Why is Social Media Essential for Nurturing Relationships ?

When social media sites first started to appear on the public landscape, most people found the sites to be quaint little pursuits for those looking to kill some time on the internet. While that may have been how these sites started out they have now expanded far beyond their original intent.

Namely, many social media sites are being effectively employed to promote businesses and savvy entrepreneurs are rolling up their sleeves and getting involved.  Social media sites offer cost-effective opportunities to promote your online (or brick and mortar) business in a more potent manner than traditional marketing methods.

The reason for this is that a social media site is designed for communications. Unlike other forms of online promotions, you can effectively employ a social media site to promote your business by communicating directly with your audience.

This paves the way for positive interactions and opens the door for learning exactly what your client wants and identifying what’s on their mind. This, in turn, allows you to adjust your business accordingly, which then has the obvious benefit of boosting your business profits.

Prior to social media, the most common method of getting to know your customer was to engage in expensive third party market research. While this was not an ineffective method for discovering what was on the mind of customers, it was a limited method. There was no interaction with you’re your potential target market.  Social media changes all of that and this is certainly a positive development in the way marketing research is performed today. 

First of all, quality online social media sites provide numerous ways of communicating with your audience. These include access to instant messaging, email, profile comments, blogging, and even voice operated systems. All of these advanced functions come with the potential to directly speak – and listen – to your customer base. This can allow you to tweak and adjust your communication strategies according to the needs and desires of your customer.

If you discovered an emerging trend among your customer base, you can easily tap into it based on the buzz surrounding the issue. Since the lines of communication will be open, authentic and honest (key values of strong sustainable businesses) you’ll have a clear insight into your customer.   As long as you pay attention to what they are thinking, saying, and feeling, you will begin to learn exactly what’s on their mind. This will allow you to nurture your relationship with them since you will understand where they are coming from in terms of consumer perspective.

Nurturing experiences is not always easy, particularly in business. However, when you actively implement powerful communicative tools that social media sites provide, you can magnify your potential to succeed in business.  It truly is a wonderful way to nurture relationships when approached properly.

© 2010 Tania Usher International
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: “Acclaimed success coach, speaker and writer Tania Usher strips back they hype and confusion to teach, support and empower entrepreneurs around the world grow sustainable and meaning businesses. If you’re looking for simple cost-effective ways to boost your business, register for Tania’s free weekly articles, advice and tools at ” www.TaniaUsherInternational.com”

About The Author

Tania Usher is an internationally renowned marketing communication strategist, business coach, author, speaker and adventurer.  Her company Tania Usher International is dedicated to providing communication expertise and innovative solutions to accelerate results and positive transformation for entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide.  Tania aims to touch as many lives as possible with her authentic and ‘from the heart’ get NAKED approach to business where she strips back the hype to expose raw and uncut strategies for life, business and success.

Go now to http://www.taniausherinternational.com