We were likely all taught as children to NOT follow the crowd, but in today’s business world is that still the case or should we as business owners be following the crowd, especially when it comes to social networking?

Social networking is the latest way to connect with, engage and ultimately create a relationship with your potential clients and customers.  There are various social networking sites, which serve various needs but have the same overall purpose.

These include, Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and even your own blog. These are all places you can connect with, engage and ultimately create a relationship with others.

Actually, if you are doing social networking correctly, you aren’t “exactly” following the crowd, at least not in the sense we think of it as children.  What you are doing is you are finding those people or groups of people that you want to connect with and you are beginning to participate in what they are doing retweeting their tweets, responding to their Facebook posts, commenting on their blog.  You want to get to know them, so as a result they will get to know you and then, know you, like you and trust you and ultimately, buy from you!

That’s what it is all about after all, so yes, in a way you should “Follow the crowd”.

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Social media has proved to be a worthwhile tool for small business owners and entrepreneurs to use to promote themselves and their businesses.  If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur who has learned the ropes of social media and has begun sharing via tweets and status updates then you may be ready to take your use of social media for business to the next level.  It all really depends on the “network” you’ve built.

The companies out there who have taken it to the next level, which means adding selling to the mix, mostly via adding an “e-commerce” store to their Facebook fan pages have earned some modest results.  Basically it has had to do with how loyal their following is.

Business owners who have tried this technique have also discovered that they must first advertise their fan pages so that the consumers even know that they exist in the first place.  There is also the hurdle of needing a shopping cart and an application that will work with Facebook.  This is an added expense to your monthly business bills.  Really each business owner must weigh the pros and cons of attempting to jump on this trend or not.

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