Should Your Business Use Social Media To Attract Customers?

The internet is a powerful marketing machine that should not be ignored. Most importantly there is a specific area of the gigantic online world known as Social Media and Web 2.0. For starters, lets define Web 2.0 for those who are just joining us in this party.

It used to be that you would visit a site and they would just sell you something. You couldn’t “talk” to the website owner unless you picked up the phone or filled out some form. Now, there is interaction. Blogs are the best example of this. You come to my site and you can talk to me directly. You can hold a live conversation with me for months or years if you so choose to.

Web 2.0 evolved into sites being built with user generated content. Sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook are a perfect example. The content on these websites is 99% generated by the users of the site. With the ability of the users to interact with each other is what Social Media is all about. That’s about it.

As a business owner you can take advantage of this miracle and use it strategically. This is known as Social Networking. This means you look to ’socialize’ with friends who have similar interests as you. This can be either finding customers or potential partners for future business ventures. Here’s the power these sites have and how you can take advantage of them.

Let’s say you have a dog training business. You could go out to the social media world and find people who are in the same industry. You could perhaps find someone who owns a veterinary practice or they sell clothes for puppies. You could partner up with them and sell your dog training program to their existing client database.

You can also use the social media world to share your expertise. Most people I know are afraid to share all their secrets. This is the wrong mentality to have in today’s day and age. Here’s what I’ve found most people want. You would think that people want to know your secrets, but that is not really the case.

Here are your options. You can give a man a fish or you can teach a man how to fish.

What most people want is for you to catch the fish, fillet the fish, put butter on the fish, cook the fish and if you could they would want you to eat it for them. If you can show people that you are able of do all of this you will show your expertise and gain clients. You will get people who love freebies and will never give you a dime. You just have to learn to live with it. They wouldn’t give you a dime anyways, but you will gain many more customers that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

You should use social media to attract customers and grow your business.

Do you have any ideas to share on how you use social media?

Tags: how to generate web traffic, sell in social media, selling through social media, should my business use social media, social media experts, web 2.0 marketing