Using Social Media for Online Support and Business

Business Thursday: The social media sphere is a space of communications and interacting both for business and private purposes. Usually it is about information. Some services are going beyond this by offering real business services for website support. These services are helpful to website owners and service providers in any case and do help even small companies or private publishers to realize a real time support service.

A service to realize online support is Get Satisfaction. It is a social support platform already delivering support services for thousands of companies and products. The service is used by some real big companies and newcomers like Twitter. At the Get Satisfaction platform employees as well as users meet to deliver support and advices. At the same time it is a great tool to get feedback from customers. Support services do happen at the Get Satisfaction website by linking to it. To offer contact within a site there is a widget available.

Expert services are another way to offer online support. But usually these platforms are indepent businesses that are not related to particular websites or products. Nevertheless these platforms can be used to offer support serivces and to enrich the experience of a website. There are even business opportunities for new revenue streams by affiliate programs and offering advices beyond the own homepage. To offer support by using an expert service one needs to join an expert network. As a member one may link to an own profile or service offer from a website and serve foreign customers that are visiting the platform. Two services offering such services are LivePerson and Support Space.