DUKKY

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Cyma Saeed, a certified Internet Marketing professional and search marketing specialist for Harp Interactive and Harp Social.  It originally appeared on the Harp Social blog, and  is reprinted here with permission.

You may be familiar with Dell, Starbucks and Jet Blue…a few well-known brands that have been trumpeted for their brilliant use of social media. But what about lesser known and smaller businesses? Does social media marketing “work” for them too?

A general misconception out there today is that social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, is for large consumer brands. While a lot of these well-known brand giants have embraced social media and are seeing its numerous viral benefits, small businesses should not shy away from social media.  In reality, a small business (either consumer or B2B) with smart strategy, branded implementation and a touch of social savvy, can improve their customer loyalty and increase awareness with today’s word of mouth marketing platforms…just like the big guys.

Social media is not only a useful tool for consumer businesses, but for professional services too. Any type of business, through social media, can build their brand or business, forge new relationships, increase referrals, provide customer care, increase customer loyalty, drive traffic to their business and/or website and most importantly, provide a personable touch to their customers or potential ones.

So what exactly, should small businesses be doing? Almost every small business out there can benefit from a strategic combination of a WordPress blog with the right plug in applications, a Facebook Professional Fan page and my personal favorite, a branded Twitter account. Cross connect these powerful tools, and point them to your website for added traffic and increased inbound links which will benefit your results on search pages.

There are also many management tools, widgets and aggregators available today to make these platforms more efficient and useful.