According to a survey by UPS, 24 percent of small businesses have seen increase in sales due to social media, and only 1% had ageed that social media was helpful in their business growth. This leads to assumption that 99% of the SMBs don’t think social media as helpful source.
This situation may be attributed to the low awareness among the small business owners about the total concept of social media and surely not because of its ineffectiveness. Many a times, businesses limit social media to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln. But social media also include developing and updating our company websites, and corporate blogs. The small businesses in order to take maximum advantage of social medias, should concentrate on corporate messaging, thought leadership, special offers and they have be more conversational, so as to generate interest in the customers, resulting in repeated visits to the website.
Apart from the above measures, social media strategy should be implemented keeping in mind the seven steps, they are – conducting a wide research on social networks and the tastes and preferences of participants, providing a clear insight on what we want, measure the impact of social media on marketing by monitoring various blogs, active participation in the blogs, enhancing consumer relations through social media, making blogs user friendly and finally studying feedback.
As social media has high consumer reach, it is better for businesses not to overlook them. Following the above simple steps will enable the business to flourish, in a very cost effective and efficient manner.