Social Media for Small Business - An Experiment

Social Media Guru's have been relentlessly preaching the effectiveness of Twitter as a form of marketing for small businesses. Vert Studios does not offer Social Media Marketing (SMM) services. Why? Because we don't understand it. Know what else? Neither do over 95% of the companies that offer SMM services just to swindle a quick buck. Most businesses offering SMM services actually have no influence in the social media world themselves. I recently spotted a company offering social media services while they themselves had a grand total of 6 followers on Twitter. Unfortunately, this practice is becoming all too common.

"Most businesses offering SMM services actually have no influence in the social media world themselves."

So Social Media Sucks For Small Businesses?

Yes. No. Maybe. But I intend to find out for myself, and I'd like to share my findings with you.

The Current State of Vert Social Media

We know the basic premise of social media. Engage in conversation, and live like it's high school. But currently, we don't invest much time in social media. Naturally, we only get 10-20 hits from Twitter and Facebookper month. Here are our stats for the two most popular social media platforms - Facebook and Twitter. That's 38 likes and 111 followers. Bear in mind some of our followers are spammers that we've been too lazy to report. I'd say the number of actual people following us is between 80-90.

The Main Goal

The main purpose of our Twitter and Facebook marketing experiments is to objectively determine whether social media is worth pursuing for small businesses. If it works, fantastic. If not, there are always other options. Our primary success measurement will be quote requests tracked from twitter. We'll also measure secondary success, such as increase in traffic, RSS subscriptions, and blog comments.

A Change in Mindset

Previously, I had published an article concerning the number of people you follow on twitter. Basically I argued that following a lot of people isn't a good idea. How did I come to that conclusion? Common sense. But the crazy thing about marketing is how counterintuitive it can be at times. Sometimes, common sense and how things work in the real world don't exactly match up. To see if that's the case here, we're going to start following more people on Twitter, and convince as many friends and family members possible to suggest our Facebook page to their friends. We'll go for quantity over quality for the sake of experimentation. Who knows, maybe blindly following anyone and everyone actually has positive results.

"Sometimes, common sense and how things work in the real world don’t exactly match up."

Your Social Media Experience

If you're a small business and have engaged in social media or hired a social media marketer, let us know about your experiences in the comment section below! February 22, 2011