First, let me admit that I am a total neophyte when it comes to social networking. I got involved with LinkedIn about a year because some of my business colleagues were on it and told me that I should sign up as well. I got a Facebook account a few months ago as a way to keep up with what my daughters and their families were doing. And I recently signed up for Twitter because it is one of the big three in social networking sites.
The significance of these sites in terms of communications is startling when you look at the numbers. To reach an audience of 50 million people, it took radio 38 years, television 13 years, the Internet 4 years, and Facebook 2 years. With these statistics, it’s hard for me to ignore social networking and say that it is just another fad or novelty, and not really relevant to business.
There were probably those who said the same thing about television when it was in its infancy. I am reminded about the quote from Jack Warner (of Warner Brothers studios) when asked about talking movies. His response was, “Who wants to hear actors talk anyway?”. We all have to be careful about being trapped by our paradigms about what is or is not relevant to business.
Social networking is a way to market beyond traditional means. It enables someone like me who is providing professional services to connect with more people than would ever be economically or physically possible through other traditional and marketing means. The arithmetic is very simple—if I have 100 contacts in my social network, and those contacts each have 100 contacts that they can connect me with, then I now have 10,000 contacts. If you go one more iteration, the number becomes 1 million contacts. By the way, 100 is a conservative number. As a newcomer to Facebook, I currently have 129 friends. My oldest daughter who runs her own PR business, has over 900 friends.
I have found that social networking is a way to stay in contact with clients and potential clients. It is not so much about selling products and services, but more about being able to give things of value on a continuing basis and staying in touch. However, I heard more than one marketing consultant caution those who become overly enthused about social networking that social networking cannot overcome or make up for a poor marketing strategy. Whatever a company or person does with social networking needs to be consistent with and support the firm’s overall marketing strategy.
What social networking is bringing to the marketing arena is the people touch. It makes businesses of any type personal. No matter what product or service your provide, social networking is an opportunity for customers and potential customers to see inside the company or organization. There is obviously a potential downside with this transparency. People can post just about anything they want about any subject on the web. People will post their negative experiences more often that their positive experiences. Social networking is a way to counteract negative publicity.
In addition to marketing, social networking is becoming widely used for recruiting new employees. It is a way to get referrals for positions that may be open in your company and to get unsolicited information about the person. Anyone who has had to check out references for a potential candidate knows that the information is highly biased. No job candidate is going to provide a reference that is not totally supportive of the candidate. Past employers are extremely cautious for legal reasons of providing any information about a job candidate. Social networks can provide information, both positive and negative, that cannot be obtained through other means.
Information obtained through social networks needs to be verified in some way for accuracy. For example, I have read very negative reviews of restaurants that I personally have had great experiences with. If it is a restaurant that I have not been to, I will look for more reviews or try to find someone who has been there, before immediately discounting it because of a bad review.
There are a number of social networking sites out there right now. It is like anything new in that there will be a rapid growth period followed by the normal consolidation and rationalization. Look at how many different search engines there were a few years ago, and now Google dominates.
Choosing which social network sites to become involved with is not an easy choice. Those which are the largest may not be the best from a business perspective. For example, MySpace is the second largest behind Facebook, but it is dominated by teenagers and has been declining in usage because if this.
An associate of mine did an informal survey of his clients and contacts and found that Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter were the most used sites. These are the three that I have chosen to use as well. Each has a different focus and purpose. LinkedIn is useful for making contacts and getting recommendations. It is generally targeted at business professionals, where the other social networking sites are more general. For example if I wanted to get an appointment with someone I didn t know, I could use LinkedIn to ask people I know for a referral. Facebook is primarily an information sharing site to update people on what you are doing now and to find out that they are doing. The things you put on Facebook are the same things that you would discuss with someone over a cup of coffee. Twitter is similar to Facebook in that you can update who you or your company are doing. Twitter is the fastest growing of the sites because of it structure and ease of use.
In summary, I don’t think we can afford to ignore social networking and its potential impact on any business, but as with anything we new need to be careful and selective on how we use it.
Author Resource:
Ryan Scholz works with leaders whose success is dependent on getting commitment and high performance from others. He is author of Turning Potential into Action: Eight Principles for Creating a Highly Engaged Work Place. For more information, visit his web site at http://www.lead-strat-assoc.com .
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