Social media is now the vogue: Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube, LinkedIn, among others. The internet is bubbling with lots of them and not a few people are signing on by the second. It is also no longer just a tool for social interaction; it has become an important business tool.
As business-oriented individuals are making friends and reuniting with lost friends through it, they are also utilising it to promote and sell their products and services. In fact, experts say that social media has become a viable medium for driving customer growth and increasing profit.
Social media can be described as an interactive website, a website that does not just give you information, but interacts with you, while giving you that information, says Daniel Nations in an article, ‘What is Social Media?‘, published on www.about.com. Writing in the e-book,‘Let‘s Talk: Social Media for Small Business‘, John Jantsch says, Social media is the use of technology to co-create, know, like, and trust.
In other words, businesses can use social media not only to create awareness for their product and services, but also make customers and potential customers to like and trust them.
From all indications, social media seems not just a one-off fad, like telephone, radio,television and other older communication media, it has come to stay. According to the online competitive intelligence service, Compete.com, social media growth continues to increase in leaps and bounds. It reveals that the top three social networks-Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn-collectively received more than 2.5 billion visits in the month of September 2009 alone. Twitter grew by more than 600 percent in 2009, while Facebook grew by 210 per cent and LinkedIn by 85 per cent.
In fact, checks at website of Alexa, the web information compay, www.alexa.com, reveals that at present, Google is the only website that receives more daily traffic than the elephant of the social media, Facebook. Given that towards the end of 2009, Yahoo was receiving more daily traffic than Facebook, there is every possibility that before 2010 runs out, Facebook might overtake Google. Little wonder, Jantsch notes that if Facebook were a country, it would be the world‘s fourth largest.
Quoting Compete.com, Jantsch notes that the most recent count of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million, while on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period. YouTube, he says, served around 75 billion(or more) video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during 2009. The online photo sharing site Flickr, now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images while the online bookmarking service, Delicious has more than five million users and more than 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.
So how can social media benefit small businesses? A major advantage of social media is free. Imagine advertising your product or service in a medium where over one billion people will likely see it. That, no doubt, is priceless.
According to brand and social media expert, Mr. Yinka Olaita, ”social media has provided an equaliser for any business, no matter how small, to communicate, build engagement, support and word of mouth opportunities” He adds that social media is all about what people say and business success is premised on what the targets are saying today. People listen to their friends more than what a business says. There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give any business a platform to reach it customers with zero or no financial cost like social media”.
Contributing in a recent debate, ‘Does Social Media have value?‘ on www.brandchannel.com, a creative director in a marketing firm, Mr. Andy Mr. Baker, says: ”Like the rise of the website, developing a social media presence has become the new ‘must have‘ (or This Year‘s Model, Costello fans). The key is not just to have, but to understand how it fits into your overall communication strategy. There is no doubt that, for some brands, it is a powerful channel that facilitates a dialogue with the audience in an environment where they feel able to express their opinions more openly. To me, this is gold dust. few other channels offer this, and the clincher is this: if people like it, and all the stats say they do, then it‘s here to stay.
But in using social media for business promotion, experts warn that caution should be exercised. ”We must always remember that even though this is a media platform like any other media channels, the ‘social ‘in front of this media is a clear signal to its usage. You do not want to go to a party and all that you hear are sales pitch. Unnecessary ego- promotion, ‘me too‘ game destroys a business tactic in a social media platform”, warns Olaito, who is also the President of the Social Media Club, Nigeria.
He adds that lack of sensitivity to platform rules must be avoided. ”Each social media platform has rules. Learn the platform‘s language instead of using industry grammar. Intolerance is another social media abuse by business owners. They may not know how to handle negative feedback, hence most of them use abusive and ‘F‘ words when handling negative comments”.
To Jantsch, however, ”The savvy audience can be turned off if approached in the wrong way. Use these new tools properly and they will prove to be invaluable in your effort to strengthen existing customer relationships and capture the hearts and minds of new consumers”.
So how best can social media be utilised to boost customer growth and increase profit? Again Olaito says that ”Businesses on social media require human face. So business owners need to downplay the use of industry jargon, be real and communicate as human not as a programmed robot. There is need to also promote compelling, creative content that will help the business audience”
According to him, ”Businesses should also learn to add value to discussion and help customers who have problems understanding their products. More importantly, to increase profit and customer growth business should realise that perception, reputation, image is important. So business owners must use social media to enhance, manage their reputations and perceptions among other key issues. Businesses must share generously. The foundation of solid relationship is based on sharing, respect and value.”
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