Social media always requires the basics: knowledge, time, and the right tools. But for small businesses looking to grow their fanbase, it's important to add a heavy dose of innovation. These six businesses, after taking a hard look their industry, competition, and target audience, thought outside the box to develop solid social strategies and even some wildly successful social growth campaigns.

1. OptimalRun.com created a process where customers can submit questions about shoes and staff members reply with a personalized video showing the shoes and explaining benefits of each pair. “They find that not only do they usually make the sale, they get tons of testimonials and social shares of the videos.”
2. Franktuary, a popular Pittsburgh hot dog shop, takes time to listen and engage with its audience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and its blog. “Everything from its weekly #TuesdayTrivia hashtag series to consistently answering questions and feedback from their audience in a friendly tone… If you're a small business, take note of its hustle.”
3. A formal dress shop owner took innovation in her industry to the next level by posting pictures of prom dresses that had already been purchased so high school girls could avoid purchasing the same one.
4. Morton's Steakhouse: “This is a story of online marketing that started via listening. A hungry man who likes steak (me) jokingly tweets to Morton's Steakhouse that he's landing at Newark in two hours, would they please bring him a Porterhouse. He tweets it the same way you'd tweet 'Dear Winter, please stop snowing.' To his utter surprise and delight, a waiter is waiting at the airport with a Porterhouse when he lands. The now no longer hungry man goes home and writes a blog post about the event, which immediately goes viral, resulting in millions of dollars of free publicity for Morton's. The restaurant kept the story alive long after the steak had been digested by offering smaller 'moments of magic' to its now ballooning Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Moral? More often than not, you, as a small business, have the opportunity to let OTHERS do your own marketing.”
5. KissMetrics provides inspiring, useful, valuable content that gets mentioned, linked to, and shared across the Web, raising brand awareness, traffic and conversion rates. “In today's era of online marketing, it's all about the content. Lots of great content published and promoted strategically is what propels small businesses to the front of the pack.”
6. Cupcake Royale often asks social followers for suggestions on cupcake flavors by using real-time surveying tools. “Local businesses need to go beyond just customer service or broadcasting on social channels. You should be using it to find out exactly what your customers want to see and then use it to promise and deliver. That's how brand loyalty is built.”

How can you use social media innovation for your industry? Read more at Entrepreneur.com.