YES is the short answer. But the longer answer is WHICH social media is right for my business.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE social media. And, personally, I especially love twitter. For so many reasons {and I might blog some of these another time}.

BUT, not all forms of social media are right for all businesses. There. I’ve said it. And you DID read that correctly.

However I firmly believe that at least one form of social media is right for every business. You just have to work out which one is right for you. Just like not everyone can wear red – not all businesses are right for Facebook!

Social media today takes many forms with the best known being:

• Facebook – Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Over 10m users in Australia, over 500m worldwide
• Twitter – 140 characters to tell your followers what’s happening
• YouTube – video sharing site, 2nd largest search engine after Google
• LinkedIn – often called Facebook for business, but soooo much more than that!
• Blogging – allows users to post their opinions, thoughts or comments on a website, that others can then comment on.

Many organisations with little social media knowledge are overwhelmed by choice. Which is expected when faced with something new. My advice is:

• pick 1 form of social media and start with it
• once you are comfortable with that, then pick a 2nd and use it
• then pick a 3rd form etc etc.

However, as I said, not all social media is right for all businesses. Before deciding how to venture out, you need to look at:

• who your target market is – what social media do they use?
• how much time and money do you have? While in theory social media is free, it does take time. And if you use YouTube there may be some costs associated with getting a video camera and some basic editing software (although if you have an iPhone and a Mac you’ll be sorted for basic video)
• who is going to look after your social media? Pick someone who wants to do it and make sure they do it consistently
• if you are a small business or a sole operator, then what suits your personality? If you hate writing, blogging is probably not for you. If you are fairly time poor then twitter will be a great option as it takes just a couple of minutes a few times a day to find out what is going on and post updates. If your business is very hands on or visual then look at posting video blogs to YouTube.
• if your business needs a lot of customers to keep it going (maybe it’s a product or a shop or a restaurant) then look at how you can set up a Facebook business page.

The other ESSENTIAL thing you need to consider when starting out with social media is how you can incorporate it into your existing marketing activities. Facebook and twitter are tools to help with  your marketing. Not stand-alone strategies. You should weave its use into your goals and objectives, key messages and evaluate how they are working for you.

And once you decide to go down the social media path make sure you incorporate the urls of all your social media in your traditional marketing (such as on brochures/websites, stickers on products, point of sale materials and in your email signature).

What is your social media tool of choice? And why?

As I was tweeting about a very bad customer service experience at dinner on Saturday night, it struck me that customer service is even more important than ever in this era of social media and mobile technology.

With the growing popularity of smartphones combined with the massive increase in the use of social media (twitter, facebook etc), businesses really need to make sure they are up to scratch, otherwise they could see themselves splashed on the first page of a Google search for all the wrong reasons.

Recently released research from Nielsen shows that over 43% of online Australians now own a Smartphone (such as an iPhone or a Blackberry) and that mobile social networking has increased significantly in the last 12 months.  Nielsen’s report found that 26% of social networkers participated in mobile social networking in the past year. Facebook is the most popular social networking site accessed via a mobile (92% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook), followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%).

However, more than half of Twitter’s mobile users visited the site daily, and 36% of Facebook mobiles users visit its site daily. And this doesn’t include the use of third party sites such as Twitterberry or Tweetdeck or any of the others available for mobile devices.

So as a business owner, think about what this means in terms of getting immediate feedback. While it’s great when you provide excellent service, think of the potential damage to your brand if your customers tweet about what they really think when you fail. Particularly if the person tweeting has a lot of followers.

When do you tweet about a good – or bad – experience?