Do you remember when your parents told you it doesn’t matter what brand is on your clothes because money won’t buy you real friends? The message your parents were trying to teach you is really the driving force behind why it is so important to be involved with social as early as possible. I want you to think about every form of advertising you have ever done. It could be newspaper, TV, radio, or billboards it doesn’t really matter it is all the same. It is all “push marketing.” It is the act of putting our product in an attractive light and shoving our message down our consumers throats in the hope that we can convince them that we are the best product on the market for them. It has worked well, but that is where the line in marketing is being drawn. Now, thanks to Social, we are experiencing the social shift from “push” marketing to “Relationship Marketing.” This is unlike every new media platform that we have been using for years where if you began losing market share you could throw money at it and catch up. When your competitors leverage social to take over market share you will not be able to easily just throw money at the problem to catch up, because you can’t buy real relationships!

Consider two businesses open up the same week, for the sake of example, two restaurants in corner properties in downtown. Both serve the relatively same food, both have a very friendly staff, and advertise in the local newspaper and billboards. Now let’s say restaurant A also leveraged social media as a way to stay connected with their happy customers, diffuse any situations with unhappy customers, and promote their business while restaurant B felt it wasn’t important. Now let us flash forward about six months. Restaurant A has a substantial following on Facebook, many of their customers post online the great experiences they have had and instantly refer everyone in their social grasp on what a great place this restaurant is. Do you think that restaurant B really has a chance to get back the business that it has lost to down the road overnight? These people have interacted with this restaurant for 6 months through online platforms that really begin to personalize the relationships we have with the places we do business with.

There is true ROI in social media and it is the true driving force behind the power of word of mouth. This is not a fad to be overlooked. Get involved today to leverage the opportunity to bring more traffic to your business today!