On the flip side of yesterday’s post, Why Understanding Your Customers is Vital to Your Social Media Strategy, social media can also be an extremely powerful tool for understanding your customers. Before the wide-spread use of social media, companies would have to spend thousands of dollars on having market research, surveys, studies, etc. done so they could understand what their customers wanted and were willing to pay for. This pretty much left any type of customer or market research in the hands of large companies who could afford to pay for the information. With social media you’re able to gather much of this information directly by finding, listening and asking your customers online.
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News & Notes
7 Tips for Integrating Social Media Into Your Day
Finding time to spend on social media is a big problem for many businesses, especially small businesses where owners may be already wearing a lot of hats. If you’re the salesperson, the administrator and the person performing the work, where do you find time to socialize? Businesses may be starting to realize the value of social media, but actually using it can be especially difficult. Here are some tips for integrating social media into your day:
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Social Media is Part of Your Resume & Portfolio
Jim Connolly‘s post on WebProNews today, Remember Who can Read Your Tweets, is a great reminder that whatever is said on social media is not only part of your permanent record, it’s probably also something that potential customers actively look at. Jim has an especially good example:
I used to follow someone, who was always tweeting about how stupid his clients were. He never named them, but would tweet what he called the stupid questions they were asking him. In other words, any of his clients reading his twitter stream, would know he was insulting them, from the questions he was making fun of with his friends. Is he free to do that if he wants to? Yes (thankfully). Would I recommend him to one of my clients or contacts, knowing he may insult them in that way? Not a chance! – Remember Who Can Read Your Tweets by Jim Connolly (WebProNews)
Young adults have been struggling with this problem for a few years — youthful indiscretions often popup in searches made by recruiters. Now that social media is much more prevalently used by companies as well as consumers looking for information to guide their purchase decisions, what is said online can have a definitely impact on future sales. There’s still something to be said for having a personality and being personable online, but keep in mind that anyone, including potential clients can see what you’re saying (and have said).