But everyone else has it!

Yesterday I took my daughter shopping for new shoes. I keep telling her to stop growing but she refuses to do so. As we looked at the selection of cool light up shoes and purely athletic shoes she was a bit overwhelmed. I tried to narrow it down to the least expensive of the shoes, showing her and trying to get her read on what she liked.

Finally, after trying on the "athletic" shoe with purple glistening stripes on each side she looked up a shoe I kept bypassing because it looked so plain. She said, "Savannah has those shoes" and I thought okay, let's take a look.

When I opened the box the shoe actually came with little charm bling across the toe attached to the grommets and two sets of laces to be laced together (pink & white). She was sold and the price was right.

The day made me think of how well social marketing works. She saw a friend with them, she wanted them too. Then I realized, kids have been doing this for years, albeit sometimes it was annoying to be reminded of what their friends had!

Social media is just one more channel that is presented to people amongst all the other clutter on the internet (search engines, websites, text ads, banner ads, video etc.) and off the internet (television, radio, billboards etc.) who can really make a choice with all of this going on?

But the one thing social media does offer is the "but everyone else has . . . " in a more grown up form of course. And if everyone else has it, then it must be the thing I need too!

Not only is social media more important than ever (hey, facebook gets more traffic than Google!) it's also a great supplement to testimonials or customer comments already on your website.

And, speaking of social marketing -- it's time for me to get to work socializing on behalf of my clients. Have a terrific Monday!