photo credit: abnehmen.net
A friend of ours recently posted on Facebook about a bad experience they had with a local restaurant here in the Buffalo area. Fully half of the comments on the post said that they wouldn't consider going there after reading about our friend's experience.
While I'm sure it won't put the restaurant out of business they will lose money because of it. And I'd bet that they do not even know that people are talking about them or maybe they don't care.
Granted this isn't a big deal in the overall scheme of things but it does point out that when people are unhappy about something they use social media to tell others about it. And of course they also share the good experiences as well.
Whether it be a blog, Twitter, Facebook or some other social networking site people are talking about you and your business. The question is do you want to take part in the conversation?
Social media is a broad term that covers a wide range of tools that can be used to communicate information and experiences within a select community of like minded people or a community open to anyone with an internet connection.
A report by Universal McCann’s Wave 3 was released in the middle of 2008 and listed the following statistics concerning Internet users between the ages of 16 and 54 worldwide:
- 394 Million users watch video clips online
- 346 Million users read blogs
- 321 Million users read personal blogs
- 307 Million users visit friends social network profile pages
- 303 Million users share video clips
- 202 Million users manage profiles on social networks
- 248 Million users upload photos
- 216 Million users download video podcasts
- 215 Million users download audio podcasts
- 184 Million users start their own blogs
- 183 Million users upload video clips
- 160 Million users subscribe to RSS feeds
It would appear from these numbers that the use of social media has taken off globally.
But what does it mean for you and me? If you have a business it means that you will have to rethink the way you promote your business, not in the future but today! The old ways of marketing and communicating with customers or clients is rapidly dying. To grow prosper we have to rethink the way we do business. Social media is not what we will use in the future because that future is here right now!
