Getting to know your customers is an important part of running a small business. Social networks are a key way to do this when running an a small business on the web.

Social Networking creates a positive view on your business

You want to give your customers/clients the feeling that you are like them. You don’t want to appear as a huge company that will treat customers unfairly, you want to seem like a small business that really cares about their clients. Social networks can help you do this. By using social networks, you can talk to customers 1 on 1, in a format that they feel comfortable with. A customer will associate your company with their friends that they also communicate with on the social network.

Using a social network, you can help the customer. Helping someone is probably more beneficial than any type of advertising. Once you help someone, they will either a) stick with your company, and eventually purchase something or b) recommend a friend to your company, or both.

A social network is also the perfect place for one of your customers to refer someone to your business. It’s very possible that once you help someone on Twitter, they will send a message to one of their friends saying: Hey, I just worked with Austin Gulati from gulati.info. He helped me with my WordPress SEO issue, he can prolly help you too. Follow him here: http://twitter.com/austingulati. (By the way, you can actually follow me there!) Basically, sending a message to a friend is only a few clicks away from reading a message sent by your company.

What Social Networks to use?

This is a hard question to answer. It really depends on the group you are targetting. Are you targeting the Web Savvy? Head to Twitter. Are you targeting high school students? Head to Facebook or MySpace. Are you targetting the middle aged? Head to LinkedIn. Check out http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/06/top-social-network-age-distributions/ for more.

Tags: Facebook, MySpace, Small Business, Social Networks, Twitter