How have you all persuaded or shown clients that social media truly can bring a profit for small businesses?

@mikid15   @milan-steskal

I usually provide examples.  If you don’t have your own, there are tons of social media success stories out there.  Just do a search for “social media success stories”.  I believe there is an article or two on SME that have some examples as well. 

What I find is it’s not so much about persuading the clients.  It needs to make sense and most of all there needs to be a reason behind jumping into social media.  A lot of business owners and marketers think they need to be on social networks because others are doing it when that’s not really the case.  It needs to be done strategically and with purpose or you’re wasting your time and the client’s money.
You need to figure out how social media will benefit them whether it be awareness, customer service, establishing authority, etc. and explain how social media will provide the solution.  If it makes sense to the client, it’s a no-brainer.

SME post by the carpenter lady in Alaska is a fine example. She uses Pinterest to draw three million page views every month.

She writes a do-it-yourself carpentry blog to help women discover they can build beautiful, stylish things.
My (millionaire) cousin has a FB page to help people learn how to do short sales

Choose multiple examples like these from different fields so people can’t tell you that ‘of course they can do it’. 

@mikid15 @milan-steskal I start off by explaining what social media is … Anywhere you can have a dialogue on the Internet. Then I ask what are there target market demographics (so I can see where their target market frequents). Then I suggest social media assets that will reach their demographic and will allow them to shine as an expert in their field. Most people know that if they are recognized as an expert in their field they will gain trust and then clients. I suggest non traditional forms of social media to meet the clients specific niche/demographic. Not everyone should be on Facebook!