We work with small business owners and independent professionals, and quite often hear things like, “I don’t even have a fan page yet” or “I created a Twitter and Pinterest account a while back, but never did anything with either”.

Don’t worry for one second if you are late to the social media game! Sure, those early adopters do have certain advantages over you, but you are in a good position, too. Here’s why:

4 Benefits to Getting Started Late with Social Media

• Social media platforms are more established Those of us who have been with a platform since its early days remember – and have endured – all the growing pains changes those platforms have gone through. Not that platforms will never change again, but rather, features and functionality (including advertising options) have been introduced and fine-tuned along the way.
• Learn from Others’ (Mistakes) Assuming you are doing all that you can to learn about social media best practices, getting started late with social media for your business means you have a much better chance to do it right the first time. You get to look, watch, and analyze your competition’s profiles and activity, and determine exactly what you do and don’t want to do before beginning.
• It’s Easier to Learn when your Accounts are New A much less desirable situation would be that you had accounts that used to be active (or accounts that you purchased a bunch of likes or followers for), and you need to do follower clean up plus spend time getting reacquainted with each profile. Having a small amount of followers on any given profile means you can spend more focused time interacting with and organizing those you follow and those who follow you.
• It’s Easier to Perform Well when your Accounts are New This likely seems counterintuitive, but a brand new Facebook page typically gets a much higher percentage Reach than an established page. It’s also easier to see the most important stuff your customers and potential customers are tweeting/pinning/posting when you have almost no noise in the feed and not tons of people you are following (and having to wade through to find your customers’ content).

It’s never too late to get started with social media for your business. So, where would you like to begin?