Korhan - Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business

Contents

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Cover design: C. Wallace

Copyright 2013 by Jeff Korhan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Korhan, Jeff, 1957

Built-in social : essential social marketing practices for every small business / Jeff Korhan.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-52974-4 (hbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-63179-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-63189-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-63193-5 (ebk)

1. Social marketing. 2. Small business. I. Title.

HF5414.K667 2013

658.872dc23

2012049075

To Ali and Zakthank you for your honesty and inspiration .

Preface

This book is organized into three essential components or strategies, all of which build on your present marketing strategy, and of course, incorporate your process for closing sales.

First, we focus on the transformational shift in the business environment, why and how your business needs to adapt to it, and how a content marketing strategy is integral to accomplishing that online.

Then we get into the techniques of using social media well, by engaging with communities: getting to know them, helping to solve their problems, and ultimately building trust that can be converted into new business. Its a simple formula for helping people to know, like, and trust you and your business.

The final component of the three-step process shows you how to convert that trust into growing and sustaining your business, regardless of the economic conditions.

If you are a small business owner or work for a mainstream small businessthis book is for you. Many of the books available on this subject miss the mark because they are not grounded in an understanding that comes from direct experience operating a mainstream small business, along with an understanding of how both social and media work.

For this reason, be prepared for fresh insights, honesty, and a few pleasant surprises. One of my objectives is to clarify and simplify so that you can start getting the results you have been expecting, but have nonetheless failed to achieve. In short, I hope to reignite your enthusiasm for this remarkable platform that is ideally suited to small businesses in local communities.

One of the reasons small businesses do not get social media is they see and hear so much about the technology, yet they miss the global understanding of how it works to accomplish practical business objectives. There are necessary skills you will have to develop to be successful, but they are not the ones that most businesses assume are important.

I will help you learn, in a relatively short period of time, what has taken me years of study and practice to developand that is grounded in decades of experience operating a mainstream small business. Youll learn how to use the social networks to engage and share your perspectives with the audiences for whom your solutions are most relevant. Youll better understand the role of search engines and how they influence buying behaviors, and most important, you will learn why content marketing is the most vital component of a viable social marketing strategy.

Ready to get started?

Introduction

After a successful decade as a corporate sales and marketing executive I was increasingly anxious to operate a business of my own. Months of research and study produced nothing more than anxiety. Then one day I just made a decision to indulge my love for plants and nature by starting a landscape business. What followed were two successful decades and thousands of practical lessons.

That business became a laboratory for testing ideas, and every time I made a breakthrough it seemed so obvious that I often wondered why there wasnt a manual of some kind where it was written down. Now there is. It turns out many of those lessons are just as relevant today, with the primary difference being how technology has introduced better methods and practices for getting results.

You dont need a marketing degree or to be technologically savvy to be successful with social marketing, although both are useful. More important is a basic understanding of business, the desire to help your customers, and a reliable process to effectively engage them with your business in a meaningful way. Built-In Social gives you that process.

There is a big difference between saying you are an entrepreneur and being one. When I was busy planning my landscape business I read a story about Jim Koch, the founder of The Boston Beer Company and brewer of Samuel Adams beer. He too was stuck in the planning stages of his entrepreneurial venture until his father pointed out one undeniable truth: you arent in business if you dont have customers.

Those words instantly resonated with me, so I made a decision that Saturday summer morning to go out and get some customers. Not even having professional business cards, I wrote out my name, company name, and phone number on 35 index cards. I was now in businessalmost. I just had to find those customers.

Back then you could still ring doorbells and get an attentive audience, so thats what I did. I drove to a neighborhood where there were plenty of newly constructed homes in need of landscaping. I vividly recall one conversation with a young attorney. He listened to suggestions and then gave me permission to engage my process. Sounds good, he said. So, I guess, go ahead and take measurements. You know, do whatever landscapers do.