Challenges for SMB in Social Media – Technology

Challenges for SMB - TechnologyI like man of you reading this want to partake in some of the latest advancements in social media. They include Facebook Instant articles, Rich Pins on Pinterest and more. From the sounds of it, they all sound pretty simple to implement when you read the instructions. You get the “Oh I can do that, easy.”

After a while you will realize certain steps require a technological background. When rich pins first came out. I thought Marketing Elements should be listed as an Article Pin. I hoped it was easy as just putting a plug-in in WordPress and it would be up and running. NOT so fast! There was not easy one size fits all solution. It was a little bit of a work around.

The work around involved the Yoast SEO Plug in. This is a plug-in that many people rave about and it helps them greatly. I have had bad experiences with the plug in. It could be related to the plug in or it may just be a coincidence. The first time I installed it you couldn’t go to any post pages. It would give an error. The second time there was a database failure. I’m not real keen on installing it. Like I said it could just be coincidences other things happened, but I don’t want to use it again.

As for Instant Articles, its simple so it sounds. They are sign up, develop and submit articles and third is publish. If you’re on WordPress.com they have a plug-in for the dot com but not self hosted. Self hosted is the wild west. There are a few listed but none that are sponsored by Facebook.

Instructions can be irritating

The instructions sound easy then after a while you go, HUH? There are things written for developers. When the jargon starts you have to Google what they are talking about. And then sometimes you need to have experience in coding or programming.

Have Sponsored plug-ins/solutions

It would be great if Social Networks would have a sponsored solution for SMB. It would make it way easier to implement for all businesses. This would also be great for the social networks. More people would use their services! Plus this would hopefully prevent issues installing and messing up websites. If something goes wrong in a small business. Many of them don’t have $75 an hour or more to fix them.  This could make or break a business. I have dealt with issues on my own. Luckily I could solve them myself. I did this because I couldn’t afford to pay a person to do it for me.

I hope in the future we will see easier ways implement tech for SMB.

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

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