Using Social Media in Business
10 ways to use social media to get ahead at work
1. Prove its value. Social media and networking sites are valuable tools that businesses constantly undervalue. Does your company have a Facebook page, Google+ or any way for the customer base to readily have their voices heard by and about your company? If not, this may be a valuable place for you to start using your Facebook skills at work.
2. Use social media to provide additional value to your customers so that they become loyal to you. Buying a product is easy. But if the support is not there in an easy-to-use format, it may become just as easy to return it for something that has the user support that they need.
3. Identify the current and future needs of your customers. Do your customers have your product but think that adding just that one more little thing would make your next line of products the best thing ever? Did you forget something that is now crucial to the performance of your product? Learn all this and more through social media.
4. Find out just exactly what your competition is. Sometimes it's hard to tell, especially when your company belongs to a large category. Does Pepsi compete with Coke, or Arizona Tea Company? Jones Soda? Does bottled water count, and do powdered and liquid water additives, either separately or together? Is your product unique, or equitable with another product?
5. Network for yourself with experts in your field. Get to know people who are smarter than you (or at least who have been in the biz longer). You never know when you will need information from one of these resources, and these relationships are being increasingly developed and maintained on-line.
6. Analyze your value to your company. Are you in a position that you can ask for a raise? How much would it cost them to replace you? Are you actually doing the job of someone two levels ahead of you in the company without either the recognition or the title? Are there openings within your company that you are unaware of that would give you the boost in pay and recognition that you deserve?
7. Find new employees. It costs a lot to find a new employee, or at least to find the right new employee. There are a myriad of firms that cater to the busy employer, but sometimes flipping through the files at monster.com, LinkedIn, or Xing might produce equally good results.
8. Organize and collaborate. Is your company spread across the country or the globe? Social media can give them a place to gather so that it doesn't seem so far between the home office and the far outpost.
9. Build and streamline your supply chain. If you are connecting to your customers, why shouldn't you connect as a customer? And doing this, leaving feedback, creating dialogue, can help your suppliers serve your needs better, and in turn you can be better for your customers.
10. Transparency and accountability to your customers. Making your customers feel a valued part of the process within your company can create loyalty, and while there is a need for some secrets, if more companies committed to a transparent outlook, customers would be much happier.
