Social Media Marketing and the Small Business Owner

Social media is an important part of the marketing plan you create for your small business.    For in-depth discussions of social media marketing, check out books such as Shannon Belew’s “The art of social selling : finding and engaging customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks,” or  “Social media marketing all-in-one for dummies,” by Jan Zimmerman, among others available at EPL. 

Quick guides are always available, too, like this “3-Step Beginner's Guide to Social-Media Marketing ,”  by Matthew Toren for Entrepreneur.com, in which the author suggest figuring out your MVPs: your most valuable platforms and your minimum viable platforms; or "How to Manage Your Social Media in 34 Minutes (or Less) a Day," from SocialMediaToday.com contributor Jim Belosic.

Something that might be easy to overlook when creating a social media plan is the legality of what you are posting.  Forbes.com’s Cheryl Conner tells the story of the PR nightmare that Topps is still experiencing from a promotion that inadvertently violated the privacy laws as they relate to teenagers, in “Marketing Gone Wrong: Is Your Social Media Plan Legal?”

Finally, Forbes contributor Carrie Karpen interviews Eleni Tavantzis,  Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing & Public Relations at Lilly Pulitzer.  Ms. Tavantzis has concocted what she believes is a “magic sauce,” a combination of being in the right place at the right time and being unafraid to do some professional stalking!  Read an interview with this ultra-successful social media professional in “Being A Rockstar On Social Media - Eleni Tavantzis.”