Your Small Business and the Value of Social Media

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“At the end of the day will Social Media actually help me realize more dollars?”  This question has been posed to be countless times.  If done right, the answer is yes.  It’s all about creating relationships. That’s what internet marketing, small business, and social media have in common and you won’t be successful without. You won’t even be selling water in the desert if you don’t understand it. People are uncertain by nature, they’re wary of getting a bum deal and nobody likes being taken for a ride so people are careful about where they put their money, with what business and for what product or service.

So you have to create a relationship. You have to get people to like you and trust you. Any good salesperson will tell you that. You create that relationship by getting their attention, showing them that they have a problem, and offering them the solution, which is your product or service. Their problem might be boredom, drudgery and the daily grind, and you might be in the business of entertainment selling movie tickets. They have a problem, you have a solution.

The internet offers you the ability to reach out and literally talk to the world. It’s a great tool if you know how to use it, and that’s where social media comes in. With social media you can interact with your clients (and potential clients) and that’s important because a relationship is about back and forth, dialogue, and action. You aren’t just featuring a website where people can hit the buy button, you’re offering a tiny little community where they drop by, check out comments, write their own, play games, look at apps, read interesting blogs, and naturally, check out your services or product. They have an opportunity to talk to you, to create dialogue and it lets people know you care about what they have to say and you find them interesting. It also lets people post about your product, what they liked and didn’t like, and it allows you to improve that, but more importantly it lets clients sell your product for you. Other prospective clients read it, and trust what their fellow buyer had to say. Remember what we said about trust and building relationships? Just like that, you did it. Now you’ve got that new prospective client in a place where they’re much more likely to buy because they find your site interesting, they have a problem, you have a solution, and they trust what other buyers had to say, which translates into trust with you and your product or service.

That’s the power of interactive relationships and social media, and it can put even your small business on the map, with big business. So look into what social media can do for your small business, and remember, work smart, not hard.

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