Social Media & Small Business
via EMarketer
Most small businesses satisfied with results. A difficult economy has helped spur small businesses to adopt social media marketing in greater numbers, according to “The State of Small Business Report” from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. Social media usage increased to 24%, from 12% the year before. The most common usage of social media among small business was a company page on a social networking site, followed by posting status updates.
Small businesses’ expectations of social media seem roughly to be in line with their experiences, although they are not quite as successful as they had hoped. Respondents’ top accomplishments were customer acquisition and placing their own businesses within the market, but did not meet expectations fully. Social media’s capabilities for staying engaged with consumers and collaborating with other businesses, however, were more in line with businesses’ expectations.
Most small businesses say they are just breaking even with their current usage of social media, but a solid one-fifth find it profitable already. Businesses are positive about the potential as well: Nearly one-half believe it will make them money in the next 12 months, and another 39% think they will break even on it. Just 9% think social marketing will continue to be a losing proposition.
Overall, 58% of respondents felt social media lived up to their expectations. One-half felt it took up more time than they realized, but only 6% claimed negative comments on social media had hurt their business. “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service,” said Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service, in a statement. “Time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.” Previous research on small businesses and social media use revealed a somewhat rocky relationship. A Citibank study indicated social media was not working well for small businesses’ lead gen efforts, but other data showed small companies would be upping spending in the channel.
Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners’ Time
via BusinessWeek
YouTube (GOOG). Flickr (YHOO). Digg. Metacafe. Stumbleupon. Technorati. Del.icio.us. Kaboodle. Fark. Furl. Swik. Mixx. Are social media tools like these the future or simply new ways to waste time? Can’t we slow this train down?
Unfortunately, we can’t. But if you think about it, we don’t want to either. The Web is a vital source of innovation, and it levels the playing field between small businesses and corporate giants. The only problem is keeping up with the pace of its rapid (some would say rabid) advances. Taking advantage of all the Web has to offer is like eating your vegetables or getting exercise—most of us don’t do enough, and even those that do could always do more.
The first thing I want to encourage you to do is relax. Take a deep breath and release that tightness in your chest. This column isn’t about making you feel stupid for not knowing what Reddit.com is, or chastising you for not having three extra hours a day to spend tweeting and blogging. I simply want to encourage you to get started. (For background on social media, check out this story.)
The Price Is Right
Activity in this universe has thus far been dominated by innovators and early adopters. But now that the early majority is getting in the game (with the late majority right on their heels), the numbers are starting to swell. Facebook, the most popular of the social media sites, has nearly 200 million users worldwide. LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals, and more than 30 million of us have signed up. And Twitter—not even three years old—tracks thousands upon thousands of instant message “tweets” every day. That spells significant opportunity—whether your customers live around the world or across the street, you can find a lot of them online.
The biggest reason to use social media is that it’s free. You can be a significant player online without laying out any cash, and in this economic environment cash is king more than ever. It does take time, though, and in business time is money. But getting up to speed on social media is like learning to ride a bike; it’s difficult and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it you can get where you want to go quickly—and even enjoy the ride.
Think back 15 years or so, to when you first heard of the term “Web site.” Your first thought was probably “What’s a Web site?” quickly followed by “Why would I ever need one of those?” Now, of course, some of the tiniest mom-and-pop shops in the farthest corners of the world do business on the Web. You probably had the same reaction when you first discovered blogs, text messaging, and even e-mail. Many of today’s flavor-of-the-month social networking sites will go the way of the dinosaur, but the medium is here to stay.
Jump Right In
The key to getting on top of social media is not investing a fortune on expensive new initiatives. They key is to get your hands dirty. Pick a site, find a spare hour or two, and sign up. Experience it as a user, and observe how others are using the site. Only in doing that can you come to understand not only how it works, but how it might relate to your company. As outlandish as it may appear at first, there’s probably an application of it for your business.
Let me give you an example. I’m not an early adopter, but I do have a Web site and blog, I use text messaging frequently, and have Facebook and LinkedIn networks. I had been hearing a great deal about Twitter, so I decided to spend part of a recent weekend getting up to speed on it. At first I was lost, but before long I figured out what the community was about and how I wanted to develop my network. I even made a business connection my very first day that made the investment of time more than worthwhile.
Interestingly, I found that, unlike me, most of the people now on Twitter would fit the “early adopter” category; when I searched for a wide variety of clients and other professional colleagues, most of them weren’t there yet. But with that small investment of time, I now have one more social networking tool in my repertoire. And I now know how to fit it into my business practice in a way that isn’t overwhelming or intimidating.
Dividends Within Weeks
If you were to take on, say, one social networking site per month, by the end of ’09 you would be ahead of 90% or more of your peers (and your competitors). And it would have the added benefit of helping you relate to the emerging workforce for whom all of this is second nature. If you do, I’m convinced you’d have at least one new customer, product idea, or other business-building asset to show for it within weeks. Give it a try. Pick a site, log in, and get started. If you find me there, introduce yourself. I’ll be happy to show you around.
Enterprise 2.0: How a Connected Workforce Innovates
Enterprise 2.0 tools—wikis, tags, Twitter and other microblogs, Google-style searches, and the like—are transforming companies’ innovation processes, according to Andrew P. McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the author of the forthcoming book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (Harvard Business Press, 2009). McAfee explains why in a recent conversation with HBR senior editor Anand P. Raman.
How do the new social technologies transform innovation efforts?
Companies have traditionally been very specific about who’s going to do the innovating: their designers, engineers, scientists…Those people have the credentials—the right combination of education, experience, success, failure, and so on. More recently, companies have allowed major users of their products to participate in the product-development process.
Some companies now say: Why stop at lead users? Why not let everyone take a crack at helping us develop a new product, improve an existing one, or solve a vexing problem? They no longer specify who can participate in the innovation process; they welcome all comers. Enterprise 2.0 tools are designed to help with these more open innovation processes. In fact, most new types of innovation, such as open innovation and crowdsourcing, are based on these technologies.
Procter & Gamble, which has embraced the open-innovation philosophy, does some smart things on its Connect + Develop website. P&G doesn’t only publicize what it knows and what it can do; it also highlights what it needs. That’s radical; big companies don’t usually display their ignorance. In addition, the company doesn’t restrict itself to product development; it’s looking for new ideas in everything from trademarks, packaging, and marketing models to engineering, business services, and design. Finally, P&G invites everybody to submit ideas—not just prequalified partners. It recently bought the technology for an antimicrobial product from an unknown company that submitted a proposal through the website.
Does the use of Enterprise 2.0 technologies yield better ideas? Won’t a company simply drown in bad ideas?
Keep two things in mind. One, there’s no guarantee that your next innovation challenge is going to look anything like your last one. It might require a fresh perspective or skills that your existing innovators don’t possess. A company that uses Enterprise 2.0 technologies can publicize the challenge widely and collect responses from many people. Two, the community that forms around the challenge can help sift the ideas. People suggest improvements and vote on one another’s ideas, so the best ones eventually rise to the top.
Because of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, good content becomes apparent over time. A good idea isn’t always obvious. For example, Gwabs is a game that lets characters fight one another using the elements on a computer desktop, such as toolbars and icons. It came out of a crowdsourcing start-up, Cambrian House, which solicited ideas from a large community and let them vote. It then had the top vote getters face off in a tournament. The company’s executives thought Gwabs was a pretty dumb idea, but it won the tournament. In fact, investors are now funding the game’s development.
Enterprise 2.0: Marketplace 2009
via SocialComputingJournal.com
Latest analysis of the Enterprise 2.0 marketplace for 2009 with over 70 social computing platforms evaluated.
The term Enterprise 2.0 itself is used to describe “emergent, freeform, social” collaboration tools in the workplace. In their simplest form that means blogs, wikis, and social networks and we’re seeing wide adoption of these types of tools in the workplace this year. In fact, nearly half of large companies around the world have these tools in one form or another.
The challenge is that because it’s such an interesting space both in the consumer world and the enterprise, that means there are lots of players including commercial products, SaaS (hosted online), and open source. Sorting them out and figuring out which ones are strong contenders is hard work.
Read the full analysis of the Enterprise 2.0 Marketplace for 2009: Robust and Crowded. The Enterprise 2.0 Marketplace Map is below, you can also click on the visual to expand it to full size. You can get a list of the companies and their segment ranking here.
Click To Enlarge
The visual is broken down into two primary: incumbent enterprise players that are frequently taking their CMS, DMS, and ECM systems and adding Web 2.0 features such as tagging, blogs, wikis, and user profiles, or Web startups and open source-based firms that have built Enterprise 2.0 apps from the ground up.
There’s a third category that represents the Enterprise 2.0 “Sweet Spot”. Only a few products reached this critical space (marked in green in the upper right) because they are both enterprise savvy and capable as well as had the right ingredients to enable Enterprise 2.0 and create vibrant internal collaborative communities.
Further Reading: The enterprise microblogging marketplace for mid-2009. The folks over at CMS Watch have created their own version of the enterprise social software map as well. You can read the details from Tony Byrne and I’ve included one of their key graphics below:
greenconcept | LAB 