A company can put itself out there through television, radio, billboards, newspapers, magazines or Internet banner ad campaigns. However, how many small businesses can afford advertising like that? How many of the dozen or so billboards you passed on the way home from work do you remember? Besides the “Old Spice” commercials when was the last one you saw that truly entertained or emotionally compelled you? Along comes social media, offering highly targeted, engaging media options with all the oomph a business could hope for. What’s more, is it’s completely conversational! Want to talk to your customers? Every tool imaginable is there for the taking; for free. A wide open world without barriers between your business and its clients and customers.

It’s exciting. It can be a bit overwhelming, too. I get that. I also think we can all agree a whole lot of good can be done at an extraordinarily affordable price. I understand, good content costs money. We need to make a good case to fund the creation of good content. The final cost is always indicative of doing any marketing whether it’s traditional media or new. But think about it. If that’s what it’s down to, people, that’s pretty amazing. Time, the “I” in ROI, is a part of the equation no matter which route is taken. The difference is that social media offers complete, immediate control as much or as little as you like.

Gary Vaynerchuk (wine library tv, author of “Crush It!” and soon to be “The Thank You Economy”, prolific video blogger, self made social media multimillionaire superstar) in one of his short, profound video posts deftly answers the question, “What’s the impact of your business’s social media efforts in terms of true ROI?”

“What’s the ROI of social media? What’s the ROI on the relationship with your best friend? What about the ROI of opening a door or giving up your seat to someone on the bus? How about simple manners, like greeting someone with a “Hello” or telling them “Thank you”? What is the ROI of being polite, being helpful, of actually caring?”

In a word, these things are priceless. Each immeasurable and basic element lends itself to richer and more meaningful experience for everyone involved.

Now, just because your business has a Twitter account doesn’t mean it’s going to change your business. Social media, like building a business, is a marathon. Building an audience via social media, like building a business, doesn’t happen over night. Make no mistake, social media is important. It’s integral to survival, and staying relevant. Customers and clients are online, engaging in social media. We all know that the money goes where the people go, and so should your business. Social media is serious business. You can’t not do it. Don’t worry so much about the ROI of social media and get out there and do it. If you want something to worry about, be concerned about the cost of not doing it; losing your audience to your competition, entering the game too late, or of the lost opportunities. The analytic tools for measuring ROI and tracking metrics are coming and will be here some day soon. For now, you need to be social. Business has everything to gain and so very, very little to lose.

The article covers many interesting facets of media and content, but most intriguing is the study which reveals that visitors display overwhelming gravitation to engage in blog content instead of exploring products or services or -no surprise here- spending time submitting the tired oh-so-90’s “Contact Us” web form. Especially those who arrive at business websites via social media.

A Self-fulfilling Prophecy?
It’s been argued the stats are a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and it makes sense that the majority of referral traffic via social media is to content as opposed to product and core service offering pages and submission forms. Of course it is. Social media is conversation and content. A web form isn’t content and nobody wants to converse about it. The second you tweet a message about completing a contact form for client referrals or tell followers to check out your static service offering page is the second they hit “Unfollow” and are lost to you forever. People know how to use the web. When visitors come to a web site they can figure out where to go to get that information. “Sharing” a product link with your audience is akin to actively spamming them. “But they’re following us to hear about new service offerings and product developments”. Probably not and if they are, they won’t be for long.

Whatever you share with your audience has to add value to your online relationship, or you risk being in no relationship at all. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh suggests taking an ICEE approach to social media: inspire, connect, entertain or educate. I would add one more qualifier: genuine. Genuinely have your audience’s interests at heart and make sure the message – be it a twitter tweet, a Facebook or LinkedIn update, even a blog post – is authentic. The second your followers catch the slightest whiff of “I’m another number they can sell to” – something every business should avoid at all costs – it’s over, especially online with social media and its ever-so-fickle followers. Clients and customers have been advertised at for decades, social media is different, and so better be your message.

Social media is for conversation and content. Direct sales and lead generation may be incidental to it, but should never be the goal. “Direct” should be the tip off, a warning word that smacks of direct mail marketing and direct phone sales, neither of which have anything to do with conversation or engaging content and neither of which are too effective or long lasting.

The struggle amid producing product pages vs engaging content is a clamorous one which echoes especially loud in the brief, albeit extraordinary annals of social media. It’s a common contention in many organizations; are we writers or do we make this widget? Are we video producers or do provide this service? Are we radio talk show hosts or do we sell this product? It seems the most successful and effective will do both, as Adam Ostrow perfectly illustrates by sharing a quote from Andrew Heyward (former President of CBS News) who wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “every company is a media company.”

Adam ultimately sums up beautifully in his post: “The thing to keep in mind is that while linking your audience to a blog post might not translate directly to a sale, it might translate to a blog subscription, a retweet, or a share on Facebook. And that audience – which will grow with every quality piece of content you produce — can be re-engaged down the line with news about your products or special offers that directly drive sales.”

Why would a business, organization, or public personality who already has a blog audience bother with Facebook? While I highly recommend blogs for the incredible content hubs they are, consider how they work. Blogs comprise a 1-to-1 relationship in that one reader can visit and consume the content you create. An individual reader may visit once in a while to see what’s happening and maybe comment on your content. On Facebook, however, fans can receive (content is pushed) blog-length posts and twitter-length status updates which can contain photos, links, and videos directly in their News Feed. You no longer have to rely on readers occasionally dropping by the blog. Content is pushed to them and they can easily comment on it. If they like, share or comment on it, your content ripples out across all of their Facebook friends (the average Facebook user has 130 friends!) as recent activity. This engenders conversation between people and their connections. Facebook is another great enticement for your fans to share and interact with your content.

The Fan Box widget is how you get a fan page out of Facebook and onto the web at large and in turn makes it easy for your blog readers to become page fans and tightens the bond you share with them.

The Fan Box has a few basic options you can select for how you would want it to display:

• With/without the stream
• With/without fans (it will display fans you know if there are any)
• With/without the Facebook logo

A few of the Facebook Fan Box Options

Now, website visitors who are not currently Facebook fans will see a “Become a Fan” button; if you are already a fan it says “You are a Fan”. No matter which Fan Box options you go for, the important thing is that Facebook users now have the option to become a fan of your page right from your website the fan box is embedded on. If gaining fans is your goal, the Facebook Fan Box is a fantastic way to do it.

Rock Fire Grille uses the Fan Box on their website to share specials and gather new fans in Facebook.

I prefer to “tie” my LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts together using a slick web service called HootSuite.  HootSuite users compose a single update, check off the accounts to post, and send it. In a single click Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all automatically pushed the latest news, all from one place.

The free web service hootsuite allows users to post to multiple social networks at once, among many other cool features.

Additionally, HootSuite offers some other great features, like historical click statistics for displaying the most popular messages by respective referrers.  Another extremely helpful feature is the ability to compose and schedule pending messages. You can even schedule blog posts for Wordpress.com accounts.  There is also a link shortening service ow.ly that transforms links like this: http://microvisionsinc.com/blog/2009/10/solid-state-drive-technology-delivers-exciting-promises/ into a link like this: http://ow.ly/11VEt ; helpful when limited to 140 character tweets.

HootSuite statistics make tracking the number clicks and where clicks come from is easy.

HootSuite is easily set up and convenient to use.  Since setting up my account I’ve used it almost every single day and can highly recommend this amazing, free, online tool for managing updates on all your social networks.

HootSuite has a beautiful interface that's easy to use.