It’s impossible to escape the influence of social media. As a more "mature" member of the tech community, I must admit it took me a few years to get with the program. I cubby-holed Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and the like incorrectly as something for kids. That may have been true at one point, but it’s surely not the case now. According to a 2011 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the average age of adult users of social networking sites rose to 38 in 2010 from 33 in 2008.
In other studies the average age of someone who tweets is 39 years, and the average age on LinkedIn is 44 years.
These are hardly kids. So where to get started?
Don Mangiarelli, a social media and IT pro and founder of Enterprise Technology Solutions (www.ent-techsolutions.com) in Honolulu, suggests that Facebook is where the small-business owner should begin.
Facebook has 800 million-plus users and, Mangiarelli said, the best thing to do is sign up for a free account and familiarize yourself with it.
He encourages owners to get two accounts, one personal and one for business.
When establishing the personal site, he suggests going into account settings and "locking it down." You want to secure it. You don’t necessarily want strangers to know too much about your personal life even if, he says, "you’re squeaky clean."
Your business profile, by contrast, "should be wide open," Mangiarelli said. You want people to know as much as much about the business as possible. It’s a numbers game so you want as many "friends/connections" as you can garner.
How to do this? "Friend" as many people as possible.
Now, the caveat. Facebook and the other social media platforms are great promotional tools, but they don’t replace relationships. They are, however, wonderful tools to help build and strengthen business relationships.
On many occasions I find that if I show up at a networking event or a business meeting, chances are someone will have seen or heard of me on a social media site. This, Mangiarelli said, "helps lubricate social interactions by acting as a ‘calling card.’"
Mangiarelli suggests, and I agree, you’ll want to check out Facebook.com/business tutorials in your efforts to get up to speed.
Keeping an eye out around town for introductory talks on social media is a good way to start.
Mangiarelli often has free workshops, but you’ll also want to consider classes at the Hawaii Pacific New Media College. The Social Media Club of Hawaii (socialmediaclub.org/chapter/social-media-club-hawaii) is also a good place to meet like-minded people and hone your skills.
Finally there are many online resources such as Lynda.com that have free and inexpensive tutorials.
One thing for sure: If you have a small business, you’ll need to understand the basics of social media.
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Mike Meyer, former Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, now manages information technology for Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
