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Twitter is a social media portal that has gained much traction in recent months.
Everybody wants to get the word out, right? And the bottom line is the bottom line. No business wants to break the bank letting people know about their great products and services. Social media can be a part of your toolkit, helping the right people find out the best and the brightest of what your business has to offer.
You’ve heard people talking about it, but maybe it’s unclear to you what social media is. Philadelphia-based Interactive Marketing Strategist Neal Wiser describes it this way: “Social media is what I call active media; meaning that everyone has the opportunity to actively participate.” Wiser continues, “basically, social media is the art of conversation.”
Social media includes familiar web applications like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and the app-du-jur Twitter. Each of these portals give the power of conversation to both the business and to loyal and potential customers. As a business owner you can put any message you want out there, at little or no cost. The tricky bit is this: the audience you target is then free to accept or reject that message, vocally. Conversation is, of course, a two way street.
One thing we all need to remember is this: Whatever the medium, you don’t own the message. If you are confident in what you are offering to the public, social media is a great conversation starter. Something in the neighborhood of 90 percent of word of mouth happens offline, so your Facebook and Twitter presence is just the tip of the iceberg.
Businesses large or small can’t afford to disdain social media. There are other ways to start conversations, but in bang for the buck terms, social media tools are hard to beat.
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