There’s no ignoring the ‘Social Media Revolution’ that’s happening around us, but the real question is…does it actually matter? Facebook, Twitter, Web 2.0, etc, etc, etc. The numbers are quite staggering when you hear about how many subscribers these services have, how rapidly they’re growing (and what they’re considered to be worth in dollar terms – astronomical).

But what’s it worth to me, as a small business owner? Can social media add any value to my business? To my clients business? The irony of that question I guess is that I”m asking it via a ‘social media’ channel, namely my blog. In my opinion yes, the well considered use of social media channels can bring a massive amount of value to my business (note the phrase ‘well considered’ in that sentence) and that of my clients. Now I’m going to throw up a quick disclaimer here to say that social media is a new thing to Grassroots IT. We’re starting to dip our toes in the water, so to speak, and learning a lot as we go. To give you a quick idea of where we’re heading with this, and how we might gain some value from the time invested…

1. “How To” posts on the blog. By provided step by step instructions on a particular task in the form of a blog post, we will start to build an easily accessible knowledge base for both our own internal reference and that of our clients. Need to setup your new iPhone to talk to Exchange? No problem, just go to our blog and search for Setup iPhone.
2. Engage in an open dialog. We get some things right, but we also get some things wrong. The important thing is to be aware of each so that we can continue doing the right things right, and work to fix the rest. By encouraging an open, transparent dialog with community, clients, and potential clients we can hopefully gain more insight on how we’re doing, and what we can do to improve.
3. Get People Talking. The goal of most marketing I guess is to get people talking about you. Increase the awareness, get your name in front of people, and so on. Check out this great video from our friends over at Bluewire Media and Mike O’Hagan of MiniMovers fame that says it so much better than I can.

Here’s an amazing video that I’ve seen a few times around the place, but final just came across today. Gives me goose bumps every time I see this, and puts a new perspective on social media.