This video is an interview with EVP of Local Social, Brian Q. Smith, and he answers the most common small business social media questions. This interview covers: • Will social media help me grow my business? • What social platform is right for me? • How often should I post and what should I post? • Where do I get content? Transcript first 10 minutes - formatted for easy reading. We have a lot of questions that seem to come up again and again and we thought would be helpful to hop on the phone with our EVP of Local Social, Brian Q. Smith, to give us some of the answers to questions that seem to come up from small business owners and operators. Will social media work for me? Most people running a small business feel like they don't have time to commit to more "to do" items. They feel that they are preoccupied with upgrading the office photocopier and ensuring their team is productive. What would you tell them? When starting a business, it's important to publicize the brand as much as possible to try and increase people's awareness of the company. This is one of the best ways to grow the business. However, there are other ways of growing a small business. It might also be worth getting in touch with Exos Advisors - Business Growth Consultants, or another company similar, to see if they can help you improve your business operations to become more successful. Whilst that should have a positive impact on your business, it's still important to consider making use of the social media platforms that could get you many more customers. Social media success essentially means that you are able to build a community of individuals that have mutual interest and are interested and engaged with your product or service. In this day and age, you should think of your social presence (regardless of platform), as your face to the world – your calling card. In fact, it will be one of the first things that people will find when they research you - before they even reach out to you. Roughly eighty-three percent of all online users today will research your social media presence before they communicate with you directly. So social will work for you if you can create a robust presence, which includes a good number of followers, and that those are individuals in your target market, based on geography, age, education, or interests and other demographics. You'll want those individuals to be engaging, watching your posts, commenting, liking, etc. So social does work, but you have to devote a little bit of time and effort to do it. As well as social media, professional business websites have also been known to be an essential tool in helping the companies growth, as without a website, potential clients won't have all of the relevant information they need. With a website comes the possibility of being able to look into have some [...]

Business owners and independent sales professionals often ask us, "Can I use my personal Facebook profile for my business?" According to Andy Defrancesco, business Facebook pages have functionality that was built specifically to help you grow a fan base and to efficiently and cost-effectively advertise your company. Why to Not Use Your Personal Facebook Profile for Business You need a business page for Facebook. I know. It sounds like another thing on the small business person's never-ending list of "things to do." But before we get into some of the drastic differences, maybe not apparent at first glance, let's talk about a couple of basics. It's a Facebook Violation It's a violation of the Facebook Terms to use your personal account to represent something other than yourself (ex: your business), and you could permanently lose access to your account if you don't convert it to a Business Page. Drawing attention to your business in a negative way by violating rules is also not something you will want to do in general as a business owner. When (or if) you come to close down your business, for example, you choose to Dissolve a California LLC, it is important that you've followed guidelines and laws throughout your ownership in order to successfully close the business. Furthermore, if you have linked your personal accounts to your business, which is now closed, this could cause further confusion for previous customers or potentially new customers looking for a service. Do You Really Want Business Friends? Facebook is a place to be social with "friends." Do you really want prospects and clients knowing about your holiday celebrations, kids' first day of school, or that you enjoyed the rock concert last night? This potential encroaching on your personal life is why some businesses, particularly small and/or virtual businesses, might consider getting a business mail forwarding address so they don't have to give out their personal address for correspondence. A Test: Would You Like Your Own TV Channel? How would you respond if I told you that I'm going to give you your own radio or television station, completely dedicated to your business? Would you shrug your figurative shoulders and say, "Nah. I don't have time to talk to people who want to watch my channel. I already have my own world where I talk to everybody I know." Sounds a little... unenlightened, doesn't it? Of course, you wouldn't respond that way. Because the prospect of a radio or TV channel would mean that people you don't know would be watching and learning about your offers! You'd be crazy to pass that up, right? New prospects. New leads. New business. A Facebook page for your business is essentially a new channel to reach not only existing customers, but also prospective customers. And to allow them to tell each other how great your business is. And it's free. You can even look at setting up a sip trunking VOIP system so your customers can contact you, especially if your business [...]