More on Social Networking for Small Business

I was skeptical the other week about the utility that small businesses can get from Twitter. Well, my skepticism has abated slightly after reading this post today from SmallBizMentor. Online shoe retailer Zappos is using Twitter in a creative way to show off the quality of its customer service. Zappos has set up a site that puts together all the times that customers and employees mention Zappos on Twitter (but I'm presuming that it doesn't put everything up there, only positive mentions?). Anyone who visits this site from the Zappos home page can see comments like this one from user "teampoop": "Thanks for the upgraded shipping on my wife's watch. She's stoked."

Twitter definitely involves a time commitment. Obviously, someone at Zappos spends time working on this. But if you have a business heavily connected to the online social world, with customers who would use or be impressed by the feedback you're getting at Twitter, that commitment might be worth making to shore up your brand and make potential customers feel more at ease.