7 Interesting Ways Small Business can Use Social Media

When small business owners hear about social media their attention immediately goes to Facebook and Twitter. They think of social media as a place where customers go to gossip and complain about their businesses or where business owners can go to publicize their products. This limited view doesn’t do full justice to the potential social media holds for small businesses. There is lot more to social media than just Facebook postings and Twitter broadcasts. We showed how you can use other interesting social media tools as well as some emerging social media tools in earlier posts. In this post we will review how you can use those and other tools in interesting ways to improve your business.

1. Customer Service – We all know customers are using social media tools to share their experience and complain about your business. But, do you know you can turn the table on them and use those same tools to improve customer service? When a customer is complaining on sites like Yelp you can respond to legitimate complaints and offer to make things right for them. Now, you have not only addressed the customer complaint and gained a satisfied customer, but others will also see the attention you are providing to customer service and improve the perception they hold about your business.
2. Marketing – This is how many small businesses use social media these days. You can set up a Facebook page, create a Twitter account and show off your business brand in various settings. In addition to those standard tools you should also look into creating your own blog and discussion forum where you can maintain better control of the situation.
3. Industry Research – Customers are talking about their likes and dislikes on social media sites all the time. This is also the place where you can see how leading edge consumers see future of products in your business. Is there a growing trend towards healthier food? Are greasy burgers and pizza on their way out? By monitoring discussions about your industry you can comprehend the impact these trends will have on your business and position it to benefit from them. This is how McDonald’s transformed itself from purveyor of burgers to healthy salads and smoothies and enjoyed tremendous success in the last 5 years.
4. Competitive Analysis – Just as customers are talking about your business on social media they are doing the same for your competitors. Are you listening to what they have to say about them? If they are raving about their new products and marketing you know you have a serious challenge ahead. On the other hand, if the complaints against them have increased lately you can take advantage of the situation and invite those dissatisfied customers to your business.
5. Product Testing – Social media is the best place to test new products before launching them. While you cannot run expensive focus groups in the same fashion as large competitors you can invite your Facebook fans and customers to vote on new features. This is a low-cost way of trying new things before taking on bigger risk. The software developers do this all the time with the release of their product to limited group of people in “Beat Testing”.
6. Product Improvement – You can take testing one step further and seek customers’ help in improving your product. Many customers are already providing their unsolicited input in various sites such as YouTube. Why not monitor those sites and learn from them? Even better, why not provide them a platform where they can regularly provide improvement suggestions directly to you?
7. Financing – This is perhaps newest and most overlooked benefit of social media. A number of sites have been launched recently where individuals and small business owners ask others for loans with what is called peer-to-peer lending. In this difficult economic times, when banks have reduced small business lending significantly, these sites can help you get the money from other individuals who are willing to lend. Look for companies such as Prosper or Lendio to help with your financing.

How else have you used social media to improve your business? Let us know in the comments below.