I talked to a friend of mine tonight who runs his own business. He does about 2 million dollars of internet business every year and he has done well for himself because he found his ‘niche’ in his business and works hard to do well at it. He was telling me how many orders he gets online each day and how many people he has to employ to keep up with the demand and keep his customers happy.
He isn’t on Facebook. He isn’t on Twitter. And I would dare say that he has no idea what Foursquare is. Because I am consistently consulting people on how to use social media to grow their business, of course this intrigued me. The more I talked to him to find out the details about how he operates his business, the more I realized that even though I could provide him some quality information about how he could use social media to grow his business even more, it would do him no good. In fact, it might frustrate him to no end.
You see, he doesn’t have time. Literally. His whole family is involved in the business. He is going in early, working late, and he doesn’t have days off. I mean, his business is doing really well, and he is making alot of money. And the pride he has in his business is obvious, and his passion is contagious. But he simply doesn’t have enough hours in the day to keep up with a social media strategy. And I can see why.
I see all the reports and statistics about how small businesses aren’t embracing and utilizing social media like they could be, and I understand why. Small business is what runs this country. I believe the latest statistics show that over 80% of the working people in this country are employed by small business. So looking at the number of small businesses that aren’t using social media can be alarming if you just look at the numbers. But I have come to realize that social media isn’t for everyone.
In fact, in some cases, the time it would require to be good at a social media strategy could be detrimental to a small business. Even if they could use all the fantastic tools available today to monitor and keep track of all their social media channels. It still takes time. Which can be pretty hard to come by when there are only 24 hours in a day.
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