Social Media and You

Social media is one of the hottest topics out there right now, and many small retailers are strugging to decide how to use the various outlets and to understand how they might apply to their businesses.

Should you be using Twitter?  Should your business have a Facebook fan page?  What should you be doing with your website?

The answer to all three is, "It depends."

If you have a local business with a strong following or a unique product set or message, and you want to promote your sales, special events and other news, then social media can definitely help.  If you think that a good percentage of your customers are likely to be using some form of social media, then you should seriously consider looking into it.

Setting up a Facebook fan page for your business, and then inviting your best customers to join your Facebook page gives you an easy to way to send out invites to events, and news about promotions.  Twitter gives you a similar capability to send out short updates about your business and any relevant news.

You should give your customers some incentive to sign up and follow you on these social media sites, such as a discount or special notice of events and new items, etc.  Make these customers feel special and use social media to enhance your customer loyalty programs.

The bottom line is social media is important, and it's here to stay, but you need to figure out which sites are useful to your business, and then set out a realistic strategy for implementing them.  Even though most sites are free, your time isn't, so you need to carefully choose and budget your time in order to execute properly.  If you can do this though, you should definitely benefit.

I'd love to hear from you about your business and whether or not you're using social media.  Check out our site or follow CAP on Twitter @CAPTime.