Small Business Social Media: Get Going – You’ll Get “Good” as you Practice…

Small & local business owners – heck, Fortune 500 companies, etc – hesitate to start social media campaigns in part because they aren’t good at it yet. Or once they start they ‘go slow’ because it’s not quite up to their standards.

There are a myriad of reasons for this, one of which is the inability for people to realize that hey, this is going to take some time. We’re not going to be ‘great’ or even ‘good’ at this for awhile. We need to practice and contribute and build and learn – and than you’ll see…eventually you’ll get good at using Twitter, using Facebook and contributing to a blog, but it takes time. You just need to get started.

Effort & Time Question Addressed Using Social Media for Local Businesses

Some business owners contend: I / we don’t have time to “use Twitter” or Facebook, contribute to & maintain a blog, etc. We just don’t have the time!

With this contention come very real concerns that not only are small business owners currently over inundated with work, but there is an outstanding question as to the efficacy of using Twitter, Facebook, developing a blog, etc for their business. Does it really work? Is it in my demographic? “Do people actually watch / use this stuff – consume this information? And why???”

The answer is that 70% or more of the people – for most retail business – that come into your store, use your service or otherwise patronize your business came in contact with you or were some way influenced by your online presence. 70%. 50% is a very conservative number. Considering this, wouldn’t it be prudent to spend more time here developing your brand and making a very real contribution and connection with your customers online?

Cut something else out! Stop doing that direct mail campaign, stop doing whatever it is your doing where 50-70% of your customers are not being influenced. That is the real paradigm shift here. That is the real handle. Make the time to get involved with this medium. It takes time, both in terms of the day to day time it takes, and in the overall time it takes to build up an audience, but it will pay off.