As a small business owner, the first thing you need to do is draw and describe the person that buys your product or service. Creating a generic description of your market that you guess will purchase it is not the best way, even if you’ve read 1,500-page text books about guerilla marketing and the like. You have to describe a very specific person, not a community of people. The moment you’ve consumed everything from your brain (and that of others) to describe this person, immerse this person into your business vision, mission, values and goals, and see if it fits. If not, you’ve got to rehash things with your sales, marketing, service, support and overall customer strategies to fit this person into everything that you do for your product, service and company.

How can the small business owner compete with large, multinational enterprises in the same market without having to spend so much money in setting up and maintaining a “customer conversation” infrastructure? People say “Talk is Cheap!” but simply said, it’s either complex, expensive or both. Beyond social media activities, the small business has to talk more to its customers in the most direct manner possible - verbally. The cost-effective way for the small business owner is to look for web-based solutions and rent it cheap. This article attempts to explain that “way” in simple, non-technical terms the small business owner himself (or herself) can plan, implement and succeed.

Entering the social media field today isn’t late in the game. The entire world is still building the social media road. You can still join in. The question isn’t how you’re going to benefit from it – you know there are advantages in social media networking and social media marketing, and profits to be made out of it. The bigger question is “how?”

Everybody's gotten into the social media bug. Even grandparents have asked help to be taught and grandchildren painstakingly trying their best. Moms and Dads have gone awry on the social media bug. What was once the private realm of teens and yuppies has now been invaded by their parents, Uncles and Aunts. If e-mails and websites successfully made the world a smaller place a decade ago, social media networking sites have compounded it o a two-block radius.