Chamber Insider Blog

2 Big Reasons You Should Use Social Media for Your Business

Thanks to Lisa M. Karl of Savvy Digital Business for this article. Catch Lisa talking all things social media at our upcoming Small Business Workshop series, “Demystifying Social Media” on November 19th. Register Here.

 
2 Big Reasons You Should Use Social Media for Your Business

Social media is neither good nor evil, it’s just a tool that is available to businesses for marketing and advertising their products and/or services. That’s it. Is it a good tool for you to use for your business? Probably—for two big reasons.

Number one:  The platforms themselves are free to use, although they do take time to use, and probably a monetary investment in learning how to use them and/or ads on the platforms themselves. Plus, as we saw in the excellent post by Sarah Kneip, Social Media Specialist at Communicate By Design, people in the U.S. are on social media in huge numbers! This means your customers and potential customers are mostly likely using social media.

Number two:  Social media can be an excellent communication tool, allowing you to communicate with large numbers of your customers, provide customer service and receive instant feedback about your products, services and your business.

You must understand what social media can do for businesses and what your investment will look like in order to succeed. Fumbling your way through social media marketing will end in failure, meaning you’ll either turn your customers off or turn yourself off. And an abandoned social media site is worse than none at all.

My best advice:  Have a strategy. Define your audience and discover where they are on social media. Then spend some time on that social site, learning what people post, what the culture, the norms and the etiquette is. As you do that, start deciding what kind of posts you’ll use, in a healthy mix, to attract and retain the attention of your customers and potential customers.