Leaders of many small to mid-sized businesses understand the potential benefits of a positive social media presence. They also understand the risk inherent in making a company so transparent. What many lack internally is a team of people who

• know each of the social platforms in depth (the rules, the membership, the unwritten expectations and tolerances of members)
• know how to create a strategy for social media success based upon the unique needs of a particular company
• know how to nuance company information
• know how to create a “voice” for the business
• have the time to monitor and engage customers and prospects effectively, and
• are able to produce a constant stream of appropriate content for a social media program.

What We Do

Little Black Dog Social Media provides a range of social media services to small and mid-sized businesses who seek effective customer and prospect relationships to grow their firms. We focus on qualitative activity that presents your company realistically in the best light possible in the social realm. Our approach is studied and rational.

We work for our clients in three ways: we write and post content on their behalf, in their name; we champion their businesses in our name; and we seek new opportunities to promote their businesses. Our monitoring of the internet and social media sites is partly automated. However, because our experience is that automated tracking is imperfect, we also monitor numerous sites live every day. Automation for posting and monitoring is fine to a point. We choose to take a hands-on approach to ensure accuracy and relevance.

What Makes Us Different

The Little Black Dog looks everywhere for the best opportunities to grow your business.

Little Black Dog Social Media is a small firm committed to helping our clients succeed in their social media activity and in their business. We accept only those clients we believe we can help.

• We use no canned approaches or cookie cutter strategies.
• Before we create a strategy for your business or plan any social media activities, we take the time to get to know you and your business. Because social media includes branding and demonstrating credibility to build trust among your customers and prospects, we must know your corporate culture, your values, your business goals, how you relate to your brand, and how you relate to your competitors.
• We will seek to discover or work with you to create your company’s distinctive voice.
• We will determine the appropriate level of social interaction for your business and for your market.
• We are very hands-on in our approach for each client. We utilize automation only minimally, in ways that do not directly affect your brand or your voice.
• We maintain a level of direct involvement in your social media strategy that enables us to see what is or is not working and make timely adjustments.
• We define goals, measurement, and metrics with you to ensure that our focus and our measurement are appropriate to your business needs.
• We provide regular and frequent updates to you.
• We are schooled and competent in Word of Mouth Marketing (Buzz)
• We are trained and experienced in traditional marketing, as well as Web 2.0 and 3.0 Marketing
• We are at our best and most creative when we are relaxed and happy.
• We enjoy what we do.
• We will coordinate all of our social media activities with your other marketing and advertising campaigns. We believe is the power of integrated marketing.
• We are committed to providing value to our clients.
• We do not believe the customer is always right. We are the social media experts.
• Because it takes time to build social relationships (three to six months, typically), we require a reasonable period in order to achieve measurable results. Therefore, we require a minimum contract of six months.

What You Can Expect

The team at Little Black Dog Social Media (like the little black dog himself), are eminently social, with vast experience in building and maintaining relationships both local and distant. We know people are different and that each relationship has unique characteristics. For this reason, unlike other big social media firms, we do not assume that every client or every client’s market should be active on the same few social media sites.

We believe entrepreneurs and small businesses understand the value of social media presence, although they are unlikely to have the time to devote to building social media visibility while starting and operating a business. Little Black Dog Social Media Services will sniff out the most compelling strategies for each of our clients and personally manage all activities day-to-day. Because we are a hands-on services provider, we are able to recognize and respond to limited success of activities and to changes in the users of a social platform and make strategic adjustments quickly. We appreciate budget constraints and we tailor each client’s service package to win maximum results for price the client is able to pay and respond quickly with needed change so we do not waste our client’s investment.

We provide a range of social media services, as appropriate to the client’s business, ranging from Blogs to social bookmarking, posting social news, social media relations, customer service, lead generation, customer engagement, market/customer research, reputation management, and brand building. We coordinate these services with a full range of marketing and public relations strategies to accelerate growth for our clients.