Social Media Partners opens shop in Traverse City

Starting and running a small business is definitely full of complications, hard work and demands on your time. For some business owners, social media, while a needed part of their business, just doesn't fit into their schedule. That's how a new firm in Traverse City, Social Media Partners, saw an opportunity for their services.

Social Media Partners just opened its doors in Traverse City, led by Christine Stalsonburg. She has spent the last few years in the real estate business, and saw that she had the skills needed to help businesses with their social media challenges.

"The more and more I spoke with small business owners, the more I realized that although businesses recognize the value of social media, they do not have the time to dedicate to navigating all of the options out there, implementing them in the business and maintaining the sites," Stalsonburg says. "I have extensively used social media over the past four years in my real estate business and was looking for a new business opportunity. I decided to hang up my Realtor shingle and launch Social Media Partners."

The company uses Facebook, Twitter, blogging, YouTube, and other social media sites and outlets, in whatever combination suits their clients best. That can be a pretty individual process; Stalsonburg says the first thing she does with every new client is analyze their business to see what they want to get out of social media and what the best ways to accomplish those goals are.

"By outsourcing their social media, companies can concentrate on doing what they do best; running their business. I will take care of building their online presence through the social media sites that are right for their business," she says.

She notes that more than 80 percent of Americans now use some form of social media, so it's a communication mode that isn't going away, and is only growing and developing as time passes. Luckily for most small businesses, social media presence and marketing is significantly less costly than other forms of traditional marketing, she says.

Social Media Partners is located at 1060 Schmidt Way in Traverse City and can be reached by email or, of course, online.

Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: Christine Stalsonburg, Social Media Partners