I want to tell you all a tale of how often Small Businesses can bury their heads in the sand, tip their toe into Social, but don’t fully understand what being social is all about
Last week I was delivering Social Media training in Hale and the session finished just after lunch time. For those that aren’t local, Hale is a stones throw from where we’re based in Altrincham, but it’s not somewhere I visit on a daily basis and when delivering training in a different town I like to eat out somewhere locally that are on twitter
I wandered past a small business that are active on twitter and was going to walk in to grab something to eat and I thought “Wait A Minute”
- This was a business i’d emailed a month or so ago and had no reply
- I’d tweeted them previously before and had no reply
- The day after this happened I tweeted them again and yet still no reply as I write this blog
Social Media is about 2 way communication, it’s stepping away from the broadcasting nature of traditional PR, it’s caring about what your customers / potential customers think and taking feedback on board to enhance the customer service experience.
If you open the Social Media communication channels, this has to link with open communication via other channels such as email and your website
We’re now entering what I believe for active Social Media towns is the 2nd wave of Social Media. The early adopters are finely tuned, they’re intuitive to their customers needs and they care deeply about their customers, while the newer businesses which are entering the 2nd wave of Social Media are yet to realise this and are simply broadcasting sales messages out to the ether and hoping some of it sticks
The business above I didn’t enter their door – using Social Media the way they currently are is doing them no favours – and I went and spent my £££s closer to home with businesses that care about their customers
