Social Media Changes and How They Can Affect Your Business

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Using social media for business has been a hot topic on this blog.  (See Using Social Networking Effectively for Your Business, and Using Social Media for Your Business).  Of course, with society and technology changing so rapidly, there are bound to be constant changes to the social media sites we’ve come to find so useful for marketing, public relations and establishing relationships with customers.  Therefore, it’s important that you stay updated on these changes, in order to continue to use such sites for your businesses.

TWITTER

Promoted Tweets

We’ve already touched on the topic of Twitter’s promoted tweets, but just as a quick overview, businesses can pay (based on performance) to have their tweets made searchable, based on specific key words.  These “promoted tweets” appear above other tweets.

Location-Based Tweets

Twitter users now have the option to add a location (longitude and latitude) to their tweets.  This can be especially beneficial to small business owners attempting to reach out to locals and/or tourists.  As stated on mashable.com, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver said, “The additional context allows for us to deliver more meaningful and localized experiences to users.”

FACEBOOK

Like vs. Fan

Many small business owners have developed fan pages to promote their businesses on Facebook, to provide a platform for discussion between customers and to make their businesses more “human.”  Until recently, to connect themselves with these pages, Facebook users had to become “fans” of the businesses’ pages.  Now, however, rather than becoming a fan, a user can simply “like” a page.  According to the website, this change offers a more “light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.”

Like Buttons for the Web

Now, the like buttons that we’ve seen on Facebook, to show interest in a business, status, comment, etc. are appearing all over the internet.  For websites that opt in, users will be able to click a like button if they like something on the particular webpage.  Then, this action will be visible to everyone in his/her social network.  This could potentially help to direct traffic from Facebook to various other businesses’ websites, increasing their visibility and possibly their sales.