Get Closer to Your Customers

Social networking is the perfect tool for learning more about your customers. Yet new figures reveal that only 8% of small businesses are currently using it in this way. Here, managing director of Echo E-Business Management Deborah Collier offers her advice on how to use networking to gather useful information.
1. Create a Twitter account and ‘tweet’ about potential issues your customers might face. Watch the number of new visitors that start following after each tweet. You will be able to see which subjects you should discuss more often, and potentially what products or services might be of interest.
2. Follow your customers on Twitter. From their comments, you will be able to learn what they are passionate about, what products they are most interested in, and, potentally, what issues they face.
3. Connect with customers on social and business networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Watch their postings, interact with them, ask them questions and get their opinions.
4. Implement social media and user-generated content features on your website to allow your customers to interact with your own contect and ideas. Social bookmarking will also inform you as to how these customers are interacting with your content, and whether it is valuable to them.
5. On applications such as LinkedIn and Facebook, see who else your clients or potential clients are connected to. This may give you an indication of potential competitors and also other useful relationships that they may have. If you have delivered a good service or a product to one of your clients, you can ask them to refer you to a specific person of interest in their network.