Since we haven’t hammered social media in a while…

The best way for ANY business to get more business is simply to do GOOD business. You take care of your customers in such a way that they’ll want to come back, spend more, and tell others about you, and success will follow as sure as night follows day.

Social media is but ONE tool to help market a business, and frankly, it’s one of the most overrated tools that’s ever come on the scene. Yes, it is a very low cost way to promote a business, but it’s also a way to irritate a lot of people very fast. IF, and only IF, the brand is such that people eagerly want to talk about it in a positive way through their social channels, it can be extremely powerful. But that’s a big “if” because busy people today feel they get quite enough communication, and they’ll quickly turn on a brand that abuses that privilege no matter if it’s you or one of your raving fans who share the message.

So social media CAN be a good tool if the rest of one’s marketing house is in order, but the risk that it’s just something that adds to the clutter is pretty high.

Social media is best done if used in an non-pushy manner. For example, rather than invade people’s social media space with disruptive messages in a vain attempt go get in front of them, work on having such good relationships with your customers that when the need for your product or service arises, your customers confidently recommend you to people in their sphere of influence, whether it’s via social media or a good old fashioned personal conversation.

So I still say the best way for any business of any size to get more business is to focus on doing GOOD business. Then, take care of every customer relationship with the goal of keeping and growing it for life, and chances are those customers will be happy to stick with you and may even feel so good about their experience that they’ll tell others and do a lot of your marketing for you.

If social media helps YOUR brand with that, then it’s a great tool and one you definitely want to put to use. If not, it’s a waste of your time and that of your customer.