The use of social media is growing every day. Although it is not the answer to all your prayers, it can give you some great tools and benefits that make you business work. In fact these tool work to make your business work. Here are numbers 4-6 of my top 9 benefits that social media can offer your small (or not so small) business.

Helps you feel the pulse of your customers, partners and competitors

With the information you get from the various sources you use such as tweets, blogs, forums and discussion posts, you can glean a lot of knowledge about those that you work and deal with everyday. There likes, dislikes, goals and opinions are right there for you to see and use to your advantage. This can give you a good sense of how you want to and need to proceed in your business plans to gain the best outcome.

Showcase your services and products

Traditional blurbs about your products and services are great, catalogs are good but information is power. You can really let your customers get to know you and your products in new ways. You can simply put up an update saying: “Check this out, it is something new and we think it is really cool.” This give a less “preachy”, “salesy” feel while still getting your product out there for people to see. You can also design “how-to’s” and give your viewers some tricks and tips on how to solve the problems they face daily with the particular service or business type you specialize in.

Enhance your skills

In this ever increasing world of virtual communication writing has become even more important. Even though most individuals use a texting language that is very different form formal or traditional writing, it is still imperative that you and your company know how to write well. Texting language is great for tweets and even status updates but when you want to share your ideas it is of the upmost important that you have good spelling and grammar. Social media can give you a chance to really hone these skills. It can also give you resources such as workshops and courses that will help you achieve these goals.

Click Here for Part 3!