“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Jeff Bezos – founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon.com

We live in a digital age. Look around you. Even in the harshest of economic climates, people have smart phones. And they are using them to connect on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many, many others.

The power of social media lies, quite simply, in communication. Not just communication, but good communication. Communication that adds value, sparks conversation and develops relationships. This is not done by spending all your time directly promoting your products and services – people will simply stop listening!

Social media as a marketing platform is about creating great content that adds value to your followers, it is about building relationships and building trust. It gives you an effective, cheap and quick way of reaching lots of people, of connecting directly with your customer base, and of finding out what they are interested in and what they are responding to.

The flip side of this, of course, is that this very powerful tool can also very quickly be used against you to expose poor service, unethical business practice and sub-standard products. So your social media presence should always be dignified and garner the respect of your audience. It is a tool that needs to be carefully monitored, consistently updated, and requires participation with your target audience.

Used responsibly and diligently, it is a great return on investment. And the investment is not money. But it does require time and amazing content.

I can do that for you!