Do You Know Where Your Customers Are Finding You?
It used to be that anyone thinking about doing business with you would first consult with their colleagues or friends to see if any of them had worked with you before.
If they weren’t able to find anyone that had, they would then crack open the telephone directory, find your ad and give you a call to find out more about your business. This was a great situation for you as you had total control of all the information they were getting about you.
A few years ago, that same prospective customer would have jumped on the Internet and surfed to your company website, find out more about what you had to offer and get in touch if that had a certain degree of interest in whatever it is that you sell. Like the first scenario, this was a pretty good position for you to be in because you could control the information they were finding out about you.
Today, things have changed yet again. Social media websites are popping up all over the place and people are flocking to them like moth to a flame. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have millions of users and their content consistently appear at the top of the search engine rankings.
As a result, your prospects trust the information found on these mega-sites because they know that any information placed there is usually done so by customers and is less likely to be biased.
This isn’t just a working theory or unwishful thinking. It is the new reality of doing business – whether online or offline. The ramifications of this new reality are significant. You can no longer control everything that is being said about you and your business on social media sites. However, you can make yourself aware of what is being said, participate in the conversations and try to influence them to your advantage. Also, the scary fact also exists that it could your competition and not customers that are bad-mouthing you on these sites and your prospects would never know the difference.
Sounds pretty daunting, doesn’t it? The good news is that the solution is fairly simple. Rarely will a visitor go past the first page or two of Google to research you. Ideally, your content must dominate the first ten to twenty search results so you control what they see.