Social Media for Small Business: Updated Blue Paper

• Posted August 3rd, 2009
• By Adam Darowski (bio)
• Filed under: Social Media

Way back in early 2008 (has it really been that long?), Michelle and I collaborated on what was then the second of our BatchBlue Blue Papers. Blue Papers, if you’re not familiar, are like white papers. Only… you know… blue. The paper was called Social Media for Small Business. It served as a primer for small business owners wondering how (or even if) they should get their businesses involved in social media.

Since 18 months is an eternity in the social media world, we decided it was time for an update. Some of the highlights:

• We expanded the Twitter section. This was necessary since in the last version we talked about how we were still skeptical of Twitter’s business applications. How the times have changed! The updates include discussion of tweet chats (like SBBUZZ!) and hashtags.
• In the social networking space, Facebook was brought to the forefront and MySpace was downplayed. When this was originally written, Facebook applications were all the rage. Remember those?
• We added StumbleUpon, a site that was totally left out of the first version.

Of course, a bunch of other minor changes were made. Please take a look at the new version of Social Media for Small Business. If you prefer your reading on paper instead of pixels, it has a nice print style sheet as well!