectively used as a CRM tool; however the current expectations may be too great vs. what it can deliver — especially for SMBs. Do you agree or disagree?
Do you think SMBs are wasting their time with social media? Would it be better to spend time optimizing for search and mobile?
October 2nd, 2011 at 1:47 am
Content creation has been difficult even for large organizations and not just SMBs. Just like Google created a whole new industry of SEO experts, we need an industry of content creators – serving large, medium and small organizations. SMBs are clueless beyond setting up a web site and Facebook page.
October 2nd, 2011 at 1:54 am
I am generally in agreement with what you have said
October 2nd, 2011 at 4:05 am
Greg, no doubt there is a need for capable content writers and community managers to help SMBs publish quality content and engage potential customers. Most SMBs need to focus on running their business until they’ve fully integrated social into the core of how they engage with customers and prospects. In fact, until they can understand that every day the customers they serve are a great content opportunity they won’t truly realize that many customers want to connect with individuals at the actual business.
Your headline calls out all social media and yet you only mention Facebook and Twitter. We’ve found that blogging can have tremendous SEO benefits for our local businesses and when combined with optimized directories, reputation marketing and regular updates to Facebook and Twitter can generate leads through social discovery and well positioned promotions and conversion tools.
The reality is certain verticals face an uphill battle by the very nature of their business. Not sure I’ll ever engage with a collections company, payday loan company or adult video store or ever follow or fan them.
But what’s the alternative for a small business? With consumers spending so much time on social media, businesses need to learn to use these tools themselves too. The owner of a business under 25 employees is the brand of the business typically and they have the greatest opportunity to even use their own name to connect with folks in addition to their business brand.
I believe there is a content management strategy for every business. Albeit, it takes time, talent, tools and potentially outside experts.
@MikeDMerrill
October 2nd, 2011 at 4:51 am
By definition there probably is a content strategy for each SMB and vertical.
For most SMBs blogging is a problem. But for those who already blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are going to be more “intuitive.” They will understand what to do. And for them there may be less work involved than blogging.
You imply you’ve discovered a “formula” or template. Would you characterize it that way?
October 2nd, 2011 at 10:55 pm
A blog is more time consuming and involves quite a few considerations for optimal SEO results and engagement. With regard to a formula, we do have a specific web presence strategy that may warrant a longer conversation at some point.
October 3rd, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Greg- I tend to agree with Mike. As you know, we represent SMB from many different categories and what we have found is a specific formula that helps engage potential customers through social and has a great SEO impact as well. We never discuss thr quantity of fans and followers because that is where I believe the SMB loses their footing. We spend a lot of time purging fans & followers to create a more realistic picture.
We put specific “customer” goals against each campaign and get paid based on those metrics.
Too many SMB put all of their eggs in the social basket and that leads to failure. They still need a mix to be successful and in every market that mix is different.
The other failure that I’ve seen is the SMB social branding and voice totally contradicts their existing brand and causes confusion.
Social is too fast to half-ass and it’s sad to say that most of them have either no plan or a cookie cutter plan. We are starting to see social go the same way SEO did.. Go for the lowest priced offer because it is what we can afford instead of looking at the overall impact of making the wrong decision.
October 3rd, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Greg, I’m glad you asked the question you did in your title. SB owners would probably answer it differently than ”social media consultants”
For the truly small biz, SM is probably better for retention or recapture rather than new acquisition.
And it’s early. We are still, as an industry, enamored with the shiny toys we’ve made, whereas your average SB owner isn’t sitting around thinking about tweets/week etc. We have not yet made SM truly useful.
Small businesses didn’t need “bookkeeping management consultants”; they needed QuickBooks.
October 3rd, 2011 at 12:51 pm
From the perspective of a vendor or service provider to SMBs, how would you provide a solution that could “scale”?
October 3rd, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Hey Greg, would welcome the opportunity to have a broader offline discussion about this. You have my email from the comments.
October 4th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
If they are using social to generate new business then yes, but that said the same SMB most likely does not have the knowledge about SEO/SEM to do this correctly either.
Everyone seems to agree that it’s about content and generating valuable content is difficult. Valuable content applies every channel mentioned above.
October 5th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Greg,
We believe strongly that for many verticals the concept of social media engagement is very misplaced. Considering need/emergency driven verticals for example, one needs to ask themselves, should these SMBs really be producing social content? Further, one needs to ask themselves, who wants to receive social content from an SMB that they hope that they don’t ever have to interact with again? In some verticals, like entertainment, the situation is very different, wherein fresh content on specials and deals from your favorite restaurant isn’t intrusive in your feed and is advisable to produce.
In part, EdgeRank forms a natural selection in that content that you don’t interact with will ultimately not find its way to its intended eyeballs, but SMBs still must consider “what is my social audience profile” (getting the right connections), “what do they want to hear from me” (getting the right message), and “how do I measure my connection interest and churn”.
What we know for certain is that engagement is way over-hyped and misses the mark entirely for a huge segment of SMBs. And frankly, products for this group lack value. This does not mean however that “social” is not something that should be utilized – it is really a function of how, where, and why. For example, the point of interaction/transaction for almost all vertical types is a tremendous opportunity to gather social objects such as endorsements, reviews, referrals, surveys, etc.
Further, in the years to come, what we will find is that search will be inherently social and the checks and balances that are provided by the graph within a search environment will dramatically improve the experience. As such, it will become essential for SMBs of all types to collect social objects in the form of endorsements such as likes and +1s. It is in this environment that social starts to take form and mature, as passive endorsements become meaningful for connections within ones graph and the search experience is improved on both G and FB and others and WOM is carried out in passive manner by the business supporter.
So as the marketplace currently skates to where the puck-is concentrating on what content SMBs should provide, many SMBs will become quickly disenfranchised. There is another way, however, and it requires one to take a hard look at human behavior and the reality of how social will ultimately take hold for most small businesses – where the puck is going to be.
November 18th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
[...] findings caused Greg Sterling to ask whether SMBs were wasting their time on social media. As Sterling wrote, “The rush by [...]
November 18th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
[...] findings caused Greg Sterling to ask whether SMBs were wasting their time on social media. As Sterling wrote, “The rush by SMBs [...]
November 19th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
[...] findings caused Greg Sterling to ask whether SMBs were wasting their time on social media. As Sterling wrote, “The rush by SMBs [...]
November 19th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
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January 10th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
[...] social media has lots of potential impacts, data is slowly coming to light that social media: (i) may not be what most SMBs want it to be, (ii) that a company’s Facebook Fans aren’t really paying attention to them just [...]
January 10th, 2012 at 10:20 pm
[...] social media has lots of potential impacts, data is slowly coming to light that social media: (i) may not be what most SMBs want it to be, (ii) that a company’s Facebook Fans aren’t really paying attention to them just [...]
January 11th, 2012 at 10:19 am
[...] SMBs and social media Be Sociable, Share! Related posts: [...]
February 29th, 2012 at 1:44 am
Hey Greg, its interesting to read this article now, especially when compared to the debate (or realisation) that is now happening on this post http://www.screenwerk.com/2012/02/22/in-digital-shift-ad-dollars-evaporate/
Maybe SMB’s aren’t “wasting” their time on social at all.
February 29th, 2012 at 1:45 am
@building not if they do it right . . .