Remember a couple years ago when the term “Social Media” was foreign to all of us. Now, everyone and their mother (literally – my mom friended me on Facebook last week) is on the bandwagon trying to get the hang of this Social Media thing.

It’s become much more than a tool to stay connected with your old high school buddies, or to update your friends on what you ate for dinner last night. Social Media has become a regular part of our daily lives, and for businesses, an integral part of their marketing and PR strategies.

So with everyone on board – how does a business stand out from the rest? At the end of the day – Social Media is about forging, nurturing, and promoting relationships. The one on one connection Social Media allows between businesses and their consumers are allowing small businesses to not only compete with larger corporations, but thrive and succeed where the competition falls short.

Here in Chicago – there are a lot of businesses who “get” Social Media –
Threadless
Foiled Cupcakes,
GroupOn and
Grubhub to name a few.

Our generation is wise to the corporate act – and very rarely do we buy into a straight up sales pitch. This is why, when it comes to online advertising, we’re seeing more affiliate geo-targeted campaigns rather than pure Google ads. Businesses that get it focus on building a relationship first, helping us realize that there is a need or want there, and then acting on it.

Mari Luangrath, founder of Chicago-based Foiled Cupcakes, connected with me as a friend. She followed me several months ago and since then, we’ve become good friends both on and offline. Not once did she sell me on her product – not once did she throw a sales pitch my way. She focused solely on building a genuine relationship and friendship with me. Now I’m days away from signing a contract to have Foiled Cupcakes cater my wedding.

So what can business learn from this? What’s the take away? Here are some basic takeaways to implement into your Social Media marketing strategy:

Be personable

This is above all the most important thing. As a representative of your business, yet also a “regular” person – there can be a delicate and sometimes difficult balance between your personal and professional self. The trick is to not let the balance beam sway to heavily in either direction – you must represent your business but also be yourself. Be someone people want to talk to – even if you’re selling running shoes, it’s OK to talk to your community about the Lady Gaga concert last weekend. When you become a “real” person instead of a corporate identity, people will forget you’re even trying to sell them something.

Know your audience

A critical piece to the puzzle is knowing your audience –and spending a lot of time LISTENING to their conversations. What are they talking about, what are they interested in? Take note of who’s talking to who and what they’re talking about, before jumping into the conversation yourself. Listening is key, but taking action at the right time by monitoring your communities behavior is even more important.

Invest in social media

Social Media isn’t something you can throw in as an afterthought. To be successful, you need to be present and engaged. Whether this means hiring an online “Community Manager” on your staff (a growing trend amongst businesses) or outsourcing your Social Media Management to an outside firm, you need someone who can and will be engaged in the community and actively involved in conversation. With Social Media, the old adage is true – you get what you give.

The point is simple – relationships are the foundation of any good business and Social Media allows us as individuals and businesses to establish those relationships easier than ever before. Connect first, sell second – a simple recipe small businesses are using to dominate the local market.

What businesses can you think of that are “doing it right” with Social Media?

Beyond blogging, thousands of athletes and teams are constantly on twitter and other social media portals. There is even a service that aggregates athletes’ twitter updates. Partly because of social media, the sports world is more transparent than ever, where athletes have the ability to control their own public image and interact directly with their fans. Chad “Ocho-Cinco” Johnson has even threatened to tweet during NFL games.

Now all of this is impressive, and has been examined thoroughly by just about every sports blog and PR company. What few have talked about however, is what major market teams can learn from smaller sports teams in niche markets.

Today, I became a fan of the Chicago Red Stars on facebook and started following them on twitter. For those who aren’t familiar, the Red Stars a professional women’s soccer team from Chicago. After checking them out, I am very impressed by their social media campaign and fan community. There is much that major market sports teams can learn from these Red Stars:

1) Build an officially licensed and branded fan community:

The Red Stars have an amazing fan community. The key to the community is integration. All of the Red Stars’ social media presence is accessible from the fan community– links to their twitter, facebook, myspace, and youtube profiles.

Beyond links to other social profiles, they have lots of internal blogs and media on the page.

The fan community reflects  that the organization seriously cares about their fans. Moreover, by putting up interesting and fresh content, they will convert many new fans (like me), who just happen to browse through their community.

Imagine if every NFL team had a branded fan community with great interactive content  such as forums, pictures, video, and blogs like the Red Stars. Give fans the tools to express their loyalty online,and your brand or fandom will grow exponentially.

2) Leverage contest marketing with Twitter and Facebook

Both twitter and facebook are great tools for contest marketing. Many large market sports teams are using both twitter and facebook, but few are tapping into their full potential.

The Red Stars are running a campaign right now where if you suggest friends join the facebook group you receive a $10 ticket to the game. Moreover, if they hit their goal, 5 fans will win free parking.

This is a perfect example of the power of contest marketing with twitter and facebook. I guarantee you if a major market team ran a contest similar to this they would be on Twitter’s trending topics within hours. Imagine if an NFL team randomly gave away 5 pairs of tickets a day to those who mentioned the team on twitter using hashtags. People would go nuts.

3) Transparency and Fan Appreciation (Reaching out to content creators)

One of my favorite things about the Red Stars fan community site is that they list all the people who work within the organization with links to their personal profiles and blogs. In this day and age, transparency in your organization is key. We live in a world where the open brand is king, and privacy has been redefined.

Acting as a closed brand, you appear untrustworthy. In today’s world, if everything isn’t placed out in the open, it is assumed you are hiding something. Fans want to be part of their organization, they want to know who is running their team, and feel like they reflect their own values.

Show your fans that you reflect their desires by expressing your own ideas  in an authentic way. By showing the human side of your franchise you will create a fan base and community who not only believes in the athletic prowess of your team but in the underlying message of your whole organization.

In the sports world in particular, many sports bloggers and other content creators have huge followings. Bring those content creators into your own fan community. Offer them guest posts. Involve them in press release creation. While you can never fully control the message in the online world, you can develop relationships and communication avenues where you appear likeable and human– even in the eyes of those pesky bloggers.

The Red Stars are building up a passionate fan base one social profile at a time– your major market teams could learn a thing or two from them.

As a restaurant in a saturated market, how do you stand out?

Restaurant that needs some online marketing

Online marketing, especially a strong social media presence, can build a brand awareness for your restaurant and bring in waves of new customers with a small investment. Here are some tips on how local restaurants can leverage the power of social media and online marketing to shine in a cluttered market.

1) Use Twitter and Facebook:

While this seems obvious, there is more to these outlets than simply advertising your weekly specials. Facebook is ideal for creating a community around your restaurant or bar, with testimonials and pictures to prove that your place truly is the most fun. Moreover, a facebook fan page that is updated regularly implies that you both have outstanding customer service and a customer base that values your product. Facebook fan pages are a great way to sell an experience, to illustrate the ambiance and clientele of your bar or restaurant in a powerful way.

Twitter is a great way to advertise specials and hold interactive contests. For example, let’s say your trying to start up a happy hour business at your mostly nighttime bar.

What if you design a contest through twitter where anyone who includes a hashtag with your restaurant in it gets a free pitcher of beer from 3-6 PM? This a simple way to get your potential customers both curious and involved.

2) Food and Drink Bloggers are Powerful

Reaching out to food and drink bloggers (maybe even offering a free dinner in exchange for a review), is a great way to promote your restaurant online. Identify bloggers who have lots of online clout, meaning those who receive generous amounts of traffic, and those who are active across all social media platforms.

There is nothing better than having a potential new customer hear that your bar or restaurant is great from someone that they trust.

3) More People than ever are finding restaurants and bars online, As a restaurant or bar owner you need to manage your web presence.

As sites like Yelp, Citysearch and Metromix become more and more popular, as a restaurant or bar owner, you need to pay attention to what is being said about you.

While you cannot control what is being said on the hundreds of sites where customers can express their love or hatred of your establishment, you can interact with them, and respond to them in a manner that shows you care about your customers.

If there are customers that are especially angry, maybe you can offer them a free drink or appetizer next time they come in. Now instead of talking about a bad meal or terrible service, they’ll talk about your wonderful social media presence and generosity. Constant monitoring and interacting on social media channels is the only way to keep manage your bar or restaurants image online.

4) Search Engine Optimization is increasingly important.

Imagine this. After work a group of co-workers want to meet up at a bar. Because they live 20 minutes from where they work, they aren’t especially familiar with the bars or restaurants in the area. So, one of them types “Chicago Loop Happy Hour Bar” into google, then looks at the Googled sponsored results, looks at the Yelp, Citysearch, Metromix, and Chicago Tribune reviews, and then decides on a place based on a combination of user reviews, posted daily specials, and placement within the google search universe.

In that scenario, how would a customer find your bar or restaurant? Think about the previous scenario whenever you are managing your online presence. How are the title tags for your website? What about your html code, is it search engine friendly? Do you have a blog and strong backlinks?

While online marketing and social media expertise are important for all bars and restaurants, it is especially important for small and local restaurants, as they do not have the brand recognition that larger chain restaurants and bars do.

The good news is that small local restaurants can build effective brand recognition and find customers harnessing the power of online marketing. Build an interactive community around your restaurants, monitor your online presence, and make sure you rank well on major search engines. Then watch the customers stream into your doors.

Needless to say, many of the “experts” who have thousands of friends and followers on social media networks don’t actually know how to maintain a positive social media image. Or, as Open Press Wire so nicely put it: “If you weren’t aware already, most of these experts are just idiots that have found a stool to stand on and shout their garbled rehashed crap they read from TwiTips.com and rewrote it on their own “pretty” blog.”

Oftentimes, the person running your campaign from your online marketing company may be a better bet for taking social media tips from. They’ll know how to integrate your social media and online marketing campaigns so that they mutually benefit each other. They will understand the importance of mutual participation in social media– those who solely self promote on Twitter or Facebook quickly lose the interest of their followers and friends. And an online marketer will know how to create good long-form content on your blog to accentuate the short form material you create on social media networks. The overall tone of your web presence should be easily accessible in your social media, too; using trite social media strategies will drown your indiviual voice.

While joining and participating in social media is good, drinking the kool-aid is not. You can always learn from so-called social media experts, but sometimes the best thing to learn is how to avoid being like them.