1) It doesn’t matter if you are small: In his book UnMarketing, Scott Stratten writes that “…social media can actually be better for local-based businesses than for anyone else.” The one to three location businesses will never have millions of fans, but that doesn’t make a social media presence not worth it. Most of our clients, although small, have avid fans that are extremely involved with them. The fact that it is a small business means that there is a closer connection felt between the customer and the brand. Fans love to be in a relationship.

2) Marketing is a relationship: You can no longer push information into the world and hope it takes hold. Much like planning out your business strategy, you have to plan how you are going to approach, interact, and engage with your fans. Old methods of direct mail coupons, Savvy Shoppers, Valpaks, etc. are not giving you the same effect as a social medium. Today, marketing is a two-way communication. If you are not willing to put the time and effort into building trust with your customers, you are truly missing out because someone else is taking the time and effort. It is much more difficult to break something as strong as a consumer-brand relationship, but to maintain that relationship requires work.

3) It’s where your customers are! Like I stated earlier, there are almost one billion social media accounts worldwide. Every day, people are coming to your establishment and checking in on Foursquare and Facebook, looking to see if you are ready to engage with them. In the past, a large part of marketing was targeting your audience – where they are, what they like, etc. Using a social medium helps eliminate a lot of that work. A lot of times, your customers are the ones looking for you, not the other way around. Many of our clients were unaware they even had a Facebook presence until they saw Place Pages where they already had dozens of “likes” and check-ins from their audience. Their fans were just sitting there, waiting to be engaged and rewarded for liking their brand. The longer you abstain from something like Facebook, the larger the audience you are ignoring. And fans do not want to be ignored.

Fans want to engage with your brand.

4) Social networks are how we are wired to communicate: Lon Safko writes in The Social Media Bible, “Social networks have been around as long as there have been humans to create them.” A social network is not solely social media, and that is something that can confuse people. Social networks are basically trusted groups of people with “similar interests and a common bond.” Since people lived in caves we have banded together to form groups amongst which we socialize. Social media is just a new way to be a part of a bigger network. People thrive on communicating with others, whether it is in person or virtually. Either way, it’s an extension of human habit. There is no need to fight Facebook or call it unnatural. It’s actually about as natural as it gets.

5) Did I mention it’s where your customers are? With almost 700 million people on Facebook alone, the excuse “My fans are not using social media” has no traction. I hear it all the time and I refuse to let you think that anymore. When I mentioned earlier that social media is important because it is where your customers are, I wasn’t talking solely about college kids. Actually, the average age of a person on Facebook is 38. They have an average of 130 friends (or an immediate social network of 130), and according to an article by The Telegraph on June 22^nd, in the United Kingdom 22% of grandparents over 60 have a social media account – and 71% of those are on Facebook. So just because you cater to an older clientele does not mean social media is not an option. It is becoming an important option more and more each day. With such a large age spectrum, social media can’t be pegged to just one generation- it is spanning all of them.

So, social media is truly an exciting new way to engage with your audience, even though it is still a relatively new medium. The reasons above are just a couple of general notes about why it is a useful tool for business owners today. Brands more than ever have a chance to interact and build lasting relationships with their customers, and it is an opportunity that should not be ignored.  Do you really want to stick to old methods when it could alienate the very relationships you have worked so hard to build? Let us know in the comments!