It’s no wonder that many of them haven’t decided whether try to find new customers through social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

These online destinations don’t do a great job of allowing for direct marketing opportunities (although Facebook does offer its own advertising service), and they often seem dominated by Fortune 500 competitors, celebrity self-promoters, and a small army of men and women who spend their days immersed in online marketing. So, does social media really matter to small businesses?

Our answer would be that social media especially matters to small businesses.

The reason is simple: from marketing perspective, the advantage of using social networking sites is that you get a chance to cut through the clutter – that is, the normal course of “corporate speak” that so many people have gotten to be so tired of. People don’t go to social networking sites to read ads or press releases; they want to stay in touch with friends, make contact with vendors and professionals who can help them one-on-one, and just be entertained. These are all areas where small businesses have enormous competitive advantages over their corporate counterparts.

If you have yet to make social networking a part of your small businesses marketing strategy, here are a few tips to help you get started, and to compete with the bigger players:

Be people, not organizations. Lots of people want to be friends with you, but few are interested in joining up with a faceless organization. Make sure your social profiles emphasize the people in your company and encourage customers to get to know them. You’ll be able to make a lot more progress if users feel like they’re reaching another human, not a marketing or customer service department.

Develop a brand and voice. Really, this comes down to fun. If what you say, post, and share is entertaining, people are going to come back. Make a habit of finding something funny, or at least offering a message with some insight. Pretty soon, these will become a part of your brand, a voice that other social media users will look forward to hearing.

Start slowly, but move consistently. There’s no reason to turn your company upside down if you just want to dip your toe in the social networking tool. There’s nothing wrong with setting up a few profiles, devoting 10 minutes a day to making contacts and updating messages, and seeing what happens. Just make sure that you get started, and don’t let your activity drop off completely. Social networking sites thrive on going conversations, so don’t go long stretches without saying anything.

Whisper your marketing message. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are no places to go shouting about your low, low prices or some other special. Instead, use these forums to have a little fun, share some insight and advice, and ever so quietly mention once in a while that you or your products are available. If the rest of what you have to say is interesting enough, people will take notice and respond accordingly.

Integrate social media into your overall marketing plan. One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes we see – in companies of all sizes – is using those sites in a vacuum. There’s nothing wrong with hoping your online profiles and messages will bring you new customers and clients; but make sure that what you’re doing and saying this supporting other things you have going on, as well. If you frequently have sales at your retail locations, mention them online (but again, without resorting to straight advertising.) Or, if your normal way of finding business is through business journal columns, be sure to mention them on social networking sites. The point is that everything you do, online and off, should be pointing in the same direction.

Social media sites are one of those places where small businesses have a distinct advantage over large ones. Follow these tips, use your online profiles and messages to support your other activities, and you’ll soon begin to see why.

Why Won’t You Help Me?

Great example of the Bystander Effect (source: carbonsmart)

A couple of teenagers start a fight in the hallway at school. We’ve all been in this situation, whether we were a part of the fight or we were witness to it. How many people do you think will intervene and break up the fight? Very few. More often than not, others willl group around and witness the fight unfold before their eyes. We’ve all been there at some point in our life.

The Bystander Effect refers to the phenomenon in which the likelihood of someone acting upon an emergency situation will decrease if the number of people around the situation is larger.

(Source: psychology.about.com)

Videos are posted all over the Internet about experiments and even real-life situations caught on camera where people simply ignore distress calls. At first, you probably would laugh at the situation but in reality it is pretty sad how we are hardwired to react a certain way based on our surroundings.

Why do we ignore? Put simply, it’s a matter of trying to fit in with the crowd. If everybody else is just watching and not doing anything, therefore, I should act like them to fit in with the social norm.

A study on the bystander effect, Markey (2000) tested how it played a role in getting help online through a chat service. Markey had three primary goals:

1. Would gender determine the response time in receiving help?
2. Does the amount of people needing help affect the response time?
3. By asking help from a specific individual, would it decrease the response time?

The results validated the bystander effect by proving all three questions. Gender did not have a distinctive effect on response time. The larger the number of people in the chat room increased the response time per person. By asking someone specific for help, the response time was rapidly reduced (as if nobody else were in the chat room).

Only 5 to 10 percent of the population engages in behavior contrary to the social norm. Because we want to fit into these groups and maintain our membership with them, we conform our actions to the norm.

The bystander effect is a great way to show the power of social validation. We tend to do what we think is best to fit in with the crowd, regardless of the situation.

Online Shopping

Shopping online is becoming more popular each and every day. It’s more convenient, cost less, and with websites becoming more focused on usability, it is much easier! The real challenge is the actual shopping itself.

Questions start to come into play, such as:

• What do I buy?
• What color?
• Which model?
• Will my friends like me if I wear this shirt?

Online shopping is a great example of how powerful social validation can be. Websites that allow user feedback or shopping statistics can provide a great experience for both the business as well as potential customers. It is used as a tool to reinforce their purchase.

People look to others to decide what they should do. This is especially true when they are uncertain about whether or what action to take.

(Source: Neuro Web Design (2009), Dr. Susan Weinschenk)

Make It All About The User

So what are some ways to enhance the user experience for online shoppers? Here are just a few that come to my mind and should be relatively easy to implement:

• Product ratings
  These are typically a 5-star scale, ranging from 1- Not Good to 5- Highly Recommend. They are straight to the point and are based on the collective average.
• Product reviews
  Whether they are from professionals or from actual customers, product reviews can provide a more qualitative analysis of a product. Users will listen more to those who appear to be in a similar lifestyle as them. Therefore, product reviews that relate more closely to the user’s use of the product will have a better effect.
• Similar products
  When looking at products on a site, it can be beneficial to see a list of similar products. In a store environment, you would expect similar products to be grouped and placed in the same location. Why not mimic that for the web? By doing so, you allow your users to seamlessly flow between similar products without having to backtrack or go through the search process all over again.

Hey Which Game Would You Buy?

Highly rated game and was highly well sold worldwide (source: RockStar)

Let’s take video games for example. I personally go out and buy the latest and greatest video games on the market. I have my sources online that I go to daily and read up about the upcoming games. This is my strategy for figuring out whether my investments will be worth it in the end. After all, spending $60 per game adds up rather quickly. So when these games get reviewed (most get a review within a few days of its release date), I’ll read it and decide whether the game is going to provide me with an amazing experience. I am putting my trust on my sources. If my sources unanimously say that a game is amazing (i.e. Grand Theft Auto 4), then I will go out and buy that game. About 9 times out of 10 my sources are correct. I like those odds. In today’s economy, every dollar counts and I want to ensure that I am making a great purchase – every time.

My strategy not only works for games, but it works for other big purchases, like a TV, surround sound, car, etc. People rely on others’ opinions in order to make an informed decision.

Your Opinion Matters

Amazon’s products have two very valuable pieces of information on their website: user ratings and similar products. As an online shopper, I find this very helpful when making a decision in buying a product. Most of the time, I’ll focus on why a product is necessarily bad rather than why it is good. It could be the functionality, the photo of the product was misleading, or the materials were below expectations. I like to do my research beforehand when buying stuff online. I’ll check professional reviews, read the product description on the manufacturer’s website, etc. I’ll know beforehand why it appears to be awesome. By reading what users rated and said about the product, I can filter out and find information that I want to know: reasons why I should not buy this product. Of course it is up to me to determine the validity of this information.

How many times have we gone to the iTunes Store with the intention of buying just one or two songs and ended up downloading entire albums? Sounds good to Apple, but not so helpful on the wallet. Happens to me all the time. Not only is iTunes addicting to media lovers, but Apple now uses meta information in which it uses to suggest similar media (music, apps, videos, etc.) that pertain to your collection. This information organizes their media by tags, such as most downloaded, highest rated, similar genres, etc. Having this information at your fingertips is helpful – or hurtful, depending on which way you look at it.

Related Articles

• 6 Things Video Games Can Teach Us About Web Usability
• Don’t Blink! You’ve Got 50ms to Impress Me
• Hierarchy of Consumer Needs for a Product

Time to Speak Out!

Social validation is hard at work in many ways. Ever feel pressured to buy something because everybody else has one? Did you grow up trying to be like one of the popular kids in school?

This topic doesn’t end here today. I open it up to you guys. Got any stories about how social validation has helped or hurt you in a given situation?

Social networking sites started with a simple concept: people want (need) to stay connected. Can you say what you need to say in 140 characters or less? Or do you pick up the phone and potentially have a 30 minute conversation? As they say, time is money. Back in the day, texts were just used for grocery reminders “need milk” but now they’re used for fairly personal concepts like “Happy Birthday!” When you care enough to “text” the very best (Hallmark). Hey, at least some contact is better than none, right? Facebook has a similar attribute, you can do a quick drive-by on your old childhood friend’s page and say “Hello” without the obligation of waiting for a response. That’s the great thing about social networking you aren’t committed to the conversation. It’s a way to contribute and have a one-way conversation. Really it’s a form of broadcasting. It’s an efficient way of saying what you need to say without all the fat.

The same holds true for businesses using social networking to stay in touch with their base. In a case where you are using Twitter, there’s a competitive advantage when you can share your message and reach a qualified audience very quickly. For example, you “tweet” an article to your group of followers. It can then compound very quickly if it just gets “re-tweeted” once or twice by your followers’ followers. It can spread like wildfire. I should mention this only works when you have something to say that’s worth sharing.

I feel digital forms of communication aren’t directly replacing verbal forms of communication, because they are filling a gap that wasn’t widely used before their inception. People don’t verbally communicate in fragments (only if you’re a robot) like you would in a text or an instant message. People don’t call to share articles or blog posts they are reading. If anything social media has allowed phone or face-to-face conversations to be much more meaningful. They hold much more weight when you take the time to pick up the phone and invest in the conversation.

An email, text, or tweet can’t share tone of the message or inflection of their voice, they can’t tell you if the person is happy or sad (regardless of smiley face options available). That’s why social networking sites won’t ever replace in-person or phone communication because they are fragmented thoughts and can only occupy one dimension of a conversation. But what they do well is they allow you to stay in touch with a large mass of people without the commitment.

I can presume I’ll have a different viewpoint when video chatting becomes much more prevalent.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, actually spoke up, and spoke out about all these rumors that have been flooding the news blogs as of late, and it looks like the short answer is this:  Twitter is not for sale…yet.  Here’s what Stone had to say:

“We’re really optimistic about becoming a successful profitable independent company and we believe there’s high potential here. That’s something we really want to see through.”

See it through they will, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always be that “profitable independent company.” He mentioned that he would be very interested in some sort of partnership with Google as currently they do all search-engine operations in-house using a company they acquired last year, Summize.

On top of all this, is the importance in making Twitter better for businesses, and helping businesses become more profitable.  That has been the goal of Twitter for quite some time, and if and when that occurs, I think their “worth” will go up even further.  Nevetheless, Twitter remains not for sale…for now.

The bottom line is, the time is now to start incorporating social media into your business.  We just stumbled on an article that highlights not only how big social media is getting, but why you should be getting big with it.  Did you know, as of the end of 2008, there were over 300 social networking sites according to some reports? Did you know some average as many as 200 million unique users a month?

The fact that businesses of all kinds are jumping on board is not surprising.  According to reports:

“An overwhelming majority (93 percent) of online Americans say companies should have a social-media presence, and 85 percent believe these companies also should be interacting with consumers through social media, according to research from Cone, writes MarketingCharts.”

Ninety-three percent of online Americans all can’t be wrong.  The good news is, it’s not hard to at least incorporate some social networking or social media into your business plan.  Many are free, easy to use and require minimal upkeep to stay connected with those that visit the pages.  I think the question you should be asking yourself isn’t whether or not you should start doing it, rather, the question is, what are you waiting for?