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How Does Social Media Help Small Business?

You want to share your business with more people, right? You want them to know you exist, come visit your stores, shop at your online website, express interest in your products, and talk about you with your friends- Yes?

Can you believe you would be able to get these results from social media?

Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and several other social sites all have the structure for users to share their thoughts, opinions, and stories with the world. They can share text, photos, or video and by using social media they can reach hundreds to thousands of people.

For each person on Facebook, they usually have 150 or so friends. When they post an update, all of those friends can see it. In these updates they can share links to your website or even make your company’s profile part of the update.

When one of their friends sees there is a new update they will go comment on it, and all of their friends can see this activity. Now for each friend of a friend who comments, all of their friends will see it, and a simple update to friends now becomes viral- meaning thousands to millions of people can see it.

How Does That Part of Social Media Help Small Businesses?

Your profile on a social media website allows you to collect people to share updates with. These will all be people who WANT to see what you have to say. They actually have to follow you on their own, you can’t force it, so they are already fond of your brand. Your business benefits from this because you can share updates that motivate your followers to take action.

What Businesses Can Post:

A link to a special sales event
Updates of new products available for purchase
Special promotional codes for social followers
Questions to get feedback on future product ideas
Links to affiliate products they can purchase
Positive reviews from product users
Education information to teach followers about products

It Sounds Easy- But There’s More Small Businesses Can Do

Anyone can throw up a profile and get their website visitors to follow them, but to get really get the benefits of social media, there has to be some kind of strategy to it all. This is where most small businesses go wrong, they don’t embrace the purpose of social media, and instead of focusing on everything it can be for their business, they go for the short sighted goal of more sales- NOW.

This will produce results, if you have a following and you share links to your products, you will get sales, but with a strategy in mind, you can increase the amount of sales, how much is spent in each sale, and how many referral sales there are- now that is embracing the purpose of social media.

What Else Does Social Media Provide Small Businesses?

The purpose of social media is relationship, transparency, community. It is turning a business to consumer relationship into a person to person relationship, and using that to:

Get more word of mouth advertising
Get more brand awareness
Inform people to make purchasing decisions
Get honest feedback from people who love your products
Provide customer service
Prove how important customers are to your company
Show your interest in supporting causes

And the reason a small business should be so interested in doing all of this is because, the return is so beneficial. Having customers who love your brand, share it, and provide feedback can save most small businesses a lot of money.

Your Small Business Can Save Money with Social Media

Think for a moment about how much is spent on customer service, what if social media can cut this down, at the same time increasing sales? How about market research, businesses spent thousands to get access to another firm’s statistics, but with social media you can get your own information as part of your social media budget.

If you are considering a new product to sell in your store or to even manufacture, you can use your social media profile to ask followers what they think, will they buy it, do they have better ideas, do they want to see that new brand in your store? You’ll save thousands on not manufacturing until you know what consumers want, or not buying wholesale what you won’t be able to sell.

How Small Businesses Should Utilize Social Media

Instead of looking at social media as a way to get more quick traffic and sales, embrace it for building relationships with followers who like your company, and are likely to share their opinions with friends. Use social media to see what your followers think of your products, ask them questions, and act on their recommendations. Last, but not least, take the time to share information that is relevant to them, give them something for them allowing you to promote to them.

If you have any questions on how to use social media for your small business, please feel free to ask, we are available on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and via email, or…