Social Business: Analysis – Part 2B: Reasons To Participate In Social Business: Reach & Community

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into three categories:

1. Marketing
2. Reach & Community
3. Internal reasons & Reasons to avoid social business

Today, we’ll look at prevalent reasons to participate in social business related to reach and community.

• Global Reach Social media is borderless and you can use it to reach a global audience and marketplace.
• Targeted Niches Maybe global reach isn’t for you. No worries, social media also offers targeted communities or communities within communities that you can be of value to. Whether you’re looking to engage with sports fans, shoe lovers or cooking fanatics, there’s bound to be communities dedicated to those interests.
• Communities You can also leverage these common interests to fuel your own community, like a forum or a Facebook Page. Members of such a community can become loyal connections of your brand who will help spread the message about you to their networks. Both niche communities and your own communities allow you to build and maintain a relationship with your customers and your brand’s fans.
• Customer Experience Using social media, you can provide a better customer experience. Whether it’s, for example, a community to get people to talk about you or an active Twitter account that provides customer service, you’re able to foster deeper engagement with your customers.
• Offline Relationships Social media can be used to extend your existing offline relationships with customers by giving them extra touch points to communicate with you (e.g. a customer service channel on Twitter) or to find more information (e.g. a YouTube channel with how-to’s or behind-the-scenes videos).
• Innovation Stay ahead of the curve by utilizing social media tools and platforms that may not have reached critical mass yet, but are highly relevant to your business. If you run a local business (e.g. a shop or a restaurant), location-based services like Foursquare or Gowalla can be great tools to explore.
• Feedback The feedback that you gather through social media can be put into action in your products and/or services. You’re able to hear directly from your own customer base what the areas of improvement are and you can meet or exceed their needs by responding appropriately.
• Partnerships Through social media, it’s not only possible to find (prospective) customers, but also to find new partners for your business. These may be promotional or sales partners, but could also be suppliers or manufacturing partners. Establishing partnerships can help you improve or expand your business.

Let me hear it if you have more great reasons for getting into social business related to reach and/or community. Next week, we’ll look at internal reasons as well as reasons to avoid social business.