One of the reasons Google Adwords was so successful is that the “little guys” can easily create an advert and decide on how much they are willing to pay to appear for a keyword – it’s accessible even if your budget is £10 a day. Today at the ‘NMA Live: How brands should use Twitter’ conference, a smart and funny marketer called Ciaran referenced the Google Adwords model when someone asked him for his thoughts on how Twitter will monetise its service. Ciaran’s assertion was that Twitter might look to the Google Adwords model of making itself accessible for small businesses to make some real moulah. One idea he mooted was two sets of trending topics (this is the way Twitter shows what are the most talked about subjects): one ‘sponsored’ and one ‘natural’, similar to the rankings on Google. Not sure about that, but an interesting idea nonetheless…

I wonder if Twitter will start to charge businesses for using Twitter in other ways. Specifically, for including links in your business Tweets, and measuring the amount to be charged by the amount of traffic your site gets already (I am not sure how this would work but I know it’s possible).

However Twitter decides to monetise its service, one thing is for sure: for now, the platform is 100% free, so get involved and reap the rewards that come from promoting your small business on there.

It’s worth adding a note here that whilst it is free to have a Twitter account, it is not free to invest time in Twitter. It sounds obvious, but it’s your time, be that one employee’s or six employees’ time – ten minutes in the morning or one day a week – that costs money.

Besides benefitting from the financial savings to be made potentially by beginning to Twitter now rather than in a year’s time, it also makes sense from a strategic point of view. In these relatively early days it is OK to make a little mistake or two – believe me when I say that even the big brands are still very much on a learning curve. Add to this the fact that the relatively early adopters will be more inclined to grow their followers organically rather than in a blind panic to look ‘big’ (classic mistake), and it makes even more sense to be an early bird on Twitter.

When EasyJet (God forbid it’s Ryanair!) or Dell operate on a social scale with their marketing they are not only talking to people like my boyfriend, people on Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs and so on – but they are by proxy talking to their loved ones too. It is no different for small businesses.

Example: a local artist blogs that they are having a print sale this Saturday in the city centre. Jim, a 28 year old art director who follows the blog, sees the post and tells his colleague. His colleague’s mother is looking for a 40th anniversary present for her husband. He tells mum, mum buys print for dad.

It’s not rocket science, is it?

On the other hand, the over 60s group do use social networking, just not in the vast numbers their younger co-humans do. 64% of British pensioners want to network online, according to lifestyle60.com, a social networking site for over 60s.

In summary, keep in mind that your message will go further than the people who you directly talk to in social media. Never mind Retweeting, forwarding, and extending reach in this way. Good old fashioned word of mouth and talking is often the way most social media marketing is passed on. Also don’t forget that, especially if your target audence is the over 60s, they are a growing group within social media themselves and they are not to be discounted.

a) The individual news items go out when they are ready so they are more timely. An item may normally have to wait until all the other news items are also ready so they can go out in a job lot.

b) The news item is offered to the audience in a method that many of them may prefer (a percentage of them might not like having to receive essential news via email).

I don’t know about you, but I receive hundreds of emails a week from companies whose newsletters I subscribe to. The ones I am more likely to open and act on are the companies who send less to me, but tell me lots when they do get in touch.

Have a weekly or monthly (depending on how much news you have) roundup email and in that include the headlines or news that you have fed out during that week / month via RSS feed or Twitter. That way you are servicing the audience who is already engaged with social media, and also those that prefer to receive an email.

One thing you may notice is a drop in email open rates, as some of the audience will move over entirely to RSS or Twitter – theses people may even unsubscribe from your email list. But, you should recognise that this is not a bad thing; the moveover of such people should be made evident by your stats on RSS subscriptions and Twitter followers / referrers to your site etc.

Using social media in this gentle and easy to understand way shows you to be an innovator: to the guys who already use social media they will be pleased to see you offering them something useful – news in a format they prefer. For the people who do not use social media you are introducing it to them in a way that they can see the benefit of – news delivery. Who knows, you might be the company who introduces them the joys or Twitter or RSS feeds?

Every business has a personality. If your business was a person, what type of person would it be? Whether you are a retro coffee shop, a stylish hairdressers or a professional accountant, you should have a strong sense of the image and brand you want to promote. I’ve already talked about having conversations using Twitter, but in a wider sense, how do make sure you communicate your brand successfully in the Twitter community?

Here are a few ways:

- Make your page look like it belongs to your business.
Your logo, your background and also your Twitter name – it all matters, even if you aren’t Starbucks. It’s worth investing time yourself, or asking someone more able in the old Photoshop department, making your page look good. Not only does this tell people that you are taking your Twitter presence seriously, but it also reinforces who you are – and this makes you more memorable and likeable.

- Choose your brand voice.
Just as you would when writing copy for a leaflet or website, decide on the tone of voice you want to use when Tweeting. If you are an accountant you probably will be more serious and businesslike than a retro cafe might be. Will your Twitter account be one person or several people? If it is the latter then it is worth deciding on what type of collective vibe you want to send out when Tweeting. If your Tweeting is serious one minute and fun and quirky then next then people will get a confused sense of who your company is. Decide the overall voice you want to Tweet in and stick to it.

- Choose your followers carefully.
Even though it makes you look popular to have 5000 followers, if a large portion of them are spammers, porn sites, or not a ‘desirable’ match for your brand then block them. Quality, not quantity is what you are looking for.

- Hang out with the right people.
Similarly, don’t follow people just because they have followed you. It is tempting, especially when you are starting out, but try to be selective about who you follow back. It is fine to have a bit of a nosey at them and scope out the type of person they are. If you then decide they don’t fit with the type of community you are trying to build for your brand’s Twitter page, then that is fine, they will not care.

- Make everything you say useful or informative.
My personal Twitter is also the one I use for my SMfSB Twitter. I made that decision because I am blogging as me, Rachel. My profile on TWitter isn’t used to chat with friends very much. Rather, I use it to connect with contemporaries and people I am interested in in my field of work. So, my Tweets aren’t always about social media. As a small business owner with an account specifically for your business, I would advise against rambling about the Hobnob you just ate with your cuppa. Keep it relevant; in the main stick to conversations with customers and contemporaries, or include a link to your site to an offer / event. This isn’t to say you must always talk shop; just make sure what you do talk about is related to your business.

Twitter is just another medium that shows the world what your business does and what it stands for. If you get it right it can be an outstanding tool for growing a strong sense of brand, if you get it wrong it can be potentially damaging. Use it wisely!

My hair? It sort of worked; I may not look like Kirsten, but I certainly stand out!

Social Media Marketing Basics for Small Business from Steve Gaines on Vimeo.

Why would you want to have conversations with your customers? Here are a few reasons:

• For customer service.
• To tell them about news, events etc.
• To get to know them better.
• To build strong foundations for your business and engender loyalty.

Conversation is a two way street, so as well as you telling your followers things that are useful and interesting, you must also engage with them! Scroll through your followers and see what they are talking about, if it’s relevant to you then get involved, if they ask a question, answer it! If they say something interesting why not ReTweet their post? When people see that you are engaging with your customers, contemporaries and even competitors (why not?) it  shows you to be a dynamic and interesting (and interested) company.

Here is an example of what might happen to put in into context for you:

Someone you follow comments that she is looking forward to the weekend but isn’t sure what to do. You, a restaurant owner, reply to her that there is a great offer on for Sunday lunch, so why not come on down to take advantage. She ReTweets the offer and 15 of her friends see it, 2 of which visit your website as a result and make a booking.

This is a great outcome. However, conversations aren’t always just about driving traffic and extending reach of offers (though they are two great reasons to use Twitter). Sometimes it’s worth it just because you made a personal connection with that woman, and she will remember that fact. Without wanting to sounds like a hippy, just because you own a business doesn’t make human interaction any less important. Twitter can help you make meaningful connections with your customers through having a great conversational facility – so take advantage today and start bonding with your customers!

If you have a blog, or a news page that you update regularly, then create a Twitter account and use it to distribute your blog / news headlines.

Write your Tweet. Include a link (important!) and then post. Visit http://tinyurl.com to make your link as short as possible before you post it. It’s very simple, you copy and paste your URL into the box on this page and then it creates a shorter one for you that will save you characters when you come to post it in Twitter. It will only allow 140 characters.

Here are some guidelines to encourage people to click through from your Tweets to your blog, and also to increase the readability and conciseness of your messages, and therefore the likelihood of people ReTweeting (this means when someone copy and pastes your Tweet into theirs and posts, a bit like forwarding) your message.

• Spell-check your Tweet. It reflects badly on the brand and your site if it contains errors. 
• Make your copy action-oriented.
• Try to make your Tweet exciting and colourful.
• Cut out extraneous words that don’t add anything – it doesn’t have to be the full blog title.

Of course, extending you reach using Twitter will only work if you have followers. Don’t worry too much about this as you begin to post. It is also advisable to have stuff there to read when you do begin to get followers, so concentrate on posting for a month or two and just follow people you know to start with. Wait till you get used to it then, in month three, begin a strategy to increase your followers properly:

• Follow competitors, industry contemporaries and thought leaders etc.
• Search for keywords relating to what you do and where people seem interested in, say cake making (if that’s what you do) then follow them, they may well follow you back.
• Of course, add a link on your site saying Follow Us on Twitter.
• Add this link to your email signature, business cards – everywhere you can think of.

Now all you have to do is sit back and watch traffic to your blog or news page (and also the rest of your site) increase!

So, in an effort to cover some basics during the first few weeks of my blogging, here is my attempt to explain why small businesses in particular should use social media…

Social media is about sharing: photos, links, blogs, videos, reviews, opinion. We want to share our lives with our life partners, colleagues, friends, family, even people we haven’t met but have connected with online. Increasingly, people are becoming more vocal online when they share; they feel good, bad, sad or mad about something and nagdamnit they want to tell the world!

As you will imagine, there are a millions of people talking about, say, Starbucks, Ford, Intel, Dell and other such business behemoths out there at the minute. But what are the chances that people are talking about small businesses, for example, Linda’s Ladieswear in Leigh or Perfect Pizzas in Peckham (I’m making these up, can you tell?)..?

First of all, don’t assume you are not being talked about online, no matter how small you are. Secondly, your own business specifically might not be at the centre of a heated debate on Twitter at this moment in time, but fashion and food to use the same examples ARE being talked about on every social channel and in droves, I can guarantee that.

So how do you get involved in the conversations that are related to what you offer? Here are some tips to get you started:

- Try and match your audience demographic with a suitable social media channel which channel you choose.

- Get involved on a local level. Using the search facility that is on all social channels, look for groups and so on in your area and try to connect and become friends with them. Look for related threads and make yourself known.

- Search blogs for mentions of anything related to what you do. Don’t search too narrowly; for example, if you are in tourism then look for blogs by area or type of holiday. Comment on blog posts and get your profile out there.

As long as you are looking for opportunities to talk about what you know and also to tell people your news, whether you are commenting on blogs; ReTweeting an interesting link; replying to people’s comments on a forum; posting a link to a video on Facebook… it takes time and effort, but once you engage and interact with your community, you will be suprised at the come back.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could jump in when someone slagged off your business? You could ask them what the problem was, and even offer something to win them back. What about if you produce content on your subject and offer it to people for free, do you think you would attract more businesses if you did this perhaps? Or how about if you could find potential new customers, befriend them, and then keep them informed of great offers and news about your business? That would be alright too eh?

Social media can help you engage with new customers and build stronger reationships with old ones. It allows you to position yourself as an expert on your given subject area, and also to provide your customer base with a more flexible and informal way of contacting you.

If you want to open up new possibilities with your online presence, then start building your social presence today.

What it basically says is get your metrics straight at the start of the campaign, be specific, think about the real business goals – whether it’s to generate traffic, increase PageRank, answer people’s queries, number of insightful messages – whatever.

What’s harder to measure is the more transient benefits that aren’t visible or apparent, such as overall brand impression.

Have a look.