Not too long ago, many self-proclaimed "experts" were still saying that social media was just a passing business fad - great for teenagers and college kids, but not a real business tool for serious companies. [OK, mainly I was the one saying that]. However, now that "serious" companies are making serious money conducting "social business" via social media tools - whether via Twitter-based marketing campaigns, referrals from Facebook fan pages, or leads generated in online communities - skeptics (myself included) are finally willing to concede that social business and social media are probably sticking around for a while.
Yet, even though it's clear that social media has real business benefit, not everyone is convinced that social media is right for all businesses. For example, some people argue that Social Media is great for businesses that focus on consumers, but that social-media tools like Twitter and Facebook are not particularly well suited for business-to-business environments or commodities products. The mantra about controlling your own brand before somebody else does is great if you're selling soda, beer, or computers and you actually have a "brand". But what if all you have is a commercial warehouse or a post office box; how do you own your brand? Would a chemical company really bother to tweet about "injection molding" or how "silicones perform under adverse conditions versus organic carbon compounds"? (Answer: Apparently yes. Check out Dow Corning, @dowcorning, with 293 followers). This question of whether commodity-product companies can really benefit from engaging in social business was recently addressed by Esteban Kolsky in an epic blog comment battle. And for the record, I'm with Esteban on this one. Just take a look around. Even traditionally conservative enterprise software companies are fully embracing social business and social media tools - setting up customer-facing online communities, blogs, and wikis, while also building native integration to social media tools into their products.
So now that everyone agrees social media isn't just a passing fad and is not limited only to consumer-facing brands, perhaps the last interesting un-asked questions relates to the efficacy of social media for small businesses - specifically, very-very-small, local businesses. Can so-called "mom-and-pop" shops benefit from social media? For example, should the local barber, cobbler, haberdasher, and shoe shiner be tweeting on Twitter? Does anybody really want to "friend" their drycleaner or neighborhood liquor store on Facebook? And while online ministries might be growing, is there any real demand for local churches, temples, and mosques to offer worship services in Second Life? Consider me a bit skeptical still. I work for a large, global company with over 50,000 world-wide employees; and the companies that I work with most frequently tend to be Fortune 500 global brands - many larger than my own employer. So perhaps by default I naturally tend to usually view things in the context of big business.
Thus, I have to admit that was caught a bit off guard this weekend when my barber Mike asked me if I thought he needed get involved in all of this new-fangled Yelp, Foursquare, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter tomfoolery? My first thought was something to the effect of, "Ha ha. Sure dude - if you've got lots of excess time and money to waste." After all, who in their right mind would want to get a tweet from their barber saying, "Hey, it's Wednesday, 10:00 am. Business is slow. No line/wait right now. Come in today and save $3." Whoa, wait a minute. I just answered my own rhetorical question. I would definitely want to get that tweet. I would actually love to know when I could come in with no wait - and save a few bucks to boot. And I bet so would a bunch of other folks (or at least a few retirees and work-at-home dudes who aren't in the office at 10:00 am on Wednesday). Clearly it's not a huge pool of potential customers. But then again, my barber Mike isn't looking to draw in a million customers; Edward Scissorhands couldn't even cut that much hair in an afternoon. Rather, Mike is only looking for a few, loyal customers who would take him up on this immediate, time-constrained offer. Hmmm, we could be on to something here...
So I started doing a little research online to see to what extent other local, small businesses were leveraging social-media tools like Twitter, Yelp, and Foursquare. I was pleasantly shocked and awed. I found great stories about street-food vendors leveraging Twitter to announce their current location and daily menu: "Wafeleurs, we r celebrating Bastille Day at 60th and Madison. Come and yum yum! Password today is Tourmalet" from @waffletruck. I read about a combination coffee-shop slash beer garden that doubled it's customer base using Twitter to take to-go orders from busy customers who didn't want to have to wait in line. I found rave reviews on Yelp for street corner shoe shine outfits, like Famous Wayne's Shoe Shine in the San Francisco Financial District who sells a life-time membership card option for those who are ultra serious about always keeping their Oxford's looking like new. Suddenly I felt like Keanu Reeves (or rather his character Neo) who takes a red pill and is afterwards able to see the world clearly for the first time.
Yikes, social media had followed me home from work! It was starting to show up at all the neighborhood hot spots -- health clubs and salons, trendy restaurants and hole-in-the-wall bars, dry cleaners, landscapers, roofers, painters, handywomen and mechanics. I was reminded of the old adage, "if you can't beat em, join em". So I fired up my Blackberry and left my first Yelp review for a local business that had just done me a solid favor earlier that week by fixing (free of charge) a chip in my granite kitchen countertop that was entirely my fault. So if anyone is looking for some nice granite or natural stone tile in the San Jose area, check out the great folks at Eskandari Stone on South Bascom Avenue.
John Burton works at SAP as a director of product management in the CRM area. In his free time he enjoys blogging and shopping online for light-weight carbon-fiber and titanium bicycle parts for his Calfee Tetra Pro racing bike.