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What marketing strategies REALLY work for small businesses, and what are their feelings about another alternative strategy – Social Media?

Well, it really depends which side of the fence your on doesn’t it?

Meaning that if you’re a small business which is still using traditional methods, i.e. direct sales, telesales, yellow pages, and networking, you could assume that Social Media or using the internet is indeed ‘The Dark Side’.  Phrases such as “trivial” “unethical” “glib” “superficial”"trashy” “just for kids” “unsecure” “childish nonsense” are commenly thrown at it. 

However, if you’ve actually bothered to find out what Social Media REALLY is – i.e. one of the most powerful mass influence strategies ever devised – you may well conclude that those on the ‘Dark Side’ are those businesses who’re still waiting for it to catch on and watching what everyone else is doing as they honestly believe is a passing trend.  Unfortunately ‘everyone else’ are the very individuals who’ve grasped what Social Media is very quickly and are running with it (i.e. using Facebook, Twitter and Linked In) and benefitting from it nicely already thank you.

Is the Dark Side a realm of traditional tried and tested, reliable methods, but which paradoxically for a Small Business are actually expensive, complex and for the inexperienced a complete waste of money?  Things like sending out flyers, writing sales letters (which require endless follow up with more letters and more phone calls) and costly telesales?  Is it something that they would ‘like to have’ – possibly need but can’t actually afford?

Whereas enter Social Media another ‘reality’ where for the uninitiated you’re only going to be wasting your entire day having meaningless conversations with total strangers whose only agenda is to sell someting to you, or waste your time on trivial nonsense?

But wait?

Surely a comparison is in order here – some statistics would help wouldn’t they?  Well no actually, because there are many business owners who’ve already seen these stats and are still saying “well…but why do I want to meet a million people online?  I prefer meeting people in person.”  OK what are you counterparts and competitors doing?  Is Social Media working for them?  Are they in fact galloping away and tripling their revenue? Is there any proof that absolutely convincingly concludes this question once and for all?  Does Social Media actually work?

The anwer lies really in what outcome you’re looking for.   If you want more customers, even some peoople when presented with the overwhelming body of evidence the ‘Habeous Corpus’ – still refuse to accept it.  There are some businesses that have exploded online, but despite this not everyone wants to adopt the methods or even the values associated with these business.  But my argument is – do you want to be successful or not, e.g. earn shed loads of money so that you can do more good in the world?

Is it human nature to wait until the tide comes in before acting?  Are there always going to be individuals who will wait on the beach denying the enevitable, while others (the early adopters) eagerly get their surf boards out to welcome in the tide of change? 

Social Media isn’t necessarily about going over to the Dark Side.  It’s actually tapping into the very thing that prevents many business owners from embracing it entirely – preferring to watch and wait and see ‘what everyone else is doing’.  The paradox is that they are prepared to be influenced by a large proportion of the population before they make their choice. 

But why wait to be influenced when you could begin to be one of those businesses influencing large groups of people using Social Media, therefore being seen and heard.  Get it?

What’s your opinion?  Share it here.

But just calm down a minute, because you are not alone and this is really, REALLY common; I confess to being absolutely terrified the first time I went to a networking meeting, AND it was first thing and I am not a morning person. Once I even set my alarm incorrectly so I arrived at 5.45 a.m. instead of 6.45 a.m. (did I feel stupid or what? Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone around to actually WITNESS me feeling completely stupid.) But we can all do with a little bit of help sometimes.  This topic came up again and again in my recent survey as a matter of fact.

Running a business hasn’t all been plain sailing for Suzanne Bolwell-Davies of Flexible HR Ltd as she discovered recently.   Everything was going really well until she ruptured her achilles tendon whilst playing tennis. She’s now in plaster up to her knee and is in a wheel chair or has to get about with the aid of crutches.  Suzanne can’t drive, she can’t even leave her house!  Plus she has a daughter at school, and a business to run.  Hear how she’s been coping …

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I was interviewed by James Watson of www.coacheswebmarketing.com about the marketing strategies I used to promote my book. Listen here.