What Is Social Media For, Besides Marketing?

Bizer · 2026-10-01

For a small business, social media pays off at least as much as a front desk, a job board, and a listening post as it does as an ad channel. Most owners measure only the advertising part, decide it is not working, and quit the other three along with it.

Here is what the non-marketing work looks like, and why it is often where the money is.

Is social media really a customer service channel?

Yes, whether you staff it or not. Customers send messages to your Facebook Page, comment on your posts with questions, and tag you when something goes wrong. If nobody answers, the question still got asked. It just got asked in public and left unanswered, which is worse than the phone ringing out.

What to do about it:

Answer messages within the same business day. A customer asking "do you have this in stock" is about to buy from someone.
Answer complaints in public once, then move it private. One calm reply under the complaint shows everyone else reading that you respond. The details belong in a message or a phone call.
Keep a short list of answers you give often. Hours, service area, how to book, return policy. Paste and adjust.

This is unglamorous, and it is the part customers notice most.

Can I hire through social media?

For local, hourly, and trade jobs, often better than through a job board. Your followers already know your business, and their friends are your best candidates. A post that says what the job is, the pay range, the hours, and how to apply gets shared in a way a listing on a big job site does not.

Two cautions. First, be careful what you ask and how you screen; hiring rules about discrimination apply the same way on Facebook as anywhere else, and the EEOC's small business pages are the plain reference. Second, do not look up applicants' personal profiles to decide who to hire. You will see things, such as religion or a pregnancy, that you are not allowed to weigh and cannot unsee.

How is social media a way to listen?

Customers will tell you what they think of your business in public, for free, if you pay attention. That includes:

Reviews and recommendations on your Page, on Google, and on Nextdoor.
Comments on local community groups, where people ask "who does the best brake job in Houma" and others answer.
Questions that keep coming up in your messages, which tell you what your website fails to explain.

Spend ten minutes a week reading those, not replying, just reading. Write down any complaint that appears twice. That list is a better guide to what to fix than most paid research. There is more on this in how to monitor what people say about your business and finding out what customers really think.

Does it count as building relationships with other businesses?

It does, and for B2B companies this can be the main return. Comment on your suppliers' posts. Share a neighboring business's event. Congratulate the restaurant down the road on its anniversary. None of this sells anything directly. It makes you known, and when one of them needs an accountant, an electrician, or a caterer, you are the one they already know.

What are the costs of treating it this way?

Time, mainly, and it is ongoing. Customer service on social media means someone checks messages every day, including Saturday, because that is when customers send them. If you cannot commit to that, put a clear note on your Page saying you answer messages on weekdays and give a phone number for anything urgent. A stated limit is better than silence.

There is also a risk in public replies. Anything you write can be screenshotted. Never write a reply when you are angry, and never discuss a customer's account, health, or money in a comment.

What should I measure, then?

If you only count likes and post reach, you will undercount the value. Track a few of these too:

Messages answered per week, and how fast.
Hires that came from a social post.
Complaints you fixed because you heard about them online.
Referrals from other businesses you know through social channels.

None of these show up in a platform dashboard. You track them yourself, on paper or in a spreadsheet. How to measure social media ROI has a fuller method.

What is uncertain?

How much any of this is worth to your particular business. A hair salon may live on its Instagram inbox. A commercial electrician may get nothing from social media except two good hires a year, which might still be worth it. Nobody can give you that number in advance. Try the four uses above for three months, keep notes, and decide from your own record.