Think about when you last needed recommendations for a dentist, dry cleaner, florist, mechanic, plumber… ah, you get the point. If you’re all 2.0 and everything, we’ll guess you went to a social media platform (probably Facebook) and posted that inquiry for your X number of friends to see and, hopefully, respond. (Note – you may have checked Yelp, though you’re probably troubled by the allegations of that site shaking down businesses, thus tainting its value as a referral service.)
We know in real life that the best recommendations are from family and friends. But what about today’s social networks, with less hand shaking but definitely lots of online chatter? The social media goldmine is waiting for you to harvest the conversation and turn tweets, status updates, and other online praise into dollars.
So businesses of all stripes, listen up! How about doing some research to see who your biggest fans are, what they’ve been saying, and monitoring online sentiment about your company? The best social media marketing consultants can certainly get you started, and also plan the larger outreach strategy. It’s not enough to know what people are saying, you have to act on that information – and ideally in a creative way that puts your business rivals on edge.
We hope this provides a very simple snapshot of the potential that social media marketing has. Basic, but powerful nonetheless.
