So Why Do We Need Social Media, Again?, Part II

I should probably call this post, "So What's So Cool About Social Media?", but I wanted you to know it's a continuation of the thought process I started in the last post.

So, here's Home Depot with an egregious complaint sitting on the Internet for all to see. As a matter of fact, if you Google "Home Depot Blog", you'll see this guy's post right at about the number three spot! Not only that, but the title of the post about the guy calling his wife a vulgar name just begs you to click on it.

(For the record, I really like Home Depot, and have only run across very helpful people there. So, please don't think I'm dissing HD. I'm not. I'm exploring the awesome power of social media.)

As I said, here's Home Depot with this complaint, and they're apparently not making much of an attempt to mitigate the situation. Well, guess what? I don't think HD's stock is going to fall because of this, and I don't really think their bottom line will be affected too much. They're just too big!

What I do think, however, is this. Problems like this coupled with social media give smaller businesses just that much more power to level the playing field with companies like HD. Thanks to the Internet and savvy keyword research, etc, your site can rank as well as HD's does for targeted keyword phrases.

Now, you're not going to outrank HD for phrases like "makita tools", or something really generic and huge. But you could easily outrank HD for a phrase like "professional grade tables saws Atlanta." See what I mean?

These more specific phrases (called long-tailed keyword phrases), especially when you combine them with some sort of local attribute are quite easy to rank for. And, if you're the high end hardware store down the corner in Atlanta, you don't need for someone in San Francisco to find you. You just need for people in Atlanta to find you.

Now, couple this with really savvy social media marketing. Where you actually keep track of all the online complaints about your business, contact these folks, and seek the rectify the situation. Tell me that's not a way to build a local business?

Okay, so your business is not local, maybe it's global, but much more specific than HD, which sells everything under the sun. Global competition for keywords is harder right now than local, but still it's very doable. Instead of slicing up the marketing space geographically, you're slicing it up conceptually. Again, with the Internet and a solid understanding of social media (blogging, etc), you can go head to head with your larger competitors, carve out a niche for yourself, and flourish!

So Why Do We Need Social Media, Again?

I know a lot of companies are struggling with social media. They just can't get their hands around how incredibly efficient and fast the Internet is. Well, let me rephrase that. It's not just the Internet, but mobile media as well. Stories like this one can cause a great deal of damage to a company. Check out this story about Home Depot, here. It's about a guy who heard a Home Depot employee call his wife a vulgar name.

Used to be that an employee like that would have caused some damage to the company's reputation. Let's say the couple tells everyone at church. Let's say they tell, oh, 100 people. According to the blogger, above, his story has been linked to not a few times. That story is not just speech. It's not ephemeral like that. It's on the net, and it's going to stay there for a long, long time. Can you imagine how much damage something like that, or a few items like that can do to a business like Home Depot?

If you own or work in a business, and you're interested in how your customers, investors, and everyone else view your business, then you're going to have to learn to manage social media like blogs.

Bottom line: that's why you need folks like me. Folks who know how to use social media to the advantage of a business!