One Entrepreneur On Social Networking: Mikael Cho
Jun 18 in Smart Growth 
This is part of a series called "The Entrepreneurs on Social Networking." This interview is with Mikael Cho.
What are your general thoughts on social networking (do you think it's highly important for today's business owner, a great way to build a web presence, a fad, exaggerated in importance, etc.)?
Having experimented with many of the popular social networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and being an early adopter of up-and-coming social websites (i.e. Foursquare, Scribd), I have had a lot of experience using social networking for business purposes. At the very least, having an account on social media networks does add to your web presence, even if it just makes your company more searchable on Google. However, to actually see increased revenue and website traffic, it requires a much deeper dedication to the conversations within the social community.
I think it is important to experiment with different social networks to see which community sphere contains your target market. Once you have a few social platforms that fit your product/service, then you can start to develop the conversations that will hopefully lead to new customers. Furthermore, identifying creative ways (i.e. contests, follower of the week, etc.) to interact with social communities will help set you apart from the chatter of millions of users.
What have been your biggest challenges with social networking?
Before programs developed to organize all the social networks in one place, it was a huge task to keep up with all of our online marketing. Now that Hootsuite has developed to accommodate all of our networks, I can go to one place to interact with our online community of followers/friends.
Another big challenge for us was deciding which social networks would fit our business model best. Since our target is businesses, we needed to selectively choose the best social spheres that could translate into leads or clients for our company.
What have been your keys to success when it comes to social networking?
1) Don’t spend too much time reacting. The noise in online communities can easily overwhelm you and take away a large part of your day. To use your time efficiently, communicate with your social network twice a day for 30 minutes total.
2) Be organized. Use a free service like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organize all your social networks. It saves a lot of time being able to go to just one place and communicate with your internet followers.
3) Promote others. Converse and share information about other interesting users in the social community. They will appreciate it and will likely share your information with their friends or followers. Also, your online followers probably will appreciate being “introduced” to someone that may provide interesting content for them.
Do you have any techniques or routines that help you succeed with social networking?
On Twitter for example, I love mentioning or retweeting interesting users and writing a little message about them. Taking the time to go to their website and finding something that is interesting to you and sharing it, can go a long way.
Being active. It is not about how many followers or friends you have. It is more important to have a few dedicated followers that communicate with you in online conversation. The content you share will be more attractive to them versus another user who is not really making an effort to have a relationship.
Unless you are a celebrity or a large organization, you will probably need to start small. Go through your e-mail contacts and see if they are on your social network. This will get the ball rolling and open you up to new online contacts. Then it is a snowball effect from there, as long as you can continue to converse and contribute valuable content to your online followers.
Any final thoughts on social networking?
Social networking is a marketing strategy that should be considered for any business. However, it is important to determine which social networks would be the best fit for your product/service. In addition, depending on what you want to achieve with your online conversations will determine how much time and resources to dedicate to your social marketing campaign.
Mikael Cho is the co-founder of Kuuala, a company that provides sustainable solutions for businesses in North America. Kuuala offers energy-efficient lighting, eco-friendly cleaning supplies, green information technology, and sustainable office products.
Kuuala also provides a Kuualafied Business Directory, which helps market organizations that support environmentally responsible procurement, services and infrastructure. The goal is to encourage people to support businesses that have incorporated sustainable initiatives into their business practices.
Reader Comments (2)
I understand that success in social networking depends on what type of business you are promoting since promotion from business to business vary from each other. Am I correct with that? Like you have your home business opportunities differ from your other type of business?
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