In an effort to attract new customers, businesses are looking how they can run a small business marketing campaign on a social network like Facebook or Twitter.  The two key elements to any effective small business marketing campaign run on a social network are Content and Connections.

Good content leads to more connections, and connecting to other good profiles (more specifically, relevant people) helps improve the effectiveness of the small business marketing campaign.

Content: A restaurant for example that publishes their daily special to their Facebook page, with a nice picture, a short caption and a link to make a reservation is an example of a good worthwhile content stream. Publishing an entire menu everyday would be overload.

Publishing some content as it happens helps give a small business marketing campaign some personality too, however business profiles should always provide a primary information feed that is relevant to the business, interesting for its customers, and published on a reliable/regular basis. Online Project Management Software provides companies with a virtual workspace they can use to organize and prepare their small business marketing campaign material before they publish it to a social network profile.

Connections:  A restaurant that has a Facebook profile can encourage the restaurant staff to inform diners about the social network profile and invite them to stay connected with them.  Inviting patrons to link can be done during the final transaction by a host or the wait-staff, and social network profile names can be printed onto cash receipts or added to take-out menus.  Integrating small business activities to the social network profile can produce a profitable synergy for any small business marketing campaign.

A small business that uses their social networks to run contests for their followers (i.e., restaurant contest: “send in your favorite recipe for chance to win”) can use online marketing communications software like applicant manager software http://applicants.wizehive.com from WizeHive during the contest entry period to help collect, rank, sort and judge the incoming submissions. Online marketing campaign software allows companies to keep information organized for future marketing opportunities. 

Author: Clint Garwood