3 Ways To Effectively Use Social Media

Posted by Jason Kienbaum on Aug 26, 2010 in Online Marketing, Small Business Marketing | 3 comments

Still wondering if it is worth your time to be on multiple social media platforms for your business? Maybe you’re ready to dive further into the social media world, but just don’t know what the best way is to use these free tools. If you are still struggling to come up with the best social media plan for your business look at using these three ways social media can benefit your customers and followers.

Customer Service

More and more companies are looking to use social media as a customer service element. With having a social media account dedicated to answering the questions of your customers and potential customers you actually save money by not having to have an expensive land line plan. I have seen small businesses funnel almost all of their customer service through social media mainly on Twitter and use email or Skype if someone is in need of a more in-depth answer if the problem can not be solved through a social media platform. I think this is definitely the place to begin for a bootstrap start up business looking to have a strong customer service piece. I have seen that customers are open to using social media this way because many are already users of social media and prefer to use the less intimidating social media compared to phone or even email. However, before you make the move to use social media for customer service, look at your current customers and how they prefer to communicate. If the product or service that you offer is targeted to the laggards of the internet then using social media would not be the place for customer service.

Post Sale Education

After someone has actually bought your product or service where do you send them for more information and tips so they can have a successful experience with your product or service? Many choose to just send their customers to the company website, but a lot can be accomplished by using social media. Many times people want to connect with others who use your products or services so why not place your how to videos on Facebook and let others leave comments and form their own Q & A group. Let your customers point out ways they have had success with your product or service.

Crisis Management

We have all had to deal with some negative comment or a negative review at some point in our business’s history. We know that the best way to handle this negativity that is directed to us is to be proactive about it and fix the problem. Once the problem is corrected we need to have a visible way for those to see how we have handled the situation.

Question Of The Day:

How are you using social media for your business? Is it in any of these three ways?