This is all commercial gold, but the real brilliance in the clip is in the way it calls attention to a very real question that businesses of all sizes are asking. With the end of the school year upon us, and many eager young adults looking for summer jobs and internships, many businesses are probably wondering whether bringing a social media intern into the fold is a good idea.

Why should my brand get an intern?

Many businesses benefit tremendously from internship programs.  For small businesses especially, interns can offer an affordable piece in the social media puzzle. Brand management really is a lot of work, after all, but many businesses are already spread pretty thin.  They need help with their social platform, but they’re still growing and can’t break the bank bringing that help in.

A social media internship can be a good fit for a young adult looking to gain exposure in the business world.  As digital natives, these would-be interns already have a natural, some might even say preternatural, ability to connect and engage in the social sphere.

The right intern will already have a very good idea of what their job entails and how to go about doing it.  Just look at the Jack in the Box intern, who knew the product her brand was focused on, what was trending, what hashtags to use (#FaveFlave), and how to use additional media such as candid photos to bolster social presence—all this while carrying on a conversation with the CEO of the company!

Maintaining message control

The natural concern many brands have when entrusting an intern to something as visible as social media is message control.  Your intern may know how to make things happen online, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to automatically know what your brand is about.

This means that you as a manager have a very short time to show your intern the ropes of your brand.  Your intern is going to be acting as your brand ambassador for the summer, and it’s up to you to make sure they buy in to your brand message if you want to drive authentic engagement.

Defining the role of your intern

It’s easy to laugh at the intern’s lack of practical knowledge about common office equipment in the commercial’s final punch line.  However, Jack is demonstrating his own lack of knowledge here in the way he interacts with his intern, ignoring the importance of her role and giving her a task clearly outside of her job description.

Whether interacting with an employee or an intern, defining and honoring roles is important.  It’s clearly not unreasonable to ask your intern to make copies.  Even if their primary task is social media, interns should expect to perform other tasks.  They need exposure to what office work entails after all, and this is a great way of showing them the ropes.  Just make sure that they understand these other duties, and that you’ve shown them how to be successful in their performance.

Passing the baton

Remember, internships are temporary, like rentals.  Once the summer is over and your intern has gone back to school, someone else is going to have to pick up their duties.  Otherwise, it won’t look good for your brand if you’re active on social media for a summer and then suddenly your presence plummets.

Many businesses have their interns write up a description of their day-to-day processes before they depart, making it easier for someone else to step into the role once it’s vacated.  I might suggest taking this a step further and building a system of reverse mentoring into the process.

In reverse mentoring, the intern trains the manager in their job—in this case, social media best practices.  This brings value both to the intern by allowing them exposure to the higher ranks of a business and to management by providing them with essential knowledge of what going social truly entails.  With such knowledge and processes in place, the transitions resulting from the coming and going of interns will largely be mitigated.

Does your business have an internship program?  Are you considering one?  Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

This perception needs to change. For many small business owners, social media is still largely an unknown quantity. Here are a few basic reasons that businesses of every size should invest their marketing resources in social media.

Five reasons social media marketing is important

1. It’s cheap.

Ultimately, the concern of all small businesses is getting the most bang for their marketing buck. Depending on how you approach it and what platforms you use, marketing through social media will either be free or very cheap. The biggest expense, at least initially, is likely to be time. Establishing a social presence doesn’t happen overnight, but it can create a wealth of opportunities for your business once it gets rolling.

2. It builds community.

Much more so than large, nationally recognized companies, small- to mid-size businesses are often deeply connected to the communities in which they’re located. Consumers like to add local businesses to their social media feeds, and platforms like Facebook continue to make it easier to filter news feed results by location-based criteria.

3. It expands your reach.

While your primary consumer base will inevitably be close by, social media offers ways for any business to broaden its borders and sell its products in the online marketplace. In social media, your community members double as your brand ambassadors. All they have to do is share some kind words about one of your products, and all of a sudden, you’re getting interest everywhere from Albuquerque to Dubuque.

4. It builds thought leadership.

One primary duty of businesses using social media marketing is sharing relevant content. Part of this process involves passing along useful content from others in your field, and part of it means creating your own content, whether it’s a blog, video, podcast, etc. By constantly sharing information, you will demonstrate that you are aware of the trends in your industry, connected to other important minds within that industry, and contributing new ideas to the conversation.

5. It gives customers a voice.

Every business owner at one time or another wants to know what their customers think of their company. Aside from things like surveys and comment cards, however, small businesses didn’t really have an affordable option to get customer feedback. Your customers will freely volunteer details of their experience through social channels—often without even being prompted. Sometimes negative feedback will sprout up as a result of this process, but the good news is that you will have a direct line to your customer to try and sort the issue out.

Is your small-to mid-size business engaging customers on social media? Share your experiences in the comments.

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” ~ Simon Sinek

Any organization can easily explain what they do and how they do it, but few can really explain why.  Starting with this clear objective, small businesses can leverage social media to increase brand value by demonstrating that their own values align with the values of their consumers.  If your community feels a shared sense of purpose with your brand, it can rest easy knowing that the two of you will live happily ever after.

Sound like a fairytale?  Well, as you can see in “The Tale of the Social Brand” below, perhaps it is.

Make change work for you

As we see in the experience of “The #1 Brand” video, it’s easy to shutter yourself in your castle, content that your product or service will continue its reign of popularity over the land.  However, today social media presents a deep set of challenges to the way brands communicate.  Many of these challenges are mental obstacles. With communication easier than ever before, what responsibility does a brand have to its consumers?

Change is the catalyst that propels businesses to move forward, igniting innovation and stoking powerful new ideas.  This concept isn’t new to the era of social business, but the process of change has accelerated, giving rise to more customer-centric business models that value user input through dynamic conversations.

Many organizations have evolved into becoming social brands, yet many still struggle to understand the value of going social.  In short, the value of social business is having mastery over the why.  Social media provides large and small businesses alike with a rich, democratized sounding board that can yield far more nuanced information and data than any focus group ever could.  By employing social media as part of your business strategy, your brand is signaling to its consumer base that it is active, engaged, and ready to carry its products into the future.

5 personality-building steps for the small social business

1. Find out where your audience hangs out.

The social media landscape continues to grow more diverse, and some platforms will fit your product or service better than others.  For instance, if your work is more visually oriented—perhaps you’re a graphic designer or a baker—your audience is probably hanging out on Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram.  If you work more in the tech or information sector, however, you may find that your core audience spends most of its time on info-based platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn.

2. Get acclimated by being an active listener. 

In a constantly changing environment, the best way to learn is through participation, trial, and error.  You will have to earn your voice on social media, which means you must learn how to engage other influencers effectively.  The best way to do this?  Become an active listener.  Watch and learn from the people who have already found success in your niche.  Once you have a good sense of the techniques they employ to achieve active engagement, then you can start branching out and making connections on your own.

3. Don’t overextend yourself.  

The easy misconception among people new to social media is that they need to be everywhere all at once.  This simply isn’t true.  It’s far better to be the master of one platform than to be inept at several.  Your audience isn’t likely to use every single platform, so why should you?

4. Drop the sales pitch.  

Especially when you’re getting started, your objective should be to build trust and credibility in your community.  The sales will come as your presence grows.  Use your bio to direct curious community members to your website.  Once you’re established, you can start sprinkling more targeted messages into your social strategy.  But don’t be overbearing—a little bit goes a long way.

5. Ask questions. 

As we learned in “The Tale of the Social Brand,” the best way to show that you’re a seasoned social expert is to actively court the opinions of your community.  Give people a stake in your product. Let them feel like they contributed to your brand’s future, and they will reward you by becoming your product evangelist, spreading the word on your behalf through their own networks.

Did you find this post interesting? If so, please share it in your own social circles using the links below.

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Start with what you know best: yourself

In social media, brands truly get to choose their own adventure. However, the brands that have had the greatest success in this arena—brands like Zappos, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Starbucks—have made sure to focus on one essential element before anything else: their brand stories.

A good brand story extends far beyond a business’s products or services. Today’s consumers are less interested in what you’re selling and more interested in knowing why they should buy from you rather than from someone else.

Consumers want to know how your product aligns with their own personal stories in order to feel good about their purchase decisions. Social media is a big place, and a brand that doesn’t communicate its mission, vision, and values through every message risks being drowned out by the brands that do.

Pick your platforms carefully

Brands have many platforms available to them to promote their businesses, but this doesn’t mean they should try to jump onto all of them at once. The rules of engagement are different for each platform—different types of messages and content work differently in different places. Learning all these nuances takes time and first-hand experience.  For example, Pinterest might be the perfect place for a catering company to post photos of table decorations; a jewelry designer or retail boutique might find Facebook is the right way to interact with customers.

Because of this, it’s best to begin slowly. Start with the best social platform for your business, and set your brand up there first. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your social media presence isolated to just a platform or two, especially when you’re just starting off. Chances are, the communities you’re hoping to influence won’t be on every single platform anyway, so why should you?

Obviously, if you’re going to limit your presence to just a platform or two, you’ll want to make sure you pick the right one, so don’t forget to do some research. Find out where communities are forming around your subject area. Work to identify what kinds of content and interaction those community members best respond to. Finally, ask yourself how your brand story can be tailored to fit this environment.

Be human

Successful social brands build communities, and having communities means engaging in real conversations—not just delivering a sales pitch. Your brand’s story must guide every interaction with your community members, but that doesn’t give you permission to try and make every conversation about you.

Engaged communities interact with each other over their shared interests. They don’t want to be sold something every five minutes. Being human means sharing useful content in your subject area without expecting anything in return. It means asking for honest feedback about your business and listening to suggestions on how you can improve.

The more approachable and helpful your brand is, the more credibility it will establish. With enough of this social capital, your community members will soon become your brand ambassadors, expanding your sphere of influence and helping you to generate new leads.

Let it grow naturally

Building engaged communities around your brand doesn’t happen overnight. Approach the task with patience— your audience can tell when you’re trying to rush into things. Once you’ve got the hang of these basic tenets, you can start thinking about expanding your reach. By then, you should have a pretty good idea of what steps to take next.

What social media strategies have your small business employed? What lessons have you learned for you brand, and what advice do you have to share with others? Please share your comments below!

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Many small businesses have thrived simply by using word-of-mouth to promote their products or services.  A successfully deployed social media campaign kicks this process up a notch by helping small businesses to dramatically amplify their messages and reach new prospects.  While many small businesses have already jumped on Facebook, they don’t realize that simply joining the social media arena isn’t enough.  In truth, these businesses have barely scratched the surface of the digital bazaar.  In all fairness, however, many large enterprises have yet to fully integrate social media strategies.  After all, social integration requires allocating time and money to those efforts, and many businesses remain unwilling to justify the investment.  However, companies both large and small risk failure the longer they put off becoming social brands.

I recently interviewed Joanie Schwarz (@Joaniesart), a Westfield, New Jersey photographer and mother of two, who has had a long career in illustration, including her work on a series of Nancy Drew Notebooks for Simon and Schuster.  These days, she is trying to grow her small business beyond the boundaries of Facebook by branching out to the higher levels of digital engagement such as Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

For Joanie, becoming a social brand hasn’t been that difficult. She is already a warm, compassionate person, and her Facebook page currently sports over 2,400 “Likes.”  Her experience shows that, for businesses large or small, being a social business is about building relationships with people. We don’t do business with a logo—we do business with other people. People want to document great images in their lives, and through the warmth apparent in her photos of people, children, babies and dogs, Joanie puts the value of relationship building front and center.

Real world, social world

Seemingly everyone Joanie has met recently is starting to use Twitter, and she is fascinated by the platform’s ability to foster interactions with people around the world.  Of course, her primary goal is growing her small business while still juggling her job.  Fortunately for Joanie, her assistant, Erica Furman, is just as enthusiastic as Joanie about the idea of moving beyond Facebook.

So where should their journey start? First, before any brand decides to become social they should consider these 15 key goals and objectives for business a must read.

Second, learning the actual “how to” of using social media is key.  I wish I had a penny for every time I’ve referenced someone to Lynda.com.  The site’s social business training programs are paced at your level of learning, and within a few training sessions you should be ready to hit the social slopes of Twitter.  Well maybe not the black diamond slopes, but certainly at least the bunny trails.

Third, remember that using social media effectively IS a little like learning how to ski. Even if things start a little shaky, after a few successful runs you’ll be ready to try it again! Below is my slide from when I was asked to speak at AT&T’s first Annual Networking Leaders Academy Conference at their Bedminster, New Jersey office on “Expanding Your Influence: Lessons in Social Networking.”

Now, let’s get granular in Joanie’s social reach in order to help her find social media exposure and recommend places for her to explore beyond just Twitter. My first suggestion is that she read,”Why Photographers Should Love Twitter,” which is filled with wonderful ideas for photographers looking to give Twitter a try.

Twitter chats are another goldmine for small businesses to build communities.  A great place for Joanie to start learning about this practice is by checking out these Twitter Chats – #TogChat  #PhotographyChat.

Let’s also give her a Google+ community, since she enjoys taking images of yoga. Now that Google+ started communities of their own, Joanie might want to check out Google+ Photographer Communities.  Another great social haven for photographers is the Pinterest Community of Photographers. Flickr also has a great photography Flickr Chat Group that offers another potentially rich resource for learning to build communities.

Part of the art of being human is that we can be our own source of social energy in order to transport ourselves into the digital bazaar.  We mustn’t become so frustrated and fearful that we don’t at least consider options beyond Facebook.

So let’s crowdsource and open up this discussion.  What recommendations do you have for Joanie on her quest towards becoming a social brand?

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Aside from the following pearls of wisdom, I also recommend reading Kathryn Rose (@katkrose) and Ted Rubin’s (@TedRubin) new book  Return on Relationship.  It’s a powerful read and marks a mind-shift in building online relationships.  Investing in relationships and building networks is the new currency.  Finally, if you’re still not convinced after reading the following bits of expert advice, check out the infographic at the end of this blog.

1. Carri Bugbee (@CarriBugbee) – Founder, strategist & writer – Big Deal PR + Social Media: Make sure your employees mention your social profiles to customers.  Put your social account URLs on receipts, hang tags, shopping bags, counter cards, posters, etc.  Don’t say, “Find us on…” That’s too much work for customers.  Spell it out.  It’s your job to make it easy.

2. Chris Carragher (@AlphaBrandz) – Chief Marketing Strategist – Alpha Brandz: Create a social media content calendar and plan to share content on a consistent basis.  By dedicating a couple of hours at the beginning of every week to creating content and map out important blogs and messages, small business owners are able to focus more on what they want to say and how they want to say it, and spend less time every day wondering, “What am I going to talk about today?”

3. Kellye Crane, (@KellyeCrane) Founder – Solo PR Pro: The best advice is to find out where your customers are (you can ask them!), and focus your efforts on their top 1-2 networks to reach them.  Use those platforms to talk about the issues that matter most to your audience, not just about your products/services, and you’ll succeed in building a thriving community that benefits your business.

4. Kristen Daukas (@KristenDaukas) Director, Social Media Services - Atlantic Social Media Group, A Division of Atlantic Webworks – Blogger: Small businesses that will make the commitment to dedicate a certain amount of time each day to building their audience and finding their voice will gain so much traction.  Set a goal of finding 10 new people to engage with each week, and soon you’ll have a core group of followers and sites like Twitter will become a wealth of resources.”

5. Anne Deeter Gallaher – (@AnneDGallaher) Owner/CEO, Deeter Gallaher Group LLC – Blogger: Choose the channels that fit your marketing strategy, create profiles, start following people and companies of interest, and listen to what the world is saying about your brand, your services, and your competitors.  Engage in conversation, be helpful and tell your story—one tweet, one picture, one blog, one video, one link, one post at a time.

6. Caroline Di Diego (CASUDI) (@Casudi ), Principal & Solution Specialist ESSE GROUP blogs at Designing Success:  If the small biz customers are not currently on social networking platforms but are attending traditional business networking groups, like the Rotarians, this is what I do: I suggest bringing in a Social Media speaker to help them learn how and where to network online. This works well, the small biz owner is a hero, and his/her existing and potential customers move to networking online, often learning together.

7. Karima-Catherine Goundiam – (@karimacatherine) Digital and Social Media Consultant at Angels Marketing. Time and time again, businesses allow misunderstandings about the social media space negatively impact their bottom lines and get in their way of successful digital strategies. For anyone who is in business and wants to be successful, 2013 is the year to revisit old beliefs and concepts about social media and digital and ask whether they have the right people, resources and strategy in place.

8. Heidi Cohen (@HeidiCohen) – President – Riverside Marketing Strategies: Small businesses have limited resources, and everything they do must contribute to generating sales. To ensure your social media activities translate to supporting your business, incorporate a social media call-to-action and related tracking code to assess results.

9. Amy Howell – (@howellmarketing)- CEO Howell Marketing Strategies, LLC – www.Howell- marketing.com: Make sure you have a strategy and realistic, measurable expectations.  Social media doesn’t replace traditional marketing.  It leverages it.  Adding social to your marketing campaigns can make a huge difference in business, but it must be strategic and deliberate.

10. John Jantsch, (@ducttape) – Founder Duct Tape Marketing:  You have to stop thinking about social media networking and start focusing on a total online presence in all that you do—including social networking.  Your conversations must be about content partnerships, creating awareness for your email newsletter, and ultimately, building network connections that turn into bigger opportunities.

11. Aaron Kilby – (@kilby76) – Director of Marketing & Business Development at Artisan Colour.   Founder and Host of #MediaChat: A great way for a small business to grow its social media network is to build a community with their followers and potential clientele.  They need to find the network or networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest) that best fit them and interact with groups on those platforms daily.

12. Shelly Kramer (@ShellyKramer)  – CEO – V3 Integrated Marketing her blog: Social media channels provide the same networking opportunities as in real life networking.  SMBs need to quit trying to mail it in and use social media channels to network.  Find out where your customers and prospects are, and engage and interact there in a meaningful manner.

13. Markus Orlyus (@MarkusOrlyus) – Media Strategist – Cover Story – If you think about a really great dinner party where everything seems to just flow, all that sparkling conversation and witty repartee doesn’t just happen; it’s facilitated by a thoughtful host working unobtrusively to involve all the guests and gently nudge things along.  But to be a great host you must be present virtually all the time—managing your web presence in real-time is a must for community building.

14. Peter Davison (@ourmaninmtl) Co-Founder & CMO - Trendr: The Mobile Meeting Plaform: The best advice for small businesses to increase their social media networking is to realize that their social campaigns have the ability to strengthen their offline relationships.  Mobile makes it easy to take social on the road—get out from behind your desk and use social to meet key customers, learn about their interests and create events that bring people together face to face.

15. Stan Phelps (@9INCHmarketing) – Experience Architect – 9 INCH Marketing – Speaker – Author of “What’s Your Purple Goldfish?:  Your social media plan should focus on ways to further engage current customers to leverage authentic word of mouth.  Provide incentives for check-ins on Foursquare, follows on Twitter or likes on Facebook.

16. Neal Schaffer, (@NealSchaffer) – President, Windmills Marketing, a Social Media Strategic Consultancy: Small businesses need to leave the buzz behind and focus on the basics in 2013. ISocial media marketing requires consistency to be successful, so in order to avoid a “crash and burn” scenario, start by just spending a little time a day on a consistent basis and build up from there.

17. Andrew Spoeth (@andrewspoeth) – Team Lead, Social Media Marketing – CA Technologies - Blogger: Connect with your happiest existing customers on social channels and let them be a gateway to others like them.  Through social media, give your customers access to little bits of information that are important to them, even if it’s not directly related to your product or service.

18. Frank Strong (@Frank_Strong) Blogs at – Sword and the Script: Aim for real conversations on social media, ask questions and respond to them, share advice but also accept it, and focus on the long-term outcome.  Relationships are built over time with consistent engagement: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

1. Research and Plan: Judy Bellem (@JudyBellem) – Principal, SMM Advertising

Small businesses should resolve to improve use of social media in 2013. Here are three easy steps

1. Research: Focus on reaching your customers on the social sites they frequent.  They best way to find out is to ask.

2. Plan: Make sure to create a social media plan that aligns with your business objectives.

3. Build sharable content: If you don’t have a blog, it is easy to create one.  Write short blog posts on a single topic.  Use keywords; add tags for SEO; include images, “share” buttons, and a comment box for engagement.  Then, share your blog on social news sites (Digg, E-Zine, StumpleUpon).  Post in LinkedIn Groups and initiate a discussion.  Remember, people want to do business with people they know and trust.

2. Seek Relevance: Paul Biedermann (@PaulBiedermann) – Creative Director/Owner, re: DESIGN

Seek out relevant Twitter chats and online communities to deepen engagement.  Focus only on those platforms most likely to benefit your business and support your strategy.  Be sure your website and social pages are mobile-friendly with a strong branded presence.

3. Narrow Your Target: Deirdre Breakenridge (@dbreakenridge) – CEO, Pure Performance Communications

For small businesses, an important social media New Year’s resolution would be this: Don’t focus on too much at once.  It’s better to be on fewer social media platforms only targeting where your stakeholders are the most active rather than trying to be everywhere.  Of course, through monitoring and tracking (yes there are free tools), you can stay tuned into the relevant conversations and create more meaningful opportunities for engagement.  In 2013, plan for better quality participation, as opposed to a greater quantity of participation.

4. Find Networks That Matter: Terry L. Brock, (@TerryBrock) – Member, Professional Speaker Hall of Fame, Certified Speaking Professional

Small businesses today need to be active on the platforms where buyers and key influencers spend time, money, and effort.  Much like we would commit to being active parts of key networks in the real world, we now need to commit the time, money, and effort to be in the digital areas that matter most to our business.

5. Be Holistic: Jamie Crager (@JamieCrager) – CEO & President, Crowdshifter Media

Commit to a purpose driven, holistic marketing plan, one in which your business is intentional about building targeted relationships through social media as a part of a greater unified sales strategy and understanding that social media is a gateway that opens the door to customers and prospects being guided through an organic conversion funnel that will help produce your desired results—along with many other benefits you cannot possibly imagine.

6. Put The Right Tools In Your Toolkit: Gini Dietrich (@GiniDietrich) – CEO, Arment Dietrich, Inc.

The one New Year’s resolution small businesses should consider to optimize their use of social media is the use of Squeeze.  I know, I know.  No one wants yet another tool to use.  However, Squeeze gives you statistics on the content you share on social networks that not even Google analytics can give you.  When you combine the two, you will become very smart about what works, what doesn’t work, and how to change or improve very quickly.

7. Think Visually: Peg Fitzpatrick @PegFitzpatrick – Managing Director, 12 Most  and Host of My Book Club and Director of Marketing and Social Media Manager, Kreussler Inc.

In 2013, we resolve to update our social media design!  Making an impact with social media requires eye-catching visuals that pop, and we last updated two years ago with a new product.  Time to freshen up!  We’re coordinating our social media design (including blog header, custom email header, social media backgrounds, and cover art) to go along with our marketing focus for 2013.  We are planning all our visual marketing together (print, email, social media) for a fully integrated and successful New Year!

8. Let The Numbers Guide You: Carla Gentry (@data_nerd) – Founder, Analytical Solution

As 2013 draws near on our social media endeavors, we begin to evaluate the year and speculate on 2012: What did I do right?  What did I do wrong?  If you used analytics, you know; if you were “winging it” you don’t.  Now, I know everyone has heard about how analytics makes a big difference in social media as far as target audience and leads, but how many actually took the plunge and invested in analytics?

In my opinion, not enough of us did.  Therefore my 2013 New Year’s Resolution is to continue spreading the word of how analysis and data can make a difference in the New Year, and I challenge everyone to open their minds and get away from “gut reactions” and “flying by the seat of your pants” marketing and take social media seriously.  Use your data and measure as you would any other channel you put money into.  What can your data and analytics do for you?

9. Collaboration + Productivity = Success: Ian Gertler (@IanGertler) – Director of Marketing and Communication, Kona.com

2013 small business resolution: collaboration and productivity!  Become a social business by identifying and testing at least two social collaboration platforms (like Kona.com and Basecamp) to connect the dots, internally and externally.  Choose options that address both the professional and personal sides of life.  For collaboration on the go, make sure the choices have mobile apps.

10. Be Generous With Online Praise: Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) – CEO, Maiers Ed Services and Founder YouMatter Movement

Make it a habit to let people know they matter.  Seek to give lasting compliments that forever cement in their minds what you notice, value, and find essential about others.  Be specific.  Be Bold.  Be Real.  Be the leader.

11. Tie It Back to Objectives: Sean McGinnis (@seanmcginnis) – Founder, 312digital

In 2013, our small business will resolve to tie our social media use to business objectives, and we will only measure social media outcomes that directly or indirectly affect those business outcomes.  We will experiment and measure the results of our efforts to find out what works for our customers, our business and our industry.  We will devote the resources necessary to accomplish the resolutions above, whether that be time, attention, people, or money.  If after focused measurement and experimentation, it is determined that social media is not driving the business results we hoped for, we will stop doing social media and instead focus those resources on marketing efforts we know to be effective.

12. Build Your Foundation: Ted Rubin (@TedRubin) – Chief Social Marketing Officer, Collective Bias™

I believe that social media offers small business marketers significant opportunities.  In 2013, every small business should make a resolution to get started by building a thorough understanding of how to interact, engage, and connect in social media.  Then, hire a smart, young intern, many of which are available at a mere $10/hr., and some will work simply to fulfill college internship requirements.  Through your hands-on guidance, this intern can help you execute your plan—which will include a lot of the basic, time-consuming work.  Remember that a “brand” is what a business does, and a “reputation” is what people remember.

13. Crank It Up: Esta H. Singer (@sheconsulting) – Principal, s.h.e. Consulting

In 2013, brands need to make the resolution to get on board the social media ride and crank it up.  Like a wheel, every spoke is seamlessly networked to leverage your exposure.  Most importantly, you need to be the one building one-to-one relationships.  In social media, people respond to people, not brands.  Use Hootsuite to get your wheel turning by scheduling posts linked to your networks.  Schedule real-time to interact.  Go the distance, and people will follow.

14. Commit to Commenting: Susan Young (@sueyoungmedia)  – CEO, Get in Front Communications, Inc. 

Commit to commenting on the blogs of three influential people in your industry with whom you want to do business.  Offer thoughtful insights on a regular basis, and your visibility will increase.

What are your tips for small businesses using social media in the New Year? What are you planning to do new or differently when it comes to social?

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

1. Meghan M. Biro @MeghanMBiro – Founder and CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group and the TalentCulture World of Work Community. “In 2013, for businesses small & large, I predict that the quality of online relationships and content will rise to the occasion in the vast sea of social media.  Also, crowdsourcing will become a more active player in the mainstream social enterprise.”

2. David Brier @DavidBrier – Chief Gravity Defyer at DBD International, Ltd. – “In 2013, small businesses will need to strengthen their ties to their customers as the world keeps getting smaller.  So much more is available than ever before.  Thus, the competitive edge will be built on those relationships and bonds.  In addition, small businesses can become the official ambassadors of excellent customer service in a world that’s going increasingly automated.  As more and more “touch points” become “streamlined” at the expense of personal human contact, the companies with excellent personnel and live customer service representatives will outshine and outperform their competition.”

3. Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas – Account Director- Infinity Technologies, Social Media Marketing Blogger, Speaker and Strategist – Author -”Blogging the Smart Way – How to create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” “Google has realized that people voting for content they like with Retweets, Facebook likes, plus +1′s and comments is important and increasingly relevant in what they serve up in Google search results.  Google+ was launched just over 12 months ago to capture those social signals, and today the Google +1 button is used over five billion times every day.  In 2013 you will see small companies starting to realize that social media is also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Companies will begin to understand that social, content, and SEO are linked and more integrated than ever.”

4. Margie Clayman @MargieClayman- Vice President of Client Services, Clayman Marketing Communications, Inc.  “I predict that in 2013 small businesses will start seeing social media more as a tool and less as an entity unto itself.  Instead of asking what social media is, they will ask how they should be using it and why.  In the end, this will increase the effectiveness of their social media marketing efforts.”

5. Jon Ferrara @Jon_Ferrara – CEO Nimble, Inc. “Nearly every small business is experimenting with or planning on using social media because they understand they need to go where their audience is.  Listening and engaging and being discoverable online is critically important today in growing their businesses.  2013 will be the year Social Media moves out of Community Management and Marketing to Social Selling and Customer Engagement.”

6. Sam Fiorella @samfiorella – Partner at Sensei Marketing  and Author of Influence Marketing “Small Businesses in 2013 will tire of broadcast social media campaigns and messaging and invest in monitoring tools like Jungoo.com, Shoutlet.com or others to better segment their audience, effectively target influencers and accurately measure the impact of those efforts.  Next, employees—the businesses’ biggest brand ambassadors—will become trained and empowered to become actual influencers across social channels.”

7. Mike Johansson @mikefixs –  Lecturer in Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Social Media Strategist for Fixitology LLC  – “2013 is the year that small businesses finally acknowledge that social media needs to be part of the daily workload.  Depending on whose numbers you believe, somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of small businesses use social media for customer engagement, customer service, community building and selling. In 2013 small businesses will realize they either get on that bus or they’ll be waving goodbye to the opportunity to be in front of people … and some, if not all, of their business.”

8. Wendy Marx @Wendy Marx – President – Marx Communications-“In 2013, for B2B small businesses it will be more use of content marketing, especially content curation, as a way of engaging customers.  Small businesses will make greater use of LinkedIn as the platform continues to expand its offerings. Finally, the coming year will see a greater integration of social media into all marketing practices so it becomes a part of a small business’ way of doing business.”

9. Steve Olenski @steveolenski – Sr. Content Strategist at Responsys  – “In 2013 I think (and maybe it’s wishful thinking) that more and more small businesses will begin to dive into the visual side of social media, (i.e. Pinterest and Instagram).  I have said this a million times, but you have to look at your computer/mobile screen the way you do a TV.  People do not read TV, they watch it. Consumers want to see something—not just read it.”

10. Tom Pick @TomPick –  Digital Marketing & PR Consultant – Webbiquity- “In 2013, small businesses, and larger ones too, will get more sophisticated about their measurement of social media results.  They will view social media marketing tactics within the larger framework of their overall Web presence—how it supports what they are doing in PR, website optimization, search advertising and other areas of marketing.  Their measurement will be less about direct, linear ROI and more about how social sharing and engagement fits into and enhances their overall web marketing and lead generation strategies.”

11.   Alex Romanovich @AlexRomanovich – Managing Partner - Social2B, Inc, Adviser – The CMO Club – “SMBs will continue to test social media, while more aggressively increasing their budgets allocated to social media in any form.  By now, the SMB community is seeing some positive results via social media and will continue to test the channel, conversions, ecommerce or social commerce, etc. For the first time, SMBs will start paying even closer attention to metrics and analytics—they will want to know more about their conversion rates and ROI, although they will continue to be challenged by the complexity and growing pains of the social environment.  SMBs will also use more social networks—besides LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, SMBs will continue to discover Google+, Slideshare, etc.”

12.   Gary Schirr @ProfessorGary –  Assistant Professor – Marketing, Radford University  - “In 2013 savvy small businesses around the globe will learn valuable photo and video-editing skills to help drive their social media marketing efforts.  Using their own cameras, smartphones and tablets, small businesses will leverage newly found creative skills to create content that impacts their audience.  They will also solicit visual content from employees and customers.  Small businesses will develop an eye for visual content marketing opportunities while learning editing tools such as iMovie, MovieMaker, Photoshop and PaintShop to help energize their business marketing approach.”

13.   Deborah Weinstein @debweinstein – President & Partner, Strategic Objectives “2012 saw a major surge in mobile adoption rates, and 2013 will be all about the apps that lead to social sharing.  Mobile is an effective brand building tool for small business given its powerful ability to geo-target consumers and promote local sales.  In 2013, we will see a focus on quick, easy and highly visual apps, including Instagram, Viddly, Cinemagram and Keek. These apps are the ‘140 characters’ of visual, social sharing.  Small business can use these free, easy-to-use tools to get the message out to their audience on such a short, quick-consumption platform.”

14.   Patricia Wilson @brandcottage – President/Founder BrandCottage  - “The biggest shift we will see is in content creation. It is relatively easy and inexpensive to create beautiful photos and videos for social media.  Small business are beginning to reach their comfort level with social media and will employ more tactics with Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and other social nets.”

What trends in social media do you see taking shape in the coming year?

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

#1: Tech Adoption

If 2012 didn’t already prove that tablet computing isn’t just a passing fad, the coming years should leave no doubt.  Tablets, smartphones and e-readers have become the primary media source for thousands of users.  eMarketer even estimates that tablet users will reach 89.5 by 2014. With this trend, brands will have to rise to meet the additional demand in content—including apps, video and social media—that this trend is likely to produce.

#2: Explosion in blog traffic and leads

A new survey by HubSpot, “Uncovering Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000 Businesses,” reveals that small business benefit the greatest from blog articles in terms of both new leads and traffic.

#3: Employee branding creating rich content development

Today’s socially-enabled employees like to share content, including content related to their employers.  Employee branding has been dancing on the periphery over the past few years, but it’s poised to be a big player in the social arena in the coming year.  With proper guidance, employee branding can be an asset to a brand’s image, but managers must establish social guidelines to keep the individual brands from eclipsing the company’s own brand image.

#4: Innovative Strategies for Marketing SMB Blogs

While it would be wonderful if blog content could just market itself, employees and brands must accept that part of their job after producing content is finding an audience for it.  Good, well-promoted content attracts vibrant communities, which are usually more than happy to pass the content on to their other networks.  In fact, platforms such as Triberr have sprouted up on the Web specifically to aid content producers in this process.

#5: Curation Syndication

Once just for TV, the syndication model is now being successfully adapted to Web content.  In fact, it has proven quite successful for smaller businesses looking to boost their visibility and generate more leads.  To implement a successful curation syndication program, brands should find other blogs, websites or news sources that actively curate and republish content from around the Web.  The reasoning is simple: the more places your content appears, the more visibility you will earn.  In his article “How to Get More Blog Traffic,” Tom Pick mentions B2B Marketing Zone, Social Media Informer, and Social Media Today as particularly strong syndication sources.

Find this post interesting? Please share it using the social links below.

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

“Content marketing is the art of communicating with customers and the target audience without selling,” according to Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton in their book Valuable Content Marketing. This description highlights the essential truth about branding engagement: consumers expect to be engaged before they will even consider buying into a brand’s line of products or services.

In this world of content as cultural currency, the greatest investment marketers can make is not in advertising, but in providing consumers with a chance to engage, contribute, and learn.  The content must be dynamic, relevant, and useful to the consumer, whether that content is a helpful how-to video, a sleek infographic, or a well-crafted blog post.

Engaging consumers without breaking the bank

The advantage for brands is that producing this content is cost-efficient—a boon for small brands on a budget that need to invest in low-risk strategies such as content marketing to guarantee a strong ROI.  The first step any brand should take before developing their own rich content is to engage its community by asking them what they’d like to see and what questions they want answered.

Many brands will find that once they’ve established a culture of content, their most engaged brand ambassadors will often contribute their own rich ideas and media, enhancing the experience for other users in organic and exciting ways.  The end result is brand loyalty and trust, as the community will know they are being listened to and respected.

What makes the best content?

As is often the case with most Web 2.0 strategies, there is no one-size-fits-all type of content that will work for all brands all the time.  Brands looking to develop rich content should have a clearly defined goal, whether it’s to drive traffic or foster brand loyalty.

Here are a couple examples of smart content marketing for small businesses:

• A small plumbing business could post blogs and diagrams to help its customer base deal with various small plumbing issues such as a leaky faucet.  By offering free advice, the brand will build trust and become a thought leader.
• A hair salon could use Pinterest to post images of the most recent trends—from prom styles to professional fashions.  This will not only establish the salon as an authority that keeps up with the fashions in its industry, but also it will save consumers time when trying to decide what hair style is best for them.
• A chef at a popular local restaurant could post short videos teaching its patrons some simple cooking techniques.  These videos could be especially helpful during the holidays, when people are looking for the best recipes to really make their holiday dinners sparkle.

How is your business building its content currency?  How are you measuring customer engagement and the effectiveness of your content strategy?

Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is a digital and social brand consultant, blogger, and speaker. Her knowledge of business strategy, passion for creative expression, and marketing technology helps businesses achieve the remarkable. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.