Mia Pearson from North Strategic wrote a great article in the Globe and Mail about the further evolution of social media for business. Most businesses have adopted some form of social media, have a link to their channels from their websites, have a feed, and allow readers to share pages on social media… but Mia dives into a whole new level. I definitely am paying attention to this and will adopt some of the strategies for my company.

A quick summary:

• Integrate technology like Pepsi has with Pulse into the homepage of your website to heavily integrate social media feeds into the homepage, highlighting events, news, and conversations going on within various channels about the brand.
• Give Pinterest a whirl. Some critics are saying that the only way it helps is to drive traffic to your website, and the bounce rate is high, but that could change as more people join it
• Add a questions forum on Twitter – McDonald’s has adopted this – people can ask questions via Twitter, and they are aggregated and answered from the McDonald’s website.

Bigger companies have more resources to do these types of initiatives, but smaller companies can adopt some of these tips if resources are strategically allocated well. It really depends on the nature of your business and how large your social media audience is.