I’ve been fortunate to speak at several local tradeshows / seminars about Social Media lately, and one of the most common questions I get from businesses during my presentation is “How do I keep my company safe with Social Media?”

This is a VERY legitimate question as companies are starting to block access internally to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter due to hacking attempts and mostly, due to employee inefficiency.  A gentleman made a crack during my last presentation that he FIRES each employee he catches online. So, employers, business owners are seeing social media as a colossal waste of time as opposed to an opportunity to grow their corporate brand online: here’s a few opportunities I see that could be a positive to implementing a social media campaign for your business and could quite possibly save you money and improve efficiency.

1.) Expand customer service.
What if each one of your customer service team knew how to use Twitter to monitor issues / questions regarding your brand / products or services? Addressing customer service needs promptly online as opposed to answering phone calls all day could dramatically improve overall efficiency and leave the client / prospect feeling like they were special. You are being proactive by GOING directly to the problem and addressing it rapidly.

2.) Expand Your Marketing Message.
What if each one of your marketing team members could rapidly deploy NEW product announcements to a very targeted audience, OR test market a particular product rapidly to a very targeted demographic? Twitter and / or Facebook can be good tools to rapidly get a pulse on potential buyers. Twitter and Facebook can be a great tool to build a buzz about an upcoming product launch or tradeshow, etc.

3.) Spread Your Corporate News Rapidly.
What if your public relations team could get your press releases disseminated rapidly and into the hands that matter using Twitter, online press release services, facebook, etc.  Believe it or not, people get their news quicker from Twitter then they do on CNN.com.

I think business owners need to realize that if your employees aren’t on social media at work, they are on social media at home.  They will talk about work, they will talk about the company: why not harness that power and grow an army out of your staff to grow your online presence and improve your presence online?

There are of course many dangers lurking with social media and corporate usage, I’ll address those in my next post.

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Tags: social media