How Important is Social Media for Small Business?

Here is a real life experience that I am sure many of you can relate to. My brother was having problems with the brand new dishwasher he had bought few days ago. He called the manufacturer and after waiting for 15 minutes on phone was told to try couple of things that would fix the problem. Well, it did not. He called back. After waiting for another 15 minutes was told to try something else. This went on for few iterations. Frustrated he took his complaint to Facebook and Twitter. And guess what? 5 minutes after posting his complaint a real-life technical person from the company asked him to contact him directly. Not only did he not have to wait for 15 minutes, but the technical rep figured out exactly what was wrong and fixed the problem in a matter of 1 hour.

Now, I don’t know about you, but next time I have a problem with an appliance guess where I will be going for resolution? This is the power of social media these days. The internet is flooded with social media stories like this. When you think about it you can understand why businesses are monitoring the social media sites so closely. It doesn’t take long for a story to reach to thousands, and even millions, of people in a short time. If not monitored and responded carefully and quickly it has the potential to do serious damage to your brand and business.

Are small businesses immune from such damage? I don’t think so. If anything, they stand to lose even more compared to large corporations from poorly managed social media presence. Large corporations have dedicated teams that can monitor social media for any type of reference to their company. They can also respond to them quickly. Small businesses simply do not have resources to monitor it 24×7 and respond quickly. That’s why it becomes important for them to understand the social media and deploy their limited resources carefully.

Don’t get me wrong. Not everything about social media is filled with horror stories. In fact, when used properly it can do wonders for small businesses. Not only can it help you prevent damage to your business from bad reports from customers, but it can also help you build strong brand, develop relationship with customers and improve overall business if used properly. I will show number of ways in which small businesses can use social media to their benefit in later posts.

So, how important is social media to small businesses? I think it has become invaluable tool that you have to come to grip with and learn how to use properly. Yes social media is double edged sword and it can hurt you if not managed properly, but it can also help you improve your business significantly. Don’t believe me? Do a search on Google with the keyword “social media stories” and you will know what I am talking about.

What is your view? Any stories from your personal experience you would like to share with the readers? Let me know in the comments below.

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