By creating accounts in Facebook and Twitter, managers of smaller businesses can easily track both positive and negative feedback comments made by their customers, by setting up RSS feeds. Understanding what an organization needs to work on and improve can greatly effect the customer satisfaction levels within your company. Social media also allows IT representatives to offer support through virtual chat rooms, which allow problems to be solved at a faster and more efficient rate, rather than responding to an automated voice messaging system.
In the article Six Reasons Companies Are Still Scared of Social Media, one main issue of why small businesses avoid social networking sites is the aspect that there is a fine line on offering either too many status updates or not enough. In other words you can be the annoying company or the unseen company. However, if a small business effectively manages their content, social media can enhance the company's image resulting in greater customer satisfaction and overall appreciation. On that note, social media is an important tool that should be used by businesses both large and small.
Social media can become the next generation tool for both small and medium business companies to get closer to consumers. This new tool is highly economical and cost effective. Social media network if used effectively can diminish the supremacy of large companies which uses billions of dollars to promote their products. For example Tiger Woods in 2009 earned 87 million dollars in brand endorsement alone. Small companies cannot afford this amount of money neither they have money for outbound promotional campaigns. Social media networking naturally becomes the preeminent choice for these companies to promote their products. Companies can use this medium for brand promotion, Networking and interacting with potential and new customers. Companies also use this tool to gather data and information to have better understanding of market trends and consumer needs. This new medium is now getting accepted by all sections of society .Now many large companies are also trying to understand their customers and match up with their expectations. I believe this as beginning of new marketing era.
ReplyDeleteI truly enjoyed reading the article you linked to on your blog, “Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media”. While reading several articles on small businesses and social media, I couldn’t help but think, “How can businesses successfully handle the Facebook comments of unsatisfied customers?” This article offered great insight to answering that question. It states, “If you have built an online community that includes people who don’t hate you, that community will rise to your defense and they will handle the problem for you.” I saw that happen this week, where a small photography business hosted a Facebook competition, and when declaring the winner, someone was so unhappy with the results, he decided to voice his opinion on the business’s page. He said that the competition had been unfair and that the business was terrible. A few minutes later, dozens of people were letting him know how great the business was and how fair the competition had been, and even sent him off to read the rules. Obviously, the small business had a group of people who loved the business and took care of the brand management themselves. Of course, in the end it is also important for the small business owner himself to deal with the customer either publicly or privately, not only to “look good to the customer” but also because this one customer may be saying something important that may help the company improve the ways it conducts its business.
ReplyDeleteOnline social marketing brings important opportunities to the small businesses' field. I agree that an effectively managed strategy of this resource can channel a stronger brand image. The uncertainty in this is what exactly “effectively managed” means. As stated in a recent CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/04/08/social.media.small.biz/index.html)
ReplyDelete"some of the companies that have been very successful with social media have not had any kind of strategy” and it is still unclear how to implement a successful marketing approach using this tool. A trial and error method to detect what is more suitable for a small business could be extremely harmful for an enterprise trying to find its way between budget limitations and the imperative necessity of improving customer awareness and brand recognition.
Tovah your point that social media is an excellent tool to be used by small businesses is duly noted. However I would like to point to an article that I used for my post which included the results of a survey which showed that despite the significant increase in the use of social media by small businesses in the last year, many of these companies experienced experienced no change in their profit situation and some of them even incurred a loss. The obsession by small businesses on the use of social media has become an epidemic. With so many businesses flooding the social media market the chances of a small business actually being noticed in the now massive pool is shrinking. Small businesses need to focus on more traditional techniques and incorporate social media marketing into their overall strategy, not the other way around.
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