Why Social Media?
Many Tallahassee business owners ask me the question, ‘Why should I be using social media?‘ and that is certainly a valid question.
Social media consists of much more than just having a Facebook fan page; it is a tool to promote yourself, your business and the products and services you offer.
More than that, social media is a tool that is made up of a number of tools (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Trusteria) that help you connect with your customers and provide ways to get feedback from them in a timely fashion.
Social media works as a marketing tool but before you begin, you should ensure that you have:
- a web site that is well-designed and functions properly
- a web site that has been optimized for search engines about the product and services that you offer
- a web site that has been submitted to search engines and other online business directories
Once you have these three items out of the way, you are now ready to begin down the road of using social media to help your business efforts.
What Will Social Media Do For You?
Utilizing social media will provide your business:
- Links - part of any search engine optimization is obtaining links from as many sources as possible and you can utilize social media to provide some of those links. If you provide good content and others ‘talk’ about your content and link to it, it makes that content even more valuable in the eyes of search engines.
- Sales - of course the whole point of utilizing marketing with social media is to get customers to purchase your products and services. Understand that you may not (and probably will not) make direct sales using social media. On the other hand, you should view it as a way to connect with your potential customers so when they are ready to buy, they purchase from you.
- Customer Service - using social media is a great way to provide customer service in a unique way. Just the other day I saw a post about a local restaurant that went something like this: ‘Don’t ever eat at ***, I just left the drive thru and the service stunk, the food is cold and it tastes funny’. Now, if that was your business, wouldn’t you like to know about that? I sure would and connecting to your customers where they are is certainly going to help you provide better service to them.
- Branding - you can simply help raise awareness of your current products and services by simply being visible online using different social media platforms.
For all of the good that social media can do to help promote your business products and services, it can also harm them if you are not careful and do not take the time to learn about how to use each tool properly.
