Yesterday, I attended the Liberteks Smalbany 5th Annual Small Business day at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. I was invited to be a Guest VIP Blogger and take some pictures for the event. I didn’t get to take many pictures, but I did get to sit in on some pretty good seminars about how social media can help grow your business.
I was going to sit down and write a long, drawn out blog series about what was said, by whom in each seminar. I decided against that, because almost everyone said the exact same thing:
Your business needs to be active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
As someone who has been using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for a few years, this was not news to me. For those looking to drive more traffic to their company, this was an excellent place to spend the day learning how the web can work for you. It was nice to see that these methods have been effective for many other businesses and continue to drive business to their sites.
I wanted to highlight some of the key parts of the seminars that I thought would be of importance to my readers and keep this from being a novel that no one wants to finish. So, here are some of the best parts, in my opinion, of course.
The first speaker I heard from was Lisbeth Calandrino. She was full of spunk and looked nothing like her claimed age of 70. Lisbeth told us that being partners with your customers is a must. She also mentioned that Sam’s club asked their small business customers what they need to stay in business, and they replied “money”.
Lydia Kulbida led a panel of bloggers and also offered a very important piece of advice for using online media to sell your product – Read it out loud to yourself. Would you want to buy it? Great advice. Plus, she like LOST, so she’s OK in my book!
Mary Darcy from All Over Albany backed this theory up by saying “would you tell this to someone else?” I really enjoyed Mary’s feedback on how she gets information to post on the AOA blog. I wish she had more time to talk, as it was not only informative, but very interesting.
Mike Huber led a panel called Local Social Media and Your Customers. He asked about blogging and tweeting – why would you want to do it, and why would people care? Sonya Stark said to create lists. People love lists. Lisa D’Aquanni and Vic Christopher shared some great information about blogging and what it can do for your business.
My favorite panelist was Rev. Al Rudnick. I am not huge on religion, but he explained how people are using Twitter and Facebook during church and how they encourage it. They even project it on a large screen so people can see it and participate. I think I will try this on Sunday. I bet the people in our church wont be as accepting…
Rhea Drysdale from Outspoken Media put on a great presentation about the Mobile revolution. She detailed how Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare play a huge part in the mobile arena. Rhea mentioned that you should protect your brand. Make sure you get your company name on every outlet you can.
Alexis Grant (@AlexisGrant) held a great seminar about Using Social Media For Your Job Hunt. She recommended three ways to make the web work for you;
Facebook – They are more likely to help you because you are already friends.
Twitter – Network outside of your friends. Prove yourself as an expert. Make connections with companies and employers. Connect with people through Twitter that you might have been too intimidated to talk to at a job fair.
I think this event was a huge success. It offered many great ways to promote your small business with social media. Thanks to Tim Cronin and Larry Zimbler for letting me be a part of this event. I hope to participate again next year.
For developing business and professional profiles, LinkedIn is fantastic. I often hear people say that they prefer Facebook because it is more interactive and better for networking. In some ways LinkedIn is more static, but it is the perfect complementer to Facebook.
Mike,
Thanks for your participation @ smalbany — text and photos.
I agree will your summary that every small business should be using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others, but they have to find the right mix to cultivate and profit from their customers. I think we got some great ideas from some great speakers at smalbany.
Tweeting at church! How about that…
Good to meet you, stay in touch.
Tim Cronin
Communication Concepts
Where can I put the photos? Is there a Smalbany group on Flickr that will allow me to upload them?
Let me find out. I’ll get back to you.
Thanks for the shout out!
Not a problem!
I think the key to these new social networking is a small word that gets overlooked; “ACTIVE”. If you start providing updates via Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc you’ve GOT to stay active. You’ve got to *actively* provide updates for these technologies to work for you. Thanks to the way RSS feeds work its your online activity that will generate traffic. If your company didn’t have time to update it’s webpage, don’t event bother blogging; the content will become stale and no one will come back.
But remember all this activity comes at a price. WHO in your company is going to post on Facebook or send that tweet? Decide BEFORE you sign up for the service. Depending on the size of the company it may be easy to integrate into your daily routine or for others (especially those with limited tech-savvy people) you may have to actually expend some time training.
Dan – I agree 100% and that is a point I shared with some people. I know of a few companies that have a blog or twitter account and never use them. One is a car dealer we know personally that actually pays a kid to do his Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter account has maybe 12 followers/following and has 10 tweets. That is pathetic. What is this person doing. Said dealer also paid good money for a commercial that says ‘find me on twitter’. Ok, we found you. Now say something.
Precisely. True or not, web inactivity always makes wonder how responsive and dedicated the company is to my needs as a customer. If they’re incapable of updating a webpage or social network tool, how up to date are they with their primary service?