SMEs and Social Media - Vital or Useless?

The Forum of Private Business has recently published the results of a referendum themed around electronic technology and social media.

The results are very interesting: 52% of the members polled used social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter - but only 7% described it as 'very useful' for their businesses. Moreover, over half of the 52% of members polled expressed serious doubts about the value of popular networking sites - and 6% went so far as to describe them as 'useless'.

The problem is, of course, that whilst electronic technology and social media can potentially be enormously valuable marketing tools, you only get out what you put in - and what you need to put in is a lot of time.

• Websites, for example, are wonderful things, and I tend to believe that every business should have one - but they are never really finished: they need to be updated regularly.
• It takes time to build a profile on LinkedIn - or any other social networking site - and the work there is never really finished either, because it's essential to advertise yourself and your business by updating your profile and letting people know 'what you are doing now' as frequently as possible.
• People who Tweet every five minutes are an awful nuisance, but you can learn a lot from people who Tweet responsibly - and people can learn a lot from you if you do likewise.

The Forum didn't include 'blogging' in its referendum, but blogs are a excellent marketing tool, too - and they cost nothing.

The use of electronic technology and social media can give any company - however small - a very high profile and pull in a lot of business, so it's worth taking the time to learn how to use them - and then taking the time to use what you have learned side by side with traditional trading methods.

SMEs - Suddenly Everybody Loves You?

I received an e-mail last Friday from British Airways. It introduced 'a new forum for small business experts worldwide'.

The new forum is called the 'Face-to-Face Business Connection Hub - Innovation Discussed, Experience Shared, Growth Inspired' - and it consists of a series of blogs, and something called "The Face of Opportunity Contest".

I don't propose to comment on the blogs. You can read them yourself at British Airways - Be There Face to Face if you want to, but you will almost certainly find that you've read it all before (and better) elsewhere.

The contest, though, is interesting - or at least will be for British Airways if you really do (as they strongly suggest you should!) "Share your submission with your networks, friends, and colleagues and remind them to vote" in an effort to win, because if enough people do that, it will net BA a mailing list that will be far and away more valuable than the free flights they are offering as prizes to 250 successful contestants , thank you very much.

Some very unpleasant words - like 'opportunistic', 'cynical', 'exploitative' and 'bandwagon', for example - sprang to mind as I read my way through this beautifully presented (and almost certainly very expensively produced) piece of work, but what struck me most was how out of touch with reality it was, not just for SMEs, but for people in business generally in the present economic climate.

The fact is that 'face-to-face' - or at least 'face to face and in the flesh' - is a gone goose for practically everyone if it means travelling long distances and paying for meals and an overnight stay. And who needs 'face-to-face and in the flesh' anyway? Conference calling and video conferencing have made travelling from Halifax to Bolton unnecessarily expensive in time and money, never mind flying 'from London to NewYork and beyond'.

Take a look at the conferencegenie and you'll see what I mean. You can do 'face-to-face' quite cheaply - and much more comfortably! -from your office or your home, simply by taking advantage of this easily accessible technology.

Dealing with Debtors Who are Playing the System

Now that the normal collection techniques that served everyone so well in the past have become so expensive, it has become very difficult to deal with recalcitrant commercial debtors who are playing the system - banking, in fact, on the fact that the expense of using the Courts in the UK is a non-starter for any creditor who is looking for anything less than £10,000, and that chasing debts abroad (even within the EU) can be extremely time-consuming and difficult.

There is a potential - and relatively inexpensive - solution to this problem. Actually, there are two potential and relatively inexpensive solutions to this problem, and both rely on the fact that businesses need access to credit to survive.

Credit Reporting Agencies -like Equifax or Experian, for example - have enormous clout these days, and although using their services isn't free, it can still be cheaper and more efficient than using the Court system because, effectively, Credit Reporting Agencies can cause the 'credit well' to run dry for non-paying customers who are 'playing the system' in the hope that creditors will simply give up, write off the debt, and go away.

I was particularly interested, for example, in the Delinquency Notification Service that Experian operates under the name of Business Credit Information Inc . The service acts like a simple letter collection service - but it makes the long price of non-payment very, very clear indeed.

And then, of course, there are Credit Circles - both formal and informal. The Office of Fair Trading has laid down certain Rules govern the activities of members of formal Credit Circles in the UK, but there is nothing in those rules that forbids members naming defaulting customers or giving chapter and verse as to the nature of the default - and no Rules govern the purely informal conversations that go on as a matter of course between credit personnel who happen to be working in the same trade. Credit Circles, too, can make the 'credit well' dry up.

Different times demand different techniques. I think that these can be very powerful and persuasive ones.