People love to share their opinions. The most likely audience is their friends. Social media makes it easier to share opinions with your friends. People love to share their opinions (reviews) about things they buy. Surprisingly, most of the reviews are positive. Their friends are 3 times more likely to trust their friend's review than a professional reviewer. Can you imagine how little trust they put in an ad? To win consumer loyalty all you need to do is please your fans and hope they spread the word about your fantastic product. You need to listen to that word being spread and find ways to improve your already fantastic product to win even more fans. This is the point of any business success anyway, isn't it? Social Media just makes it so much easier for a business owner to succeed.

Social media is a reality and it is not possible to ignore it anymore. While most small businesses cling to their proven sources of reaching out to their customer, smart business owners explore the world of Social Media. If you want to stay ahead of your competition, you need to be incorporating Social Media into your marketing plan. It will require a lot of time, effort and dedication, but remember - that's where your customers are spending their time. They are no longer looking for products and services. They are expecting the products and services delivered to them or recommended by friends. Social media revolution is upon us.

Social media became The Place to be in the past year. Americans spend 80% more time on networking sites in the past year alone, according to researchers. What does it mean to you? It means that your customers spend a lot less time on non-networking websites - websites like yours. If you owned your business for a while, you have been around the block. You know, that being where your customers are is vital for your business survival. On the internet, the same principle applies. But don't rush to join all the networking sites and don't start pounding people with sale offers and coupons. People hate that. Instead, have a plan. 80% of people are now on Facebook. Look at some of the fan pages that promote businesses similar to yours. Concentrate on the ones that have the most fans - they know what they are doing. Try to apply their strategy to your business and come up with ways you can do it better or at least as good as them. Add Facebook fan page and try it out. 66% of Americans are on Twitter. First, find out what Twitter is. Read up on proper Twitter etiquette. Learn the ropes, read public Twitter timeline, follow some people, decide for yourself what posts you like and which ones you don't like and why. It is very likely that your customers will have the same reaction to the same type of posts. Find some businesses on Twitter that are similar to yours. Look for them in Twitter directories. Find which businesses get most responses from their followers and figure out why. Try to emulate success.