Social Media FAQs for Small businesses

After I delivered another successful workshop introducing some basic principles of social media to small business owners and managers, it occurred to me that there are some FAQs which keep rearing their heads in discussion. Social media is a buzz phrase at the minute and with any hot topic there are some really strong opinions being aired in the discussion. The most common point raised was "How do i find time to do all this as well as running my business, bringing up a family, walking the dog, putting food on the table etc?" 10 years ago I think people probably said the same about email... and now we can't live without checking it hourly at least. Its all about time management and the beauty of modern technology is that you dont even have to be sat at a computer to carry out your social media strategy. Mobile phones are the most popular way of "Tweeting" and within 2 years smartphones will be in the majority which makes this time-saving technology open to more people still.

Another common concern was "How do i protect my private life?" A lot of this comes down to common sense, in the same way that it would be pretty foolish to drive around with your mobile phone number in large digits on your car bonnet, so its sensible not to give away all your personal details on public social media sites. Sites like Facebook offer a variety of privacy settings that can be used to limit who sees what information so for example family photos can be reserved for viewing by selected friends only. Some bosses are wary about the implications of employees' raucous activities being published widely on the internet but no one will ever censor this completely. Instead a more open-minded view that perhaps it is best to know what employees are getting up to in their spare time rather than have them secretly getting into mischief could be a positive way forwards. Some people advocate the use of separate social media "identities" for private and professional life but I think this is rarely necessary. A small business owner or one man band in particular can use their social media "brand" to enhance their personal branding as this is a key part of the motivation of customers to buy - people buy from people they like after all.

Likewise there is always a question about "how do i get rid of negative comments and customer complaints - its not fair that these are published online." Think instead of how damaging customer complaints can be if they are spread solely by word of mouth but never raised to the business owner. While the initial shock of seeing a complaint in public is unpleasant for any hard-working business owner, at least we have the opportunity to address the issues raised, and respond with our improvement actions. Surely it is better to see these complaints for yourself by engaging with social media rather than ignoring the issue.