Small businesses should embrace social networking

My Google Alerts came to me on Wednesday, as always, but something I didn't expect was there...a post by Paula Henry, a local real estate agent in Indianapolis. Paula's blog talked about how valuable and necessary an inventory is. She mentioned that if you do create an inventory, you'll most likely find a lot of items that you forgot you own, some of them possibly 'gadgets' you don't know how to use. She then seamlessly moved the discussion over to a company called Noobie. The remarkable thing about this is that Patrick Welch, President of Noobie, Inc., and Mike & I, owners of Hartman Inventory, are friends, but she has never met either of us! (Do you see an opportunity to co-market here?)

I emailed her and asked how she learned about us, stating the different social networking sites we're on. She replied that she's in all those places as well, but Twitter was the winner this time. Her remarks: I occasionally go looking for people in Indianapolis and found you and your company. When Twitter first started, I was hooked up with all Realtors and people in the real estate industry. Well, that doesn't make much sense, so I started looking at Indiana specific places and ended up at Smaller Indiana and the Twitter group there...... the rest is history. I keep looking for and finding businesses and services which I think are of value to my clients.

For those of you who still question the value of social networking, this is a classic example of why it is worth your time, and how it helps your business. We most likely would have never touched Paula's contacts...but because of Twitter, we have!