All those folks you see using their smart phones may be talking about more than their lattes - they may be talking about your business. If that's the case, if you're running your own business, you want to stay ahead of the curve.
"If you do a good job in servicing your clients or you have a great product that people are interested in, they could give you feedback right then and there on Twitter or Facebook. And it's always good to get positive feedback from people. It always keeps you inspired, it makes you want to keep going on and doing well," said Galileo Tan, Central Pacific Bank.
Of course, social media can send out a less than positive message as well.
"You can also get negative feedback as well and what I always tell business owners is to take that in stride. Use that to improve whatever it was that caused these people to give you a negative feedback in the first place and with that, you can move forward and improve yourselves even further," said Tan.
You may have noticed the holiday shopping season got underway much earlier this year. There's an upside and downside to that when it comes to your business.
"In a way, it's never too early to start promoting your business for the holidays - but we don't want to see it too early as well. We don't want to holiday decorations go up during the 4th of July weekend for example. That's a little too early," said Tan.
That may be too early, as Tan suggests. However, there is an advantage to taking care of regular customers at any time of the year.
"It never hurts to have sort of like promotional things where you could maybe have special discounts or sales specifically for those businesses. In that sense, it generates interest in your business early and likewise as we mentioned before, Hawaii is such a small community that people tend to spread the word about your business," said Tan.
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