Rural Businesses Can Harness the Power of Social Media in One Hour a Day

Using social media is not limited to big cities, big brands or big budgets. In fact, taking time to engage in social media marketing an hour a day is all you need to establish your small business as a social media player, engaging with the community and potential clients and customers.

Why make things more complicated when you start?

One hour a day. It doesn’t even have to be a continuous hour.
Ten minutes here, twenty minutes there – whenever you can find the time to spare, all you need to do is engage in social media marketing an hour a day. So, what can you do in that hour? Here are seven things you can do, all in under an hour.

1. Do a Twitter search on your company name to see what people are saying. Respond to a couple.
2. Add a picture or two of new products to your company Facebook page.
3. Film a quick 5 minute video about recent news relating to your industry or company.
4. Write a blog post about your top 5 best selling products or services.
5. Create a quick coupon and link to it from your Twitter account.
6. Do a quick Twitter search for your town and add ten new friends from the local area.
7. Spend a couple of minutes personally responding to blog comments and visiting the blogs of commenters.

Give it a try

Not only can each of those social media marketing techniques be done in under an hour, all seven tips can be accomplished in under an hour. Participating in social media marketing an hour a day may not seem like enough to be effective. However, pick one, two or even all of the tips listed above and try them out for a couple of weeks. Don’t spend more than an hour a day on social media marketing, and see what kind of connections and results you come up with. After your initial two weeks, take what you’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t and tailor the tips to your business’s needs. Don’t wait for the big budget and big staff of a big city business to start your social media marketing efforts. If you can spare an hour a day, your small business can have a legitimate presence on social media as well.

Your thoughts?

Can you spare one hour to focus on building relationships online, enhancing communiation, learning what your customers are really thinking? I would love to hear your thoughts.

BTW – the photo above is from one of my favorite local potters.  You can learn more at www.claycoyoteblog.com.