Keep your Social Media Systems Sustainable, Sweetheart

Are you a small business, totally overwhelmed with the millions of things on your plate? Don't worry; there's still a way that social media can work for you.
 
I've been doing some marketing workshops lately through the Canterbury Development Corporation, an organisation here in New Zealand devoted to making sure local companies have everything they need to succeed. As a part of the service, anyone who attends my workshops is entitled to up to an hour and a half of one-on-one follow-up time with me.
 
This arrangement means that I've been seeing a number of people who wouldn't normally pay for a social media consultant -- people with one-or-two-man businesses, people who come in wearing seven or eight hats, people who stare at me blankly if I ask about the level of marketing resource they have to commit to social media.
 
I love working with them.
 
I love it because social media is not about big budgets, or elitism, or corporations. It's about relationships, and relationships are accessible to anyone and everyone. There is no secret sauce, or golden chalice, or special club you have to belong to in order to participate, and that's exactly what makes it great.
 
At the same time, if you're looking at social media activity for a business, you have to be pragmatic. I would be doing that overcommitted person a disservice if I recommended starting a blog and spending two hours every day building links. Quite literally, it wouldn't be sustainable -- they wouldn't be able to keep doing it.
 
And that's one of the absolute keys to any social media strategy: will it work, in the context of your organisation, your available resources, your energy and stamina to keep it going? If not, you're barking up the wrong tree, and what you're going to end up with is a dead blog with tumbleweeds rolling through it.
 
So we look for the simplest, most effective, most sustainable ways for these companies to implement social media. I'll give you an example:
 
One of the companies who came to see me was a small backpackers here in Christchurch. The woman I met with is the marketing manager -- and the receptionist, bookkeeper, janitor, and part-time chef. I exaggerate, but not by much. She, like so many of us, has little time and energy to devote to a sustained social media effort.
 
So we decided to take an existing process and give it a social media slant. Right now, that backpackers has two computers in its lobby, with free Internet connection for its guests. All we did was to create a shortcut to the Facebook page of the backpackers, right in the middle of the desktop. Then we changed the wallpaper of the desktop to point to the shortcut, and wrote on it, "We live and die by your recommendations. If you enjoyed your stay, won't you please leave a comment on our Facebook page?" We built that same phrase into the standard checkout speech, to replace the traditional "Would you sign our guestbook?"
 
Simple system. Part of their existing operation. Minimal effort. Totally sustainable.
 
It doesn't matter how big you are or how much money or time you have. Social media is of and by the people, and accessible to everyone. Keeping it sustainable is the first step towards setting yourself up for social media success.