Eli Rose Social Media specializes in helping small businesses optimize their online presence. They offer everything from search engine optimization to easy to understand training to ongoing social media management. Every Tuesday, they offer insights to the readers of Little Indiana on how to use the internet and social media to build their online brand. You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

One of the most frequent questions I hear is “Who uses social media, anyway?” The answer is simple: your customers and prospective customers. Not all of them, certainly. If 100% of people were on social media all of the time, you’d never ask this question.

However, I’m positive you have customers who use social media. With over 1 billion people on Facebook the statistics are simply in favor of your customers being on social. So shouldn’t you be there too?

Small Business Tips

Here are four reasons you should consider adding social media to your existing marketing efforts.

1. Know What Your Customers are Saying Since it’s likely your clients are already on social media, don’t you want to know what they’re saying? Even if they’re not talking about you or a competitor directly (and it’s likely they may be) you may find out about trends they’re concerned about or colors they love. Social media can help you gain great insights into your customers.

2. Increased Search Engine Optimization Social sharing becomes more and more important in the world of search engine optimization. Google and other search engines determine how relevant a website or article is based on the number of times it is shared via social media. This means two important things 1) social media is not going away. It only becomes more important to the way the Internet works over time. 2) To rank high in search, social sharing is an important part of a successful strategy.

3. Become More Relevant than Your Competitors If one of your competitors went to an industry wide  conference every year and networked with everyone there while you stayed home, they’d likely become more relevant in the industry than you. If you have a social media presence and your competitors don’t, this makes your business the one people find when looking for businesses in your industry. Similarly, if your competitors are on social and you’re not, you’re giving them a competitive advantage you don’t need to.

4. Target Marketing Social media allows you to connect with existing customers and target new ones. We recently grew a clients Twitter presence from zero to 300 contacts in a month with no existing client list to start from. That’s 300 new people who indicated interest in our client’s upcoming book by following her on Twitter. When her book debuted at number one in its genre on Amazon, she stated social media was a huge part of that as it allowed her to target specific individuals who were interested in her book’s topic. The search function on social media only get better and better when it comes to finding your target market.

Are you currently on social? What have your results been? If you haven’t joined yet, why not? Look for more small business tips next Tuesday.

Interested in learning more? Head on over to Eli Rose Social Media or follow them on them on Facebook or Twitter.

Just don’t forget to tell them that Little Indiana sent you.

Targeted. Relevant. Affordable! Little Indiana advertising.