The Internet show about small business marketing.
Podcast Episode #61 – Power to the Small Business
If you spend enough time on the popular social media sites, you’ll find plenty of advice telling you to use social media marketing to increase business. It’s the specific “how-to” advice that’s lacking. Oh, there’s plenty of advice, but mostly in abstract form, such as “listen,” “engage,” and don’t forget to “share.” In this episode of Power to the Small Business podcast we’re going to ignore the abstract in favor of concrete, exact advice. You get specific A-B-C steps that you can implement to help drive sales from this social media marketing formula.
Maybe the best thing about the information in this podcast is that it is result of research and real-life application. Stephen Woessner of the University of Wisconsin La Crosse Small Business Development Center, and author of the soon to be released book: Increase Online Sales Through Viral Social Networking, gives us this social media marketing formula based on his research and his first-hand experience selling products on the web using social media. He found that using the tactics he shares in this podcast episode increased sales conversion rate from 2%-4% for normal website traffic to a 22% conversion rate for social media traffic to the website.
Guest: Stephen Woessner, University of Wisconsin La Crosse Small Business Development Center
Length: 24 minutes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Social Media Marketing Show Notes and Links
Stephen Woessners’ Social Media Formula
The Steps
- Open your free accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (If possible, set them up as personal profiles)
- Start getting engaged with the conversation by sending out status updates. Reply to others and comment on their status updates.
- After you have built your network, start following the 6:1 recipe. Six life or professional-related posts for every one product or service related post.
- Start publishing status updates twice per day and do some testing.
- Every third day post about your product or service and link back to your business website.
- Use Google analytics to track the data.
Selected Quotes from the show:
“From my experience, I can easily conclude that a small business owner, out of nowhere, can use social networking to build a profile, launch a product, and generate online sales.”
“All these different content pieces are important, wherever they exist, because that’s what gives you things to talk about within your social network.”
“Just like any other promotional tactic, it needs to be nurtured, it needs to grow. Otherwise …you will wear it out just like a direct mail list that you send to 15-20 times without adding new people to it.”
“In my experience, you have to invest in building a community, you have to invest in developing conversation, before you can ever develop commerce.”
Show Links
Stephen Woessner’s Books:
Increase Online Sales Through Viral Social Networking
The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization
Upcoming Events:
ProductCamp Austin
Optimization Summits
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