By Kathryn Reed

FB friends, tweeting, linking. LOL without making noise. Emots with keyboard strokes.

Lost?

The Information Age can be mindboggling. Missy Potalivo, owner of Social Sense Marketing, is helping businesses make sense of it. Her business it all about creating an online social network for businesses.

“If you are stale for a week, you lose out. People don’t find you,” Potalivo said. “You have to constantly update posts.”

Missy Potalivo explains how social media helps businesses. Photo/Kathryn Reed

With print nearly dead when it comes to phonebooks and newspapers, it’s online where people are searching for businesses. Facebook isn’t just about finding out what friends did last night. People are using it to find businesses.

“Most people don’t want to buy a newspaper. They want to go online whenever they want something,” Potalivo said.

That is why the more places a business has an online presence, the greater likelihood there is of it popping up several times on the first page of a search.

Potalivo’s background is marketing. She worked for Pro Growth for seven years, where she became an expert in social media. Now the company is a client of hers.

She believes social media marketing is good for most businesses. The only one that hasn’t been a fit is a law firm because the lawyers kept fretting over legal issues.

Potalivo is also working with South Lake Tahoe’s program called TIES. It provides consulting and coaching to businesses.

What Potalivo finds is most small business owners don’t have the time or desire to put in the online work. They are too busy with day-to-day operation of the main business.

Many business owners may not like to be so connected personally, but it comes down to attracting customers and retaining them – the same principles of good business that have been used for generations.

Social media is a different way of marketing and advertising. All indicators point to online being the future of businesses and how people conduct business.

For a fee, which depends on how much work she does per month, Potalivo will create and maintain that online presence for businesses. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Blogspot and online newsletters are where she focuses her attention because that is where the public is mostly going.

She links a business’ FB account to the other sites to create a seamless flow of information.

“Social media marketing is not instant gratification,” Potalivo warns. “It can take six months. You have to be patient.”

The purpose is to drive clients/customers to a business’ website. It’s up to the business owner to have a viable website the public will use, or where they can find the information they seek, or see what they want that prompts a call or visit to the business.

For one of her real estate clients she takes the broker’s newsletter and pulls information from that to post online. It could be new listings or events in the area.

She likes her clients to have an ad on Facebook because they can be targeted to specific ages, cities or states, and interests. The cost is based on criteria selected for who could see the ad and then totaled per click. A maximum daily amount can be set.

Potalivo says this is much more cost-effective than adwords.

Analytics through FB show the number of clicks and impressions the ad has received. This, like advertising stats Lake Tahoe News and other online businesses can provide advertisers, is tangible feedback compared to old-school print.

For more information about Social Sense Marketing, email missy@SocialSenseMarketing.com.