Social Media Starter Pack Tools for Small Businesses

Small businesses that are in the process embracing social media as a marketing strategy don’t really have much of an idea as to where to start or what tools to use. And in as much as it’s easy to just hire a social media personnel to do things for some small businesses, some don’t have the extra budget to do so.

Those who can’t afford to hire their own social media staff would have to learn the ropes and choose the tools themselves. Granted that there are a lot of resources on the web to teach them the basics of social media marketing and the tools they could use to do it, I’d like to help out by sharing some social media tools which I think a lot of small business entities could benifit from.

Facebook – With a lot of potential customers using this popular social networking site, it is a must-have for SMEs. By making an account for your brand, you pretty much open your businesses to a bigger audience scope and to a variety of people who could end up needing your products/services.

LinkedIn - A well-known professional social networking site, this is where you’d want to be if you’re looking to establish a contacts list of people in the same industry as you are.

Twitter - Twitter actually offers a lot of benefits to SMEs. For one thing, you can share the link to your own blog through it. And another, you can use it to reach out to yet another set of audience. As a bonus, SMEs can also use Twitter as a customer service medium where they can answer concerns, questions, and complaints.

WordPress – This is an excellent blog platform choice if you want to start a blog for your business. It has a lot of plugins which you can use to further make your blog more visible on the social web. Through your blog, you can share information about the company and the products and services you offer, among other things.

Namechk - this tool is an important safety measure to ensure that even though you can’t set up accounts on many social media sites, your brand’s name will be secured and no one else can register it, even if you don’t plan on using it.

Although these are must-haves that all SMEs venturing in social media marketing should have, business owners should never forget to dig through the web for social sites which cater specifically to their industry or niche. Although reaching out to a broad audience is easy, finding a site where it’s easy to target customers offers you a bigger chance of success.

How about you, what other sites/tools can you suggest for our small business owners?