Comments on: Do business owners actually understand customer interaction?

By: Make Yelp work against you in one easy step! | Matthew Petro

Make Yelp work against you in one easy step! | Matthew Petro — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:03:41 +0000

[...] in February, I wrote about small business owners and their lack of understanding of social media. Most don’t seem to understand how valuable it is for connecting with customers and building [...]

By: Matthew Petro

Matthew Petro — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:58:52 +0000

Joe Johnston (@realjoe) and his use of Twitter with Liberty Market (@libertymarket) is the best example in the Valley. Sure, Twitter doesn't allow the same level of interaction as a face-to-face conversation in the restaurant, but he uses it very well to keep in touch with regulars. He'll often comment when I tweet about having been at Liberty, thank me for recommending the restaurant to others on Twitter and sometimes respond when I'm tweeting about coffee.

He doesn't carry on long interactions on Twitter, but he does make sure to stay in touch and keep up on what's going on with frequent visitors.

Now, I realize that not everyone has the time to do what Joe does. He's fortunate in that he has operating partners in his restaurants, so he doesn't have the day-to-day pressure and busy-ness that many small business owners have to cope with. But, other small business owners do make this work. Lara Hardwick at Petit Fromage (@petitfromageaz) and Helen Yung & Jan Wichayanuparp at Sweet Republic (@SweetRepublic) are good examples who come to mind.

By: Greggo

Greggo — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:52:58 +0000

Matt, what I'm missing is a concrete simple example of a small businessman using SM to “get to know the regulars”. What use of Twitter, for example, equates to relating to one's customers on the same level as if they were in the store?

By: Matthew Petro

Matthew Petro — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:58:52 +0000

By: Greggo

Greggo — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:52:58 +0000

By: Matthew Petro

Matthew Petro — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:09:12 +0000

I agree that business owners often are good at what they do, but lack the attendant skills to market a business effectively. But do people business owners need to learn all of these skills? Entrepreneurs have their hands full every day providing the good or service which is their business' core skill. Learning marketing and other skills is a lot to add. Should those of us who have those skills be offering to help them DO some of it, rather than offering to TEACH it?

Granted, there's only so much an external resource can do. CPAs can handle taxes and bookkeeping, marketing experts can tailor print and online advertising, web designers can make the website look good, but social media is one thing which requires an authenticity which can't be generated by a 3rd party.

A good entrepreneur knows their weaknesses and builds a team of supporting players who compensate for those weaknesses. But social media interaction really needs to come from the heart of the business to work well. This is where a small business owner needs to understand that they have to interact with customers via social media in a real and authentic way.

By: tdhurst

tdhurst — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:01:19 +0000

You know the answer to that. People are much more likely to avoid harm by hiding than they are to receive praise by being open.

By: Matthew Petro

Matthew Petro — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:55:24 +0000

But businesses are ultimately built and run by people. Small business owners are especially connected to what happens in their business. Are small business owners just afraid of having their dream criticized publicly?

By: Jack Smith

Jack Smith — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:46:45 +0000

Although there are plenty of examples of poor social media use by businesses, there are even more examples of poor marketing decisions by businesses. Being a business owner who knows how to perform a service and/or create a product AND how to effectively market said product or service is a combination that is few and far between.

Until we start doing a better job of educating entrepreneurs in general on ALL the basic skills it takes to run a business, we'll continue to see the very sad failure rates of people brave enough to take on the entrepreneurial challenge.

By: tdhurst

tdhurst — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:23:22 +0000

Social media success requires that you have excellent communication skills, a fairly solid idea of who you are and a willingness to accept criticism from others in a public setting. Most businesses fail at the first, do decently at the second and run screaming from the third.

Businesses are inherently not human. They are manufactured.