You can hire Virtual Assistant to do Social Media as it is very important to be known. Social media sites are very popular and can also help in getting customers.

I would look into Pinterest, take pictures of your work and share it, generate a following. You can use a Pinterest widget for your blog and website and share your photos to your viewers. Other social media networks may not work well for you since your in a small city. The only other option would be to setup a business page on facebook, update it every now and then, and use Facebook ads to trigger facebook users in your area who could potentially want your services. I believe social media is beneficial for any business, you don't have to post daily, and you can use free automated applications like bufferapp or hootsuite and schedule posts a week in advance.

Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter all can help you in your business. You just need to know how to promote your business and pages and be smart.

In my opinion Social Media will boost your business a lot. It will give huge exposure to your business. I recommend you to install social media plugins( hope your blog is in wordpress) to share each & every post to pinterest, facebook, twitter , etc. You can also automate this using twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter ,but don't forget to do manual post too.

It will be much more easy for you to 'spread the word' about your fanpage to local people than it will be to drive traffic from local people to a general website or blog. If I could only do one blog / or fanpage I would choose fanpage every time.

No it is not a waste of time. Social Media is now impacting organic search ranking so it really can't be ignored.

Donza,

I think it would be difficult to provide concrete examples of businesses who have converted fans to buyers unless those businesses were to share their success stories directly with you. I can tell you that if you don’t put the time into it, then it won’t be successful for you. If you are better at maintaining your blog and website then focus on that and hire someone else to do social media for your business.

Maybe you can find some good examples here,

9 Companies Doing Social Media Right and Why | Social Media Examiner

Hope that helps,

Shawn

Social Media is definitely a good idea for you. One thing to note is that it will help make it EASY for your customers to share your praises with others and therefore potentially generate more new customers.

It's not a waste of time; you just don't know how to do it, that's all. I used to work for a PR firm with many clients in residential/commercial home decor, furnishing, and construction. There are so many passionate people in the industry and it is indeed possible to build a community online even among very busy contractors and spec guys. And believe me, some of our clients had far more boring & less-personable products/services than concrete!

We built popular Facebook Pages easily and used them to run contests and network and meet other interesting people from all around the world. All this stuff make you look very good when you can show your company community to prospective clients online. Makes you look trustworthy, knowledgeable, everything.

Are you selling primarily to the consumer or the contractor/designer market? Sometimes you can get just as much building an email list of contractors and interior designers you work with, keeping them informed of new products and unique projects. I know social media is sexy but don't neglect plain old internet marketing sometimes, especially if it fits your client base.

Social Media should be laser focused and you don't see quick results from it. You just create your presence and keep posting some useful and interesting stuff. This will catch some eye and you could get business from it.

Have you tried creating YouTube videos? Post your videos and comment on similar videos to increase your views.

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Try onlywire, hootsuite those 2 are good for social network distribution

Social media is the only way to boost your business... significantly.

Let me ask you this. How do you create awareness, drive traffic and convert visitors into paying clients? That is the role social media plays. Here is a helpful article 20 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Social Media | Jeffbullas's Blog

Social media has so much to do with SEO these days that if you are concentrating on building your website, you absolutely should be building a presence on sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It's a great way to generate traffic to your website. Here is a 1-hour a day social media plan you can implement (credit)

Social Media in 1 hour a Day

Content Curation: 15 mins. Read industry news. Buffer interesting articles so they get distributed to your social channels.
Facebook: 10 mins. Comment on 3 posts. Engage 1 person. Add 3 friends. Post 1 personal status update.
Twitter: 10 mins. Retweet 3 posts. Direct message 1 person. Follow 10 people. Post 1 personal status update.
Google+: 15 mins. Comment on 2 posts. Add 10 people to your circles. Engage 1 person. Post 1 personal status update.
LinkedIn: 10 mins. Answer 1 question. Participate in 1 group discussion. Add 5 people to your circles. Engage with 1 person directly.

You can use tools (HootSuite, SproutSocial, IFTTT, Buffer, Google Alerts, etc) to automate much of the work. The key is spending the time (like the example above) to go online seeking to engage with other people and businesses. People go online for basically 2 things: Information or entertainment. If you can be the source of either you'll capture people's attention. Also, everyone is seeking the same thing. We all want engagement, so shining the light on someone else will naturally cast a light on yourself as well.

Social media is very popular nowadays and it would be a great idea to promote your store and your website/blog via social media promotion. It's good that you already have a website for your business, but it would be even better if you could promote this website as well. You don't necessarily have to pay for social media promotion. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites will allow you to set up pages for free.

Why don't you try this:

Pick one of the fine suggestions above and commit to 30 minutes of time working on it per work day for a month.

Spend 10 minutes of the day skimming through articles and advice columns about how to use the site (focus on one for your experiment). Use the rest to post, respond to comments, etc. Try using an egg timer, I swear by mine.

Your blog is definitely where you should focus more of your time, but you can use social media to advance and leverage your blog.

The trick is disciplining yourself to not turn it into a time sink.

You don't need to put a ton of time at once to work out if something is useful or not. Just dab your toe in to see if the water is warm. But you need to come back to it again and again.

From there it's just trying things out, seeing what you see, dropping what does work and improving what does.

Trial and error may be our only real tool, but it's really good when you stop minding the failure rate.

We have a tool that allows you to post your content to 1000 social media sites. It is more powerful than hootsuite because of its features. See how it works by going to http://X-tremeBiz.com. We can set this up so we can manage your campaigns or you can learn how to become a social media guru on your own. We are also looking for founders. Visit our site for more info.

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From Facebook You Can build a page for your business, Twitter allows you to create a business profiles and updates if you have really some special offers, From pinterest you could find audience which suitable to your niche. Social media is rapidly growing thing

Building up creative imaginations and acting on that is very important. Generating boards and pinning images related to your business niche in pinterest can be beneficial to great extent. A huge amount of visitors can be obtained from here if they like your creativity.
Interactive Facebook pages can also act as a great way to generate vast traffic if you can do so properly.

Hi there Don

Mate I'm sorry to see you feel that way about social media believing it's been a waste of time. I'm not sure if you are talking about getting business from social media or, actually trying to get better rankings for your business by utilising social media. Whether you like it or not, social media is here to stay.

Obtaining business from Social Media

As far as trying to obtain work from social media, some people have had mixed results. There are particular industries around us that would provide more work for us all and there are industries through social media that wouldn't even get you one job. I've had a detailing business which I've been trying to promote through social channels like Facebook and have only had a handful of jobs. If I was to promote a weightloss program, I may have varfied or even more positive results. To give you an example, I know a lot about SEO. I just recently launched a new business into my arsenal of employment and in the first half hour my site received nearly fifty hits. Why ? It's SEO. It's associated with the web. People are more into the web these days than car detailing. See my point ?

Using social media for rankings

Social media whether we like it or not is these days a necessity in terms or site rankings within Google or any other search engine. Social media alone won't get you better rankings of course, there are other factors which must be in line as well but Google DOES use social media to determine the importance of a site. The one thing that is important when people visit your site from social media is your bounce rate. Make sure it's healthy but social media is something you need to promote your site. Any jobs you do, post it on as many social sites that you can and link it back to your sites. If you add it to your site or start new pages, make sure that those pages are bookmarked towards social sites access. Which ever way you look at it, social media is vital to any business these days. Since the Panda and Penguin crashes, social media is even more important

Hope this helps
Pete

Content can be time consuming for sure... since you're a local business, have you thought about just using your social sites to post local news? That might get you some engagement and some authority.

Give this a try - it takes the work out of your hands so you don't have to spend any time with it.
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...autopilot.html

Don,

Have you checked out houzz.com? Definitely get a strong profile up there as people searching for home ideas (and then who can make those ideas a reality) flock there.

Put the same pics on Pinterest as has already been suggested.

Put the same pics on Facebook. 1-2 a day is plenty. Some of the pics can be work in progress "behind-the-scenes" style.

The goal is just to have an overwhelming amount of "proof" and stay in front of people so that when they need your services, you're the first that they think of.

Don't waste time on Twitter. (not that Twitter is a waste of time, but for your business the prior three will be more effective and take less time to maintain).

Social Media can expand your Market Reach. You don’t need to open up new stores in another location to introduce your products. You just need to be unique and creative so you can easily grab the attention of many. Say for example: Post a fantastic video on YouTube presenting your tiles and concrete products, show your audience how good the quality of your products are. Think of an awesome video idea! You’ll never know, your video will become viral in just a few days.

Social media would be GREAT for you! What better place to show off your beautiful work to your local customers than right on their social media accounts?

Think outside the box, and provide your social media followers with quality content. Have your past customers post pictures showing off their awesome work that you've done. Get some buzz going, and you'll see just how powerful it truly can be.

Grow your social media for sure. Instant reach to potential customers is important . Share specials with them and tips to keep them coming back.

You cannot simply deny the reality that people today are getting dependent on social media and internet. And if you think social media is a useless strategy to boost your sales in your business then your surely loosing a lot of money on the table.

Did you know that social medias are the most relevant way to increase sales nowadays? You can post your products and services on facebook, twitter and business directory so that people browsing the net will be able to see what you're selling. I hope this helps!

I have a client that is a roofer and one of the things that has made him successful is taking a more helpful view of social media. Instead of using it basically as advertising, he lets anyone ask him how to repair leaks in their roofs, etc and also gives them an time estimate for them to complete the project.

This last part is critical since many people won't want to spend the time on it. But since he is honestly helpful, if they are in his area then they will hire him.

Also, in many cases, the people actually screw up the project and call him to fix it. Of course, the additional problems convert to higher invoices.

Like said by many many people here social media is an essential part of promoting your business. It is hard to find people you can trust to manage your social media for you. I would recommend looking for local people to do it because it is hard to trust people with it online. Maybe one of your employees. If you are not taking advantage of social media though then you are doing yourself a disservice.

its not a waste if u know how to use them

If you don't have time, outsource to a VA/manager. If you don't have the money, then there is a problem.

Hi Don! Your business seems to give more room to showcase images. It sounds like there is more room to take pictures which means you should definitely promote yourself on Social media. But wait! You can first invest in sales and get customers (if its B2B) and then use Social media to engage your customers. If yours is B2C don't think just invest in Social media..its is worth it for B2C business...

It is not a waste of time it helps you expose your company to more people. Social media also help you to increase your ranking by sending social signal.

Twitter , Facebook , Youtube , Pintrest can bring you alot of traffic . You just need to find the right way for bring traffic from them. Good Luck

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Social media sites like Pinterest, google plus, twitter and facebook fan page are really useful if you are doing in right strategy, nice boards on pinterest can attract to right followers,
you can create g+ communities pages for specific users, nice post on fb fan page can attract your followers and # tags useful for twitter.

Social Media is relevant.