blogs4businesses.com

The Chicago Trib did an article yesterday featuring a couple of random small businesses—a cruiseliner, a test preparation site, a real estate company and more—that have used social media to successfully drive their business.

Some highlights/lessons from the article:

Go where your customers are. The Scion Group, which owns and manages college housing, took its blogs to Facebook so they could reach their potential customers where they already play. Find out where your potential clients reside online by asking existing customers what types of social media they use (connecting off and online presences) and seeing where competitors and similar businesses in your field have successful online presences.

Don’t do it halfway! Posting events on social networks, blogging, having a Facebook profile won’t get you a lot of traction unless you have an integrated strategy for what you want to achieve, and actively work toward it every day. For example, PrepMe.com has a targeted, integrated social media presence to reach online clients: words of the day on Twitter, a Facebook crossword game, and Facebook group pages associated with high schools that use its services.

Be transparent. What does that mean? Being open, honest and responsive to online criticism. If someone complains about any aspect of your businesses, being online gives you the opportunity to acknowledge your shortcoming and make it right. Take advantage of that.

Read the article (and dissenting comments at the end): Fast Company’s Kitt Eaton spews some European WebTrends research saying only 2 percent of businesses use Twitter as a marketing tool.

Ideas why? It’s easy! You actually have to be original, authentic, transparent, imaginative et al. to engage followers you may or may not know. That’s a different approach for businesses and marketers alike, the latter of which are just used to pushing the slogans and specials they’ve thought up, without any feedback.

Moreover, Twitter is a tool to develop relationships–and that takes time.