Meeting Your Customers Online and Offline

One thing I like to do here is to feature completely different types of businesses to break you, the reader, out of the box as far as who could use social media and how.
For example, this last weekend I went out to support my friend since she is part of a motorcycle and ATV stunt team called Stunt Farm. (NSFW) While hanging around her booth, some girls came up after their stunt show asking about a men's shirt design in a women's size. Stunt Farm was having a great deal on shirts that day but didn't have what they wanted; it was coming though.

Later, she told me that she felt like Twitter was the huge new thing and they wanted my input on putting together a Twitter and a Facebook after telling me that "most of our contacts are on Myspace". You know what I told her?

Stay on Myspace.

If your customers aren't into Twitter and think Facebook is still for college students, why have a Twitter or Facebook? Not only that, but she could have used the opportunity to connect with those girls on Myspace so that they would know where the stunt team would be appearing next and when the shirts they wanted would be out in women's sizing. Better yet, they could have pre-sold the shirt and shipped it to that girl as soon as it came out.

Social media doesn't mean being everywhere all the time. The internet is nice but its a lot of wasted energy for anyone to be omnipresent. Social media is best when you meet your customers where they are, or better yet, if they aren't anywhere in particular, give them a place they enjoy being. Even better yet, social media is a great way to keep in touch with your customers AFTER you've met them in real life.