In the social media industry, a significant amount of attention is paid to large companies who engage in successful programs. Companies are lauded for reaching certain follower milestone, or investing unknown dollars into flashy programs. But what about the local business? The mom-and-pop store or even small corporation that doesn’t have such extensive resources? Social media offers solutions for them, too. However, without significant resources, they are facing a bit of a David and Goliath-type challenge. Companies like Bizzy, however, serve as advocates for the “little guy.” The company, which launched a personalized local business recommendation engine, has found a way to bring social to the local business and to bring local businesses to the masses — through the Web and through an iPhone app. Ryan Kuder, vice president of marketing for Bizzy, believes this kind of service is critical, and says it is important for social media practitioners to build tools that local businesses can easily use and understand. We talk about this — as well as the social market overall — in this latest installment of 100 Brains.
Q. Late last year I asked a lot of social brains what they thought would happen in social in 2010. The most predominant answer was “ubiquity.” Do you believe that has been reached?
A. No. There are plenty of people who don’t use Facebook, who aren’t on Twitter, who only occasionally use email, and who never check in when they visit the dentist. And yes. It’s nearly impossible to find a startup who is not incorporating social technology into their offering, to turn on the news without hearing about Twitter or Facebook, or to schedule an event without using online social tools. That being said, if you define ubiquity as “everyone does it all the time,” I think we’re looking at another few years until it’s “ubiquitous.”
Q. You have a unique perspective on social media and the SMB market, and how SMBs require special consideration when going social. Please explain a bit of that.
A. Small businesses are very different than big businesses when it comes to using social technology. By their nature, they’re more social than big businesses and their business hinges much more on their personal relationships with their customers. Think of the difference between your favorite local coffee shop where they greet you by name and a big chain store where everyone through the door is a stranger. It’s a competitive advantage the little guy has. This advantage can extend online as well, but the challenge is that a plumber knows plumbing and a hair stylist knows hair and a landscaper knows landscaping. They don’t always know what the new fancy social toys are or how to use them and they never have the time to sit down and learn. It’s therefore incumbent upon us as practitioners to build tools that are easy to understand the value, easy to use, and require very little time commitment to see benefit from.
Q. Do you believe that SMBs have an ability to be more creative with social due to their nimbleness, or are they challenged by lacking the big budgets of enterprises?
A. It’s a blessing and a curse. I like to use coffee shops as an example. Say Starbucks gets mentioned on Twitter somewhere around 100k times per month. They have to figure out who to respond to, how to respond, work through corporate bureaucracy, set up systems, etc. The coffee shop on the corner may get mentioned 100 times per month. They can respond, do promotions, chat casually with each person, and it costs them a lot less and they can do what they want. The flip side is that the big company has lots more money and lots more people who can focus exclusively on fostering online relationships with customers. The little guy can’t. They have to squeeze in the time where they can and that can be hard to maintain an efficient online presence without taking away from other priorities.
