What happened before social media arrived? To spread the word, here's what used to happen. People told their message to their friends; they'd tell their friends who would tell their friends and so on.

Word soon spread but it was …

Slow.

Now you can distribute your message across all your social media channels. Put a video on YouTube. Post to Facebook. Tweet to Twitter. Post your RSS Feed.

Q. Whats the Difference Between Then And Now?

A. Reach.

Your reach has increased exponentially. Now instead of telling your friends and they tell their friends and so on, when you upload a video to your YouTube Channel, or Post to Facebook, you're telling ALL your friends. If they like what you're saying then they tell all their friends and things snowball from there.

You have incredible reach with your message, something that was many times more difficult to achieve before the advent of Social media technology.

When you refer that to your business, it's a massive change in mindset when dealing with customers.

Before It Arrived On The Scene How Did Businesses Communicate?

Go back far enough it was by mail, although you probably still get plenty of this. Then there was email.

This was all fine, but how could you really know what a company was like, what reputation they had and what their customers thought of them? Well there was the letters and email, but they all came from the company! And who can believe everything they say?

What About Now It's Here To Stay?

Do not just go onto Facebook and look up the business you're researching. Or watch a video on YouTube. Any social media platform you investigate while looking at a business will have comments from customers.

And what's good about that is they're giving their honest opinion about the value of that company. Now you can find out what a business is really like, without just relying on company propaganda.

Sure, the business can moderate their customers comments, but that's where the power of social media comes in. They can not moderate a persons private comments on Facebook, or take down a video on YouTube.

Companies now need to listen to their customers voice. It's up to companies to provide amazing value to their customers or face a backlash on social media.

A business can also engage it's customers by letting them know of upcoming promotions, using social media for their support, and just interacting and getting their customers to interact with them.

Social Media is just at the beginning. It's immensely powerful. So embrace it!