The Impact of Social Media on Business

Blogs, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us. Social media is everywhere and it continues to gain popularity. What impact will it have on your business?

Social media provides transparency about the brand. These days anyone can share their experiences instantly through blogs or tweets to a much larger audience than before; which means one negative experience is all it takes to damage your brand. So what can businesses do to prevent this from spreading?

Companies like Comcast are already monitoring Twitter in effort to quickly resolve problems with unsatisfied customers before they spread. While I consider damage control as an important function in business, re-evaluating ways to provide a better level of service ought to be taken as a priority. Why?

Two reasons: For one, it eliminates the need to invest time or capital in a dedicated damage control team if you have qualified people resolving problems on first contact.

Second, stories of great service are also shared which strengthens your brand. A blog about Nintendo’s customer service or a blog about United Airlines (by Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics) are some examples of such.

Like it or not social media is here to stay. Whether to benefit from it or not will largely depend on how seriously you take your company's customer service.