There is a mounting body of evidence that social media has a positive impact on the sales process of businesses of any size. With limited budgets, small businesses have the most to gain by embracing social media.

In a recent post on the Social Media Examiner, Nichole Kelly shared eight methods of evaluating the impact of your social media activities. One of the most interesting, was the idea of a control group.

She suggests that you compare two groups of prospects; one that has, and one that hasn’t interacted with you through social media. In her example, prospects exposed to social media before and after filling out lead forms, where significantly more likely (175% to almost 740% ) to become customers of Care One.

She also looks at retention rate, cross sell and customer saves. In each case, social media can play an important role in solidifying the relationship with the client. How do you stay in touch with clients and prospects today? Consider how social media can be incorporated into that process.