Happy New Year! I wanted to start the year off with a couple tips for those of you that haven’t jumped into the Social Media fray. With all the buzz in 2009 about Social Media, it has left many small businesses wondering where to start. For some, you are probably grappling with whether Social Media is a viable strategy for their business at all. When you think of Social Media, many small business owners immediately think of Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.

The problem is people immediately go straight to tactics and don’t look at the “meta” view of Social Media and how it fits into their overall strategy.

Here are a couple things that we do know (regardless of whether you believe in Social Media or not):

1) Google and the other search engines can now index data in real time from your website, customer comments, competitors sites, press releases, and virtually anything else you will let them index.

2) Your prospects and customers are talking about products and services every day.

3) Your competitors are getting savvy and realizing that they can have their own “channel” to communicate with your prospects like the big boys in real time with total transparency.

Let’s face it, one of your customers (satisfied or not) can go to Yelp.com and post anything they want about your company it can literally dominate the search engines in minutes. Scary? You bet. Especially if you aren’t tuned into what is being said about your company, your employees, or your product and services. You can’t hide in the sand, the MACHINE is just too powerful…I tell my clients to get on the wave, or prepare to get crushed.

Here are three (3) tips that will help your business in 2010 regardless of how much Social Media you want to consume:

1) Listen – It is critical you leverage Social Media to determine what is being said about your business, industry, services, wants, needs,  likes, and dislikes. By tuning into these conversations you will be well prepared to position your products and services against your competitors, but more importantly they will be positioned with “real” data. There has never been a more efficient medium to perform market research quickly for the local small business.

2) Your Name = Virtual Real Estate – Just like physical real estate, your name and your companies name have real estate online. You have two choices…You can claim it and control what is being said about you and your company, or you can let others define it for you. What would you rather have? Dumb question I know…

3) Go Global – If you are thinking local you are thinking TOO SMALL. Go global with your thinking. You have an entire world online to discuss your products and services too. Even local service organizations have figured out how to sell valuable how to information around the globe. The result…More local recognition. More expert status in their niche. And more importantly more business locally as a result.

Get past the buzz and take some action in 2010. I guarantee you will see some results.

Let’s make some profits together in 2010!

Cheers,