Do you have a word of mouth business?   I talk to lots of small business owners who say they get the majority of their business from referrals, that they run a word-of-mouth business.

But word-of-mouth is changing!  Conversations which used to occur across a garden fence are now happening across the internet, as word-of-mouth, becomes world-of-mouth.

Just look at some of the statistics

  • There are more than 200 million blogs
    Twitter Logo
  • 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and services
  • 78% of consumers trust peer recommendation.
  • 3,000,000 Tweets every day on Twitter.com

You don’t need to be a statistician to realize your customers are going on line to find products, gather information, share information, form opinions and select service providers.  If you want them to select you, GET IN THE GAME!

Becoming involved in social media allows you to build strong connections to a base of customers and fans who are passionate about you.  In Indianapolis, Scott Wise of Scotty’s and Paul Poteet have done terrific jobs of building their community.  Scotty has done it mostly through Twitter, while Paul has maxed out on Facebook.

So the question is … what is your strategy.  How do you tie the pieces together?

Now I realize this is probably a silly place to be sharing this post. If you are reading it, you are already one of the folks who gets the importance of social media, but you can help!  Share this link via email, to someone who doesn’t yet understand why they need to be a part of the conversation.