Social media has so changed the marketing and public relations landscape that business operators can not afford to ignore or fail to engage with it.
That was one of the key messages of the presentation by marketing guru Sharon Williams, founder of Taurus Marketing, at Pittwater Business Limited’s Networking Breakfast at Bayview Golf Club last week.
Ms Williams told the audience of about 100 local business people that internet tools, including social media sites like Facebook and You Tube, now offered unprecedented low-cost opportunities for companies to get their names and brands in front of their stakeholders. She said this was a very big change from the days of telex and fax machines that prevailed when she started her marketing career more than 20 years ago.
``Australia is the second highest user in the world of internet time … and the largest growth in internet users has been 39-45-year-olds, so it’s not actually a young person’s thing anymore,’’ she said.
But, apart from scope to generate positive marketing opportunities, she said engagement with social media could also avert potential negatives for a business.
``As the risk manager in your business you should be responsible for monitoring what is being said about your brand online right now,’’ she said. ``While people can write about your personal brand or your corporate brand, that brand is very much out there to take as opposed to us being able to control it as we always used to.’’
Ms Williams said a good tip for those less adept at the new internet tools was to harness the knowledge of younger generations for whom it came more naturally - if not from among staff, then family members - to help them get started.
She also stressed that one of the greatest marketing resources small businesses owned was their databases, which needed to be ``beautiful’’- in other words kept accurate and up-to-date. ``You (should be) communicating with that database constantly, touching them regularly with communication, either by phone or email or social media,’’ she said. ``One of your business-plan objectives should be to increase the number of people on your database. Make it a real priority.’’
She said it was also important when conducting PR or marketing activities to ``know your audience’’ to avoid wasting cash. ``Rather than take a machine-gun approach with your precious dollars, know who your stakeholders are … know your customers, your suppliers, your influencers, your prospects, your media and your potential staff,’’ she said.
Ms Williams, who is Nine MSN’s resident blogger on small and medium business, also spoke at the breakfast about work/life balance and the strategies she employed to achieve it. She suggested business operators should know their own strengths and weaknesses and be prepared to outsource tasks they weren’t good at; also to delegate effectively and to have systems to keep staff engaged, accountable and productive.
But, one of the strongest messages from the entrepreneur whose business has now built up a bank of about 400 operational templates, was the value of templating a business and setting up good systems.
Sue Hoban was formerly the long-time business writer for The Manly Daily. She now freelances as a journalist and media strategy adviser. suehoban@pacific.net.au
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