Social Media and Small Business

Hard to believe only about a quarter of small businesses conduct business online. Maybe a pretzel shop or a cupcake shop don't see the need, but there were these kind of owners at a recent town hall type of meeting. It was put on to help other small business see the opportunity to be active online with an ecommerce site and how to support it with social media advertising and marketing. There was some suggestions about blogging and suggesting to just jump right in. It takes focused effort to make a blog work for you and to say having a blog is better than not having one is not right. A business blog must go through blog customization which if handled properly, will give a business owner a very powerful tool. Free blogs do not perform at the speed and efficiency of a customized business blog that's been optimized and organized for successful blogging.

The one thing that is of great interest are social media networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Twitter has started it's social media advertising program called 'Promoted Tweets'. Promoted Tweets will stay around longer as long as people are interacting, when people stop the Promoted Tweet goes away. It's designed to hang around longer and be indexed by search engines. So, unlike regular online advertising, where an algorithm says an ad is relevant to the user's query, on Twitter, the users give the approval--by retweeting, replying, adding it to their favorites or otherwise responding to it. Small business can reach a greater audience online and at a much lower cost. It's just a learning curve of taking the time to learn how best to use for their business. Once online, small business owners need a solid website promotion that encompasses web 2.0 marketing strategies.