The small business column with Kehlan Kirwan

In this week’s column, Kehlan Kirwan looks at the power of social media in business, and why online communities have started to become more powerful than the platforms themselves.    

In recent years we, as a business community, have become quite enamoured with social media. So much so, that you begin to wonder how social it can be to interact more with a smartphone than with other people.

But, in recent years there has been a powerful shift in social media from the individual to the collective. Facebook is filled with groups who are coming together under a one-page banner. Twitter provides the ease of hashtags in which people can put their views across to collectives by tagging onto the conversation.

This has created the likes of #IrishBizParty, #StartupIreland, and more localised ones such as #Galwayhour and #CorkHour. However, the wall of social media has come down and businesses now add value to their social media skills by meeting up in person and having tweetups.

Last week, I was at a new multi-platform social media experience which has arrived in Co Clare. #DigitalClare is the brainchild of the Clare Local Development Company which developed the idea after seeing the need for businesses and communities to span geography and connect with each other.

Through the storms and the howling wind, people from all over the county turned up at the Templegate Hotel and turned the launch of #DigitalClare into a night of people using social media to highlight their community and their businesses. From balloon sculptors to make-up artists and pubs, the night was alive with people, not smartphones.

This is what happens when people take the power of social media and turn it into something real and tangible. It wasn’t about retweets or likes; it was about finding the people behind the cover photos. So, this is what happens when you make tech secondary to human interaction — you make real connections.

Followers and reach isn’t enough any more; you have to let the person behind it emerge and be the face that people connect with.

In business, networking and connections are important, but we no longer buy products and services based on price alone. We want the people and stories which give a sense that the person behind the business is more than 140 characters. More and more, we are seeing the online world creep into the real world. I see you in digital, but I want to know you in the actual.

Some things never change: Business is nothing without its people, whether that is the person who owns it or the people that work for it. Social media should be the means to an end, not the only means you have.

So, the need to develop a strategy encompassing reality with digital is a must now. Through this, businesses can develop a real and lasting connection with clients, customers, and the public.

When I produce the Small Business Show, a lot of the people I talk to have come from social media.

I see an interesting business and I go and find their website. Then I ring them up to hear from the person behind the business. This has made my job easier but has not taken away from the fact that it’s the story that sells a business, not a post or a tweet.

It has given businesses the platform to stretch out into a vast population of users in a short space of time, but social media can only open the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.