As an online store owner, your time may be consumed with updating your inventory and fulfilling orders. Your store management responsibilities are your first priority and blogging, tweeting and interacting via social networks seems like a fun idea, but you might not be convinced it’s the best business practice. We liked to challenge this notion and suggest that social media can be a worthwhile investment of your time. You can take a look at a recent article we wrote about the power of going social. Retail eCommerce is already making an introduction on social network Facebook (see Inside Facebook’s recent article). If you’re convinced that this is a good investment, let’s take your interest a step further and look at what you can do to make social media work for you.
It’s All About You
Before you start your Twitter account or create your Facebook Fan Page, take a moment to reflect on your branding strategy. Lock yourself in a room and don’t let yourself out until you’ve clearly defined who you are as a business and what makes your business unique. Consider how you fit into the marketplace against your competitors. There’s your simple and straight-forward branding strategy. We’ll return to this later to help guide our decision about which social media services to pursue. But let’s spend some more time reflecting on you and how you should approach social media.
Your Social Media Approach
Not everyone can be a Twitter rock star with thousands of followers and witty comments that whip the twittersphere into a frenzy. You should be much more realistic with your social media strategy. Wrapping the Internet around your finger is not your goal. In a vast network of users, the goal of social media is to simply create links between the nodes. In other words, your intent is to build meaningful relationships with other users. Anyone can achieve this goal of building relationships, but it may be helpful to pick an approach to your social media strategy that fits your style and your business goals. Let’s cover a few suggestions.
Be the Leader
An entrepreneur such as you may have some leadership qualities that can flourish in the right social networks. It’s seems natural that you should take on a leadership role in these communities by providing your insight and expertise. Or you may even carve out your very own community. For example, if you run a store that serves an obscure niche online, you may be able to lead this group by connecting them together. A great deal of information about forming online communities has been discussed within the sphere of social media itself. Take a look at Seth Godin’s blog post on leadership as a strategy.
Good Will Goes a Long Way
Aristotle defined one’s ability to be persuasive by several key attributes of their character (i.e., ethos—Wikipedia). Such characteristics are one’s phronesis, arête and eunoia—that’s Greek for wisdom, virtue and goodwill towards the audience. Are you someone who enjoys helping others? Social media is a perfect way for people to connect with other good people. Look for opportunities where your character can manifest in the social arena. You might be able to start a how-to blog with helpful demonstrations on a particular subject relating to your store. Or, join a forum or social network group in support of a charity. For example, if you run a store the sells pet products, you might create a blog on dog grooming or join a forum for your local Humane Society.
Be Yourself
Another wise philosopher had this to say:
“Here’s some simple advice: Always be yourself, never take yourself too seriously and beware of advice from experts, pigs, and members of Parliament.”
-Kermit the Frog
While being a leader and being virtuous are great qualities, make sure you “keep it real” and be yourself. There are thousands of smart, helpful people online, but there is only one you. Use this to your advantage.
As you build your identity online, you’ll find that you may use all of these approaches at times.
Your Social Media Mix
Connecting your business goals to the needs of your customers will help you define what social media services to use and how to use them. Here are a few tips that will make the social media selection easier.
Find Your Niche
There’s a good chance your customers are already out there, socializing with other users, huddling around a forum, blog, or what have you, and geeking out. Your first task is to find these places and join the party. Be a good listener and see if this community would benefit from your participation. Start out by looking at Facebook and MySpace. These are the two most prominent social networks. You may find another social network that is more popular in your region or industry. Do a Google search or ask someone you know if they belong to any social networks or forums. You might be surprised at what you’ll find.
Build Your Own Niche
If you haven’t found the right network, you might consider starting your own. Social networking platform Ning is a popular choice for leaders of small niches. This might be your best choice if you want to create a unique social network experience. You can also create your own forum, or group within a social network. You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. Find some friends who share a common interest that relates to your store and start that group together.
Engage and Contribute
These days everyone has a Twitter account [http://twitter.com/]. Twitter has become more common than business cards or so it seems. Many influential people are on Twitter and it is likely there are at least a few in your field already there. Start a Twitter account and do a keyword search to find out who has influence. Follow these people, read their tweets and learn about how the whole system works. It may seem like you’ve landed on another planet, but it won’t take long to assimilate. Get started now and follow our Twitter account.
Blogs are another great social medium that influencers use to connect to their audience. You can use Technorati to search for keywords and find blogs within certain categories. If you find a blog that covers your field, add their RSS feed to your RSS reader. Read their posts, find out what topics attract “buzz” (the number of comments on a post is a good signifier). Feel free to engage in the discussion and leave comments too. Get started by subscribing to our RSS Feed by clicking on the orange Subscribe icon at the top-right corner of this page. And, consider starting your own blog with Blogger, WordPress, Live Journal, TypePad or another service. You may want to consider adding your blog to a subdomain of your custom store domain (if you have one). For example, you could have a blog at blog.mydomain.com and your storefront on mydomain.com or you could put your blog on mydomain.com and the store on store.mydomain.com. Then, build links between the two web properties.
The most important aspect to social media is contributing. After you’ve found these relevant communities, start interfacing with the influencers, participants and critics. Reflect on your branding strategy, find your approach and run with it. Don’t expect overnight success. The traffic you pull onto your storefront will not be very profitable at first. As you build more and more valuable relationships within your field, you’ll see greater returns in time. As an added benefit, you’ll also be at the forefront of your industry, learning about trends and perhaps starting a few of your own. You might find yourself becoming social media rock star with a following of your own. Just remember to not let it go to your head.
Where Are You?
Leave us a comment if you’re on Twitter or have your own blog. We’d love to make a connection with you!
