Why Your Business Needs Social Media – Now
Discover how to take full advantage of social media so you can cost-effectively take your business to the next level of profitability, performance and results – even if you’ve never sent out a single Tweet or status update.
Here’s a newsflash that’s about as profound as learning that water is wet and the sun is hot: social media has invaded the business world, and the move is permanent.
So if you’re holding your breath and waiting for this Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Yelp and Google Places thingĀ to fade away from the business scene so that you can return to the serene, good old days where yellow pages and word of mouth were the only marketing tools you needed, then you’d better exhale before you pass out.
True, the labels may change – today’s Twitter is tomorrow’s whatever new thing – but the idea of social media, the enormous impact it has on marketing and communication, and the new categories of expectations that it has unleashed in the minds of your current and future customers is not going to change. In fact, it’s just going to get more intense.
Add that all up, and it leads to this bottom line fact:
If you want your business to thrive and out-pace your competitors – the people who are actively trying to capture your customers – and their networks, then you need to get things in gear and make social media work for you right now. Not next year. Not in the future when you have time. NOW. (In fact, yesterday would be even better.)
The Consequences of Ignoring Social Media
We’ll discuss the benefits of social media in a moment. For now, let’s look at the consequences of ignoring this new reality (and if this is something you’ve been doing, don’t worry. You’re not alone, and at least for now, you aren’t too late).
We can start with this: the longer you wait to get your social media strategy in gear, the more vulnerable you become to the roving army of dime-a-dozen Internet Marketing Gurus out there who have no idea what they’re doing. Sure, they talk a good game but that’s about it.
And if these scam artists get their claws into your business and your budget, then here’s what will likely happen:
You’ll keep ignoring social media. That’s because nobody likes being told what to do without being told WHY, and you aren’t going to be swayed by some Internet Marketing charlatan with a shell game. So you’ll sit on the sidelines, refuse to engage in social media, and watch your competitors use social media to race ahead of you, steal your customers, grab your market share, and eventually put you out of business.
You’ll authorize unwise decisions. If you don’t know why you need social media but feel pressed into doing something – anything! – you’ll probably authorize these flaky Internet Marketing fakers to do all kinds of things with YOUR MONEY – things that you don’t need, things that won’t work, and things that will probably even send you backwards.
You’ll waste tons of time (that you can’t afford to waste). You need to know enough about social media in order to make wise business decision. But you don’t need to be an expert, and besides, why would you want to be? You’re an expert in YOUR business, and that’s enough. If you don’t partner with the right Social Media Expert, you’ll waste hours of your time trying to figure out what’s going on. And as you know, that’s not what you’re paid to do or where your profit comes from. And it’s also not what your employees need you to do, either.
Okay, let’s pause for a moment. This is all pretty scary stuff! But there’s really no way to sugar coat this. We’re not talking about the mere success of your business. We’re talking about its very existence!
However, don’t panic yet. There’s a way to solve this. Let’s deal with that now, before we send your blood pressure even higher.
The Benefits of Social Media in your Business (a.k.a. Why You Need Social Media)
To grasp the benefits of social media, start with this: social media is not about being social. It’s not merely about having informal conversations with friends. It’s not the conversation you have over the back fence with your neighbour, the chit-chat you enjoy (or endure) at a cocktail party, or the pleasant and friendly small talk you exchange with your customers.
Rather, in a business context, social media is all about:
- Engaging the profitable, high margin customers that you want to serve now and in the future, and staying on their radars
- Reaching out to your target market and influencing the conversations that take place in those spaces through the power of your brand and the presentation of your marketing message
- Positioning your business to be found in all of the spaces where your current and future customers might venture
- Proactively establishing your virtual territory so that a competitor cannot come in and knock you out of your leadership position (which if you lose, you may never be able to recover)
- Protecting your online reputation so that misinformation or negative reviews are nipped in the bud and positive stories are spread as widely as possible
- Generating new customers through videos, digital assets, and inbound marketing channels
- Enhancing your overall marketing mix, which includes in-store/office and offline (print, other media) strategies
Show Me the Money
And of course, no discussion of social media’s business benefits would be complete without the most compelling reason of them all:
When your business’s customized social media plan and system is designed, executed, controlled and refined by an expert Social Media Marketing Partner – one that specializes in helping leaders like you use social media to take their business to the next level of profitability, performance and results – then the entire effort is REMARKABLY cost-effective and profitable.
In fact, connecting with a credible and trustworthy Social Media Marketing Partner, and building a customized and carefully controlled marketing plan that makes sense is probably the smartest business investment a business can make in 2012.
And who knows? In addition to boosting your profits, increasing your professional satisfaction, and taking your business to the next level, you may just come to LOVE Tweets, Status Updates, Online Video, Yelping, and Posts more than you could possibly imagine (it’ll just be our little secret).
To learn more about creating an effective social media presence, contact the experts at CastleCS today.