Why Social Media Marketing is a Must for Small Businesses

NEW YORK, Feb. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- With 46% of consumers turning to social media when making an online purchase¹, it is becoming increasingly clear that employing these channels is practically mandatory for growing your business. But maintaining a social media presence requires sufficient time and resources, which is why many are quick to gloss over this solution.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110831/NY59180LOGO
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130117/NY44355LOGO-a

Peter LaMotte, SVP at LEVICK, understands this dilemma faced by small businesses and he believes that lack of participation may cause more harm than good. In his latest article posted to PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit, LaMotte provides ways that not having a social media marketing presence can hurt your bottom line.

1. Lack of influence. Social media provides an opportunity for you to promote your customer testimonials and also for your customer's to share their own buying experiences. How else will the public know how great your business is if your online presence is lacking?
2. Lack of reputation management. Whether you are online or not, your customers are and chances are, they are posting reviews online. It's difficult to demonstrate a policy of responsiveness with no social media marketing strategy.
3. Lack of engagement. Social media is interactive and encourages engagement. Lacking an online presence requires much harder work for business owners to engage its customer base.

For further discussion on how not implementing social media strategy into your overall marketing plan, read LaMotte's article, "How Not Using Social Media Can Hurt Small Businesses" here: http://bit.ly/1Abv7Xz

PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses. The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter.

¹ Source: Marketing TechBlog Infographic "Businesses on Social Media – Statistics and Trends"

About PR Newswire                        

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry over 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

Media Contact:

Amanda Eldridge
Director, Strategic Channels
+1 201-360-6906
amanda.eldridge@prnewswire.com