The past few years has shown a new trend of customers using social media for their customer service needs. This is something that companies are either not aware of or simply not staying on top of. In order to be effective as a small business owner in the 21^st century, you will need to understand how beneficial social media feedback can be for your company. Social networking feedback is unique in the aspect that this feedback will take place in a public forum. Every post that a customer makes on your profile is public and can be viewed by anyone that accesses your profile. The world is watching! This is the perfect opportunity to respond to this issue at hand while addressing anyone else that will view the post. You should always treat these responses as if you are on stage. This is a performance and you definitely have an audience to take into consideration.

The first rule of responding to social networking feedback is to make sure that you are able to respond in a very timely fashion. You need to treat your social media customers with the same level of respect that you would show a customer if they were to walk directly into your store. A big difference between social media and your small business is that social media is open 24 hours a day. You will have to decide if this is something that you want to monitor during your closed hours or if you want to address any late-night posts the minute that you get into work. The goal should always be able to respond to every post within 18 – 24 hours at the latest.

All posts should be responded to including those that are positive feedback. Unlike other forms of communication, social media allows for a more casual and conversational atmosphere. Make sure to show your appreciation to anyone that has taken the time to share kind words about your company. While it is important to make sure that you are professional and representing your brand accurately at all times, social media does allow for a more casual approach to dealing with both satisfied and angry customers. By responding to your posts in a positive and timely manner you will be encouraging other people to leave posts and interact with you. This sort of direct interaction with your customers is what makes social networking so unique and so powerful.

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Some people think that staying away from social media and the Internet as a whole is the right thing to do. This is so unbelievably wrong that I feel as though a kick to the hiney is necessary to anyone with this mindset. Thankfully, it’s extremely rare for companies to not even have its own website. The few that don’t, however, certainly are in for some major damage control when the time comes. And yes, the time will come. No one is immune to the harsh words written by frequent Internet junkies as they are called.

Let’s say you own a mom and pop coffee joint. The business is steady due to the regulars frequent it and its primo location. Because business has been doing so well, you make the decision to stay away from the Internet all together. You lack the time to do it yourself, and you’d rather save the money then pay for a third party to take care of it. A family comes in and has an awful experience. They find the food and drinks to be horrible and the service even worse.

What’s most unfortunate about this experience is that a teenage girl who is active on social media is a part of this family. She feels the need to complain on Twitter and Facebook discouraging all her Internet friends from going there. While the loss of her couple hundred friends isn’t a big deal, her posts have had an even bigger effect. Your business’s lack of online presence means that when someone Googles your business, her comments will be the first and only things to show up. Everyone looking up your business online, which is sure to be a lot, will only see that and thus be turned off from ever going there.

In an attempt to counteract these negative comments, you scramble to create all the major social platforms. You then spend a great deal of your time flooding the timeline and news feeds with relevant and positive content hoping it will push down the initial comments further into the endless void that can come from a Google search results page. Had you already been active on social media and even operated your own site for the coffee shop, that teenage girl’s comments would have never made it onto the first page of Google.

It’s not necessary to post daily and operate a high tech, fancy website just as long as your name is out there in your own terms. Of course, doing the whole online marketing thing will only help matters. You might as well establish a brand for yourself online now before you have to deal with any of that. Even if you provide the best quality services and products, you can’t please everyone, so be proactive about your online marketing efforts.

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Any small business online should embrace all of the benefits that are associated with creating a strong understanding of social media. When discussing social media, Facebook remains the most popular, most used social network that has the most active users. One of the biggest benefits of a business Facebook page has to be brand identity and brand recognition. Facebook presents an opportunity for companies to interact with their customers in real time in an environment that is more casual than traditional marketing. This allows a company to express its personality while communicating with its customer base.

Unlike personal Facebook profiles, business pages are indexed by all of the major search engines. This creates an excellent opportunity achieving traffic-driven success. Any time a small company can drive traffic for almost nothing, it is important to take full advantage of these options. Another important aspect to online marketing is analytics, and Facebook provides small business with plenty of tools to track and see who is visiting your page and viewing your content. This will allow you to see if this information that you are providing is being received positively by your target audience.

Facebook has spent the last few years perfecting its Facebook advertisements and promoted posts. These items help to spread the word about your company and introduce your brand to new customers. When you consider how many people are actively using Facebook on a daily basis, Facebook provides a large target audience that can be marketed to at a very reasonable expense.

One of the most underrated aspects of Facebook marketing is the ability to create an unlimited fan base. A personal Facebook page is limited to 5,000 friends, where a company page is unlimited. This allows a company to reach out to as many potential customers as they choose to. When considering all of the other options that are available to generating a buzz about your product, Facebook remains an effective, price-conscious method of creating and exposing new customers to your brand while allowing you to communicate with your audience in real time.

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