One Social Network is Not Enough

For a small business owner-particularly one who is older or who has not yet come aboard the social network and online media revolution, it can seem like just getting a Facebook page or a Twitter account is all that is necessary to catch up. However, the truth is one social network is just not enough in today's fast-paced world of tweeting, blogging and posting.

Many media and marketing experts advise small businesses to concentrate all of their public relations and marketing efforts toward online social networking. This is actually pretty decent advice since small businesses generally do not have much of an advertising budget to work with anyway AND more and more people are getting their information online. For nominal cost, even the smallest of businesses can create an online presence that drives sales and customer growth.

In order to do this, however, it is important to maximize social networking by using all of the tools available and this means going beyond one tweet at a time. This may seem like a daunting task. After all, some of those online social networking sites can seem like a huge time waste or at least, they can require a great deal of time spent keeping up and disseminating information. Consider using a social media platform or dashboard such as Hootsuite-this tool makes it possible to monitor several social networks at once and to actually schedule comments, links, tweets, etc. in advance. This way, a busy individual can spend some time once a day or even once a week, scheduling marketing tweets or business information and then be able to focus on other tasks throughout the day. Dashboards such as this also make it possible to partner and work with other individuals who can help spread the word.

Cross-posting is perfectly fine in the social networking world and can even help you to spread and reiterate your marketing or public relations message. People tend to get information from a variety of sources and when they are viewing it on their phone or mobile device, they may not even be aware where they are getting the information. Additionally, people may access different social networks at different times of the day and from different places so spread the word about what your business is up to by spreading it across several outlets.

In a world where things are changes so quickly, it is important to spend some time every day keeping up with your online social networking-consider it marketing and public relations time well spent.

Also from this contributor:

Time Management and Social Networking

Why the Press Release is Not Dead

Quelling the Anxiety that Comes with Owning a Small Business