While companies now hire firms and employees to run their social media operations, using the medium will become a basic job skill like typing or photocopying.
"It won't be much longer" until that happens, said Jay Baer, a social media consultant and co-author of "The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social."
Baer was the featured speaker Tuesday at Big River Advertising, which brought in Baer for the Richmond ad agency's 10th anniversary celebration. About 200 people attended the breakfast at the agency's Tobacco Row office.
Baer said businesses need to embrace social media as a way to do business or face getting left behind.
Over the long run, customers will cease to turn to companies that don't have a social media presence, he said.
He compares social media to the advent of the telephone, the fax machine and the Internet, each familiar now but at the time revolutionary.
Fred Moore, Big River's founder, president and CEO, said he couldn't have imagined social media when he started the agency. "Ten years ago Google was new and Facebook wasn't even invented. Now everything is mobile."
Baer cautions that businesses need to make sure they are using social media correctly.
Having a Twitter feed, a Facebook page or posting videos on YouTube isn't enough, he said. A company needs to use the platforms to help tell its story and hear what customers are saying — good or bad.
If a company stinks, Twitter is not to blame, Baer said. "Social media doesn't cause your problem, it magnifies it."
Listening is important because consumers, thanks to mobile technology, can post on websites and send tweets immediately on their phones.
Modern communication moves at the speed of thought, he said.
To properly listen to customers, companies need to pay attention to what consumers say about products, competitors and employees.
Businesses also need to acknowledge the positive and address the negative.
"The four words you need to be successful in social media are 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry,' " Baer said. "If you just do that, you'll be in good shape."
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