5 Reasons Brick and Mortar Stores Must Start a Social Media Program

It has been said that small offline businesses have been reluctant to get involved with social media. In many ways, I can understand that. There are so many social media platforms out there that simply making the decision of where to be can be a daunting task. Then there are issues of time. How much time is it going to take to learn and how much time is it going to take on a daily basis to do a good job with it? Small business owners are already pressed for time.
We could go on with all kinds of questions, concerns and potential reasons not to do this. But, what we really need to look at are the reasons why getting involved with social media is necessary. Let's look at a few statistics.

• Newspapers estimate a loss of 31% of readership over the past 70 years. On average, newspapers have lost 10.6% of their paying readers in the last year according to the Washington Post.
• Across all age groups, 45-60% of Americans spend more than 8 hours per week online including 33% of 65+ year olds. The highest percentage is the 25-29 age group at 59% followed by 56% of 30-39 year olds logging over 8 hours per week online. Source: Harris Poll
• Facebook has 400 million users, although not all in the US (this is larger than the population of the US), it does have 130 million unique US visitors each month.
• Google.com says Twitter has 75 million users with 21 million unique US visitors per month. The age groups with the highest percentage of users for these two platforms may be surprising; 25% 45-54 year olds and 28% 35-44 year olds.
• YouTube, the video sharing site, claims to have over one billion views per day worldwide. Source: Wikipedia.com

These statistics are staggering. There is no denying, however, that there is a big shift happening from newspapers to social media platforms and that trend is going to continue. While advertising in newspapers may still be effective, there is no doubt that a larger percentage of prospective customers are online.
With numbers like these, now is definitely the time for brick and mortar businesses to become social media savvy. The alternative could be detrimental to their business as their competitors develop relationships with their customers.

Karen Reed
Organic Business Strategies
http://OrganicBusinessStrategies.com
Co-owner

Organic Business Strategies is committed to helping small businesses succeed by fostering an attitude of honest, simple and basic business relationships. We are in the process of developing a step by step program to help you with your social media program. To learn more please visit us at http://organicbusinessstrategies.com. Sign up to receive our free report to be updated on the progress of this program.