Social Media is the newest form of advertising, customer service and business management. So new in fact that many businesses are resistant to be involved. Social networks such as twitter and facebook have transformed the way people communicate about brands and products.

Word of mouth has often been the most sought out form of advertising, but initiating it has been the most difficult part. Now with the advent of new technologies, customer reviews, recommendations, tweets and wall posts, a recommendation for a product from a friend has become even more valuable to the consumer and business than traditional forms of advertising.

Using social media to your company’s advantage is still in it’s infant stages. This article seeks to explore the effects of social media on your business, and identify the advantages and disadvantages of developing your social online presence.

Exploring and identifying your niche.

Before entering your business into the world of social media it is important to research similar markets and competition in your chosen niche. How are other businesses engaging in social media? Identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Negative Feedback

Inevitably, by opening your business to a public forum there is the chance of negative feedback. Not exactly what you had hoped for when you decided to engage yourself in social media.
Before you start deleting facebook pages and cancelling your twitter account, look at how other businesses react.
What corrective measures do they use for negative feedback?

If a customer is reporting negative feedback it is important to focus on the underlying problem. Does the feedback identify something you can change? How do you respond to the feedback?
Consider developing the missing link. This is the most important, and free research that your company can use.

Facebook has innovated the way we can target our market. Once you have identified who your market is, facebook makes it incredibly easy to access their huge database with information that users publicly share. People offer their age, location, political views and more on their basic profile. Although businesses do not have open access to these profiles, they do have the option to target their ad’s at individual users who have shared their information.
Using targeted ad’s you can select the demographic for your business you wish to attract. Never before has niche marketing been made so relatively easy. Remember walking through a shopping mall and someone with a clipboard trying to stop you for some market research? Companies spent hours and $$ on manpower to gather market research, most of which was ambiguous and unreliable. People forged information through fear of privacy.

Facebook is still developing their privacy policies. Users can choose which information they share, and which notifications they want appearing in their news feed. If a brand shows up too often in the news feed, a user can hide that option. Finding a balance for your business to engage users instead of irritating them will be an important part of your social media strategy. As with other forms of advertising, consumers will become blind and seemingly filter our unnecessary ad’s. In the beginning of the Internet marketing age banner ads were the best thing since sliced bread, but people grew tired quickly and began to ignore them.

Risk Factors for businesses in social media.

Opening up your business to a public forum is scary for businesses. It involves relinquishing control and giving a part of your brand to engage users. Many businesses are intimidated by social media for this reason, but can you afford to ignore it?

Social media does leave you more open to criticism then before, however even if you’re not already actively social, customers still have the opportunity to give their opinions of your business regardless of whether or not you’re on twitter or facebook. The tools are already there.

It is important to establish guidelines for your business on how you want to be perceived. The notion of a corporate culture has been transformed and is still changing. Businesses are becoming more personal. Customers identify with businesses that relate to their personality.

Before the advent of the internet, businesses had control over the message they were relaying to their customers. Now the situation has almost fully reversed. The consumer is in charge. The key, is listening to what they have to say, identifying their issues, anticipating reactions (be it reviews, or blog posts) and satisfying these issues. The premise of marketing is still the same, the process is a little different.