It's the Wave of the Future; It's Free; And Your Competitors Ain't Doing It

Suppose someone offered you a piece of equipment that could double or even triple your revenues. Would you be interested? What if the equipment were free? And what if your competitors were blissfully unaware the equipment even existed? Would you jump at the chance to own it? Of course you would.

Good news! Such an item really exists. It's known as 'business social media', and it's the wave of the future.

Business social media (bsm) is the use of social web sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn- not to broadcast your latest bowling score to your friends, but as a marketing and sales tool for your company. In much of the country bsm has supplanted newspaper and radio as a business owner's preferred method of marketing. Over three quarters of the respondents to a Constant Contact poll said they used social media, predominately Facebook, as the most important part of their marketing strategy. In San Francisco, where the company I work for is located, a merchant would no more try to start a business without a Facebook and LinkedIn page then they try to start one without electricity hook-ups.

But the Joplin are hasn't caught the wave yet.

A study by a MSSU business group estimates that just 2.3 percent of the locally owned businesses in the Joplin Metropolitan Statistical Area have active business Facebook pages. ('Active' is defined as a page that gets more than eight posts a week). The Joplin LinkedIn group has 96 members, and only four local members have posted on it over the last 30 days. The Carthage group has six members, none from Carthage. (One hales from the Netherlands). Northeast Oklahoma and Southeast Kansas don't have LinkedIn groups for business owners at all. I couldn't find any numbers for local businesses on Twitter, but there are only a handful of locally owned Twitter business accounts that are easy to find. The nearest Groupon (a social site dedicated to promoting a business's 'deals') accounts are in Tulsa.

I could go on, but you get the drift- business social media, the biggest advancement in marketing since the creation of the daily paper, the way business will be done in the future, is in it's nascent stage in the Joplin area.

And that creates an incredible opportunity for local businesses.

The dominant businesses in Joplin in five years are going to be the ones that are the biggest players on the bsm sites. Right now almost no one is vying to be that leader. And that's why you need to get started right now, today, building your social media presence.

It's easy, and it's free. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. Really- that's it. And it's free.

Start with Facebook. DON"T start putting business posts on your existing Facebook page. At the bottom of your Facebook site there is a menu that includes the option 'create a page'. Click on that, and follow the directions. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube are all as easy as pulling up the site and clicking on 'create an account.'

Look at pages that you like on the bsm sites, see what others are doing, to get an idea what sort of content others are posting. Follow my blog, sekcreditcardguy.blogspot.com- about every other post will be orientated toward business social media. Jeffrey Gitomer has written the definitive book for starting out in bsm- it's called Social Boom. Read it and learn well. Hubspot has more good material than you can read in two lifetimes. And it's free.

Business social media is the best opportunity to grow your business and beat your competition that you have ever had. It's just sitting there, waiting for you take advantage of it. And it's free.

Sign on. Establish an account on each major site. Post something. Tweet something. Connect with someone. Post value messages every day. If you do it every day, and do it right, you will create loyal customers and profit from your ability to expose yourself, your thoughts, your and value-driven message to your market and around the world.

And two years from now when your biggest competitor decides it's time to find out what Facebook is all about he will quickly discover you own his ass.