6 Roles Social Media Can Play For Small Business

Social Media For Small Business Case Study

When doing research about social media what it can mean for your small business, I came across this Social Media Today article about a case study that was done by the Kreisler Group on a restaurant in Long Beach, California. They used only Facebook, Twitter and Flickr as the distributor of outgoing information for the restaurant. They worked with management to track sales and revenue over a 10-week period.

Social Media roles

This case study confirmed 6 additional roles social media could play in addition to being a sales generating tool for small business.

1)          Building loyalty and brand recognition: Sending out promotions via social media allows the user to experience the exclusivity being a follower or fan brings. Consistently messaging with new and updated information/content allows the audience to keep the establishment top of mind and interact more frequently.

2)          Word of mouth and communicating in real time: Sharing and re-tweeting have become an essential part of social media culture. Investing time and effort into creating quality content and promotions can and will be spread from audience members. Search technology can also help businesses target consumers with specific needs in real time. People are tweeting about needing your service or product right now. Are you communicating back?

3)          Customer Service: Because of social media’s real-time capabilities, businesses can now also react in real time to customer service inquiries. Did a customer have a great experience? Great, share that with your audience. Did a customer have a negative experience? Communicate with them directly to alleviate any issue and see how the business can help resolve any conflict.

4)          Public and Media Relations: With the addition of the 24 hour news cycle and the decline of print publications, news is becoming more hyper-local and online. Long Beach also saw its share of online news outlets, and all of them promoted their respective website via social networking. Thus, social media has provided a new way of pitching and sending information to journalists and publications.

5)          Collaboration of ideas and networking: Listening to a business’ audience can be just as important as disseminating information via social media. Through connections made via social media,  the restaurant was able to introduce successful new promotions and events through audience suggestion.  Businesses can also obtain customer feedback in a number of ways including other online services such as yelp.com or foursquare.com.

6)          Becoming an expert in your field: Facebook’s News Feed and Twitter essentially act as mini-blogs and can elevate an individual or business as an expert in the respective field.  The restaurant was able to communicate the knowledge of Latin American cuisine and dancing to an audience that was interested in that subject matter. It helped bring credibility to the restaurant and can help bring credibility to a business.

Conclusion

The Kreisler Group saw an immediate positive impact generated by the buzz of social media within sales, brand recognition, lead generation, customer service, public relations and networking for small business.

To read the full case study, go to
http://www.kreislermediagroup.com/images/social_media_case_study.pdf

To help your small business in getting started with social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking and Blogging), please visit the Social Media Project Starter Kit.