@colintwilliams a great request and one that involves probably a bigger answer than we have space for.
John Battelle (The Search) breaks business marketing/advertising into two categories. ‘Intent’ and ‘Content’. Yellow Pages is intent ie. when you pick up the book you have ‘intent’ to spend. (You have pretty much already spent your money). TV, press, radio, magazines is ‘content’ advertising. You attach your advertisement to particular content. This is to raise brand awareness and attempts to influence a purchase decision.
Most small businesses typically started with Yellow Pages and progressed through to radio, Magazines, TV etc. So replicating this in a didigital world is truly affordablesimply following a 4 step process.
The tactics should be simple – why are you doing this? the typical answer for small business is to make your phone ring or bring customers through the door. Keep this in mind, implement the following plan and you can’t go wrong.

1. Website (Google friendly with analytics) – Intent
2. Blog regularly (typically this is for Google) – Intent
3. E Newsletters – Content
4. Social Media Bespoke per you industry (Basic set up being, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and maybe Youtube,) such as Trip Advisor for tourism or accommodation related fields

Hello. @colintwilliams @karlmorris

Good information – I completely agree about pushing company with personality shinning through.  However, some personalities don’t do well with the written word and also don’t respond well.  

I think I’d include a caveat about WHO should attend to social media to item 4. A very important part is communicating well.

Eileen

@colintwilliams Thanks for starting this topic. It is one that is very important to understand in working with small business marketing

@karlmorris Your feedback karl was spot on. I am going to keep the information for future use.

@supereb Eileen I do think it’s super important to find the right person to handle the social media portion of a marketing campaign. The upkeep is too much of a burden for the small business owner, and they are not writers. Finding the “right” copywriter for your SMM is key.

@supereb, @colintwilliams, @deniserubrightWHO? what a great question on item 4. We are working with many clients that when we started working with them they had their 18 year old receptionist look after Facebook because she ‘loves Facebook’. It’s a bit like making my 12 year old daughter an advertising executive because she loves watching TV.

If you have an objective (small business is typically to make the phone ring or have clients walk in the door of a retail premise)  you then need a strategy and a process.

The boss needs to control this but you can appoint someone else to do the posting etc. as long as they work with in the guidelines to achieve the stated objectives /goals. Make sure the owner / boss monitors this though. Regularly through tools such as Hootsuite just to make sure you are on the right track in conveying the right brand and meeting objectives.

Great discussion and points raised.