In a couple of weeks, as part of the Colleyville Chamber of Commerce Brown Bag Seminars, I will present a hot topic presentation called “What to do about Online Reviews?” Today’s consumers are rarely going to be a “walk-in-off-the-street” kind of customer. Consumers today are shoppers, investigators, and researchers. And with the rise of mobile devices, even those consumers on-the-go will “google” their shopping needs on their web-enabled communication device, sometimes while sitting at a stoplight! (not to name names . . . )
Read this helpful article by Rohit Bhargava on “Why Your Small Business Needs Social Media Geeks as Customers.”
Having a strong web presence is so important:
- numerous high ratings on online consumer review sites like Yelp!, City Search, Insider Pages, Google & Yahoo Local Maps will form a potential customer’s decision-making based on the number and quality of reviews of a certain restaurant, dentist, mechanic, home inspector, plumber, etc.,
- a blog gives you a larger amount of online social “real estate” to showcase your expertise and highlight your experience,
- a Facebook Page for your business allows you to to interact one-to-one with fans, but also to showcase unique differences (especially when you take the time to customize your Facebook fan page),
- Twitter is a fast-paced presence allow you to exponential expand your reach into the worlds of untold numbers of followers of your followers through high-quality (aka, “reTweetable”) posts that not only self-promote but that educate consumers
Of course, with social media also including a vast array of categories (all of the above, plus article marketing, vide0 and photo sharing, SMS, etc…), this is why having a strong social media presence is important to your social media savvy customers. This is THEIR world – this is how THEY communicate, share information, research, and how THEY make recommendations and referrals.
Social media is today’s coffee-shop – a virtual incubator for word-of-mouth!
Just in the past 2 months, I have seen Facebook be a launching pad for various entrepreneurial efforts simply because someone mentioned it on Facebook. Comments ensued asking for the person’s name, contact information and that resulted in sales!
Here’s a post from last week as well: