How Powerful is Social Media Marketing - Can it Make a Difference to Your Offline Or Online Business

Can small, medium and large businesses survive these days by using traditional marketing methods only? Can social media methods increase traffic to both offline and online businesses? Will the results of a social media traffic campaign make a noticeable difference?

These are all great questions, firstly let's address whether a business can survive using traditional methods only. The answer is yes however they will be missing out on free traffic that will make a difference to their bottom line. In today's market social media traffic for your website can come from a bunch of areas, most notably Twitter, Facebook and video marketing.

Let's focus on Twitter which is a micro blogging site where people post short "tweets", no more than 140 characters, about personal situations, stories of interest, a direct communication between 2 tweeps (people) or finally promoting their business, service or product. It's a great environment, I personally love it, but it can be a bit daunting for the uninitiated. Treading the waters of Twitterville can be a lonely experience at first, not knowing how to build up followers or what you should do is like being at a bit shy and at a party not knowing anyone.

The good thing is it takes very little time to master the Twitterverse, build your follows and have a raging good time. Beware getting hooked as it can absorb all your time. A good rule of thumb is to follow up to 50 people a day, communicate with 5 to 10 directly, retweet interesting posts and every now and then post an interesting message about your product, service or business.

I would like to give you an example of how powerful social media can be: recently I received a friend request on Facebook from a guy who lives in the same city as me, he is a real estate agent by vocation and lives about 5 minutes from me. He has now referred a property to me that they cannot sell & I am joint venturing with the owner on the sale. I posted a Tweet on Twitter about the property I received a reply from an interested party who also lives in my city, we met and although this property is not for her, we discussed other joint venture ideas that are mutually beneficial. This has all come about through 2 powerful social media sites and indicates the power of networking.

So you can see how social media traffic can make a resounding difference to generate leads and sales. Offline businesses can also benefit from this creative marketing stream

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