Smaller businesses too can benefit from social media
Where business is concerned, most of the conversation about social media revolves around large corporates. It’s the big brands like Dell, Microsoft, McDonalds, British Airways, Tesco and Barclays that have an obvious use for blogs and social networks as a means to communicate with their audiences.
But what about smaller companies? There’s an interesting piece in Monday’s Chicago Tribune about how in the US they too are extending their reach through social media. A couple who own a yacht cruise charter company say bookings are strong, thanks to the group and fan pages they recently launched on Facebook; they also Twitter frequently.
Bradsdeals.com, a consumer website that identifies savings, started using Twitter in March, and now has 2500 followers. This month is launched a fan page on Facebook, and now has 1200 users. As a result, traffic to the site is up 150% from a year ago, at more than a million hits a month.
The site’s owner says he hesitated to go down this route because he didn’t think social media would fit its demographic, which tends to be people in their late thirties. But according to Nielsen Online the largest growth in social media users last year came from the 35- to 49-year-old group.
For other interesting case studies read the full article here.
