Small is The New Big in Social Media

According to emarketer’s latest survey small companies are acquiring more customers compared to large firms and medium size companies.

Surprised? I don’t think you should. Although large companies have more budgets to spend they lack a few success key’s to be more successful in social media. What are those “magical” keys?

1. Relationship Building

Relationship building is the most important criteria when it comes to success in social media. This is why smaller companies are more success. They tend to know their customers and spend time knowing them. Restaurant owners are tweeting their customers to see if they even enjoyed their food.  By doing this they can get feedback’s and know the customer needs to improve their services and build loyalty with their customers.

I did a case study on how a local coffee shop uses twitter. Which is the best example for this.

2. Aim Small

By aiming small companies are actually aiming people who are in the local community and buidling a relationship within the community and this is when I say “the number of followers aren’t important” and “building a great relationship” is important.

Smaller companies also follow back their followers compared to larger firms who concentrate more on getting followers. Smaller companies follow back their followers and allow their followers to DM them whenever they have a question. @CoffeeGroundz even allow their customers to order take away using DM’s.

If they had that in where I am, I’ll just DM them whenever I feel hungry.

3. Quicker

Smaller businesses do better because they can reply to customers right away without going through channels. For  large firms, they might need to go through a few channels before replying to their customers. However things are starting to change.

One thing about smaller businesses is that they are themselves. I can’t say much for larger firms because they might have to follow their companies policy and is  limited to have a more professional approach compared to a more personal approach which is what smaller businesses are doing better

3. They are doing everything big firms doesn’t do

Yes! If you look at smaller companies, they are doing everything that large firms aren’t doing much. For example smaller firms are using linkedin Q&A to answer questions companies and future clients are asking and actually getting more clients. This helps them to get customers and building a two way relationship with their customers while large companies don’t really do all this. The linkedin is just a small example though.

Smaller and medium firms tend to be more adventurous and play around with new media and paid advertising like facebook advertising. I think large firms should spend more time on facebook advertising because they very well targeted.

So should you bother to use social media if you’re not started? The answer is YES? Why? Lets go through some facts

– 50% of respondents use social media at least once a day

This means they will be customers posting, blogging or tweeting unsatisfied products, unsatisfied services, or even unsatisfied COFFEE. If you own a coffee shop and have great coffee why not invite them to drop by and give them a twitter discount? If you do deliveries why not send them your coffee to try? (Be sure that yours is GOOD) Trust me if they can post about unsatisfied coffee, they’ll tweet about a great coffee.

Over 70% of consumers want access to company experts and support via social media channels and trust company information provided to them via social networks

Do you have company experts and support ready? If you don’t make sure you have them. You don’t want your competitors stealing your customers don’t you? I tweeted TWO companies in the same industry the other day. Both had similar amount of followers. One replied, one didn’t. Who will I continue to buy from? 🙂

I’ll let you guess.

Photo credits stuseeger