Mashable Social Media Awards for Small Businesses

Mashable.com is known for being a good place online to read the latest technical and social news. So it’s no surprise that one of their most popular features is the Mashable Awards, now in its fourth year. Here’s what Erica Swallow at Mashable had to say about the winners in the category for the “Top 7 Social Media Services for Small Business”:

Best Communications Service: Twitter: Why: Twitter beats out Facebook for one simple reason: speed. It’s usable in virtually every situation, and you can use it to enhance everything from customer service and business development to public relations and lead generation. Plus, it’s so easy to use.

Video Sharing Service: YouTube. As the world’s second largest search engine after Google, you might think YouTube’s sheer size would be a negative. But nothing could be further from the truth. Businesses have picked up on the importance of being on YouTube more than on any other video service.

Twitter Photo Sharing Service: Twitpic. There are lots of good photo sharing services for Twitter, but none as good at Twitpic, Swallow says. Why: Very simply, the photos are recognizable when you see them in your Twitter stream.

Location-based service: Foursquare. Foursquare was one of the first services to take advantage of location based services, so its experience alone gives it the nod, Swallow says. In addition, it was Foursquare and the advent of modern GPS-equipped phones that caused many businesses to finally go online with their information.

Blogging Platform: Tumblr. If you have good content and a great writing team, all you need is a good look for your blog. Swallow says Tumblr delivers in spades. She describes using Tumblr as “almost as easy as tweeting.”

Social Media Dashboard: TweetDeck. There seems to be two audiences for this category: Those in charge of all social media for a single company and social media addicts. TweetDeck works for both factions, connecting Twitter, Facebook, MySpcace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz on one screen.

Funding Platform: Kickstarter. How many times have you had a great idea and thought, “If on’y I had a backer…” Well, Kickstarter links you up with thousands of potential backers. You have a limited amount of time to put up yoru idea, and the potential investors have a chance to respond.

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