The two (semi-arguably) biggest social media giants are catering toward small and medium business owners, with the hopes of keeping their growth rates high, and building long-term relationships with advertising customers.  In the interest of taking all (or at least most) of these SMB customers, Facebook and Google are both laying down their best hands.

Facebook already offers tours for small businesses to highlight tools to help find lookalike audiences, different methods to appeal to customers, and advertising techniques.  The tour also serves as a networking platform, as well as a site to swap best practices.  Facebook doesn’t have quite as many customers as Google, but it is earnestly trying to close that gap through more focused targeting. 

Meanwhile, Google My Business offers similar tools to Facebook, essentially creating a suite for SMBs, and gives Places and the Google+ dashboard a more SMB friendly experience.  Google is also trying to entice small and medium businesses to test out Adwords and Google’s advertising tools.  On top of this, Google makes their suite available as a mobile application, which allows their users to manage their profiles and reach clients when on-the-go.  As the towering “giant” of the internet, Google has the advantage with SMB customers, but they will have to keep up their game since they are not the only option out there.    

As an interesting side note, Amazon is also honing its focus on SMBs.  It is hoping to set up a local services marketplace, in order to playing the role of a middle-man (similar to the services offered by Angie’s List).  Amazon also realizes that SMB customers are great business opportunities, but the big challenge for them is scaling costs.

Regardless, this is all good news for the businesses.  Seeing as how both Google and Facebook offer great network opportunities, SMBs should make use of both companies and the tools they offer.  SMBs have great potential to develop into larger enterprises down the line, and if the web giants play their cards right, there will be major budgeting by these large firms to ensure they keep their social media outreach strong.  It is simply a matter of with whom the businesses decide to strike a deal with first. 

For more information, check out ZDNet.