Social media is affecting every business, from the largest brands to the smallest mom & pop shops. It’s no longer enough for a business to just provide good service and sponsor the local little league team in order to maintain a good reputation with its customers. Modern businesses now need to manage a Facebook page, a Yelp profile, a Twitter stream and those are just the basics. If you’re a hair salon, restaurant, architect or any business with a visual component you also need an Instagram feed and a Pinterest board. If you’re a doctor there’s ZocDoc, RateMDs, and Healthgrades to name a few. For contractors there’s Angie’s List and RedBeacon (owned by Home Depot). Realtors have to worry about Zillow and the list goes on and on. It’s a daunting challenge to manage multiple communication channels and doing so can easily take away from the business owner’s main focus. This where the online presence manager comes in!
According to All Facebookhttp://allfacebook.com/facebook-small-business-4_b66989 96% of small businesses use Facebook. You’ve probably noticed, many of them have no idea how to do so properly. These businesses need your help! If you enjoy social media and are savvy in using it, you could build a new and exciting career in social media management, often referred to as community management or online presence management. Social media management is also a great stepping-stone to a career in marketing, communication, PR, and business in general.
If you already have a business serving small businesses in any sort of marketing capacity, you’ve probably figured out that social media is here to stay and must be part of your toolset for you to stay current and relevant in today’s market. It is up to you to update your skills so that you can stay current in a constantly evolving space and continue providing great service to your customers. While this means additional work for you, it’s also an opportunity to enhance your service offering and make additional money.
If you’re a small business consultant of any type (POS consultant, Adwords consultant, website developer, operations specialist etc.), consider adding social media management to your services by learning on your own or even partnering up with someone. You have spent all this time getting a client, upselling additional services makes perfect sense and has a higher return than the time and money required to acquire a new customer.
All it takes is a willingness to learn, an interest in social media, and a passion for customer happiness. It is not rocket science and we are positive you can learn it too. With that we will start diving in in our next post.
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