Social Media is all over the place. If you run in the circles I run in, then you might know a lot of people who “do” Social Media. That’s all well and good, but I think that many people are still trying to find how to really use and leverage social networks for their brick and mortar operation. I think it’s easier to use social tools to build up a larger business, or one with a larger pool of customers. What about the average guy?
How will you leverage social media for your small business?
If you own a business, you can’t ignore Social Media any more than you can avoid having a web presence. Over half of the world’s population is under thirty and over 90% of that population has joined some form of social network.
“Um, that’s great, but why do I care about 1 Billion people around the world if my store is located in a city with a population of 25,000 people?” –Curious George
Give that Curious George a cookie! A really big freaking cookie! So why should you care about the billions of people on social networks now? I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t care a spit about that figure. Who cares?
Getting Local About Social Media for Business
How can you use geo location tools to provide value to your customers?
There’s a lot of geo social tools like Yelp, GoWalla and Foursquare. Obviously, as a business, owner, you can claim your listing and offer specials to the Mayor, Baron, or Grand Puba de Awesome Sauce. Whatever and whoever, you can offer a special. It’s easy. However, I’d pose this question: Can you do more than just offer a discount to someone who checks in to your shop?
Think about that ‘extra mile’ for a moment. If you own a restaurant, could you not offer something to people who check in that would be different from someone else? Suppose that you created a special menu just for people who check-in to your store. What if you had a special dining area just for the Mayor of your business? You don’t need to be a restaurant either. If you’re a service provider, like us, you could offer a discount on one of those services. However, what if you offered a free consultation or evaluation?
Sure, it’s important to be visible to as many people as possible; but really, we only care about the people within a X-mile radius of where we live, more times than not. That’s where the focus should be.
In an upcoming post I’m going to show you how to geo-target your customers so you can find your customers that are close by.
As always, let me know what you think below.
About Alex Vasquez
