Improving business processes

Already, many clever businesses have found ways to use social media to
improve business processes. Though individual applications depend on the
nature of your business, consider leveraging social media to

✦ Promptly detect and correct customer problems or complaints
✦ Obtain customer feedback and input on new product designs or changes
✦ Provide tech support to many people at one time; if one person has a
question, changes are good that others do, too

Branding

Basic marketing focuses on the need for branding, name recognition, visibility,
presence, or top-of-mind awareness. Call it what you will — you want
people to remember your company name when they’re in need of your
product or service. Social media services, of almost every type, are excellent
ways to build your brand.

Social media works for branding as long as you get your name in front of
the right people. Plan to segment the audience on the large social media
services. You can look for more targeted groups within them or search for
specialty services that may reach fewer people overall but more of the ones
who are right for your business.

Understanding the Benefits of Social Media

Social media marketing carries many benefits. One of the most of important
is that you don’t have to front any cash for most services. Of course, there’s
a downside: Most services require a significant investment of time to initiate
and maintain a social media marketing campaign.

As you read the list of benefits, think about whether the benefit is one that
applies to your needs. How important is it to your business? How much time
are you willing to allocate to it? What kind of a payoff would you expect?

Making the Business Case for Social Media

In the best of all worlds, social media — a suite of online services that
facilitates two-way communication and content sharing — can become
a productive component of your overall marketing strategy. These services
can enhance your company’s online visibility, strengthen relationships with
your clients, and expand word-of-mouth advertising, which is the best type.

Given its rapid rise in popularity and its hundreds of millions of worldwide
users, social media marketing sounds quite tempting. These tools require
minimal upfront cash and, theoretically, you’ll find customers flooding
through your cyberdoors, ready to buy. It sounds like a no-brainer — but it
isn’t.