Social Media is not for every business! Is yours one of them?

Having read many articles on small companies and the benefits of social media, I have recently stumbled on some literature which lists reasons why social media is not a must for all small businesses. Why would the fast growing social media channels not be recommended?

• Social Media can be very time consuming for the sole trader or small local business owner. This time might be better spent building relationships with customers on a face to face level or developing the business further.

• Social Media is free but due to the millions of companies that are now represented on the major social media sites, it is more of an uphill battle to obtain a following. Even when you do manage it, sites such as facebook only show your posts to around 10% of your followers. If you are not committed to spending at least 30 minutes a day on the three major sites, you might as well not have a presence.

• New social media sites are being introduced on a weekly basis and changes made to the algorithms or functionality of the older ones mean it is a timely job to keep abreast of these developments.

Great, I hear many of you say.... it was always just a fad and I was never going to get any sales from it, waste of time.....

There is some truth in the above points, but there are some considerations you should make before throwing in the towel and forgetting about social media for good.

• What are your competitors doing? If they are using social media to build up a following of interested and engaging customers, you might need to think about doing this also.

• Who are your customers? Know your market. Are they walking past your door or searching on the internet? Are they likely to be using social media or not? If they are using social media or searching for you on the web, a good social media presence is imperative.

• Are you trying to reach a global market or a new market? This is easily done with social media.

• What is your marketing budget? If you don't have one or it is limited, with a small amount of time and effort you could end up increasing your customer loyalty and in turn improving your returning customer statistics and gaining new potential customers.

• Are your traditional methods of marketing working? If not, give social media a chance.

If your customers are walking past your door, of an age or client type that do not use social media sites actively and the offers you put up in your window drive customers to buy your products, you might be in the minority group that really would not benefit from the time and effort it requires to sustain social media accounts.

Otherwise, you should think about improving your social media activity. You might only be a small business now but as your business grows, so should your social media presence and it is easier to get started on this cyber marketing bandwagon now than wait until you need it.

Benefits to the Small Business:

• It can drive new customers to your products or services.

• It can increase sales

• Customer service issues can be addressed quickly

• A presence on social media channels enhance your credibility as a company.

• You can use the social media channels to target advertising with all the analytic evidence you need to justify the expense.

• Its easy for people to recommend your products or services to their friends

• A good presence with engagement improves your standing on search engines such as Google

• You can monitor your competitors marketing strategies & customer engagement

• You can save on advertising by posting recruitment opportunities and offers

• Its free

So armed with this information, what do you do next? Call SPC Marine Marketing for a free consultation. We will review your social media sites & your website. Either over the phone or in an email (or both). We will give you a step by step approach to improving these with priorities. We will advise how you can do these yourself or offer our services at an exceptionally low cost.

We will not recommend services if you do not need them. Last week in a consultation, we informed a client that she was best to continue with facebook herself as she was doing a great job. However, we took on her Twitter account.

It's FREE. A marketing specialist did this for me when I was getting ready to launch my marine-based business. If you only action one thing from the recommended list of actions, we will be happy.