subject: Should Small Businesses Use Social Media? [print this page] It has been proven that large corporations are benefiting from various social media to promote their companies and products. The
question now is - Can your small business experience the same level of success and benefits from social media as the large companies? The simple answer is - Yes. The longer answer would be- Yes, if you do social media marketing the right way.
The biggest myth about social media marketing is that it is easy. Social media marketing is not hard at all, that is if you have the time and the creativity to generate excellent content and to update your accounts regularly. Without time and without the creativity to manage your social media accounts then they can't possibly be of much help to your business. Some CEOs and business owners actually take the time to use social media and connect with audiences. But of course not all business owners and executives have the time to update social media sites. To ensure that you can create content and update your sites, you have the option to hire a virtual assistant who can create content for you and also update your social media accounts.
In this regard, social media marketing is not entirely free. You should expect to spend a lot of time on it if you want to enjoy the benefits of social media marketing. Success in social media marketing does not happen overnight. But the advantage of engaging in social media marketing is that you can get the maximum benefits from using social media just as the large corporations are. You don't need to spend marketing and advertising money you might not have when you use social media. The biggest resource you will need when you engage in social media marketing is time. The good news is, there are companies such as CatchFriday who will allow you to hire a permanent social media marketer, copywriter, and personal assistant so that you can engage in social media marketing without spending too much of your own time on them.
Small businesses can benefit from Twitter and other social networks the same way as large corporations do. Small businesses just need to define their target market and what goals they want to achieve by using social media. After defining goals and target market, a company can then start to use social media extensively for various purposes from communicating with people to delivering customer service.
