Last week I opened my door to find a peculiar yellow book on my doorstep. I picked it up, looked at it, and dropped it straight into my recycling bin without a second thought. A bit harsh perhaps, but my house is cluttered enough as it is without adding more to it with stuff I don’t need.
I then switched the TV on to be met with an advert, where a man called Day V Lately (who on earth came up with that?!) is looking for his own album in a bunch of record shops, quite possibly using this yellow book to do so, before retreating to the internet, where using the web version of this yellow book he manages to find the album in a split second, problem solved.
I felt slightly confused by this – a company produces a book that lands on your doorstep, and then puts out an advert effectively saying that this book doesn’t work any more, use the internet instead!
The fact is that this book is a LOT smaller than it used to be. And rightly so, these days, it’s considered essential for a business to have a website – if you have a business, you have a website. But how do you drive people to your site? SEO is the obvious answer, it costs money but is hugely effective when done properly. But even then, is your website dynamic?
By this I mean is it enough just to have a website, box ticked? The kind of site that people will only visit once, as the information never changes? And even if you do change the information from time to time, how do you keep your customers up to date without bombarding them?
The answer is simple – Social Media.
Yes it’s important to have a good-looking, informative website, and it should be kept up to date. But with a Facebook Business Page you can keep your customers updated in real-time – they can see a daily snippet of information about your business in their news feed – information that will take them seconds to read, but will keep your business on their radar.
I didn’t stay up to watch the Superbowl the other night, but during the famous advertising slots the majority of the major brands were directing their customers to Facebook rather than their own respective websites! Why? Because that’s where their customers are – all in one place, so that’s where they, the businesses, need to be too.
It’s a brilliant tool for advertising special offers, staff changes, opening and closing times, seasonal hours – it’s easier than ever to engage with and communicate with your customers.
And, even more crucially, it’s easy for your customers to communicate with you too. If your customer has a gripe, they can tell you about it publicly. And you can tell the world how great your customer service is by dealing with it publicly too. I currently know of a few cases in terms of local businesses where simple Google searches lead to negative reviews that are sitting untouched for everyone to see. Being pro-active on Social Media platforms would most likely prevent this from happening, but on the occasions that it did, would enable the chance to be able to put things right quickly.
The above is just one example of how Social Media can improve your business and drive goodwill as well as revenue.
If you want to know more, or have any comments then please write on my wall at www.facebook.com/mattdavismedia and I’ll show you how it can work!