Cortez (2011) notes “Marketing and advertising is the key to any small business success. This began with direct selling, evolved into advertisements with flyers, posters, then emails, websites, and now electronic ads on social networking sites. Targeting the appropriate customers is the best way to anticipate and meet the needs of those customers.” According to Dodds (2012, p.1) “Social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the like – are all ways to connect with people.” The benefits of using social networks are: you can get feedback from a number of people, numbers of followers of different classes; it is quick to respond, it is free, informal and objective (Dodds, 2012). Disadvantages which you can get are: you have no control of responses and people who give you them might be not part of your target audience or advice silly suggestions, make people feel they have ownership or they can feel slighted if you do not take their advice (Dodds, 2012). Groups in social networks can help you to focus on your business and groups can feel association with your business (Dodds, 2012).
According to Jantsch (2012) Facebook is the most popular social network. Jantsch (2012, p.20) notes “Social networks allow people to join, and “friend” members or invite others to join and then share and exchange information.” Dodds (2012, p.1) gave an example how to create and increase relationship with your customers, using Facebook: “The car salesman who leaves a link for £10 off an oil change on a customer's Facebook wall.” Jantsch (2012) states Facebook is very popular for small businesses which popularity is still growing and more useful, than other social networks, such as Twitter. Also small businesses can show their Web presence which Facebook allows viewing even for non-Facebook users. According to Jantsch (2012) you can create on Facebook only business account, private profile and business fan page or personal profile