This post is aimed at those of you who are owners and decision-makers for small and medium sized businesses here in NW Indiana. I am gonna show you how to dominate social media (specifically Facebook) to gain customers and also spread good will about your brand in our community.
DISCLAIMER: this post is gonna get touchy and feely, so be warned! It’s also gonna fly in the face of what your “big corporate” counterparts are doing… they are old school dinosaurs… and they will soon be extinct… don’t YOU get caught up with their way of thinking! …let’s be NEW SCHOOL!!! …so before you turn your nose up at this concept, I want you to think about your current marketing efforts and what they accomplish at what cost. I also want you to look at your business from your employees’ perspective. Then keep in mind that what I am advocating here is nearly FREE and promotes good employee relations in the process. Stick with me ok??? 
First off, we need to talk about reality! The truth is that probably 80 percent of your employees have personal Facebook pages that they use weekly or daily, and I can bet they are visiting Facebook in some way or fashion during the work day! Some may use their smart phone to update Facebook on your time, and others may use your company computers to do it. That is FACT!
But I am here to encourage you to encourage them to CONTINUE this behavior, but steer them in a direction that benefits your business in the process! Yep, this is VERY forward, cutting edge thinking, but guys, it’s time to EMBRACE the world we live in instead of fighting it!!!
(1) I want you to have a meeting, and encourage your employees to use Facebook to “invite” their friends to join your business fan page. It’s simple, non-assuming, and it works well, especially because I am sure that you treat your employees well, and they love working for you! Think about this: your full timers spend upwards of 40 hours per week at your store… why not encourage them take a little personal time and promote your place too?
(2) Big companies spend thousands of dollars developing and updating software to keep their employees from visiting social sites like Facebook during work time. They have multiple paragraphs of legal-speak in handbooks dedicated to telling employees what will happen to them if they are found “wasting company time” on the internet. It’s laughable !!
But you, the NWI small business owner, should embrace your employees’ desire to visit Facebook during the workday… you should encourage it! Don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you to let them surf social media spots for 7 hours per day… but it would be a great idea to have select employees visit your business page for 15 minutes 3 or 4 times per day to chat with your fans and friends! They are going to do it anyway, so let’s just STEER them OUR way in the process!!
Let’s look at this using a real world example… let’s pretend you operate a local hardware store in Lake County and you have 10 employees plus a couple managers… you can ask your office manager, Carrol to status update her personal Facebook page with something like:
I just checked in an order of the new Easy Seed. Looking forward to trying this out at my house this weekend. Stop by the store today and see me if you need some.
Keep in mind, that Carrol has posted this to her PERSONAL friends. They all know where she works, so it is very normal that she’d share work stuff with them.It is also pretty fair to assume that most of her friends LIVE in NW Indiana too!!
You could also have Carrol post a picture of the Easy Seed too.
Next, I would have Carrol go in and update something very similar to your Facebook business fan page…
Hi guys, Carrol here, and I wanted to let you know that we just got in a shipment of the new Easy Seed. Get some before the weekend and get your lawn looking nice! Stop by and say “hi” when you come in!
Then what you do in order to get the convo going, is have a couple of your other employees go in and talk to Carrol on the fan age. Jason, your shelf stocking guy would go in and reply to Carrol like this:
Hey Carrol, check this out, I just had a customer come in and get 10 bags of that seed… said he was gonna use it for his entire back yard! Must be good stuff!
and then you, the owner, could write:
It works well guys, I used it just last weekend and already have good germination. I highly recommend this one!
Then of course, Carrol should reply and answer back and continue to interact. If you ask 5 or 6 of your folks do this, you will find that customers will also feel very comfortable jumping in and being a part of it too. You might call this strategy, “priming the pump” for “flowing conversation!”
By the way, all of the above probably took less than 5 minutes per employee. Keep in mind, they are experienced in these spaces and can get in and get out fast!
(3) Finally, we don’t want to make it “all about me,” or just all about your business. We can use our Facebook Fan Page to produce good will back to the employees and their families. We can also use the Facebook page to illustrate that we are HUMANS and not just a stick and brick store. Remember, social media is about connecting with HUMANS!
Here is how YOU, the small business owner in NWI can use Facebook in the personal manner. Update your page like this:
Hey everyone, real quick, Carrol our office manager just adopted a baby girl! We wish her all the best, attached are some pictures of dad, mom and baby Jenny.
Or you could update something like this:
Billy Gregg Jr has worked with us for 2 years, and now he’s heading off to Air Force basic training next month! Come in and wish him well. Thank you Billy for being a part of our team, we will miss you buddy!
I hope you are getting the idea of how this all works! Think you can’t do it? Think it is too much to handle? Get in contact with us, and we’ll train it, run it and admin it all for ya! Contact us here.
Totally awesome concept. If you have a great employer, I don’t think any employee would have a problem doing this. In this economy, employees should be very interested in staying employed and this could be very helpful.
If you are a crappy employer, who does not embrace how Social Media can help your business, it’s time to embrace it.
I might add one more thing aimed at the employer. Go out and buy your employess a new iPod Nano with video as an employee appreciation gift. Simply ask them to occasionally post a video on their Facebook page using those Easy Seed products. I bet they would be surprised at the response.
Great ideas Steve, you def get it!
It would be cool to buy tools for the employees that they can use both personally, and professionally for the biz! THAT’s cutting edge!
I’m almost thinking going with Facebook is very important in these days when the site is seeing as much search activity as the Big “G.” If business people aren’t on Facebook and aren’t allowing their people to spread the message in an organic way, then they are missing out.
The stats show Facebook isn’t just kids posting about their lives — it’s also baby boomers and everyone in between.
It’s too bad that so many businesses are afraid of social networking.
I read a snippet of an article about why businesses should have internet usage policies — if they don’t already have them in place — and it was written in such a way that makes it easy for managers to just set the filters to “block” because of fear that someone will write something that gives away company secrets or varies from the corporate script.
Hey Chris — Yep, pretty much everyone is already on Facebook and tapping into that power is FREE and simple!
As far as the corp “block” of all things social media… you are right, big companies do that because of two reasons:
1) they are afraid someone will slip and say the wrong thing and give away confidential info
2) they will vary from corp guidelines
But both of these show that big companies don’t value social media as they should. They just have not caught it yet! Big corps will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to train drivers about safety in company trucks, but won’t spend a dime when it comes to teaching employees online safety and responsibility.
In addition, most big companies pay employees to “put in the hours” instead of “paying for performance.”
If you pay people for performance, you will get a lot more out of them and they will enjoy life. If you pay them to “put in hours” then that is exactly what they will do… fill the chair during business hours.
I could go on-and-on, trust me.. but that is why I LOVE working with NWI small and medium sized businesses… they want it, and are willing to get it, and invest in it!!! Love that!