92.9% of UK Internet users are on Facebook and the number of UK Twitter users has doubled in the past two years.
“Facebook? Oh yeah, I have one of them, I don’t use it much”. I hear this all too often, if you’re guilty of having this conversation, then you’re doing things wrong!
92.9% of UK Internet users are on Facebook and the number of UK Twitter users has doubled in the past two years. You can’t argue with those statistics, social media is clearly an important factor to consider when running your business.
“I’m only going to community fairs, why does it matter to me?” Are you not listening? If you have 100 customers, it means only 7 of them are not on Facebook or Twitter. You can reach almost your whole audience in an instant. This is not only useful for telling your dedicated customers about any offers or new products, but also to tell them the events you are attending, this maximises potential visitor numbers to the event and then to your stalls! Best of all, it’s free!
The use of social networking sites is not only important to engage potential customers, but it also builds up an audience that is interested in what you are doing and what you have to offer. It’s not a random bunch of people, it’s people that are interested in your business. This is important. Imagine you leaflet people in the street, you have no say if these people are at all interested in your business, products or services. Now, you post a Facebook update or tweet – How many of these people are interested in your business, products or services? All of them. 100% of this audience has signed up to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ you so this means they are interested in you, your business, products or services. If you’re not updating them with information, they will forget about you so ensure you keep them engaged.
Word of Mouth – Looking at word of mouth is a bit more tricky. I don’t have fancy statistics to back things up, but I can do a bit of maths. With the average of 40 exhibitors at each event, with 300 contacts each, through word of mouth alone we could potentially reach 12,000 customers! That is without the rest of the leafleting, postering, banners, radio, newspapers and any other advertising I can get my hands on. Word of mouth and recommendations have always been free and a recommendation to an event or business will certainly drive people your way.
So, if you take nothing from this article, take this: Post, Like, Share and Tweet for these things are free yet they are worth their weight in gold. (We shall ignore that a tweet doesn’t weigh anything to keep this analogy working!)
References:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/uk-twitter-growth_b39553
