I recently started reading Jay Baer’s and Amber Naslund’s The Now Revolution and was immediately motivated to write a post after reading this gem on the very first page…

The future of business is not in measured, scrutinized responses or carefully planned initiatives.  Business will soon be about near-instantaneous response; about making the best decisions you can with the extremely limited information you have; about every customer being a reporter, and every reporter being a customer; about winning and losing customers in real time, every second of every day; and about a monumental increase in the availability of commentary about our companies.  Business will be always on, always changing, always moving.

This is a simple paragraph on the surface, but it goes to the heart of social media for business — dubbed the “Now Revolution” — better than anything I’ve read in the past.  After reading this, I started thinking about the business environment in Louisville.

I started thinking about the local retail stores, coffee shops, restaurants, night clubs and bars, entertainment venues, and other small businesses I visit.

All this thinking left me wondering: Is Louisville missing the Now Revolution?

The skyline of the Louisville, a city that may be missing the train of the Now Revolution. Image credit: louisville.umclubs.com

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Businesses are quickly recognizing the strength of social media, so it’s no surprise that there has been a sudden rise of confusing noise from too many Facebook statuses, too many tweets, and too many blogs. Obviously you don’t have the power to make everyone else be quiet, so the only option is to break through the noise.

How Can You Break Through the Noise?

Solution: Release your Inner Gen, where “Gen” is short for “genuineness” (clever play on words, if I do say so myself).  To break the barrier and get noticed, you must be genuine and personal in your approach.  What are the best ways to release your Inner “Gen” and build those social media relationships?

Businesses must be genuine on social media — release their “Inner Gen.” Lead with your personality, not your business.  Be weird.  Be conversational. Image Credit to beliefnet.com.

Lead with Your Personality, Not Your Business

Posting company updates is great, but nobody wants to carry a conversation with a business that does nothing except promote themselves.  Consumers want to talk to real people and they get frustrated when they’re forced to talk to a machine.  The businesses that are genuinely wearing their personalities on their sleeves are seeing the greatest success with social media.  Check out 9 Companies Doing Social Media Right and Why for some great examples.

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We get so caught up in the lofty ideals or day-to-day activities of owning a business that we sometimes lose focus of the most important objective: getting more customers or clients through the door.  We can all agree it’s impossible to succeed as a business if you’re not attracting new customers.

So, let’s take a dive back into the prehistoric era to recall the early stages of business planning and discuss how social media can help bring in new leads.

The Three W’s

Who, what, and where…going old school.  Remember the elementary school days of analyzing a story by answering those three questions?  Like a lot of things we learn at a young age, this is coming back to bite.  This is elementary business planning.  How can any business function without consumers knowing:

1. Who are you?
2. What does your business offer consumers?
3. Where exactly is your business located and how far are you willing to travel to serve consumers or clients?

Now…

How Can Social Media Help Small Businesses Answer These Questions?

There are dozens of areas of social media that can serve to improve a business, but we’ll stick with hitting the two high notes in this post.

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