It has been said that small offline businesses have been reluctant to get involved with social media. In many ways, I can understand that. There are so many social media platforms out there that simply making the decision of where to be can be a daunting task. Then there are issues of time. How much time is it going to take to learn and how much time is it going to take on a daily basis to do a good job with it? Small business owners are already pressed for time.

We could go on with all kinds of questions, concerns and potential reasons not to do this. But, what we really need to look at are the reasons why getting involved with social media is necessary. Let’s look at a few statistics.

• Newspapers estimate a loss of 31% of readership over the past 70 years. On average, newspapers have lost 10.6% of their paying readers in the last year according to the Washington Post

• Across all age groups, 45-60% of Americans spend more than 8 hours per week online including 33% of 65+ year olds. The highest percentage is the 25-29 age group at 59% followed by 56% of 30-39 year olds logging over 8 hours per week online. Source: Harris Poll

• Facebook has 400 million users, although not all in the US (this is larger than the population of the US), it does have 130 million unique US visitors each month.

• Google.com says Twitter has 75 million users with 21 million unique US visitors per month. The age groups with the highest percentage of users for these two platforms may be surprising; 25% 45-54 year olds and 28% 35-44 year olds.

• YouTube, the video sharing site, claims to have over one billion views per day worldwide. Source: Wikipedia.com

These statistics are staggering. There is no denying, however, that there is a big shift happening from newspapers to social media platforms and that trend is going to continue. While advertising in newspapers may still be effective, there is no doubt that a larger percentage of prospective customers are online.

With numbers like these, now is definitely the time for brick and mortar businesses to become social media savvy. The alternative could be detrimental to their business as their competitors develop relationships with their customers.

Photo Credit: Whalt

We’ve talked before about developing business communities within your area. Marketing a block or two of businesses, a shopping plaza or a mall to create a destination for potential customers. With this type of marketing, all of the businesses are in the same area. They are neighbors.

A community of businesses, however, do not need to be located in the same neighborhood. Depending on your situation, these businesses do not even have to be in the same city. There are many types of businesses that could come together as a community for a common goal. For example, if your goal is to provide a means for your customer to secure their financial future, then it would make sense for an accountant or tax consultant, an insurance agent, an investment broker, and maybe a banker to develop a community to provide this. In this case, it would probably be beneficial if all were in the same city but certainly not mandatory, especially if you are in a small town.

Another example of this would be a group of businesses whose goal it is to offer their customer the experience of relaxation and being pampered. In this case, the group of businesses would be a day spa, a nail salon and a hair dresser. All of which are there to cater to the individual giving them an experience of relaxation and being pampered.

There are many benefits to developing a business community such as this. The main one is the expanded list of prospective customers each has. In this community, each business has access to each others customers via community email, marketing, advertising, etc. The community markets the businesses together rather than separate and each business promotes the others in the community. People appreciate recommendations from others they do business with. It’s gives them a sense of security about doing business with someone they do not necessarily know.

The only real requirement to developing a community like this is that each of businesses must have the same values. The customers and prospective customers must get the same feel from each of the businesses. As long as this requirement is met, the community has the potential to be highly successful.

What type of business community would your business be in? Leave a message in the comments below. Let’s talk about it.

Please excuse me for repeating myself, but if you are interested in learning more about developing a business community, we are in the process of developing a program to teach just that. If you sign up to receive our free report, we will be happy to send you information and updates on the progress of the program. We look forward to being able to work with you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.