Social media: Invest time and patience

A. As a consultant who specializes in social media for HME/DME providers, I find it alarming how many organizations take time to initially set-up their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn sites, yet virtually abandon them over the course of time. This leads me to wonder: Do providers believe this has become a waste of time?

As a prior small business owner, I understand that challenge of satisfying the multitude of daily activities and challenges that come your way. However, social media warrants your daily investment.

Social media is free. Most small businesses don't have a large marketing budget, therefore spending time to build relationships on social platforms becomes your only investment. Take some time to experiment to learn which social network best suits your needs.

Results improve over time. The more you invest (time) into your social media campaigns, the more you will receive in return. As you build your content and deliver your message on a consistent basis, your followers will increase, traffic to your website will grow, and your information will be disseminated to a larger audience. The key here is time. The more you put into a given task, the greater the return.

Valuable source of links. Once you share your desired content on a given platform, the content remains. This benefits your organization significantly in search engine rankings, and the more that you share, the higher your ranking. 

The future is social. When using social media as part of your marketing platform, a properly-structured campaign is well worth it. If something isn't working for you today, alter the campaigns and try again tomorrow.

Dave Bargmann is a social media consultant with Duckridge Advisors. He can be reached at dbargmann@live.com.