S

Social Media Designed For Small Businesses

Newest Trend

By: Jeremy Salentine &Dan Sanderson

Trend Section 1

We have discovered websites that are designed to help small business owners utilize other small business owner’s knowledge and skills to help increase their success.

Small companies do not have the work power and availability of resources that large businesses do. In order for these small businesses to compete they must collaborate there ideas and work together to help one another develop through the use of these social media resources.

A few of the most common social media sites designed for small businesses and entrepreneurs include Manta.com, Focus.com, Neudesic.com, Partnerup.com and many other exhibits we will explain in depth in a few minutes.

Trend Section 1(Continued)

Hospitality groups that use these types are small golf clubs, restaurants, yacht clubs, casinos, bed & breakfasts, vacation homes, and resorts.

These websites are extremely useful for small business because many can not afford to pay for online website fees. Websites like manta for example, is a great alternative in maintaining the same benefits of a website because they are free or have a cheap life time registration fee with the same effect as a website.

Exhibit One (Manta)

Link – www.manta.com

Manta is the world's largest online community for promoting and connecting small business. With more than one million registered users and 87 million company profiles.

This site allows a business to promote & advertise, also allowing them to connect with each other and help each other strive for success.

Exhibit Two (Hoovers Inc.)

Link – www.hoovers.com

Hoovers is a site where they provide comprehensive insight and analysis about the companies, industries and people that drive the economy, along with the powerful tools to find and connect to the right people to get business done.

Hoover's maintains a database of 66 million companies and 85 million people using an in-house editorial staff of industry experts.

Exhibit Three (Thomas Net)

Link – www.thomasnet.com

This website allows small hospitality business to promote their services.

This site is truly amazing in the fact that on your page you can advertise, promote deals, post monthly news letters and post reviews of their services from others for free.

Similar Sites

Link – www.business.com

Link- www.focus.com

Link- www.neudesic.com

Link- www.partnerup.com

Trend Section 2

How does this trend shape and impact our hospitality industry today?

Our hospitality operations we have today is continuing to grow. Every business starts out somewhere and majority of the time is small and takes time for them to grow. This trend of promotional websites allow small hospitality industries to grow and prosper through connections, promotions, new letters, blogs, reviews, and recommendations.

These sites are crucial unlike limited social media sites such as Facebook and twitter. Sites like (Manta and Thomas) are allowing each other to communicate through their pages and chat logs. Which is beneficial because they can discus new hospitality trends and promote new ideas. Most of all build off and promote each other rather than just promoting yourself on Facebook or your own business website.

In retrospect a lot of the information discussed on these sites relates to making social media a more opportunistic way to interact with customers, and future customers.

Trend Section 3

Is this trend business worthy?

-The trend is business worthy in the following ways..

- Allows small hospitality businesses to advertise and promote if they can not afford to pay for a

website.

- Allows hospitality businesses to build off each other rather then just themselves. This allows small

businesses to have an advantage that large companies already have due to a their larger budgets.

Trend Section 3

How the trend itself will move forward?

- There are over ten sites which target small businesses that we have discover through our trend research. To move forward it would be huge if all these different sites came together and created one site. This will create a larger membership rate, less variance, and would create one recognized small business social site, creating even greater opportunities for hospitality businesses.

Trend Section 3

What will be needed to stay ahead of its competitors?

- As more and more of these types of sites are continuing to be launched, different characteristics of website functions and the tools available are being added to improve user benefits. By improving these sites and creating new ones this will allow small businesses to network and promote affectively in more depth and affectively.

Bibliography (Sources)

http://www.boston.com/business/specials/small_business_blog/2012/09/small_businesse_flirt_with_social_media.html 

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-small-biz-survey-20120912,0,6925065.story 

http://www.ecnext.com/ecnext/Successes-MantaLeadGen.html

http://www.nfib.com/business-resources/business-resources-item?cmsid=55196 Ed Gonzalez, co-owner El Tequila Northfield MN