Facebook and Twitter are the biggest culprits in users pandering, groveling and begging for likes, shares and follows. As annoying as that can be from your attention seeking, politically motivated and social agenda loving friends -- pandering, groveling and begging for online attention may serve well for small businesses.

Let's take the example of the small restaurant and the reasons why patrons return. Before restaurants appraised themselves through the customer survey, which can be taken at the table or after a meal. Remember when restaurants had customer feedback forms near the front desk? They still do that practice today, but now restaurants are moving towards email and more importantly, social media to attain customer feedback.

Although the feedback may not be as professional or best representative of their customer base, the feedback is first hand and subjective. How do they get this from the customers? Start with getting them first. Advertising the Twitter and/or Facebook page is the first step. This is an organic way to do marketing. It's an important step because when the social media marketing is done locally, the market you will receive will most likely be from your location.

Posting is the next important element -- you have the audience already, but posting deals, sales, specials and basic information is a given. Social media is a much better way of reaching your audience than the phone book and radio/TV ads. Given that, being consistent with your posts, knowing the right time of the day to post and using images, copy to make your posts "pop" is needed to get some action.

Social media can also be used to interact and to get a response from users. You can't be posting announcements all the time on social media as that dehumanizes the experience for the user. You want the user to believe there is a real-life person behind the account -- that someone is listening to them. You can ask the general public what direction to go with your business. Using the restaurant model, you can ask users what should be your next menu item or what item should be taken out.

Social media can be another great form of customer service. You can ask users about their recent experience. Rather than getting a graded scale from a form, you get true experiences from a tweet or a share.

Now for the groveling, pandering and begging that comes with social media. It's simple, the more your post gets liked, retweeted and/or shared, the more it gets seen by others. When your follower likes, retweets or shares your posts, they share it with their friends and followers. So try asking your users to get likes. Example, "If we get to 100 likes, we will 50% burgers and fries at Happy Hour!" One, you will most likely get business from people "like" the status. But you may get business from people who see that "like" and just want a good deal.

The power of the "like", "retweet" and the "share" cannot be underestimated. On top of all that, you don't have to pay for such brand marketing. And don't think you need to get a mass following to improve your business. If you get the right, geo-targeted people to follow you, it can only bring more people from the same area to your business. So do your best begging, pandering and groveling that you can do -- it's good business.

Image credit: Jason Baker on Flickr