Posted by Patrick Murphy on Fri, Mar 05, 2010
Today's question is "how can social media help my business". In yesterday's blog we answered the question "How Google grew my business" so now we move on to a social media question. Before we go into the question "how can social media hep my business" let's try to define what social media is. Social media can be described as an online media or network that encourages contribution and feedback from the general public. Social media is also open to public participation where they encourage comments and the sharing of views or information. The principle of social media is the ability to build communities quickly and effectively around people that share a common interest or passion.
That is fine but how can social media help my business or your business. There are two answerers to that, one is to listen and the second is to engage. But for today's blog I will cover how just by listening social media can help my business grow and become more responsive.
First part on how can social media help my business is that it tells me what it right and what it wrong with my service or products. If I use Hootsuite as an example you can see some of the views of people on Twitter below. By just listening to social media they can now address the areas that they need to improve and where their strengths lie.
Second reason on how can social media help my business is that I can also listen to what people are saying about my competition or my industry. Let's stick with the Hootsuite example and see what they can learn from listening to tweets about Tweetdeck. This will tell Hootsuite where they are behind their competition and the areas the areas that they need to improve.
So how can social media help my business, even by just listening to what people are saying is a very powerful tool quickly analysis where my brand, products or completion is standing in today's market. But what if you do not have a brand like Hootsuite, what you have is an industry. To win in any market or industry to need to know what is happening now and in the future and the only way to do that is to listen. Your clients come to you as the experts and as such should know everything!
This is just the tip of "how can social media help my business" so next week SiliconCloud are running a webinar on what we can learn from Google to grow your business where we will go into more detail on social media and how social media can help your business. Check it out at: Learn from Google to grow my business.