While small businesses typically aren’t on the cutting edge of digital marketing trends,

a new survey conducted by Access Markets International suggests the emerging social

media channel will be a priority among many small company owners.

Overall marketing budgets among small businesses are expected to grow 4 percent in

2012, up considerably from the lows during the recession. Social media in particular

is showing resilience, with expenditures for the platform expected to jump by 35 percent

in 2011.

“In 2010, we saw a significant drop in the number of small businesses actively investing

in any marketing activities,” says Jacqueline Atkinson, research manager at AMI New York.

“Boosted confidence in the economy is leading many firms to return to advertising and

promotional tactics and experiment with new channels, such as online digital media.”

Facebook tends to be the go-to choice for small businesses, which account for more than 60

percent of the social network’s $1.8 billion advertising revenue.

Social media has become a pillar of digital marketing initiatives, with an

overwhelming majority of companies now incorporating the channel into

their multichannel marketingcampaigns, a new report from Social Media

Examiner indicates.

Nearly all of the companies polled (93 percent) employ social media as a

part of their marketing efforts. On top of that, as many as 90 percent said

that social media was crucial to the promotion of their business. This sentiment

was amplified amongst small businesses, who view social media as being even

more pivotal.

Social Media Examiner’s survey also identified the key benefits of social media

marketing. “Nearly two-thirds of marketers indicated a rise in search engine

rankings was a benefit of social media marketing. As search engine rankings

improve, so will business exposure and lead generation efforts and overall

marketing expenses will decrease,” notes the source.

As more small businesses adopt social media, social networks have also made

it easier for small companies to leverage their marketing tools. For example,

Facebook is in the process of implementing a category-level marketing tool

that will make its self-serve advertising platform more approachable for novice

marketers.

Most business owners understand the basic premise of social media marketing today

, which is that linking your website to your company presence on other social

networking hubs (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter) is more effective than just

getting a lot of SEO for your site. Consequently, I spend a lot of time advising small businesses

on how to create and maintain their Facebook Pages, and how best to improve their LinkedIn

presence.

However, there are some golden opportunities for creative marketing that haven’t been widely

adopted yet, that would be even more effective for many professionals. While all your competitors

are concentrating on updating Facebook and LinkedIn, wouldn’t it be fun to outshine them all by

doing something completely different? Here are five new strategies for business marketing –

things that have only become possible quite recently, that will make your service or storefront

even more relevant in a crowded field.

1. Claim your business profile on Yelp. If you have a storefront or office, you absolutely

must list it on Yelp. Why? Because Yelp has a great mobile app that is very popular for finding

products and services when you are on the road. It is quicker and easier to use than Google’s iPhone

search app, making your store hours, phone, and location instantly accessible to the large group of

Yelp users.

When you sign up for Yelp and claim your business, you can interact with all of those users — and

Yelp gives you free swag you can display in your window, or add to your website to cross-link your

site to its Yelp listing. Non-storefront businesses can also have profiles on Yelp, and can list up to 5

different cities they serve. Finally, consider writing reviews yourself. Leverage your deep knowledge

of a locale or industry by writing helpful comments on relevant businesses, then create a widget on

Yelp that you can place on your website, that will share your reviews with a wider audience.

2. Improve your business search results with a listing on Google Places. In its recent

efforts to improve search results, Google now gives greater weight to local data, most notably from

its own Google Places. The first step is to simply Google your company name, then locate it on the

Google map for your area. Like Yelp, you then claim your business identity (creating a Google account

if you don’t already have one) and are able to add lots of information about your business.

Having a listing on Google Places will automatically bump up your business in a Google search, and

filling it out is pretty straightforward. You can also correct any misplacement of your store location on

GoogleMaps, which happens fairly frequently in rural areas. Being easily found on GoogleMaps is important,

but you can also use Google Places to do the opposite and hide your company from view (by substituting a

P.O. Box for a street address), if you work from your home and do not wish to divulge your residence to

the world.

3. Engage with other experts in your field on Quora. One stand-out social media tool isQuora.com,

which operates on a simple premise: there should be a place to go on the web for clear, concise answers to

specific questions. With a minimum of hype and noise, Quora does just that. It is an excellent way to

increase your visibility and connect with others interested in similar topics. Its interface is also clean

and relatively easy to master, unlike Facebook with its endless settings and options.

As with all social networking sites, you need to put some work into understanding its interface,

finding people and topics to follow, and responding to questions from others. Once you get the hang

of it though, Quora makes it easy to share what you know on Facebook (only to profiles however, not pages)

and Twitter. In fact, a clever way to stream your Quora activity to your website would be to create a Twitter

account, link it up to Quora, and then put a Twitter widget in a sidebar on your website. Visitors to your

website will then see every time you ask or answer a question on Quora — and you won’t have to engage

with Twitter in any other way, so long as you are consistent about using Quora.

4. Create big value with a very small camera. If there is one gadget that will do more to boost

your online presence than anything other than your phone, it is a video camera. Whether you use your

iPhone 4, a Flip camera, or something else, the technology is well within your grasp to create short, fun

videos on topics of interest to your customers, and upload them to your website, blog, Facebook page,

or YouTube channel in minutes.

Camera shy? Keep in mind that the optimal length for online video is from 2 to 5 minutes. That’s just

enough time to place the camera in front of you and say something relevant about where you are and

what is taking place, then end it with a friendly sign-off. You can have short conversations with colleagues

about industry-related issues; promote local festivals and events; advertise new products and services

when they are available. Above all, you add personality to your business, which is a huge advantage in

a market stuffed with words but starved for a human voice.

5. Join or create a group for local events on Meetup. If you regularly hold informational meetings

about your business, consider expanding your reach by listing them on Meetup.com. And if you want to

network with others in your area with similar interests, you are most likely to find them on Meetup. Unlike

most tools mentioned so far, Meetup results in actual face-to-face meetings with like-minded people from

your own area. It gives event planners the tools to set maximum attendance levels, send out reminders

before the meeting, and easily keep in touch with group members.

More than any other social networking site, Meetup has also made it extremely easy to link information

from its site to your business site, with a slew of customizable widgets and several handy RSS feeds.

With them, you can promote your group, your area, your calendar of events, even specific topics right

onto your blog or website.

For the past several years, conventional wisdom has been that having a blog was the most important

tool for your business. But blogs are not for everyone, nor are Facebook Pages, and now they don’t have

to be. These new tools are less daunting and more flexible than anything that has come before, and their

reach and popularity is only beginning. If you have been hesitant so far to try social media marketing for

your business or website, you have officially run out of excuses

A new Google feature which allows internet users to mark up pages

for friends and family could have a positive impact in the online

marketing world.
The +1 feature has been designed by the search engine giant to compete with the

Facebook ‘like’ button which aims to share information between friends on the

social media site.

It will appear next to adverts and search results which friends have flagged up

on the search engine.

‘Like’ has been a popular and useful tool in digital marketing campaigns using

social media, and Google is hoping that the +1 button will have a similar success rate.

In the official Google blog product manager Rob Spiro said: “Our goal at Google is to

get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible. But relevance is about

relationships as well as words on webpages.”

This feature is the next step in a campaign to help Google users share information,

after it began to include results posted by friends on social networking sites within its

search results.

Social media marketing is the big winner with local businesses in the marketing method sweepstakes,

according to a new survey. But social media’s win comes at the expense of traditional offline marketing

methods, which continue to decline.

The survey data revealed that local merchants, who usually have very limited time and money for

marketing, are increasingly gravitating toward marketing methods such as Facebook and other

social media, as well as toward tried-and-true online methods like search and e-mail marketing.

[Why You're a Fool If You're Not Using Twitter]

According to the MerchantCircle quarterly confidence index of 8,500 small and local businesses

across the U.S., more than half of local merchants are spending less than $2,500 a year on

marketing, and 60 percent have no plans to raise their budgets this year. This places a premium

on cost-effective marketing.

Facebook is the clear category leader, according to the survey. Because of its huge consumer

adoption, ease-of-use and low barrier to entry, the social media network continues to be a

popular way for merchants to market their businesses, with 70 percent using Facebook for

marketing, up from 50 percent a year ago.

Facebook has now surpassed Google (66 percent) as the most widely used marketing method among

local merchants, the survey showed, and is almost neck and neck with Google Search

(37 percent versus 40 percent) as being one of their top three most effective marketing tools.

Facebook Places has also benefitted from this high level of adoption, soaring past Foursquare to reach

a 32 percent current usage rate. While Foursquare’s usage has inched up from just 2 percent a year ago,

use of the location-based service has remained steady at about 9 percent over the past two quarters.

Twitter has also grown in popularity over the past year, MerchantCircle said, with nearly 40

percent of local merchants using the platform to build awareness and community around their

products and services. This is up from 32 percent in the last quarter of 2009.

Offline marketing has been the loser with local businesses.  During 2010, print advertising

dropped by 33 percent, use of print Yellow Pages decreased 18 percent and use of direct mail

fell by 26 percent.

“Online marketing continues to be a challenge for most local businesses, and many merchants

are working with very small budgets and almost no marketing resources,” said Darren Waddell,

MerchantCircle’s  vice president of marketing. “The marketing methods we see gaining the most

traction are therefore the ones that offer merchants simplicity, low costs and immediate results.”

Social media is poised to nudge its way ahead of traditional marketing in the next five

years, according to new research. Integrating it into the rest of the marketing plan is

still proving challenging for businesses, however.

That the finding of  The American Marketing Association and Duke University’s Fuqua School

of Business, which surveyed more than 400 top marketers for the February 2011 CMO Survey.

They reported that over the next 12 months, social media spending will jump to 9.8 percent of

marketing budgets, up from the current level of 5.6 percent. In the next five years, that percentage

will increase to 18.1 percent, reported eMarketer Digital Intelligence.

Service companies are planning the biggest increases, with business-to-business as well as business

-to-consumer service companies planning to set aside a higher percentage of their budgets for socia

l media.

This marks a major turn of events for service companies. As recently as August, these companies

were reporting a decline in social media marketing spending.

Yet while these CMOs are setting aside more of their budgets for social media, they are still working

on integrating this newer form of communication into overall business and marketing strategies,

eMarketer Digital Intelligence reported.

Facebook and Google are the top outlets for promoting products online,

while most who’ve used group buying sites like Groupon say they won’t

repeat the experience, according to MerchantCircle.

Local businesses are turning to inexpensive social media to promote their products and

services, but the few that have experimented with group discount offerings from online

sites are unlikely to repeat the experience, a new report from MerchantCircle found.

n the past 12 months, there has been a 40% increase in the number of local businesses

using Facebook to market their wares, according to the quarterly Merchant Confidence

Indexsurvey of more than 8,500 small and local business owners across the United States.

Today, 70% use the social media site of 500 million-plus accountholders, compared with

50% last year, the report said.

This makes Facebook the most widely used marketing method among local merchants,

with 66% of local businesses tapping Google to educate consumers about their goods,

according to the study.

Social media as a whole is viewed as being highly effective by 37% of respondents. Search

engine marketing was viewed as most effective, according to 42% of those polled, while 36%

said email was the most effective tool, the MerchantCircle report said.

“Online marketing continues to be a challenge for most local businesses, and many merchants

are working with very small budgets and almost no marketing resources,” said Darren Waddell,

VP of marketing at MerchantCircle. “The marketing methods we see gaining the most traction

are therefore the ones that offer merchants simplicity, low costs, and immediate results.”

Perhaps Facebook’s name-recognition and its immediate integration with the social media site

helped propel the company’s location service past competitor Foursquare: 32% of respondents

use Facebook Places, and another 12% said they plan to use this tool in the coming months. By

comparison, Foursquare use is up only 2% from last year, with about 9% of those polled using

this service, the study found.

Twitter is gaining traction among local businesses, with almost 40% of those queried now using

the microblogging site to build awareness and community, up from 32% in the same period a year

ago, said MerchantCircle.

Mobile marketing, however, is not enjoying the same widespread adoption. Fewer than 15% of merchants

use any mobile marketing or advertising, and fewer than half have any plans to do so in the coming months

, the report said. Cost is not the main concern: 74% of merchants said they do not have a good idea of how

to reach consumers via mobile marketing, according to MerchantCircle.

Likewise, group buying services — such as those offered by Groupon and LivingSocial — are getting a lukewarm

welcome. To date, 11% of respondents have offered a “daily deal” on a group buying site, but one-fifth plan to do

so in the near future, the poll said. Of those who have used such a service to promote their business, the majority

– or 55% — said they would not do so again, MerchantCircle said.

ocal merchants may want to reconsider: The combination of location-based ads and mobile devices

fuel consumer store visits, a separate study by JiWire found. One-fifth of mobile users went to a physical

store as a result of seeing a location-based ad, the Mobile Audience Insights Report, released earlier this

month, found. Further, 17% spent money because of the ads, the study said.

“Consumer demand for location-based services and reception to location-based advertising continues

to increase dramatically, with companies like Groupon, Facebook, and now even Google getting into

hyperlocal deals,” said David Staas, senior VP of marketing at JiWire, in a statement. “Localized ads

help consumers find the best deals and venues in their area and as location-based services become

more mainstream, people are becoming more willing to give their location to reap the benefits of

relevant promotions and discounts.”

Many local businesses typically have limited time and money to invest in marketing. In fact, last

year the majority spent less than $2,500 a year marketing their products and services, and 60%

do not expect to increase this budget in 2011, the MerchantCircle report found. One-fourth cited

high costs as their primary complaint about online marketing, according to the study.

Lack of time was the top challenge for 37% of responding merchants, who were unable to investigate

or take advantage of new or unproven online marketing tools or techniques, the poll said.

Instead, many smaller businesses continue to use traditional offline marketing methods — but their

reliance on these tools is declining. In 2010, their use of print advertising dropped to 27% from 40%;

Yellow Pages advertising fell to 35% from 45%; and their investment in direct mail campaigns

decreased to 28% from 39%, according to MerchantCircle. But 24% of respondents cited coupons

or direct mail as one of their top three most effective marketing tactics; 23% cited Yellow Pages as

a top tool, and 20% credited print newspaper ads as one of their top three marketing instruments,

the study said.

Online marketing companies, which once focused almost exclusively on national brands, now are

looking closer at smaller businesses, a move that could eliminate some of the complexity and cost

for local merchants. Indeed, 51% of local businesses get at least one online marketing sales call a

week; 10% get called almost daily, MerchantCircle found.

One of the most popular ways for marketing your business in today’s online

world is to engage in social media. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, foursquare
“and Groupon have allowed companies to reach a wider audience of consumers.

However, are businesses really doing all they can to leverage this technology?

“Leaders have to become much more technology-aware. I don’t mean they have

to learn how to be on Facebook. What I mean is they need to learn the concepts

behind why technology is critical, how to make good decisions on technology,

how to build digital plumbing,” Scott Klososky told Reuters.

Businesses cannot just expect to set up a few profiles, never check or update these

accounts and expect their revenues to take off. Klososky suggests that one way

businesses can more creatively use social media is to tap into crowdsourcing

technologies that allow entrepreneurs to ask customers directly for advice and ideas.

Social media, he reminds the source, is not merely a tool for businesses to broadcast

their slogans or advertise their new products. Rather, owners must see it as a means to

improving the experience of customers.

With Facebook set to surpass 1 billion users in 2011, and Twitter and foursquare growing

at an increasingly rapid rate, owners should dive right in and begin planning their

social media strategies now

For companies trying to make sense of social media and online marketing,

it’s important to take a step back from all the “TwitFaceBlogTubeIn” mania

for a second and look at the nature of how these things are going to work for

the overall business.

There are many questions that need answers:  ”Should we develop a strategy

first before engaging?”,  ”Should we experiment and develop a strategy as we

go?”, “Will it ever be OK to ask customers if they want to buy directly within

social channels or will we always have to tiptoe around the subject?”

Here are a few considerations to help answer those questions and establish

the framework for a sustainable and successful social media marketing program.

Social Media Strategy: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pond of cure”.

Having some idea of what measurable goals and business outcomes you’re

after is essential for planning resources and forecasting outcomes. This is true

with any kind of marketing and is certainly the case with social media.

I polled a number of industry smarties on social media strategy vs. tactics
and while there was some distance between the approach Guy Kawasaki preferred

and that of people like Chris Brogan, the consensus was that developing an
approach is essential for planning, implementation, accountability and measurement of success.

The formation of a social media strategy is a ripe opportunity for creativity and certainly

shouldn’t get in the way of getting started. Gaining consensus about social strategy within

a corporation could easily create a bottleneck.  A strategy that calls for experimentation

with iterative improvement in the context of overall goals, approach, tactics, audience

and an effort to measure success is more likely to be implemented and gain support.

Social Media Marketing Tactics: The best mix of tactics needs to tie into the plan

for reaching business goals.  Whether it’s “Better engage with our customers” to

“Filling the top of the sales funnel”, an understanding of audience preferences

and behaviors will lead to the right tactical mix.

A lot of companies take the path of least resistance and go for what I like to call,

“The Social 5-Pack” of: Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, YouTube and LinkedIn

without thinking through tactics. For example, one common question often

I hear is, “Is a LinkedIn group a better use of time and resources or a Facebook Fan Page?”

What the marketer might want to ask is, “Where do social networking vs. blogging vs.

microcontent vs. media sharing fit in the context of our social media goals?”  Then

do the research and implement a listening program to discover which social networks,

media sharing sites or blogging communities the target audience is present and participating in.

That homework will answer the question about Facebook vs. LinkedIn and any other social

communities where customers spend time.

Social Media Process: “Companies who start with implementation are at risk”, is a great

quote from Jeremiah Owyang in his recent post, “A Pragmatic Approach to Social Business“.

There he lists a checklist of 8 steps that form a process for approaching social media.

4 Jumping into tactics can send a company in a very unproductive direction. Working

through a strategy, tactics and developing processes leads to efficiencies, scalability

and social engagement that is true to the business goals.

We’ve published a social media checklist that can serve as a prompt for companies to gather

the information necessary to make smarter decisions about how their organizations can

incorporate social media in their marketing and communications mix.

Process with social media marketing is important for a variety of reasons ranging from quality

assurance to accountability. How can an organization scale its social media efforts without some

kind of processes in place? Redundant processes can often be automated by software. Processes

also outlive internal social media subject matter experts who move on to other opportunities.

From a personal process perspective, take a look at Tac Anderson’s

daily routine as a social media strategist, which he calls a “workout”.  In addition to planned

activities and tactics, there’s room for putting out fires or handing spontaneous situations.

In the end, a routine or process helps keep social media marketing tactics on track over time.

Social Commerce: Social Media that Leads to Sales: Question - What’s the ROI of Social

Media?  Answer – What’s the ROI of having a phone system in your office?  That phone systems

facilitates communications for a wide variety of reasons that are important to the functioning

of the business from product/service inquiries to hiring new employees to customer service.

Social media in a business sense, is technology that facilitates communications, sharing and

connecting brands with customers.  For the most part, people buy from those they like and

social media helps build, maintain and improve those relationships.

So how does social media influence or result in sales?  A helpful post on BarnRaisers summarizes

several studies that show exactly that. Click on the link to see the post

(How Social Media Drives Sales Relationships).  I’ll also summarize them here:

Facebook - “The top reasons people press the “Like” button on Facebook is to have a sales

relationship with a brand - either to receive promotions & coupons (40%), get updates on

upcoming sales (30%) and show their support for companies (39%).” – ExactTarget 2010.

Twitter - “For over 40% of the time people are on Twitter, we spend it learning about products

and services, listening to what others have to say and giving opinions.  That explains why over

20% of the time we’re on Twitter, we’re ready and willing to buy directly off Twitter.” –

Edison Research 2010.

Social Networks – “For every hour we spend on online, we spend the most amount of time on

social networks, almost 15 minutes of every hour. Roughly half of the time (approx 6+ mins),

we are seeking out products and services and looking to have a sales relationship with brands.

” Nielsen 2010.

As more brands include commercial offers in the social experience they provide for customers,

those customers will become increasingly comfortable with the notion of social commerce.

At the same time, more social features are being added to ecommerce websites. In the way that

blogs and Twitter accounts are expected features of brand websites, so will social commerce

functionality.

Building a flexible strategy that considers business goals and the people to engage will help

marketers identify the best mix of tactics for their social media marketing program. Developing

processes from a corporate and an individual standpoint will help sustain, not stifle, social

engagement activities in the long run.  Start by building community and relationships.  Listen,

respond and create value. Monitor and analyze for opportunities to implement social

commerce features, but don’t rush it.

How have you incorporated social media into your business processes? What are you

doing to create more sustainable social participation within your organization?

As many companies have already found out, having a business presence in

the social media communities (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) can have

a positive impact on the company’s bottom line. Being able to connect with

customers and prospects to build loyalty and community goes a long way in

today’s world, and social media marketing is changing the way customer relations

take place.

One of the main questions businesses ask when implementing their social
media strategy is, “Do we open this up to the company?” Some argue that
allowing employees to access social media sites during the day will result
in a productivity drain, and they encourage businesses to put website
filters in place and to ban social media sites from the workplace.

However, Australian scientists at the University of Melbourne recently
published an interesting study that found when employees take time to visit
websites of personal interest, such as social media sites, it provides them
a mental break and actually increases their ability to concentrate. The
scientists documented a nine percent increase in productivity among their
subjects. As they explained, “The activity helps keep the mind fresh and
helps put you in a better place when you come back to working on topic.”

Additionally, realize that people don’t work 100 percent of the time on
what they’re assigned to. They do other things, such as get a snack, go to
restroom, talk to co-workers, surf the web, etc. So they’re giving
themselves some distractions already. The question is, “Do you want to offer
a suitable distraction, or let your employees choose their own
distractions?” Clearly, giving your employees an acceptable distraction is
the way to go, especially if doing so helps the company’s bottom line.

With that said, you can’t simply allow everyone to post to the company’s
social media sites arbitrarily. You can’t rev the engine and then let go of
the steering wheel. Rather, you need to establish rules of engagement. The
following suggestions will help you do precisely that.

1. Put everything in writing.

Detail what is and what is not allowed to happen on your social media sites.
For example, you may want to specify such things as not sharing proprietary
information, keeping all posts positive, not sharing client information, not
divulging salary or benefit information, and not revealing any corporate
intelligence. What you allow or disallow is up to you and your specific
company culture. For example, some companies decide that they will talk
about their clients and customers (with the customer’s permission), while
others feel talking about customers invites competitors to try to steal
them. The main point for everyone to remember is that if you wouldn’t post
the information on your web site, then don’t post it on a social media site.

Make it clear in the document that if they break any of the rules outlined,
their job is in jeopardy. Additionally, reveal whether HR is monitoring the
emails, posts, and tweets. Have each employee sign off on the social media
rules and place a copy in their employee file.

2. Start by giving social media access to certain people to test the waters;
then open it to others in phases.

Rather than let everyone jump in feet first, start by forming a social media
committee. Send out an invitation to your staff for people to join the
committee (make sure they know it’s optional). Those who come to that
meeting will be the best people to represent you on the internet. Work with
them to help clarify the rules of engagement and to help define your
company’s purpose for being on the social media sites. Then, allow these
people to become social media advocates for your company. After a few weeks,
have them report back to you on what’s going well, what they’ve learned, and
what’s not working.

After you make policy or implementation adjustments based on their feedback,
open social media up to another group of people, and then another, until you
have everyone on the sites who wants to be there. Don’t force it on anyone.
If someone doesn’t want to tweet, blog, or do Facebook posts, that’s okay.
Forcing people to be your social media voice will backfire and cause more
harm than good.

3. Make it fun.

To get people excited about social media, have an internal contest. Give
everyone (or every department) a promo code for something happening in the
company, such as a special sale or event. Then, let people market to their
family, friends, customers, and social networks. Whichever person or
department has the most promo codes redeemed gets a gift or prize. It could
be a catered lunch or even a day off. The point is to engage the company
meaningfully so you can see some bottom line results.

One major retailer did this and had a $3 million bottom line improvement
during an economic recession. This company never opened social media sites
to its employees before. Now they’re a believer in the power of social media
marketing. So don’t be closed minded in terms of who can be on the social
media sites. Let everyone be a promoter of your company’s products and
services.

4. Consider your IT and other staffing needs.
When implementing social media access company-wide, your IT considerations
are critical. You’re opening your company outside your corporate firewall.
Therefore, make sure you’re protecting your company’s assets and work with
your IT team to make sure you’re protected before opening those portals.

Additionally, while going doing social media posts can be a rewarding part
of people’s day, eventually you will need a full-time staff member to
oversee your social media activities. In fact, within the next two years,
every company over $2 million in revenue should plan to have that full-time
position as part of their company structure. Big companies already have such
dedicated positions in place; take your cue from them and start planning
now.

5. Implement your social media activity and policy from the top down.
Your company’s top-level executives need to be willing to dive into the
company’s social media activities as well. If your employees see that the
CEO is on Facebook and posting tweets on Twitter and blogging regularly, and
that he or she is having fun doing it, your employees will embrace social
media as well. No matter what the company size, structure, or culture, the
use of social media needs to work its way down.

Contrary to what some people may think, social media — especially for
business — is not a fad. It may morph and change over time, but it’s
certainly not going away. Those companies that embrace it now and get its
employees involved will be the one to reap the most rewards. So set up your
social media guidelines and gradually phase it into your operations. Not
only will your employees’ productivity increase, but so will your company’s
bottom line.