Principle 3- Start with Customer Service- and Actually Care
Many big companies like Comcast, Southwest, Whole Foods, and especially Zappos are some big brand examples that small businesses can learn from. Yes the small businesses don’t have as many departments, resources, or budgets, but try to implement little things here and there and you will see a difference in building your company up as what many in social media would call an “authority.” I define authority as someone who has been actively participating in the online social community to one extent or another, and everyone has a different authority level in this space (some higher than others because of how long they have been active in social media- and this is ok- people are accepting to honesty usually, and willing to tolerate your learning curve as long as your respectful of others opinions of course).

What principals would you add? Do you agree/ dis-agree with some of my principals? I am interested in hearing from all businesses (large and small)

Principle 2-Community-
Obama used to be a community organizer. He used social media and social networking to get elected (my opinion), so what your small business can consider is building an on-line community around your products and services. This is the simplest analogy I could come up with because everyone hopefully can resonate with this example. The benefit of online communities provides a way you can listen to customers wants, needs, pains, and feedback on your products and services in real time. Imagine if before you launched your next product you could get instant feedback on branding, colors, look/feel, benefits, likes, dislikes, etc. all from your existing or potential clients. As long as you are HONEST with people, this feedback can be extremely helpful before a new product or service launch. But just know that you will have to give up some form of “control” on your part to actually “hear” the positive aspects of your products/ services and the negative. But the main point is engagement and a feedback mechanism for your benefit.

What principals would you add? Do you agree/ dis-agree with some of my principals? I am interested in hearing from all businesses (large and small)

First- What is Gravity Summit?

An almost 1 year old Social Media Authority that supports educates and empowers businesses on how they can add social media marketing into their business strategy. More on Gravity Summit Here:

Where was the Conference: Harvard Faculty Club, Boston Massachusetts and was actually streamed LIVE by CNN!

Length of the conference: 8 hours

Basic Outline: Actual Business Case Studies of how companies are using social media from companies like DirectTV, Red Cross, Intuit, Southwest, Dominoes Pizza, and many others. Keynotes from McHammer and Gary Vaynerchuck

Why did I go? I wanted to get a taste for the Harvard Experience as some of my instructors I had in college graduated from there, and brought some of the Harvard teaching principals into our classroom environment. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to see what life was like in Boston (My first time to the east coast) & also get some great information to bring back to the small business community we help support, educate, and empower with some of our social media campaigns that are sold now on a per project basis only for simplification.

Principal 1- Listen First-
This may sound simple for business people, but believe it or not, it can be very time consuming and require a lot of internet research. If you don’t have the time (I would suggest a minimum of an hour a day to start off getting educated and listening) then you may want to wait to get into this game/ landscape. You would be surprised at how many small business professionals I run across that have even a hard time with internet research. Mostly because they don’t have the time, but if small & mid-sized businesses are to start growing again, they MUST look for new innovative ways and out-side the box thinking to sustain. When your business is considering jumping into the online marketing space, social media marketing, or any form of marketing for that matter, know first where your customers are engaging online, what their concerns are with your products or services, and problems they may currently be facing. This helps you filter out a lot of the internet “noise” that exists. Then once you know this intelligence, have a solution/ better mouse trap or product/ service to provide, state your facts/ opinions, and engage the audience, but always try to provide VALUE to the community. Speaking of Community, that takes me into my next principal (stay tuned for tomorrows principal- this will be a series of 5 posts)

What principals would you add? Do you agree/ dis-agree with some of my principals? I am interested in hearing from all businesses (large and small)