I  have to say, the fact that I participate in social media is a plus for my small business.

I enjoy Facebook and am getting educated on Twitter. Getting a personal response or retweet is so much fun. Ruby Gettinger (@RubyGettinger) , a reality TV personality & real life motivator was the 2nd person to follow me on Twitter. I'm sure her people found me because of the Ruby name. She follows 25 thousand people & when I commented on one of her tweets, I was so suprised when she, or her people, responded to just me. Very sweet of her/them.

4 years ago while working the MDA telethon I met local news anchor Care Pena. (@CareyPenaTV). She was really big into twitter and told me to jump in. I couldn't figure it but now I have. She responded to my tweet on Friday & recommend others follow me. That kind of activity is simply fun. Someone immediately started following me.

Searching twitter I have found new local vendors to consider, art studios to visit, bridal consultants to contact, & jewelry suppliers to add to my roster. Currently I follow 85 people & have 26 followers. Should be interesting to see where I am next year with Twitter.

Instagram is a picture ap on my iphone. I can upload or take a picture, tweak the look of the pic & then it immediately posts to Facebook & twitter. It's pretty helpful.

Dad signed me up for a Google account & I'm waiting patiently for a yelper to discover me on Yelp. I need to get yelp reviews to get higher in the yelp roster. Yelp is a phone ap where folks type in "jewelry" & it gives them a listing of all the locations around them that sell "jewelry". I'm listed under jewelry but I am at the bottom of the list because I haven't received reviews yet. People who yelp usually have money in hand and are looking for somewhere to go spend it. The profile of people who use Yelp is that they skew to a higher income & education & they use yelp instead of the white pages or Dex. I could pay to get to the top of yelp list but as a new start up, it's not in my budget yet.

This week a new client found me by googling buttons + Gilbert. She ordered two custom pieces. One for herself & one for a girlfriend.

Yesterday someone called and asked where my store was. She looked up bridal & my name popped up.

The more I do on the internet with twitter, Facebook, Google, yelp, my blog & my website, the more Ruby Mae's name will appear in searches.

Social media is very time consuming, but in the end, it's already been worth it.