Small business owners often say that they don’t have time or money to invest in social media.  I say, “how can you afford not to?”. Social media marketing does not have to be time consuming. There are very simple ways to incorporate a few strategies into your everyday routine that can at least get your feet wet and easily turn into valuable leads.

The exposure and opportunity that social media presents businesses is just too sweet to pass up.  As a business owner, your time is not free. I live and understand that. Relatively speaking, it takes time out of your day to do any form of marketing.. word-of-mouth included. However, social media allows you to talk to a large network of people at once and generate leads without leaving the office or doing cold calls. In the world of social media, people are used to hearing what everyone is up to and to some extent, they like it.

Advertising is about repetition. Social media allows you to repeatedly tell your network what your business is up to.  By posting creative and positive status updates, people will latch on to your enthusiasm and want to work with you (or pass your name along to their network) when the opportunity arises. If your business is top of mind, that’s effective marketing.

Here are a few simple social media strategies that any small business owner can adopt:

Connect with the people you already know
People often think that using social media means digging through the millions of users to find potential customers. On the contrary, social media allows you to connect with people you already know more regularly.

Yes, there are opportunities for businesses to have their own profiles and pages (which are like mini-websites) on Facebook, but I want to focus on really simple social media strategies here. So I’m suggesting you use your personal account to connect with the people you already know about your business. I wouldn’t always encourage a business owner to blend their personal life with their business. Word-of-mouth has and always will be great advertising and the people you know should be your greatest supporters; thus, Facebook presents a perfect opportunity to let your network of supporters know what you’re up to. There’s nothing wrong with telling the people in your life about what you do for a living, especially if you own a business.  If not them, they might know someone who needs your services.

The challenge here is definitely in the creativity behind your status updates. My advice is to be casual and more importantly, be you.  Your Facebook friends, of all people, will be able to read through any dishonesty or pushiness. Just casually tell people what you’re up to and through some personal updates in the mix.

Pre-Write your Social Media Profile
With every social media account comes a social media profile. Write a strong one that represents you well as a person and describes briefly and clearly what you do. If you take the time to write a good profile you can re-use it across all your social media accounts. Just signing up for an account can be daunting task if you don’t have your profile prepared. When you want to explore new social media sites, half the work of signing up for a new account is already done.

Set up Keyword Alerts
Social media is about engaging in conversation. But where are the conversations taking place?  TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) and Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) have made the task of listening and observing less overwhelming and less time consuming.

Google Alerts allows you to monitor any search topic and have it delivered to your inbox daily, weekly or as-it-happens.  I recommend having a Google Alert set up for your business name as a starter. You’ll be surprised by who’s talking about you.

TweetDeck is an application that I have running in the background at all times.  It allows you to aggregate your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts by displaying status updates in pre-set groups, displaying specific keyword searches from Twitter and allowing you to update all your profile statuses at once.

The time it takes to write a status update or follow up with a few direct message leads does not need to be significant. 10 minutes or less a day. Let your networks know what you’re doing and keep them up to date with your latest service offerings. Once you’re comfortable with that, you might want to explore blogging and LinkedIn groups. A gradual adoption of social media strategies will be much less overwhelming and less discouraging.

Social media marketing does not have to be elaborate for a small businesses. What’s important is that at the very least you use your networks to tell the people you know that you’re in business, you’re passionate about what you do and let them know what you can offer so that when the opportunity arises, your business is top of mind.