Facebook Has Forever Changed the Face of Small Business Marketing

In preparing for a live presentation on social media marketing, I considered how best to convince my audience of small business owners not yet taking advantage of social media marketing that they need to do so now.

I came to the conclusion that beginning my presentation by talking about Facebook might help overcome the resistance of these small business owners to using social media to market their businesses.

In fact, Facebook has forever changed the face of small business marketing because of Facebook's impact on the expectations of prospective clients and customers.



Let's look at Facebook's reach: over 500 million and rapidly increasing. As is often quoted, if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world.

Now this is impressive, but what does it have to do with small businesses?

After all, the 500 million all have personal profiles. Who knows the percentage of these 500 million people who are actually using Facebook to connect with prospective clients and customers?

In my opinion the percentage does not matter. What does matter is how our expectations as clients and customers have changed because of Facebook.

Nowadays those of us active on the Internet through computers or smartphones expect to know with whom we are dealing. We aren't happy with an ABOUT US website page that talks about "we do this" and "we do that" without any information on who the "we" may be.

Thanks to repeatedly seeing personal profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites, we expect names, photos and bios of the owners of the businesses we're considering for the purchase of products or services.



And if we don't see this information, we may decide to take our business elsewhere.

What's more, we are usually very much influenced by what our friends or even strangers say online about a business. For example, I just changed my mind on who I am calling for a specific home maintenance job after reading customer reviews on Yelp. (It would be silly of me to call a company with only negative reviews when there was a company with all positive reviews who can do the same job.)

You may be a small business owner who up until now has been resisting taking advantage of the Internet to connect with your prospective clients and customers.

(Yes, you may have a website, but the website doesn't resonate with site visitors because there isn't a social media presence on the site. There's no link for a Facebook Page – formerly called fan page – or for a Twitter account or YouTube channel or LinkedIn profile.)

Your prospective clients and customers want to know who you are and what you've been up to. (Not what you ate via a tweet on Twitter, but what helpful info you've shared online that relates to the products or services you offer.)

Perhaps you already know that you should be taking advantage of these opportunities to create relationships with your prospective target markets. But you haven't yet taken advantage of these opportunities because you don't have the time or you're worried about learning new things or any one of dozens of excuses.

Warning: Stop procrastinating and start learning before your competitors get so far ahead of you that you'll never catch up.

Start with one social media site. Read blog posts, articles, and books about how to effectively participate on the one site. Then start participating while always being willing to make changes in your social media marketing strategy as you learn more.

When you feel you are doing well on one site, expand to a second site. And repeat the above.

Remember to be consistent and professional in how you present yourself and your business online, use the same good headshot for all social media profiles, and be open to continually learning because social media opportunities often seem to change quicker than the speed of light.

For a specific example of how Facebook and other social media sites have impacted business, read the blog post "Networking: Impact of Social Media on Business Cards"



© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the FREE Miller Mosaic report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets"