Social Media Creates A Co- Creation Society Within The Small Business Industry

I was reading an article about forming small strategic alliances, it was a short but insightful read however I began to think how I could extend this chain of thought.

As budding entrepreneurs with blossoming ideas, or a recent start up new to the scene, you are always looking for potential partnerships and possible introductions. Some will argue, concentrate on your product and business in the early days and others will say that looking for potential suitors/partners is good forward thinking.

I believe social media makes this process viable and achievable if done correctly. Some entrepreneurs and small businesses believe that social media is all about Twitter and Facebook and generally fail to see the depth and creativity that social media offers.

This post will hopefully alleviate their cautious nature towards the beast.

Social Media is about the opening of communications and connections through technology, the buzzwords, tools, features are all clutter without end applications and strategies in mind.

Small businesses can build strategic, fruitful and intelligent partnerships via social media; however it is my belief that business web platforms must try to amplify how social media can be integrated into the fabric of the small business industry and an entrepreneur’s mindset.

As social media enters into the small business/enterprise atmosphere it is highly important entrepreneurs along with their businesses start to create relationships, partnerships and begin to open up possible conversation pathways; those who don’t do so will be playing catch up and will ultimately be left behind.

In saying that, entrepreneurs must begin to understand how to leverage social media technology for their small business and partnerships and understand how small businesses can use each other (positively) via social media to achieve their business specific goals.

Here are a few ideas:

Joint Viral Marketing Campaign: There is always space for a number of businesses to occupy one marketplace, which is why sharing the same target audience is ideal for small businesses and start ups. They can build a joint marketing campaign in a ‘David vs. Goliath’ format, as them going up against the ‘fat cats’. Viral marketing is about using existing networks of people and also their resources. SMB’s and start ups are unlikely to have a huge network or resource pool in the early days, thus, this provides the opportunity for both parties to increase their network and reach, and enables them to tap into each other’s networks.

Building a Community or Following: Building a following is highly important, pre- launching a product or before your business goes live; social media offers various ways on how to do so. There are thousands of groups, contacts, forums, information and links across the web spread among a number of platforms.  A partnership can set out to build and infuse their network, information and links onto one platform. Possible example is building a joint Facebook group/fan page, SMB’s and start ups can increase their reach by either owners or a group of them infusing their Facebook contacts into one group network.

Guest posting or Joint Article Building: It is important as a young business that you try to build relationships with industry experts and the power influencers within your industry. It is considerably more important to aspire to become one of the ‘influencers’. Social media offers that possibility to either the individual entrepreneurial brand or company brand; businesses can guest post for each other, citing individual opinions, knowledge, and experience gained. Creating a joint business blog where both companies address the same audience is very possible if planned out efficiently. This possible idea is much easier for the individual entrepreneurial blogger to execute. As he/she is the brand, so combining with another complimentary entrepreneurial blogger or complete opposite can be explosive.

The above points are merely a few possible examples of what social media can offer small businesses in the way of building strategic alliances; this certainly will not be easy, however the technology available today is incredible and very accurate.

There are number of issues to address along with the possible ideas above, fundamentals that social media relationships need to be able to prosper and succeed. I Intend to discuss this at length in the future.

In the mean time budding entrepreneurs and small business owners should look into the subject matter further and start to open up their conversation pathways.

Tags: Budding, Business, Social Media, Strategy, Technology