By: Kevin Voisin

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." -Buddha

The recent explosive growth of social media has been as surprising to some business owners as it has been dramatic.  I am often confronted with business owners who don't understand how people have time for social media and are skeptical about whether or not it can really help their business to be successful.  

When considering whether or not to participate in social media, it is important to understand that while the technological platform may be new, social media is as old as time.  Prehistoric paintings on cave walls are not all that different from the prolific sharing of pictures and video on Facebook walls when you stop and think about it.  It changes your perspective on social media when you realize the first wall posts happened well before 8000 B.C.  What's even more interesting is that even today so many thousands of years later we still dedicate pages in school books, magazines, news features, and weeks in travel time to the ancient wall posts of anonymous pre-historic men who had something to share.

Today's small businesses would be very short sighted not to find ways to share information and ideas with their customers.  Even more importantly, companies can leverage social media to observe and listen to what ideas their customers are sharing.  In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Our best thoughts come from others."  Being a source of inspiration and a resource for important information to your customers is an invaluable asset to your small business.   Your clients will reward you by sharing your words, posts, and messages and by developing a loyalty and positive impression of you that traditional marketing simply cannot achieve.  And thankfully, one major difference in today's social media is, unlike its prehistoric counterpart, the benefits can start rolling your way in a matter of days and weeks instead of centuries or millennia!