YES is the short answer. But the longer answer is WHICH social media is right for my business.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE social media. And, personally, I especially love twitter. For so many reasons {and I might blog some of these another time}.

BUT, not all forms of social media are right for all businesses. There. I’ve said it. And you DID read that correctly.

However I firmly believe that at least one form of social media is right for every business. You just have to work out which one is right for you. Just like not everyone can wear red – not all businesses are right for Facebook!

Social media today takes many forms with the best known being:

• Facebook – Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Over 10m users in Australia, over 500m worldwide
• Twitter – 140 characters to tell your followers what’s happening
• YouTube – video sharing site, 2nd largest search engine after Google
• LinkedIn – often called Facebook for business, but soooo much more than that!
• Blogging – allows users to post their opinions, thoughts or comments on a website, that others can then comment on.

Many organisations with little social media knowledge are overwhelmed by choice. Which is expected when faced with something new. My advice is:

• pick 1 form of social media and start with it
• once you are comfortable with that, then pick a 2nd and use it
• then pick a 3rd form etc etc.

However, as I said, not all social media is right for all businesses. Before deciding how to venture out, you need to look at:

• who your target market is – what social media do they use?
• how much time and money do you have? While in theory social media is free, it does take time. And if you use YouTube there may be some costs associated with getting a video camera and some basic editing software (although if you have an iPhone and a Mac you’ll be sorted for basic video)
• who is going to look after your social media? Pick someone who wants to do it and make sure they do it consistently
• if you are a small business or a sole operator, then what suits your personality? If you hate writing, blogging is probably not for you. If you are fairly time poor then twitter will be a great option as it takes just a couple of minutes a few times a day to find out what is going on and post updates. If your business is very hands on or visual then look at posting video blogs to YouTube.
• if your business needs a lot of customers to keep it going (maybe it’s a product or a shop or a restaurant) then look at how you can set up a Facebook business page.

The other ESSENTIAL thing you need to consider when starting out with social media is how you can incorporate it into your existing marketing activities. Facebook and twitter are tools to help with  your marketing. Not stand-alone strategies. You should weave its use into your goals and objectives, key messages and evaluate how they are working for you.

And once you decide to go down the social media path make sure you incorporate the urls of all your social media in your traditional marketing (such as on brochures/websites, stickers on products, point of sale materials and in your email signature).

What is your social media tool of choice? And why?

I sat down last night to pull a few stats together and to reflect on the emotions of the last 10 days. Of course I’m talking about the phenomenon that has become Baked Relief (or #bakedrelief if you are following on twitter).

My personal involvement began on Tuesday 11 January 2011 when my hubby called at 9am to say his office was being evacuated in preparation of the floods that were due to hit Brisbane from the following day. I popped along to the shops to stock up on a few essentials – extra milk, more fruit and veg, and some ingredients to bake a couple of chocolate cakes, sausage rolls and a few sandwiches to help feed some of the volunteers that I knew would be helping with preparations to stem the flow of the rising river.

Wednesday 12 January 2011 – hubby {Shaun Leck} popped along to help fill sandbags to fill sandbags at our local Council Depot, and landed his first media appearance – an interview in the Age.

Since then Baked Relief has exploded. My friend Danielle first used the twitter hashtag #bakedrelief on Tuesday 11 January and blogged about it on http://digella.blogspot.com. Offers of help and baking have come flooding in {couldn’t resist that one }.

Baked Relief is now providing food to thousands of people, including those that were flood affected; Volunteering QLD; the SES; QLD Police, Fire & Ambulance workers; the military helping clean up; and so many others who are helping with the massive clean up.

To me Baked Relief symbolises what can happen when the power of social media comes into play. Primarily due to the reach and influence of twitter, facebook and blogs, support has been generated, sponsors have come forward, money has been donated and people have been fed. Would this have happened without social media? Yes, of course it would have. Would it have happened with the same speed and volume, now that’s highly unlikely.

Baked Relief quickly crossed over from social media to mainstream media, with mainstream media picking up the story and first mentioning Baked Relief on Sunday 16 January 2011. This generated an increased number of people getting involved {and a HUGE increase in emails in my in-box as people wanted to know HOW they could help}.

The Baked Relief website was launched on Monday 17 January and had just under 2,500 hits in its first 12 hours.

I also launched the Adopt-a-family program on my food blog, The Cook’s Notebook, on Monday 17 January and we have had nearly 300 families already volunteer to help feed a flood affected family for possibly up to a year! We have now partnered with Flood Aid to coordinate this program.

A few stats (as of Thursday 20 January) and other interesting things about Baked Relief:

• Baked Relief has had significant national media coverage with 5 print articles and 14 interviews on radio and television, including the high rating national breakfast TV show, The Today Show (you can watch us at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/video.aspx?videoid=82710eac-1c30-4790-bcb5-45170616ef55)
• Countless blog mentions and web-posts
• 4,230 mentions on Google when you search on #bakedrelief
• Thousands of facebook and twitter mentions
• Reached #2 in trending hashtags in Australia on Tuesday 18 January (on previous days was #3, #4, #5
• While we haven’t been able to effectively measure how many people are baking for Baked Relief but we assume it’s at least 1,000 in South East Queensland (not just Brisbane). It’s grown too organically for us to count!
• People are driving from over 2 hours away to deliver food, and we know of at least one group (Funky Pies) who drove up from Sydney (about 1,000km and 12 hour drive) to deliver their pies to people working at Volunteering Queensland, Queensland Police and an evacuation centre.

Baked Relief is changing the way people are using social media – and in particular twitter. Yesterday I tweeted “I wonder how many people have signed up to twitter just because of #bakedrelief”. About 20 people replied saying that they had either joined twitter SOLELY because of Baked Relief or they joined ages ago and are now only actually using it actively because of Baked Relief. WOW.

Yesterday I also tweeted social media guru David Meerman Scott to alert him to the real-time communication that led to such a massive response for Baked Relief. When he messaged me back to say he’d love to blog about it I danced around the car park I was in at the time! My excitement was off the scale! Read David’s blog. And THANK YOU David!! I hope I can buy you a beer when you are in Brisbane in April.

For more information on Baked Relief or how you can contribute go to www.bakedrelief.org.

I am often asked by clients, friends and colleagues what the best way is to increase their fee, without alienating or losing the client. There is no easy way to increase your fee, especially if you charge an hourly rate or a standard fee for service, and it is obvious to your client that you have increased it!

My recommended way - and this does depend a bit on the type of business you have and your relationships with your clients - is to send your client an email or a letter spelling out that the fee is increasing, by how much, when it takes effect, and why you are increasing it. Then, depending on the client (and this includes how many clients you have, how much business they give you and your personal relationship with them), follow up with a phone call, or raise the subject when you next meet with them.

Below is an excerpt of an email I sent to a client a little while ago:

Given the increase in costs I have had over the last 12 months, I have unfortunately had to increase my fees. You will be aware that this is my first fee increase in over two years. Please be advised that my hourly rate for [your company] is now $xx per hour plus GST. This will take effect from [date - at least one month or one billing period from the date of correspondence].  Thank you again for your support over the last year. I look forward to continuing to work with you.

My client’s immediate reply was: No problem you are still worth every cent! And thanks again for all your glorious work

However if that hadn’t been the reply, and if my client had complained, I would have sat down with my client and reminded him of the value I provided to his business (with actual outcomes).

This blog post has been prompted by an email I received this morning that has left a nasty taste in my mouth. It was a somewhat abrupt email from the accountant of a person I engage on a regular basis to provide a service (and no, I’m not going to name names, because despite the execution, this person is also a friend). Given the nature of our relationship, combined with our regular communication (I am in regular email, twitter and phone coversation with this person) I was a bit shocked. I was also disappointed, for the following reasons:

• the email came from the accountant and said that if I had any concerns I should talk to the accountant, not the owner of the company, who is also the person I have the relationship with
• it was a group email (fine) but all the recipients were listed in the TO box (not fine) without any of us being BCC’d – I have major issues with this from a privacy perspective
• there were only 9 of us – why not email us individually or discuss in person or, better yet, send the email from the business owner.

I fully understand that business needs to increase fees over time, and I have no problem with that. But what gets me is the execution. It’s making me feel that my business, and my money, isn’t valued.

I’d love to hear how you inform clients of a fee increase. Or if you have had particularly good – or bad – experiences.

As I was tweeting about a very bad customer service experience at dinner on Saturday night, it struck me that customer service is even more important than ever in this era of social media and mobile technology.

With the growing popularity of smartphones combined with the massive increase in the use of social media (twitter, facebook etc), businesses really need to make sure they are up to scratch, otherwise they could see themselves splashed on the first page of a Google search for all the wrong reasons.

Recently released research from Nielsen shows that over 43% of online Australians now own a Smartphone (such as an iPhone or a Blackberry) and that mobile social networking has increased significantly in the last 12 months.  Nielsen’s report found that 26% of social networkers participated in mobile social networking in the past year. Facebook is the most popular social networking site accessed via a mobile (92% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook), followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%).

However, more than half of Twitter’s mobile users visited the site daily, and 36% of Facebook mobiles users visit its site daily. And this doesn’t include the use of third party sites such as Twitterberry or Tweetdeck or any of the others available for mobile devices.

So as a business owner, think about what this means in terms of getting immediate feedback. While it’s great when you provide excellent service, think of the potential damage to your brand if your customers tweet about what they really think when you fail. Particularly if the person tweeting has a lot of followers.

When do you tweet about a good – or bad – experience?

So far my two networking posts have been about going out to networking functions. While I LOVE networking face to face, and meeting new people, I find that these days I tend to do even more networking from my desk. How you ask? Well mostly via Twitter and LinkedIn.

The basic principles are the same – you connect with people, build a relationship, share ideas, thoughts, referrals and maybe one day do business together.

What I love about using Twitter and LinkedIn for networking is:

• it’s not restricted to my desk – I can network anywhere – as long as I have my laptop or blackberry
• I don’t need to make myself look “presentable” – you know, hair, makeup, clean and ironed clothes – I can network in my PJs. Or my stinky gym clothes. And I often do
• I can share things with people that are harder to share face to face – such as links to my blog, photos, links to interesting articles
• it doesn’t cost anything except a bit of time (I especially love not getting stuck in traffic!)
• it’s easier to find out more information about people, and more quickly, then a 5 minute chat at a networking function can offer - just think of all that extra info on LinkedIn and Twitter – reams of information about their personality, other followers and connections (which can say a lot about a person), and of course business and personal interests.

So how much do you network from your desk? And what do you love most about it?

So now that you have chosen which networking events to go to, how are you going to make sure you get the most out of it? There are a few things that I do:

1. Take LOTS of business cards – there is nothing more frustrating than meeting someone interesting and having to rely on them to contact you because THEY don’t have a card. Don’t be one of those people. Please.

2. Have a plan. Depending on the type of event, I generally plan to meet – and have a conversation with – a specific number of people. It might be 1, it might be 10. The actual number depends on how much time will be allocated for networking, the format of the event and my mood at the time! Try and have a look at the attendee list so you can see who will be there and where they are from – this can help you can target specific people.

3. Don’t just hang around with your friends. Presumably you have gone to a networking event to network. So go and meet people!

4. Try and learn something about the people you meet. Don’t just fling around as many cards around as you can!  You are better off meeting five people and finding out something about them so that a relationship can be established, rather than “meeting” 25 people you just give a card to. Be genuine about who you are when you are talking to people. Show interest in who they are and what they do. It’s not ALL about you!

5. Followup within a day or so. This can be as simple as sending an email saying you enjoyed meeting them. Or perhaps sending an interesting article you found that is about something they are interested in. Don’t send them reams of information about your business and how you want to work with them – unless they asked for it.

6. Don’t drink too much alcohol at a networking or industry function. It doesn’t take much to ruin a hard-earned reputation. 

7. Have fun!  

What do you do to make the most out of networking events?

I thought I would write a top 10 list of low cost marketing ideas, but couldn’t work out which one to delete!

1.      Have a marketing plan

• It doesn’t need to be sophisticated but should at least include: marketing/business objectives, target market, key messages, communication tactics appropriate for your target market, budget, action plan, evaluation mechanisms
• Make sure your marketing is regular and consistent – this way you won’t be caught out during slower times.
• Evaluate what you do so you can see what works and what doesn’t. If your marketing is not working then look at how you can change and improve it.
• Download my simple marketing plan template

2.      Know who your target market is

• Know WHO your target market is as well as where they go to get information, so you can more precisely deliver the messages to the consumer – no point advertising in a golfing magazine if you are selling cricket bats – for example. This can save you a lot of money as you are not spending it on marketing to the wrong people.

3.     Use your networks and contacts

• The more people who know what you do, the more likely they are to refer business to you – so get out there and talk to people, and ask your networks to talk about you (in a good way of course!).

4.     Business cards

• As far as I am concerned, these are the best marketing tool you can have – low cost or otherwise. Include your name, contact details, website, consider including twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, brief description of your business. Use both sides of it. And give them away often. 

5.     It’s cheaper to market to your existing customers than to get new ones

• Think about the work you are currently doing for your customers – now think about what else you can do for them. Can you work with them on a more permanent basis? Are there other people in their business you can work with? Can you develop a new product or service that will suit them?
• Are your current clients aware of all the services/products you provide? If not, then tell them!

 6.     Get a website

• It amazes me how many businesses don’t have a website. There is really no excuse, particularly with so much free software such as WordPress or Blogger available to start a simple site. Even a 1 page site with a brief statement about what your business is and how people can contact you is better than nothing.
• Promote your website on everything include email signatures, brochures, gimmicky give-aways, business cards and anything else you can think of.

7.     Email marketing

• Sending an email is far cheaper than posting a letter – in terms of dollars and your time. It can also generate faster responses and results.
• BE AWARE OF THE SPAM LEGISLATION. Find out more at www.acma.gov.au

8.     Media and publicity

• Work out your story – if it is newsworthy, journos will want to talk to you.
• Local and community newspapers/radio/tv are also always on the lookout for local interest stories, and trade mags often look for industry information.

9.     Say thank you!

• Be sure to thank your customers, thank the people who refer business to you and thank your suppliers. A bit of gratitude can go a long way in business.

10.  Social media

The benefits of engaging in social media – such as twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube etc inlcude:

• increase your visibility and target your niche market
• build relationships and communities by engaging in conversations with current and prospective clients and suppliers
• share business tips and find business contacts
• follow interesting people who might give you business ideas
• share and discuss business ideas and useful information including web links and photos
• show the human side of your business.

11.  Use the free resources available to you

• There is a massive amount of information on the web (type “cheap marketing ideas” into Google). 
• Go to the library and check out marketing (and other business) books.

Online useful resources are: 

• www.flyingsolo.com.au – free weekly e-newsletter for soloists and small business
• www.sourcebottle.com.au – free subscription service that emails ‘call outs’ for sources from journalists and bloggers

What are your low cost marketing tips?