As a relatively new small business owner, I’ve been eagerly soaking up all the information I can about how to successfully start, and operate, a small business. This includes taking classes through a local non-profit that is set up for just that purpose. Overall the information has been extremely informative and helpful.
But last night there was one segment in the class that both discouraged and encouraged me at the same time. The instructor was speaking about the marketing segment of our business plans, and he broke marketing and advertising into several sections, of which the most prominent were “paid” and “unpaid.”
In the paid section there was the predictable laundry list of print, radio, tv, direct marketing, yellow pages, and so on. In the unpaid section they listed news articles, interviews, public relations, and a variety of old school methods. Nowhere to be found was any mention of social media. Not even a mention of websites or other online activities in either of these categories.
First, this discouraged me, because here were about ten people who were hoping to start new businesses, and while they were receiving great information in a lot of areas, they were being shortchanged. In effect, they were only being given the “old” or traditional media options. Hopefully they know that there actually is an Internet out there…but why weren’t they told about blogging…social media…online networking?
On the other hand, this encouraged me. It made me realize that people need the services that I provide in terms of social media marketing. A class handout included copies of ads from the local newspaper, along with pricing, just to give us an idea of what kind of marketing costs we’d be dealing with. The class groaned at seeing how much they would have to pay for just a little bit of advertising. I wanted to jump up and give them all my business cards, and tell them that they could hire me to get them set-up and on their way, for less than the cost of a one-day run of a 3-column/8-inch long ad.
As newspaper readership is down, and the effectiveness of traditional media diminishes, I know that more and more businesses will be turning to social media as a way to increase their marketing effectiveness, while at the same time getting more bang for their marketing buck. You can read more about this in our article Social Media vs. Traditional Media.
And on a related note, this morning I enjoyed reading Social Media is free…but I’m not by Marc Meyer over at SocialMediaToday.
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