This morning I read an article by Pete Cashmore of Mashable about group buying.  I’m sure that most of you have seen advertisements where something can be purchased at a really great price if a certain number of people commit to buying it.  If the specified number of sales is not reached, the deal is off.

This is a great way for individuals to get good deals on products.  It’s also an excellent marketing tool for businesses.   (We’ll talk about the marketing side of this in another post.)

For this post, one of the big factors at play here is that the more product a business buys, the cheaper they are able to buy it.  We all know that this is why chain stores are able to sell at lower prices than small independent stores.  Price is by no means everything, but it doesn’t hurt.

What if, however, a group of small businesses got together to purchase in larger quantities?  Wouldn’t they be able to purchase at better prices?  Wouldn’t they then either be able to offer better prices to their customers or increase their profit margin?  Or, maybe a little of both.

What would it take to accomplish this?  It would take a group of businesses working together for the betterment of all of them.  Some might say that this won’t work.  To that I have to say why not?  Who wouldn’t want to work with a group of business people that are all interested in the same thing – the success their business.

I ask you to think about this concept.  It can be taken much farther than just buying power.  Not that buying power is a small thing but if you think about it, it could be so much more.

We’ll talk more on this in future posts.  For now though, what are your thoughts?  Is this something that you feel could work?

Photo credit:  didimkaem

If you are just getting started with social media and maybe if you have already started, you wonder which social networking platforms are the right ones for you and your business.  That’s a good questions and one that should be addressed before or at least very early when starting your campaign.

Some would say that you should be everywhere in order to reach all of your customers and potential customers.  The fact is, though, that you cannot possibly manage that many accounts well.  There is only a certain amount of time available each day that you can devote to your social media campaign and it just doesn’t make sense to spread yourself so thin that you cannot give it your best effort.  It makes much more sense to be in fewer places allowing you the time to manage those accounts well.

Your job then is to determine where your customers are.  Let’s face it, everyone is on Facebook and many are on Twitter so they are probably a given.  The nice thing about these two accounts is that they can be managed together from TweetDeck or something like it.  Depending upon who your customers are, FourSquare might be a great marketing tool.  If you have a yarn shop you may want to consider Ravelry which is a social network for people interested in knitting and crocheting.  A book store might consider LibraryThing which is for book lovers or a music store might consider Last.fm which is about music.  Ravelry, LibraryThing and Last.fm maybe aren’t places you want to be for social networking but might be considered for PPC advertising if you sell from a website in addition to your store.

The possibilities are endless but what you really need to consider is what you can handle well.  And, once you have decided where you need to be, be sure to let your customers know where you are.  Put links to your accounts in your print ads, on your business cards, on your web site and in any email or direct mail you send.  Make it as easy as possible for people to find you.  And then, have fun with it.  It can be as enjoyable for you as it is for your customers.

Photo credit:  iQoncept