They are not the only small business to miss the potential that social media has to build sales, says Rebekah King, principal of ReBiz Works in Irvine, a one-person shop that specializes in social media marketing and training.

Social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and online communication tools, such as Twitter and the content-update utility Ping.fm, could raise TNT’s profile, introduce it to new customers and provide an easy way to keep in front of its growing community. Also, content on social media sites is counted in search-engine results and can move a business higher in result rankings.

To be effective, a business needs a plan.

“Any social-media program has to have a focus, a purpose,” says King, who works with small businesses and advertising agencies. “They want to book more business. Social media can show people who they are and help drive potential customers to their website.”

Check out the article on latimes.com for the full step-by-step program we outlined for TNT Dunk Squad

What Dell’s doing on Twitter is one of my favorite stories, and is explained best by a Stefanie N, a dell employee herself:

I started tweeting for the U.S. Dell Outlet in June of 2007 based on a suggestion from a colleague who learned about Twitter at the SXSW Interactive conference, and the response had been very positive. But I knew we could do more. So I started tweeting more regularly and doing more Twitter-exclusive offers, which created more buzz and helped us to grow our follower base (we’re now over 600,000). Our followers responded by re-tweeting @DellOutlet messages to their followers, and our numbers rose even more. The chart below (click on it to see more options) shows our growth over the last 3 months—right around the time we began introducing more exclusive offers, when we were at about 11,000 followers. … we’ve actually eclipsed $3 million in overall sales.

Did you catch that? $3 million in overall sales since June of 2007… that’s only 2 years!

How do they do this? There seems to be a few basics I find in common for many twitter success stories:

1. Connect with your audience - Import databases, publicize your twitter profile, follow the people who talk about you and/or your product… general stay-in-touch stuff.

2. Listen and Respond to what the community is saying about you – use twitter tracking tools like search.twitter.com to keep track of what the general public is saying about you – not just the people that are following you.

3. Give your followers what they want when they want it – which for companies like Dell is answers to service issues, help finding product, and the deals that apply to them.

Always keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish, and use whatever tool it is to accomplish your goal. For Dell it’s keeping their customers satisfied in the products and making it easier for them to get the service they want. This thoughtfullness has generated over $3million in revenue for them. How could you be more thoughtful for your clients? Would twitter social networking be able to supplement this? These are the questions you need to ask, not just of yourself, but of your clients – conduct a survey, try out the software.. there are a myriad of ways to put your toe in the water and find if it’s right for you

Social Media = any kind of media that creates a social or community experience for the audience. Facebook lets people do this by sharing photos and videos and news with their friends.

New Media or Emerging Media = The exciting (and confusing) part of technology advancement is we don’t always know what to call it. That’s this stuff. Currently this includes social media, online communities, mobile marketing, and a bunch of new tools and platforms we’re learning how to use.

Our tools allow us to eavesdrop on public conversations inside of twitter, myspace, facebook, and linkedIN, bringing back information like:

• Who are your ideal clients?
• What are your ideal clients talking about?
• Where do they go to have these questions answered?
• How do they want to learn about your product?

And with this information we can then develop a marketing program tailored for your business, to provide the greatest return in the most effective way we can. Often this process will not only provide research, but also sales leads from within the social media environment.

Read a Case Study of Sales Results from Social Media via Twitter

This gentleman (lets call him Ed) is of the opinion that LinkedIN was created to gather people’s information under the guise of social networking… until the owners sell it – making boatloads of money and taking all your private information.

For me, as an educated (I try to be anyway) user who has sat on the sidelines watching the tool develop before jumping on the proverbial bandwagon, Ed sounds like Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory.

It’s important to note that Ed’s fears are not entirely unfounded. In late 2007 a social networking site known as Quechup received alot of bad press for allegedly sending spam emails to the entire contact list of each user (without the user’s knowledge). While Quechup denies these issues in a statement September 17th, 2007.

This is exactly why I encourage people to not be “early adopters” of technology in which you put your personal contact information. Wait a while, until you see a couple of buyouts or until people smarter than you are using and recommending the software (not to imply anything about your IQ – having friends smarter than you are is an integral part to staying safe in the technology age).

It’s also worth knowing that Social Networking sites rely on a large membership to serve the real money-making activity: transactions in the online marketplace OR online advertising to the membership. Only a few sites actually charge a subscription model (like LinkedIN) and this is only because they operate in the business side – selling subscriptions for advanced communication tools. Myspace recently changed hands (being sold to Google) without any user privacy issues, Facebook and Linkedin both of recently received additional investment dollars… again without stealing user info.

The internet and social networking specifically, offer opportunities for business models we’ve not seen before. If we care to get the most out of the advances around us, we must stay wise to our legal system and the standards by which our information is handled. Dissolving into paranoia not only hurts us, it holds us back from the advances laying before us.

oh, and did I mention that between google, jigsaw, and linkedin/facebook/myspace/thelistonline searches you can find just about anyone’s info…

If you’re a jerk, now the whole world knows it.
If you’re a nice person with jerk tendencies, now the whole world knows it.

Some people are freaked out by this, the merging of public and private lives, and often one must find a new set of boundaries (ie. stop twittering after 9pm – DUH!)

And often as these tools creep in to further degrade the private/public boundaries.. tools like myspace and facebook crossing over to LinkedIN, email, etc. We come up with more ways to waste time and to share our OCD with the world – tools like twitter and digg and del.icio.us

The trick in all this is balance – and one of the easiest ways to balance is to be a slow-adopter. Don’t necessary jump on every bandwagon… give it 6 months or so for the bugs to get worked out and the syncing tools to catch up. Sure you may miss a freebie here and there, but you’ll save yourself hours of headaches.

Take Myspace for example. I thought that tool was great and jumped right on… only to become a target for spammers of the world to unitedly blast. Every time I make an update, I get hit with half a dozen spammers… not to mention the porn and the current dramas in the news about kids publicizing their cruelty.

LinkedIN is one of my success stories. I signed up for it a year ago, but waited 6 months to really get into it… now it’s a huge tool for my networking and KIT systems.

Plaxo’s a 50/50 split… the plaxo pulse is a weak attempt to compete with other social networking tools, while the address book and calendar syncing tools remain unparalleled for those of us that have to sync home computer|cellphone|office|laptop and aren’t interested in thousands of duplicates.

So when in doubt – sign up but don’t email blast your address book immediately… sit around (aka “lurk) until you see a few friends in there, and then go forward. Always look for syncing ability to your existing technology tools, and never give up your right to wait.

Being the first one to adopt a new technology is very rarely worth being the first one to have a system crash.

Unless you’re in IT, of course.

Cheers,

Rebekah

So like a good nerd, I started researching other ways to use this new technology. I tried twitterific and twhirl and twillions of other twools that just made me feel lispy.

Meanwhile, I notice that all my other “social networking” tools are trying to get in on the action, with a series of “what are you doing” post options. These just added to the twitteration and twistication of my poor head. Being visible and “plugged in” is one thing…. but all of this stuff is just NOT WORK.

And then I found PING.fm
and my life was forever changed.

Ping let’s me post to all my blogs, all my micro-blogs, and even all the stupid little “status” messages across my metaverse. While it’s not perfect (thus is the world of beta) it is by far the easiest way for me to trick all the non-techies into thinking I’m a social networking queen.
(come on – you know you were thinking it)

Checkout Ping.fm on me – enter the invite code “pingfood” for access.