Are You Using Social Media in Your Small Business Aspirations?

With 2012 here, many small business leaders are looking to get the New Year off to a positive start, removing any negative memories of the past 12 months.

For those small business heads who have not implemented productive social media campaigns into their plans over the last 12 months, now is the perfect time to plow forward with such efforts.

One of the great things with deploying a social media strategy for your small business is that it essentially doesn’t cost much money, along with opening you up to a new realm of customers.

Some Small Business Leaders Missing the Boat on Social Media

That being said, many small business leaders have been slow to embrace all social media has to offer, meaning the competition is oftentimes getting a leg up. The bottom line is that one’s return on investment (ROI) can be greatly impacted, leaving them playing catch up to competing small businesses.

If you are a small business head and are still lagging behind when it comes to social media, recognize that a consumer or other business may be a potential lead.

When using social media in your small business plans, this allows you to instantly introduce yourself to potential customers. Not only that, you can guide them to your company’s Web site, providing pertinent information that may lead them to start up a business relationship with you.

Most social media campaigns involve more time than money, so this can be especially attractive for those businesses working on a tighter budget, yet still need to spread their message and attain more leads.

What Are Our Social Media Options?

For a small business who has yet to fully embrace social media, what are some of the better SM outlets to assist one’s business in generating more customers?

Among the more notable options (these are not all of them):

* Facebook – As the leader of social media, Facebook and its approximate 750 million users provide a great resource for small businesses seeking to create more leads. Begin with forming a fan page for your small business. Be sure the page offers visitors’ pertinent information related to your business, is set up for back-and-forth conversations with other small businesses/consumers that follow it, provides linking/subscription information to a company newsletter, and is monitored regularly. One aspect where some small businesses come up short when putting together such a page is that they forget about it and only update it off and on. Doing so will turn off consumers and other small businesses coming to you for possible business;

* Twitter – While a budding rival of Facebook, Twitter differs in the sense that small business leaders can use this SM tool to provide both businesses and consumers interested in their product and/or services with valuable links to industry information. As an example, if your small business falls in the salon area, use a company-based Twitter page to share hair-related information with interested parties. By using Twitter hashtags, you can use keywords like hair, haircuts, hair coloring, hairstyles etc. to link up with others who would find your business useful, therefore bettering your opportunity to generate leads;

* LinkedIn – By interlinking both the professional and company profile, you offer individuals who locate your profile information regarding both you and your business. In generating leads through this social media option, make sure you effectively optimize your profile, become linked up with groups that are interested in your audience so that you can be involved in discussions, and lastly search for individuals at companies you want as potential clients.

Should you still be questioning the importance of social media and its ability to help in generating leads, think about the numbers from a study via Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey. The report notes that 51 percent of Facebook fans and 67 percent of Twitter followers claimed they were more likely to buy from the companies they “liked” on Facebook or “followed” on Twitter.

As all small business owners should know by now, it all comes down to being social.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items starting a business, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.