Social Media: The Next Great Equalizer

The internet did a lot to even the playing field between giant corporations and small businesses. Both could register a domain name, put up a website and, at least early on, compete for traffic on search engines.

If you’ve been a netizen for any significant period of time, you’ve probably come by a web site or two that clearly is a one-man operation but where every reference to the business is first-person plural: “we, us, our company.”

That was clearly an attempt to make a small company seem big. The issue, of course, is one of trust. If you knew that online vendor you were considering was run by a guy out of his parent’s basement, you’d be less likely to provide that web site your credit card information.

Social media has turned that on its head.

Today, large corporations are doing the exact opposite, struggling to appear like mom-and-pop shops with personal connections to individual customers. Take, for example, Dell’s Twitter presence or Zappos.com’s blogs.

The goal is to create more than a business relationship. In business, only one thing matters, and if I can get shoes at a cheaper price from another online vendor and have no personal connection to Zappos, Zappos will likely not get my sale.

By telling me about what is going on in the company, introducing me to the people that power the company, and allowing me to have a conversation with those people, Zappos is creating an invaluable personal relationship with the brand. It’s the equivalent of my choosing the local, family-owned coffee shop over the Starbucks because I know the owner and have a chat with her every time I walk in, even though she has to charge higher prices to stay afloat.

It’s the age-old question. If you sell a commodity, how do you convince the shopper to spend more money on your product than she otherwise would at another vendor? The answer is the brand association.

The lesson for small businesses: Open up your gates. Tell the world you’re a three-person company with big dreams. At the very least, don’t be afraid to act like a three-person company with big dreams. It’s all the rage.

Photo credit: Carl Mikoy

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Tagged as: Brand, dell, small business, trust, zappos