SOCIAL 2013:Now Its Time to Live Socially

If you’ve been reluctant to – or if you’ve just been putting it off – this is the year you need to get your business on the social scene. Quite simply, if you have a business but no social media presence, you’re losing money.

Why should your company be involved socially? Because it’s somewhere for customers to contact you and find out more about your products and services, and it’s also somewhere you can notify potential customers and clients of deals, special events and goings on within your company.

Sign up to as many as you can – YouTube, Google+,Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. Even if you’re not technologically savvy enough to set up a page for your own business, you can easily get a friend or staff member to build one for you – if for no other reason than to secure your business’s name on various social media platforms.

It may not be this week, but there may soon come a day when it becomes imperative that your business has an active social media presence, and you’ll be disappointed when your company’s name is already taken. Your potential clients and customers will come looking for you on the social arenas and, if you’re not there, they’ll find someone else – most likely a competitor or someone pretending to be you.

You don’t have to be active on every social site, but as long as you sign up and claim handles and addresses, no one else can pretend to be your company, giving bad advice and posting negative comments that can be harmful to you and your company’s reputation.

So for now, the bare minimum of social activity that your business should have is a Facebook page and Twitter account. Sign your business up and enter your contact details: address, phone number, website and a brief blurb about who and what you are as a business.

Now that you’ve done the boring stuff, have a play around with the countless features available and maybe even upload some photos of your shopfront or a group photo of your staff. You never know – you just might enjoy it and make some brand new customers in the process!

Todd Pendergast- Social Media Community Manager