With Thanksgiving quickly approaching I thought I’d make a blog post related to being thankful while talking about some of my favorite subjects.  Some businesses are still afraid of social media and hide behind their firewall while pretending that its not there.  They come up with excuses or discount the benefits of the various social networks while still touting the dated strategies like cold calling.  But businesses, especially the small and medium sized business should be grateful for social media for many reasons.

  1. Social media gives businesses an opportunity to meet and engage customers in a more personal way. So you pride yourself in knowing the first name of all your customers that come through your store doors.  Social media gives you the ability to take that same desire to connect with clients on a personal level to the internet.
  2. It allows businesses to use more customer-friendly inbound marketing techniques instead of traditional interrupt marketing strategies. Have you ever gotten a sales call while eating dinner or lunch?  Think about all those times your commercial is interrupting someone’s favorite program.  The only good thing about that is that you’re giving them the opportunity to use the facilities while your commercial is on.
  3. Social media increases your search engine optimization. Think link juice from your social networks and Google love for your blog posts.
  4. Can someone say viral marketing?  Social media makes it possible for a clever marketing tactic to become an overnight sensation. Don’t have the millions for a Super Bowl ad?  That’s alright.  A well-planned commercial posted to YouTube can get just as many views, blogs and news stories that drive traffic to your website in similar fashion if not more so.
  5. It makes it easier for the small business to compete in a big business world. You might not have an entire department to dedicate to it, but most social media is free or have low cost of entry.

There’s a lot of things to be thankful for as a business owner.  Social media should be one of them.  What are some other reasons why businesses should be grateful for social networks, blogs and other social connection tools?