by Elton Gahr

Created on: March 15, 2011   Last Updated: March 19, 2011

In the last decade the idea of trying to run a business without an  internet presence has become an increasingly poor idea. Yet just as the average small business has gotten used to needing and using websites the internet has changed and social media has become just as vital as a website. This hasn’t eliminated the need for a website any more than the need for physical locations have been eliminated by websites. They have simply created huge new opportunities to increase your sales using social media.

The first thing to understand is that social media is not a new way to create a website. The vital difference between social media and a website is the ability to interact. This seems simple, but very few people do it well. This is why that idea has to continue to be refined and understood. There are two parts of this. The first half is getting people to interact with you and the second is interacting with them. This is important no matter the form of social media, business or customer because the more a customer interacts with you the more likely they are to become loyal customers.

The second value of social media is trust.  The value of this is that if used correctly you transition the trust of other people have for their friends and family in part to your business.  The easiest form of this is the Facebook Like button. In this way any customer can recommend the product with a very small effort. This transition of trust becomes more valuable the more personal the social media interaction is.  This means that a personal comment will be better than simply clicking a like button.  The value for someone selling is simply that your potential customer knows you’re not a scam or badly made product.  This is the biggest hurdle for getting a customer who likes your product to try it the first time and is even more important on the internet where they can’t see and touch the product.  For real life businesses check in services are effectively recommendations as well. Giving discounts or even free product to those who check in at your location can improve the amount of nearly free advertising you get this way.

The final value is keeping customers updated regularly. Whether it is twitter, Facebook people are far more likely to regularly check those pages. This means that you can use them to tell them of sales, new products or just to remind them of something you have. This can be overdone but carefully it can lead to considerably more sales.

The best way for any business to use social media is going to be entirely dependent on that business and just like websites a decade ago the entire idea of social media is still being understood and those who truly succeed will be the people who learn new ways to do things rather than simply doing what people in the past have done. For social media that means being yourself and connecting with people in new and interesting ways.

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