Why jump on the bandwagon? It is just a fad, right?
I remember when my friends said get on the internet. If you’re not, your business will fail. I got on but I’ve not noticed a tremendous growth spurt. Maybe that is you.
Next my friends said “You have got to checkout CompuServe. It is a necessity for business.” I got on and it seemed like I spent more time trying to figure it out. Who doesn’t know someone who did this?
The next big internet wave that came by was AOL. In order to just use the internet at a snails pace, I had to pay a company. I checked it out, but didn’t see any huge benefit. Do you remember the AOL bandwagon?
Next came along Yahoo and Google. I added my business profile on them as well as other search engines. I didn’t see any increase in business. It just seemed like my profile was drowned by all of the other business profiles. Consumers became frustrated because the search engines seemed to favor directories. In order to find a business you had to go to the right directory. Have you noticed that?
Now I hear about this thing called social media. Why should I jump on? It is another fad that will not increase my business sales, right?
That is wrong thinking. Unlike past fads, social media is not a fad. It will not be here today and gone tomorrow. If anything, it will be replaced by newer and better social media sites.
Today over a billion people in the world and 60% of the U.S. population use social media regularly for networking. Social Media plays into people’s makeup. With social Media people can engage in conversations, recommend businesses, network, offering feedback and share interest. Just imagine if people were engaging in conversations about your business, recommending your business to their friends, offering your business feedback and sharing your business to their network. That is power!
A friend of mine told me the other day that my website is ranked real high on the search engines because I was a pioneer and jumped on the “creating a website” bandwagon first. Social Media Experts are telling people now that if they jump on the social media bandwagon now they will be viewed as an Expert Authority.
As an Expert Authority your message and expertise to your audience will be valuable. Your message will become viral and your friends and follower will start repeating your messages.
Just imagine if you were in sales or you’re a business owner and a few friends started repeating your message to their thousands of friends on a weekly basis. Maybe it is a new product, a new service, special or important news. What better way to reach thousands of people with a few minutes of work a week.
Posted by Chris Dowell of the Dowell Taggart Team
RE/MAX Best Associates