With the start of the fall TV season, the social TV phenomenon has sprung to front and center. Social TV is just what it sounds like: a virtual water cooler around which the online world gathers to discuss what they are watching. Social TV allows us to compare opinions, analyze backstories and basically do what we like to do best, socialize. We explored the sweeping phenomenon in another post, The Dueling Screens, Social TV. What we didn’t discuss, however, was what businesses can learn from social TV. Here are five things social TV can teach us about business.

1. How to be agile

Social TV demonstrates how one, seemingly stationary, media channel (television) can be creatively converted to spread across other platforms. Whereas the literal water cooler was once the central point of social TV, now the second screen, either via tablet or smartphone, makes up the primary gathering point around the television. Viewers sign in to social TV apps or other social platforms like Twitter to participate in a social hub centered around television.

From this example businesses can learn how to mold their own business model to transfer across other media channels. This is not just about having a web presence. Television networks have had websites and forums for quite a while now. It’s about making your online presence interactive via the newer second screens. Do you have a mobile website? Are you considering an app to enhance your brand or product experience? Both of these options take into account the devices that form basis of the social TV experience.

2. How to be content-driven

Television is about content. Social TV is driven by consistently updated or new content. This content is also available via the second screen, and there is a ton of it. Businesses don’t need to overwhelm themselves in the creation of new content, but they should be consistently offering something of worth to their consumers. A regular blog feature, updates about company projects or upcoming products and promotions are all content that can be used to generate social business. Give your users and consumers something to talk about.

3. How to be consumer-responsive

Social chatter on online platforms can be easily monitored by networks. As a matter of fact it’s possible that in the future, data gathered by social TV apps like Get Glue will become the new Nielson ratings of our age. What businesses can take away from this is that they ought to be monitoring social channels for chatter about their business. Mega brand Target uses Twitter to respond to customer service concerns and issues. Other brands use Twitter leads found by searching tweets focused around their industry to explore consumer outlook and response to competitors, their products and general industry trends.

4. How to be adaptive

The beauty of the real-time data that can be collected and monitored through social TV and shall we also say social business is that it can be acted on very quickly. You can understand if your current promotions and marketing messages are effective, gain a greater knowledge of your consumer/user demographics and even explore new and different trends you wouldn’t have considered before. But most of all, you can tweak your ad campaigns and sample products to respond to what you hear your consumers saying. If a TV show is not rating well, the network changes its air-time slot. You can respond similarly by using the knowledge divined by social chatter and ratings to adapt your business strategy to fit its consumers’ needs.

5. How to be engaging

Consumer and user engagement can be about more than monitoring online chatter or interacting with consumers around customer service issues. Shopping website ideeli.com, which specializes in retail sales of clothing, luxury goods and travel, engaged with consumers recently via the social TV experience by joining the real-time chatter over Twitter during the new fall TV show Pan Am. Fans of stylish clothing that followed ideeli would very likely enjoy these tweets as Pan Am is a show centered around a retro theme highlighting stylish clothes and luxury goods.

Examining and adopting these five social TV practices can aid businesses of any size in socializing their business. And since we humans love to socialize and brands are just representations of a group of humans presenting a product or service, what better way to conduct business than incorporating the social aspect of it?

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