Hawaii transplants Kalani and Kimo Mack opened their first Mo’ Bettah in Bountiful in July 2008. The restaurant served a streamlined menu Hawaiians call “steak plates,” a fast-food alternative to expensive steak houses.

At the same time, Kalani Mack’s daughter was pressuring her dad for permission to create a Facebook account. Mack consented on one condition. He would set up his own account that would allow him to monitor her postings.

Within a few weeks, Mack was chatting with Mo’ Bettah’s customers on his personal page, and he realized he could market the Bountiful restaurant through its own page.

“It was like a brick hitting me. I just realized it could be a powerful tool for the business, and the business could be a profile itself,” Mack said.

Today, Mo’ Bettah’s page has 1,759 fans. The Macks use it to promote new menu items and events at the restaurant, and gather customer feedback.

“Just being in contact with customers directly that way was huge. I’m not sure what kind of value it brought them, but I noticed that they enjoyed being in contact with their favorite restaurant,” he said.

Melissa Coates, an account executive at Insight Exhibits, set up a Twitter account for the Salt Lake City-based designer of mall kiosks and trade show exhibits six months ago. She uses the service to develop relationships with businesses and find clients.

Last month, Coates attended a trade show staged by Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation. Before going, she investigated the companies that planned to attend the trade show in Las Vegas. Of 150 companies, 107 were on Twitter.

“I started following those companies, hoping they would follow me. I don’t know how many followed me back, but a lot did,” she said. “I went to the show wanting to target 10 companies. I got seven companies that wanted to do business.

“I was kind of shocked.”

Today, Twitter tops the list of social media used by Fortune 100 companies, according to public relations giant Burson-Marsteller and its Proof Digital Media subsidiary. Their study found that 54 percent of the companies use Twitter. Corporate blogs come in second, at 32 percent, while 29 percent have Facebook fan pages.

“Everything personal goes through Facebook and almost everything business goes through Twitter,” said Grant Gordon, a co-founder and director of products at EnticeLabs, a Provo company whose software helps employers recruit workers.

Gordon’s first exposure to Twitter wasn’t promising. He thought 140-character messages could never be interesting. Until he set up EnticeLabs two years ago, it never occurred to him that the service could be used to drive awareness of the company or keep up with trends.

“All these experts, executives and prominent recruiters are on Twitter all the time. They will post articles they’ve read, things that are happening, questions. If you are not listening to that conversation, you are completely out of the loop. If you are not participating in that conversation, you really are not heard,” Gordon said.

This is the kind of bottom-line impact social media (Facebook, Twitter) can have on your business, whether you are a local restaurant, or a Fortune 500 company.