Social Monkey

Whilst recently talking to a friend and business acquaintance about plans for a joint training seminar she made a very good point, her words pretty much were:

“You can’t afford not to ‘do’ social media – that is where everyone is and if you don’t have a presence you are potentially missing out on getting in front of that audience.”

Helen Bedeau, Ask MK Ltd

Okay, it is not where everyone is but the user stats are pretty impressive:

Facebook has over 800 million active users worldwide.

Twitter has over 100 million active users worldwide.

Google+ already has over 100 million people signed up.

The thing is that, compared to other forms of advertising, social media is fairly inexpensive.  If you have the knowledge and expertise to get set-up, build fans or followers and engage with them yourself all it will cost is your time (although that can be quite a lot of time..).  Even if you employ a social media agency to help you, you are talking costs in the hundreds of pounds rather than the thousands.

Having a presence in social media will build brand awareness, push traffic to your website and bring in new contacts and customers.  People no longer want marketing messages shouted at them from all directions from companies they have no interest in.  They want to use social media to choose who they follow and therefore who they want to receive information from.

If you’re still asking yourself whether you should ‘do’ social media the answer is a definite yes – I can almost guarantee your competitors are…

Related posts:

What is social media and why does my business need to use it?

Social media is just an extension of your brand

Getting started in social networking and not getting disheartened..