Starting a Small Business
The Social-Media Revolution
The world-wide-web has been with us since the mid nineties. Tim Berners Lee, the architect of the web, quite correctly predicted its next distinctive phase, now often referred to as Web2. This, fundamentally is the notion that we are all publishers of information, not just consumers. Every single business will need to take notice of this huge phenomenon. Underestimate this one at your peril.
Stephen Fry the English comedian and quasi-Intellectual is rapidly becoming the guru of the Internet and especially Social Media. In some ways it is comforting to see someone as archetypally old fashioned in manners and also born before generation X let alone generation Y, take on with such gusto the role of a pioneer of Internet communication, especially via a plethora of portable gadgetry.
Twitter is the fastest growing social media phenomenon, now with over 100 Million users. The concept of Twitter is very simple, by restricting the length of a message (tweet) you can keep up with dozens or possibly hundreds of your favourite messagers on one page.
The conventions of Twittering are still being formed. However, there seems to be some consensus that if you do one or two tweets per day, that would be the optimum. Some people go completely bananas and literally tweet that they've “just had breakfast”.
For a business, this is of course completely pointless. You will need to become your own spin-doctor. If you've read something interesting (and relevant) in the paper, then tweet this; however, make sure it is interesting enough for your audience; they will quickly learn to ignore boring tweets.
Your website is the most obvious way of attracting twitter followers, and to add a follow us on twitter link from your site is relatively easy.
If you're lucky then your local Business Link will run a load of free courses for how to use social media for your business. Make sure you go to some of these courses, if they're free, there's nothing to lose. As always, dish out the business cards whilst you're there; try not to be shy.
FourSquare
One of the latest (this is written in May 2010, so will of-course seem like old information by 2011) social-media phenomenons is FourSquare. This is very much based upon the location awareness of many smartphones. This media is being talked about quite excitedly by some. Take the opportunity to look at it and see if your business can benefit from it.
Facebook is the social media sensation started at Stanford University and the craze swept through university campuses worldwide like a proverbial wild-fire. The website is a good way to communicate with a group; and obviously a businesses communication group would be its customers or “fans”.
Again, if you haven't already been familiarised with Facebook, then the best thing to do is just go straight in and start playing. Set up a page for yourself or your business and just get to know how it ticks.
Side benefits of social media
Another side benefit from doing these social media things, is that you can place many links from them to your website. This has the dual benefit of getting your website more users and also your search-engine ranking (of your website) is likely to increase.
There are no 100% truths in the realm of search-engine placement improvement; the seo (search-engine-optimisation) industry is full of rumour and dark-arts. This is due mainly to the lack of information given by Google as to how its algorythm (process of evaluating search results) really works.