How communicating with customers online is helping build business networks, client lists

The Twitter revolution is the most recent social networking phenomenon to take hold in the small business world and companies are quick to extol the benefits of the popular micro-blog.

An article from Entrepreneur.com touts the benefits the service offers home-based business to expand their marketing efforts and attract new clients.

Beyond home-based business use, the article suggests ways small businesses are using Twitter-speak, or tweets, to quickly relay information to consumers. For instance, a restaurant may tweet daily specials, a real estate business might tweet about new homes for sale and a ticket agency could tweet tickets that will expire soon.

Rich media and social marketing expert Tina Hilton comments in the article that the micro-blog is not necessarily used to directly attract clients, but more as a way to get to know your customers on a more personal level.

"With the increase in social media marketing, cold, impersonal marketing concepts are getting stale. People want to find out who's behind the company - the real person," said Hilton in the Entrepreneur.com report.

Social networking is affording a number of small business owners a way to connect with potential partners and other entrepreneurs. Many business owners and industry experts agree, however, that by giving companies a way to more intimately communicate with their customers, social networking is revolutionizing customer service and customer loyalty.

In fact, one Seattle-based real estate business says that social networking sites let their clients become part of the process, which is a big benefit, management claims.

"This is not just a new advertising supplement that we're doing," Jeff Smallwood, vice president of sales and marketing for real estate firm Intracorp says of their social networking presence. "This is a way for our clients to participate in our process and get to know us on a personal level."

For companies not yet ready to make the jump to a social network, many are getting started by engaging customers on a smaller scale. A number of marketing experts advise small business owners to start a blog on the company website or communicate via a periodically emailed newsletter.

Another way to encourage social communication between management and consumers or between customers and other customers is via product reviews and recommendations on ecommerce sites. Businesses are increasingly making these interactive with customers able to rate their favorite products or postings.

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