Health & Fitness
Taking Your (Business) Relationships to the Next Platform
Do you understand how important social media is in business? Here's a few reasons why it's important, including a training option for building your social media skills.
College freshman starting this fall do not remember a time before the Internet. And it's not all about the younger generations because likewise, your customers are Web-savvy, and aren't checking out the phone book before using your services.
Your customers are online and you should be too.
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Social media and other online marketing tools give businesses a huge advantage by allowing you to engage customers before they even walk through your door. Most of these tools are free to use (but do involve a time investment). Creating an interesting and informative online presence is essential and will help you build lasting relationships with customers.
Your customers are looking for you online before they ever step through your door (). The impression you give before they even meet you will likely make the difference in if they bother to find you offline at your physical location or not. Businesses should take advantage of these media platforms to provide resources customers will want and need to make informed purchases. Your prospective customers will appreciate the ease of finding product information.
Find out what's happening in St. Michaelwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Social media is a great way to keep track of what questions your customers have about your products and services. Keeping track of these questions can help you build content that answers the questions before they need to be asked. It can also indicate what questions are not being asked that should be, questions that distinguish you from your competitors. Using social media to quickly respond to customer inquiries is a great way to build relationships by being responsive to individual concerns and allowing your customers to interact with you directly.
Not sure how to make best use out of social media tools? Overwhelmed with the amount of information out there and have no idea where to begin (or if you're making a difference if you're online already)?
Don't dispair, it's manageable, but you need the knowledge and tools to be successful first.
Attend Alée's B4: Small Business Workshop for Marketing and Social Media on Tuesday, September 19. For the rest of this month only, we have made an exclusive offer available to Patch readers: 50% off your single ticket registration! You don't even need a code. Just hit the link above and choose your "Single Ticket - August Promo Price" ticket and you're good to go. Space is limited to the first 20 attendees at this price and still includes breakfast and a 12-page planning workbook. Price returns to normal at 5 p.m. on August 31.
If you can't make the workshop (though we'd love to see you there), I'll still be blogging about social media strategies and tools right here on Patch. Have a burning question or dealing with a certain online issue? Send me a note and I can offer help through the blog.
Melissa Harrison is principal at Allée, a strategic communications consulting and design firm in Albertville. She has been helping businesses build and execute online and offline marketing strategies for 10 years.
