1. Set goals Goals will help you to understand where you need to direct your efforts and how you hope to measure your success.  Be as concrete as possible, for example instead of saying ‘increase sales’ say ‘increase sales by 50 percent’.
2. Be personal One of the great values of social media is the ability to put a personal spin on interactions.  As a small business, your opportunity to do this is even greater. Interacting with customers in a way that makes them feel like they are dealing with other humans inspires a greater feeling of loyalty toward a business.  By relaying the type of content and expertise your customers want, they will help to market your business by sharing the content with their friends, family and colleagues.
3. Don’t try to be all things to all people Find out where your customers are and spend your time and energy there.  It can be too tempting to try to succeed on every social network but that will only lead to spreading yourself too thin, particularly as a small business.
4. Incorporate video Instructional video, customer testimonials – anything you can think of that your customers might find useful or interesting that can be expressed through video will make you stand out.  You can upload videos easily on YouTube and embed them on other social media as well as on your company website.
5. Provide valuable content Think about the questions you hear most often from your customers.  Comment on current relevant topics highlighted by our ‘in the news’ emails.
6. ‘Social’ is a key aspect of social media. It means that you don’t just wait for people to come to you – you need to go out and engage with customers, comment on blogs, respond to tweets, sign up to your main competitors social media and respond to their tweets and blogs.  Get yourself known amongst their customer base.
7. Seize the local advantage Get yourself listed on Google places – it’s easy and free.
8. Stay consistent  Maintain consistencywith your brand and message, and try to post at regular times each day and each week but don’t overdo it.
9. Be generous Social media is no time to be guarded – share discounts and push promotions.  You can even identify other complementary businesses and help to promote them.  This makes you look like a member of a wider community as well.
10. Measure success Based on your goals, use Google analytics and other tools such as HootSuite and Bitly to measure your ROI (return on investment) and see what approaches are producing the best results.

For not very much money, small businesses can builder a larger and more loyal customer base through savvy use of social media.