October P.C. Productivity

Social media is useful for every type of business, small or large. Businesses can use it to enhance their reputation, to address customer or prospect concerns and to build trust. Social media enables businesses to engage in a conversation with people as a peer. The perception of a more personable, accessible, accountable business makes for more loyal supportive customers who rave to their friends about how good their products and services are.

Large companies have figured out how best to use social media to grow their business. Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) can emulate this success with a very low (or zero) budget.

#1 Local Social Networks
Services like Facebook and Foursquare allow businesses to create a list which shows their location and details of the services they provide. The social part is where customers are able to log a review, that others will read when deciding on, for example, a restaurant, hotel or DIY shop. Searches for businesses and services are based on a location, since these sites are used for businesses with a shop front.

#2 Facebook
A company Facebook fan page is like a company website but it allows you to build a community that wants to interact with you. Business can post messages, respond to fans' questions and thank them for their compliments. There are lots of ways to jazz up the fan page, running polls, making coupons available, installing free apps, posting videos, etc.

#3 Twitter
A company Twitter account can be used to keep people updated about company news using a short message called a "tweet". Examples of a message include the latest product updates, service outages or new executive appointments. Like Facebook, you gain followers who are interested in your company. It's a very instant form of communication and people follow Twitter updates on the web or on their mobile phone in realtime. Currently, a lot of large companies make great use of Twitter. As well as posting tweets, companies can search for what people are saying about their company and products (or competing products) using a tool such as TweetDeck or Twitter search.

#4 LinkedIn
LinkedIn is like Facebook for businesses. You can register your company profile on the site and provide all the information about your business that anyone would interested in seeing. As well as building a connection network, you can create discussion groups, answer questions from users, who could become prospects, host events or generate leads who you can make contact with directly through a LinkedIn search.