One of the biggest challenges for a small business owner can be finding enough hours in the day to get everything done. And, when it comes to social media, this can mean the difference between using it well, or consigning it to the list of ‘nice to haves.’

But there is help at hand. With the development of more and more mobile applications, there are some really nifty tools available to make managing your social media accounts quick, easy, and enjoyable.

My personal favourite just has to be Hootsuite. Whilst there are other tools available, this one wins my vote due to it being web based, where others have to be downloaded. You can use it to manage multiple accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare, and the easy to use ‘tabs’ function allows you to sort feeds from these accounts into separate, quickly viewed streams. Which means you can see all your social media accounts in one place, and can easily home in on those important tweets and status updates, without hopping between browsers.

Hootsuite also allows you to schedule your updates in advance, using a simple calendar function. So, in just 5 minutes, you can have all your daily tweets scheduled and ready to go. Leaving you free to get on with other things!

Whichever way you like to access your social media, Hootsuite has a version to suit: you can run it directly from your desktop via Google Chrome; Fluid; Mozilla Prism; and Firefox. When you’re on the move, there are apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android too. But the one I love the most just has to be their iPad app. It is truly awesome, making wonderful use of the touchscreen technology and features of the iPad.

So, if managing your social media is taking up too much of your time, give Hootsuite a go.

What other social media management tools have you tried? Have they made a difference?

With 400 million users on Facebook alone, social networking promises an unrivalled source of potential sales all under one big internet roof. A marketeer’s dream database of thousands of potential new customers at their fingertips.

But ask any small or medium business seduced into investing time and effort on Twitter, Facebook or any other of the dozens of social media sites around the internet, what they have to show for their investment and the answer may well not reflect this potential.

In fact, a survey by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) found that 52 per cent of SMEs now using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are unsatisfied with their return on investment. They found that the investment in time and resources compared to the potential payback for most small businesses just does not equate.

Certainly the statistics are impressive and easily persuasive as to why companies from all sectors and of all sizes should be playing the social networking game. Take Facebook, if it hasn’t already it will soon likely overtake Google as the world’s most popular website. Of its 400 million registered users, 50% of them log on in any given day. The average time on site is 55 minutes. More than 100 million users access the site regularly access through mobile phone.

That’s an awful lot of potential customers in the one place for a long time. Surely it’s something every company should be finding out more about how to exploit?

But the first clue as to why social networking may not be the marketing dream that it first seems is the average time spent on the site. Nearly one hour per day is the average  investment required to be taken seriously as a social networker. How many small or medium sized businesses have the spare resource to have someone spend an hour a day uploading and interacting online?

But two distinctive groups do; the very big and the very small.

Large companies can afford to employ people to blog full time, update Facebook and Twitter and keep up to date with myriad of other social sites that are springing up. For them it is becoming an ever more important way of building brand, finding out what customers are interested in and creating good will for the company.

At the other end of the spectrum is the single consultant or self employed, working in creative or IT industries perhaps. For them it is an essential marketing tool, a way of promoting their businesses in an innovative way. This grouping would think it ridiculous not to be socially networked.

Between them these two groups account for around 50,000 of the 260,000 or so registered companies in Scotland.

For the other 210,000 employing between 1-49 people however, it is a space they just shouldn’t be in at the moment. For networking and the creation of goodwill does not easily equate to what these companies rely on for survival , sales.

People do not visit social networking sites to buy products or services or to be marketed to, they go there to catch up with friends and find out what’s going on. People engaging in this type of activity are a long, long way from buying a product or service.

And sales are ultimately what keeps small and medium sized companies living on limited cash flow afloat.

Three questions any managing director of a small company should ask themselves before embarking on a journey into social media for business purposes.

•    Do I update my website with either a blog or company news every week?
•    Do I send out a regular web or print newsletter to my existing contacts and customers keeping them up to date with company news?
•    Do I have someone within the company who actively manages communications with customers and clients through a contacts database?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, the company is not going to benefit from devoting time and resources to social media. Small businesses are far better concentrating on getting the tried and tested marketing techniques right before dipping their toe into anything new just because it appears ‘everyone else is’.

Using optimisation tools to drive traffic to the company website, keeping a managed up-to-date list of contacts in a Customer Relationship Management database, regular personal customer or client contact with relevant business information and sector news, keeping a blog about what is going on in your business or sector, spend some resource building a media profile for the business.

All these marketing techniques will be more effective in driving sales than social networking will. Getting these right will be time and money well spent.

In marketing speak social networking is four or five steps away from a sale. Until small businesses already have these four or five steps leading up to social networking 100% covered, then it shouldn’t even be on the radar.

If it is done well and resourced properly, social networking can work. Dell for instance is just one of countless large organisations who use Twitter and other platforms very effectively as a shop front for their products and for individuals it’s a great way marketing skills and experience to potential clients.

But Dell and their like have whole teams working on social networking full time, they commit huge resource to it, that’s why it works for them. Any small business that thinks dabbling in social networking will help them sell products in the short term is wrong. So for the majority of the Scottish business base it is not for them – yet.

As applications and technologies improve it will no doubt in some way evolve into a resource to be used across the business spectrum.

Until then small businesses need to think about getting their basic marketing techniques fine tuned before dreaming of tweeting their way to record sales.

This is a guest post by Liz Melville. You can find our more about Liz by visiting her website at www.lizmelville.co.uk

When I ask business owners if they use social media, the answer is quite often ‘yes’. They will then explain that they have a Twitter account; use Facebook; maybe even Linked In or You Tube. They may have amassed loads of followers and friends, or have even set up a blog. But are they really ‘using’ social media? Do they know what to do with those followers and friends? Are they maximising the potential of what each platform has to offer their business?

I read a great quote today, which I think may sum up where a lot of businesses are:

“Social media is like sex in high school. Everyone claims they are doing it, but very few are.”

So, where do you start?

First of all, think about exactly what you want to achieve with social media. It’s important to realise that just setting up a Facebook or Twitter account, gathering followers, and spending some time doing status updates and tweets, doesn’t mean you are using social media effectively. Nor should it be the first thing you do.

At the end of the day, social media will only work for your business if you have a clear idea of how you want to integrate it into your overall marketing strategy and business structure. Here are just some of the questions you should ask, before you set up those social media accounts:

• Who are your target customers?
• What age are they? What are their demographics?
• Where and how do they connect with people?
• What do you want to achieve with a social media campaign? Is it relationship management with customers? Enhancing brand loyalty? Website traffic?
• How will you measure your success?
• What is the competition doing?
• Which employees will you allow to use your social media accounts?

Once you have the answers to those questions, and have a clear social media marketing plan, you will be ready to choose which networks and accounts to set up. Each work in different ways, with different audiences, and it is important to consider this in reaching your target market.

At this point, it is also worth considering how much time you have available to spend on social media marketing. Effective use of the various accounts requires hard work, effort, and dedication – and results will usually only show over time.

So, before you jump into the world of social media – take a good look at your business first and think about what will work best for you.

An involvement device is a component of marketing, advertising or even SEO that is designed to create a level of user involvement through inviting them to perform an action.

One very simple example where an involvement device is used, is with charity boxes. The most obvious of these is usually found in McDonalds restaurants and the bit just past supermarket check-outs. I’m sure most people will have seen the two foot high charity boxes where you drop a coin in the side and it spirals around the curved surface before dropping down the hole in the middle. Simple enough, but think about the number of children who hassle their parents to give them a coin to drop in.

The theory is that by creating this higher level of involvement people are more receptive to what you are offering. There is no doubt a deep psychological explanation for this, but it probably boils down to the fact that by being involved in something (even just a simple action) people feel more invested in the process and are more likely to develop an affinity with the product or service.

Well, there are many different kinds of involvement device that extend beyond a single action. They basically encompass anything that allows a user to become more invested in the process through some level of interaction. And the internet is all about interaction.

What are Website Involvement Devices?

You’ll definitely have come across some form of involvement device at some point while browsing online and you may have not even noticed.

Spammy Ones

One of the most common involvement devices online is found in the form of adverts. Nobody really likes these spammy animated ads, yet you still feel compelled to either ‘shoot the duck to win an iPhone’ or ‘hit the target to enter a prize draw’. These are a bad example of an involvement device and you certainly don’t want them on your site but they do provide an excellent example of how a little interaction can really draw someone in.

Online Shopping

Shopping online is a big deal. It has grown rapidly alongside the speed and capabilities of the internet, allowing businesses to provide some quite comprehensive stores with some really cool functionality. As a result some of the best online shops have invested serious time and effort into bringing their customers closer through involvement devices as well as complex website design. This is a far better example of how to use involvement devices as they often allow users to design a t-shirt or a logo and cast their vote on others designs.

This level of involvement invests a sense of loyalty or even pride in the company from a user and as a result makes them more likely to make a purchase again and again.

Loading and Quirky

Involvement devices don’t have to be complex or intuitive. Just something that can provide some kind of interaction for your users and make your site stand out from others. Nobody likes waiting for items on the site to load for instance, so many sites utilize an alternative loading screen, often some kind of creative animation. This is only a small measure but instantly makes your site more interesting and memorable than countless others. Other quirky little additions like “interesting quotes” or links to funny videos show that there is personality to the site.

But how can I apply this to my Website?

There are many other forms of involvement device. In fact it is almost limitless the number of ways through which you can connect with a visitor through your website.

Social Media

Social Media has swept over the internet like a tsunami, except instead of mass destruction it’s brought Facebook and Twitter and only now are people seeing it’s potential benefits for search engine optimisation, marketing and connecting with potential clients and customers. Social media is one of the easiest methods available to promote interaction with your site and as such is an invaluable involvement device. Having a Facebook feature built into your site can allow your users to ‘like’ your site and spread it out into the Facebook community. By regularly posting on Facebook you can get some real interaction going with you customers making you more than just a faceless business.

You can also create comment or review sections or even a blog on your site allowing users to feel more a part of the sites make-up with more control and integration.

Interactive Content

Interactive content is definitely the way forward as website design becomes more complex and the capabilities of the internet allow it to be faster and more powerful. Java applets, flash animations and functions and the impending evolution of HTML5 will allow you to develop cool new interactive methods to bring users into your site and allow them to get far more deeply involved.

Using animation that is interactive and intelligently designed can make your site stand out from the crowd as well as allowing your visitors to interact in many simple ways.

Whether it’s a more evolved navigation bar or an element to allow shoppers to put an outfit together online; the technology is there, all it requires is a little ingenuity.

Be Creative

This is the most important factor in engaging with your audience. If you want your site to rank well, provide unique original content. If you want it to be a success with visitors, make it interesting. Providing something unusual, whether it’s a cool feature or function or just something quirky, visitors are far more likely to respond to a site that takes the time to really engage them in a unique way.

Social media basics are easy to understand once you familiarize yourself with the tools that are available to leverage this new form of marketing. With the rapid growth of the Internet social media has quickly evolved in a way that gives consumers a much greater voice, making it a critical component of any marketing plan. With more and more buyers of products of services turning to the web, it’s important for any businessperson to know the impact social media can have on the success of their business.

Social Media is just like a conversation

Perhaps the simplest way to understand social media basics is to think about it in terms of a conversation. If traditional marketing is a one-way conversation with your customer, with you doing all the talking in a print advertisement or TV commercial, social media is a two-way conversation. Or more than likely many conversations taking place at once about your product or service. It’s critical for marketers to know where and how these conversations are taking place. That way you know what’s being said about your company, be it positive or negative.

Social media basics include web content like blogs, podcasts, video blogs (“vlogs”), RSS, as well as websites such as Facebook and web services like Twitter. All these examples represent ways information is quickly shared with others on the web that may have an interest in it. As a marketer, you can also participate in these conversations and provide information about your products or service. But it’s important to keep in mind that if you try to take control of these conversations, you’ll be ignored. On the web, people feel more empowered and don’t want to be sold to. They prefer to be the ones in control and have more of a say as to what they like or don’t like about a product or service. As a marketer, it’s up to you to listen closely and respond in a way that addresses consumer needs.

Learning social media basics is not as difficult as the terminology might indicate. If you’ve spent any time on the web, you’ve seen many examples of social media in action. There are lots of resources you can turn to that demonstrate how other companies use social media. Use those resources to determine how it will work best for you. For many companies, social media has already become the best, most affordable way to be heard in an increasingly crowded marketplace.