9 social media tips to get your small business noticed

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SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS Proven tips from the 2012 winner of Walmart’s Get on the Shelf to get your small business noticed

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SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS

Proven tips from the 2012 winner of

Walmart’s Get on the Shelf

to get your small business noticed

Do you have a great new invention, but don’t know how to get your product on store shelves? Leveraging social media and crowdsourcing is a great way to build support for your product and expand your distribution.

Try these 9 tips from T.J. Foltz, president of Humankind Water and the grand prize winner of Walmart’s 2012 Get on the Shelf contest.

The Humankind Water team’s ability to leverage social media helped them gain a lot of attention for their business and ultimately win the Walmart contest.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS

to get your small business noticed

Remember the 5 second rule.

You have 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Lead with the heart of your unique story and product benefits.

Know your hook.

Focus on a message that helps your audience connect personally to your business or cause. Identify your hook, make it clear, and stick with it.

For example, we created a video of me (T.J.) in front of a baseball stadium. I said, “It kills enough children every day to fill this minor league stadium.” This simple message compelled people to listen to my whole story and spend more time with our content.

Build up your story angles.

Now that you have your hook, think about how to build out your story in different ways. After all, conversations in social media are ongoing. How can you support the hook with more stories and different types of content?

What’s your human interest story? Your unique benefit, charitable component or interesting back story? Talk to your friends and family to understand which narratives work the best. Post them in your social channels and pay attention to the ones that get the most ‘likes’ or ‘shares.’

Reflect the style and interests of your audience.

Social media is a great way to engage people, starting with friends and family. Be natural and talk to them through Facebook and Twitter like you normally would. As your audience grows, don’t use corporate language in your social channels. Relate to your audience and speak like they would.

Force people to trip over your content.

Make it easy to find and navigate your social channels: 1. Choose a simple

URL, and make your website and social pages easy to navigate.

2. If you have a video embedded, put it somewhere it can’t be missed.

3. Everything should be as user-friendly as possible. If people get frustrated, they will leave your page.

Teach your audience how to best follow you.

Be consistent with your messages and the frequency of your posts. Help your audience learn to anticipate what you will offer them. We all have friends on Facebook who always post pictures of their kids or meals they order at different restaurants. What will people come to expect from you?

Be prepared to invest enough time and energy.

Don’t underestimate the time and dedication it takes to maintain your social channels. You need to generate a lot of content and be prepared to respond in a timely fashion.

We formed a strong team to maintain our social channels from the start to finish of Walmart’s contest, and through today. We found it was helpful to have the same people managing all of our channels so they were all consistent and worked together to tell our whole story.

Be flexible & ready to update plans.

If we didn’t get a good response on Twitter, we tried the message in email instead. If a Facebook post wasn’t getting attention, we tried a video on YouTube. Rely on your team to help monitor social media response and change gears if necessary.

This is a long road. Plan for going the distance.

Social networks keep going 24-7. This means there’s a lot you need to do, but also a lot of opportunity to test things out and keep building a bigger audience.

Establish a presence on Facebook and Twitter first and garner as many fans as possible. Our mentality was that a ‘like’ or fan was great, but a ‘share’ was even better.

After you master Facebook and Twitter, explore other channels that make sense for your brand. Is your product visual or humorous? Consider Pinterest or Vine. Figure out which types of content work best in each channel and build the assets you have based on what’s successful.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS

1. The 5 second rule.

2. Know your hook.

3. Build up your story angles.

4. Reflect the style & interests of your audience.

5. Force people to trip over your content.

6. Teach your audience how to best follow you.

7. Be prepared to invest enough time & energy.

8. Be flexible & ready to update plans.

9. This is a long road. Plan for going the

distance.

All of the net profits from Humankind Water go to water projects in underprivileged communities around the world, providing children and families with clean drinking water.

T.J. and his team of Andy, Drew, Deby, Brad James, Patti and Robyn share their personal story to help entrepreneurs and small business owners to harness the power of social media, earn a supportive audience, and sell more products.

About Humankind Water

Walmart’s contest, in its second year, invites entrepreneurs, investors and small business owners to submit their products online for a chance to be sold on Walmart.com.

This year, Walmart and the public will choose up to 20 product finalists that will be featured in an original web series produced by VIMBY, The Mark Burnett Digital Studio and five of which will be chosen for a chance to be sold on Walmart.com.

Voting for the 2013 contest begins August 6th. Help decide who will get on the shelf!

About Walmart’s Get on the Shelf

Through the innovative fusion of retail, social and mobile, @WalmartLabs is redefining Commerce for the largest retailer worldwide.

We are a group comprised of the brightest technologists and businesspeople in the industry, excited about the limitless opportunities that this next generation of Commerce will bring to billions of people around the globe, all in an effort to help them save money and live better.

About @WalmartLabs