Business needs to understand social media today. After delivering several social media programs, speaking engagements, social media workshops and consulting with different businesses in Halifax and throughout Nova Scotia, I have noticed that many businesses still do not understand the full potential of social media for helping businesses do better.
One of the greatest benefits I can bring to business owners is to help them understand why social media matters for their business today. Understanding brings clarity and focus. Understanding helps business create proper goals that can make their social media efforts bring results.
One thing I want to point out right away is that social media is not a silver bullet that will instantly cure-all their marketing woes. As a matter of fact, social media is but one of the tools a business owner should be using from their business tool box.
I want to make this point very clear: businesses should keep using the marketing tools that are producing results for them. But they should also investigate the possibility that social network services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn might be a good addition to their marketing efforts.
So why should a business look at social media?
- Firstly, if they have a web site, social media is an excellent way to direct traffic to the web site.
- Secondly, social media is a great way to engage your customers. People like to do business with people they like. So why not make your business more likeable by positively engaging new customers as well as customers you already have.Conversation brings opportunity.
- Thirdly, social media is an excellent way to find information. We all, I hope, have used Google to search for important information for our businesses; but what if you could communicate with the author of the information directly. That would be better.
- Fourthly, social media can be used for customer service. Imagine fewer calls to the office because some of those calls are now being handled online.
- Fifthly, social media is great at lead generation. You can find customers looking for your services and assist them to get what they want.
Another great benefit of using social media services is that information and stats can be easily retrieved to give you an accurate understanding of how you are impacting people on the Internet with your message.
I often look at stats to see how far I am reaching out on Twitter and Facebook for example. I can also see what is working and what I need to change. Try that with radio, TV, newspapers and mail outs. These marketing tools are much harder to get accurate results of how you are doing.
Many of your customers and competitors are already using these social networking services. One of the stats that I saw several months ago was that 59% of all Americans are on these services. Canadians tend to use them more. Twitter, for example, has 500 million registered accounts and it is growing by well over 5 million accounts every month. Facebook is also growing as well; over 1 billion users. This is where many of your customers are going. The only question that remains is…”Are you in?”
One word of caution about social networking service results, it takes time and consistency to see a return on your investment. Sure these services are free, but it will cost you your time. If this bothers you, think about all the money you spend on advertizing before. I know of one business that spent $1000.00 for advertising and did not see one customer added. Since the world is getting smaller every day, it’s time to start seriously look at social media for your business.
