Time, resources and funds are often hurdles between marketing success and small businesses. Thanks to the internet and social media more specifically, businesses now have access to resources that weren’t even considered ten or fifteen years ago, making these hurdles look smaller. I like to think that in the realm of social media, businesses can be on the same playing field, no matter their size. To get to this stage, it does mean thinking about marketing from a different perspective and I’ve listed a few ideas to challenge and develop this mindset.

 

Social media is real time, in the moment interactions with your community. It is on 24/7 and it moves with trends, platform updates and social attitudes. This fluidity means that approaching social media planning as you would a marketing strategy isn’t a great tactic. Agility will become a familiar concept and having the ability to move with the flow of platforms and respond to shifts will become a necessary behavior to anyone involved.

The digital space gives you the opportunity to be responsive and to do this, planning and measurement is undertaken at more regular intervals.

 

Social media is beginning to play a more active role in the customer service space. Customers demand response from businesses and businesses have to step up and take this seriously. Many organizations are implementing automatic response mechanisms via bots to deliver fantastic, personalized service and manage the expectations of customers. Customers crave ease of use, accessibility, convenience and familiarity of platforms. Facebook among other platforms have provided this connection for businesses and customers. Directly linked to customer experience is customer retention. For many businesses, social has been a retention game changer from an experience perspective.