Arguably it all began in 2004, the year blogging caught the attention of the world. Fast forward just 7 years and whole industries have popped up around it and the world has completely changed because of it. A generation of people will be defined by it and business are still trying to figure out what to do with it. So what do we do with it?
While social media (Facebook, Twitter etc.) has been around for a half decade or so, business, particularly small businesses haven't figured out what to do with it. Sure, its simple to set up a Facebook or Twitter account but what does it mean to actually use it the right way?
That answer is easy, social media is social! That's it. It's not about broadcasting and advertising it's about conversing. It's about engaging and responding. Its about inbound marketing and attracting attention because of value not because of an image or brochures. People want valuable content, provide it and you will get followers who hopefully turn into customers.
Can you ignore social media? Well, there is a lot of debate about that these days. Some "experts" are saying it only works for some types of businesses, others say you can't afford to ignore it. The truth is ignoring it is still an option for now, but it isn't going away. More and more people sign onto social media every day and the search engines are making it a bigger part of their search criteria all the time. Eventually asking "should you be using social media?" will be like asking "Should you have a website?" or "Do you want to be found on Google?".
Ignore it for now at your own risk, ignore it in 5 years at the expense of your livelihood. More on how to use social media in a future post, for now go be social.
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