Social media has helped bring friends together in online environments to share their experiences through images, videos, updates and 140 character micro blogs. But it’s not only individuals who are looking to utilise social media such as Facebook and Twitter, brands are looking to get in on the act. But just how could a brand such as a price comparison website use social media?

Here are just a few examples of how social media can be used by price comparison websites…

Customer Service

Customers can now provide instant feedback to brands about issues with their products or services. Via a tweet or post on a Facebook page, customers can directly highlight if they’ve experienced a problem or are unhappy about something. By monitoring mentions of their brand name or twitter username, a price comparison site can easily reach customers talking about them and help provide assistance with problems and hopefully turn a negative experience into something positive for customers.

Product information

By using social media, price comparison sites can market product news, offers and discounts straight to customers. Customers who have elected to follow or like a price comparison site are signalling that they are interested in the products and services they offer.

Competitions

Aiming to drive interactivity between price comparison sites and customers, social media can be used to run and promote competitions to existing and potential new customers. As a communication tool social media allows those customers to then further share something they think their friends may be interested in. If a price comparison site can gain retweets for a popular post, they are opening themselves up to a much larger audience. With the average twitter user having around 140 followers, gaining just one or two retweets allows the message to reach a much more diverse audience and target those who might not possibly have heard of the site before and for those getting involved in competitions, there’s the bonus that they might just win themselves a prize.

Create personalisation

Creating accounts and profiles on social media can allow price comparison sites to become more personal with their customer base through friendly, approachable and more human actions. Personalisation can be tied in with the customer service aspect of social media and simple actions such as signing off a tweet or message with the name of the person representing the site allows the recipient to put a name to the profile rather than the traditional faceless side customers often see. By forming a more friendly and personalised relationship with customers, price comparison sites can work to build customer confidence in a site that customers may then share with friends and associates.

About author

This article was written by Jamie Gibbs, the resident blogger of http://www.confused.com comparison site.