Social Media Trends Small Businesses Should Watch in 2012, Part 1

There are so many different social media channels these days that it can be hard for small business owners to invest their time wisely. And there seems to be a raft of new trends cropping up all the time. This article will help you narrow them down.  This is not the list of the hottest new social media trends. Rather, this list contains the first five of the top 10 social media trends that small business should keep their eyes on in 2012.

1. Social media marketing will move beyond Twitter and Facebook: The important lesson to learn from this trend is to know who your audience is and where it is in the social world. Maybe they are only on Twitter and Facebook, but maybe they are also on LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, or Flickr. As Amy Porterfield tells us in Eight Social Media Trends Impacting Businesses, if companies only focus on the most popular or obvious social sites, they can miss out on valuable niche groups. And remember: the more niche the group, the more relevant the message can be. Smaller sites likely have less competition for your audience’s attention.

2. QR codes will become more pervasive: QR codes are sure to keep popping up everywhere in 2012. And the good news is that small business can easily reap the benefits. They are easy to set up with online services like pbSmart Codes. To me, QR codes’ most compelling features for small businesses are their interactivity and ability to be easily measured. Isn’t wo-way interaction is what social media is all about?

3. Companies will advance to integrated communications: Most companies are now communicating with their customers via multiple channels, like direct mail, email marketing, and social networks. But the trend is going toward more integrated messaging across these channels — especially by combining offline, online and mobile into hybrid strategies. For small businesses, this should be easier to coordinate and orchestrate than for larger companies.

4. Social customer service will save companies money and improve the customer experience: For larger companies, the trend is actually for social customer service to drive revenue. This has certainly worked for companies like Zappos, Best Buy, and Comcast. But small businesses can get ideas from this too. They can leverage social media to provide information and provide a platform where customers’ needs are heard and addressed in a timely manner. Using a platform like Twitter, for instance, has two major benefits. First, other customers can learn from each other’s questions and requests, thus reducing additional inquiries. And second, companies can learn from the patterns and themes of customer communications in order to fix the root of any problem. You can also use your Facebook fan page to provide a current list of FAQs. And, as Brenna Ehrlich reminds us, it is less time consuming and more fun to keep up a fan page of current FAQs than responding to 1,000 emails about the same issue.

5. Social media intelligence will be used for product development: As Sally Falkow describes in her recent article Trends for 2012 – Social Media Intelligence, there is a prominent shift toward social media intelligence or social analytics. While some small businesses might not yet be ready for full-scale social media monitoring and analysis, the important thing is to learn from your customer interactions. First find out where your customers are in the social media world. Do this by simply asking them or sending out a short survey. Then keep an eye on the key sites and listen to what customers are saying about your and your competitors’ products. You can also use tools like TweetDeck and Google alerts to see what customers are saying about you. Then, continuously improve your products and services based on these findings. And when you are ready to develop new products, use this intelligence to know what your customers need, want, and are willing to pay for.

Stay tuned to see the rest of the top 10 social media trends for small businesses when we post Part 2 next week. Better yet, go to our homepage to subscribe and receive free weekly updates from pbSmart Essentials.