What can social media really do for your business?

There's a lot of talk about - and a fair bit of dabbling in - the various media known as "social" by small businesses and women are known to make up the majority of users of popular social media sites, yet a recent study suggests that women business owners might not be making as much of this opportunity as they could.  With over 60% of respondents saying that they do not track their social media presence and 24% saying they use no social media at all this indicates that there's plenty of scope for us to up our game.  But how should we tackle this opportunity?

The thing to remmeber with social media is the "social" bit.  Businesses that treat these new media in the way they do traditional media, that is as a monolgue at their customers, will miss out.  Social media is about a dialogue where you listen as much (if not more) than you talk.  It's about sharing information and building relationships, not a "hard sell". 

Recent research from Experian shows that consumers are craving more and more a personal approach although, surprisingly, it doesn't talk about any forms of social media in this respect.  But the current hot topic in social media marketing, the Old Spice man, is an archetype of a well-planned social media campaign that takes personalisation to hilarious lengths as campaign star, Isaiah Mustafa, responds personally by specially flimed YouTube videos to individual tweets about the campaign.

Of course, the budget for this type of campaign is well beyond the small business but we can all take inspiration from the way that different forms of social media have been integrated to create an impact greater than the sum of its parts.  We should also be ensuring that our social media presence dovetails as neatly with our offline promotional activities.

And this is where we can leave the dabbling and neglected Twitter accounts behind and start taking a more planned and cohesive approach to communicating with our customers online.  Why not share with us your social media success stories by posting a comment?

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PS See also Influence is Bliss: The Gender Divide of Influence on Twitter - time to become one of those influencers?