“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

If life moves quickly in the movies, it moves at light speed in the Social Media World. This is extremely important you to understand, if you are thinking about adding Social Media profiles for your company. If you aren’t prepared, opportunities will pass you by in the blink of an eye.

In 60 seconds over 98,000 tweets will be sent and 695,000 Facebook statuses will be updated. I know that some of those will be people that are talking about what they had for breakfast, but how many of those might be people using location-based apps, like Foursquare or Gowalla to check into businesses? More than a few are probably asking for recommendations on anything from Date Night Recommendations to Carpet Cleaning. And of course you will have a ton of people complaining.

Image Courtesy of Go-Globe.com

What does this mean for you and your company? The answer is simple. It is not enough to throw together a Facebook Page or Twitter account, and then just start posting away, only paying attention to people who are responding directly to the content that you post. You need to be watching and listening to the bigger picture, to capture those opportunities as they present themselves. Did someone Check-in to your business on Foursquare? You should thank them for coming in and ask how their experience was. If you run across someone complaining about your business, you should jump into action as fast as possible. Reach out publicly and offer to remedy the situation in what ever way you see fit.

No matter what, don’t think that by avoiding being involved in Social Media you will make those 98,000 tweets, 695,000 Facebook status updates, or 1500 blog posts will go away. They will still happen, and some of them will more than likely become a missed opportunity for Customer Service or Reputation Management. In this fast paced world, its more important than ever to keep your eyes open for every opportunity to allow your company to stand out among the crowd.

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• Do You Check In? (coydavidson.wordpress.com)
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