How does it work for business, all this Social Networking. There is no simple answer but in essence it is all about creating communities and having direct peer to peer access to discuss and introduce your products and services rather than use the tired and over used direct marketing methods.

We at Company Net are very privileged to have a partner www.reddresscreative.com who are pioneers in the use of the social networking for business, co-founder Colin Gilchrist is a mate and has guided us through the in’s and outs of the social network and how we can benefit. Starting with a presentation to our staff, Colin has been on hand to help and advise throughout. If you are struggling to understand the concepts and the approach, I can heartily recommend getting in touch.

For us, as technology providers of collaboration and communication solutions it is a very exciting time as customers and clients find a clear benefit by embracing the use of these solutions in a social way. One such client, Miller Homes has fully embraced web technology in the past to benefit considerably from the rich online experience provided to their customers, now they are using twitter to further enhance their reach to the community of home buyers, providing help, insight and influence to guide people through a difficult time because of the economic reset. The great thing also is that they are doing this alongside a TV advertising campaign and effectively using social networking to reinforce the TV message and explain how it fits in with the Company’s thinking.

Here is some further research that I did to look into the effectiveness of the use of Social Technology.

 apparently around 70% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 10% trust advertisements.

What we are seeing now is that the social network tools are capturing the basic human instinct to listen more attentively to others who have had an experience and to rely much more readily on the advice those informed individuals deliver. Add lots of people together who share their experiences and reinforce, discuss, agree, argue and basically form a consensus about every topic under the sun. For me it really started to be noticable on the on-line e-commerce websites a few years ago with the introduction of customer reviews. Suddenly we had a direct access to the experience of others who had purchased the product already, what is in the box?, does it work as described?, do you recommend that I buy it? – these are all questions that are answered by people freely giving of their own time to inform others about a purchase. It’s the sort of conversation that used to be contained in the pub, but now you can broadcast your view to everyone, safe in the knowledge that some one somewhere will appreciate your opinion and be influenced by it, others may well argue with it, but this is the essence of opinion forming as the discussion is even more valid when different view points help others to come to a conclusion. If the figures above are to be believed, we basically trust each other much more than being told what to do, oh,  maybe that’s why Governments are struggling so much to provide credible social networking connections with their constituents?

It has always staggered me that vast marketing budget spend can be justified in terms of extremely low hit rates – TV adverts are prime kettle boiling interludes, direct mail gets about a 1% return rate and when have you ever responded positively to a marketing phone call at home just as you are sitting down to your tea  

According to Social Harbor:

With Facebook and Twitter grabbing national news headlines, it may not be all that surprising to hear the number of users on social networking sites has doubled since 2007. However, the numbers are staggering to look at.

Almost 1/3 of the US population – 55.6 million adults to be specific – visit social networking sites at least monthly. This according to the latest report from Forrester Research. That number was 15% in 2007 and only up to 18% last year in 2008.

This puts the popularity of social networking among adults higher than instant messaging, streaming music, and reading blogs. Here is the complete breakdown from Forrester’s report:

Kurt Mackie is online news editor, Enterprise Group, at 1105 Media Inc.

Social networking solutions are various Web-based collaborative applications, typically labeled as “Web 2.0″ technologies or even “Web 3.0” by some. The use of forums, wikis and blogs is seen as a cheaper way of marketing products by “building communities.”

“Companies are finding the return on investment for social media campaigns to be aggressively outpacing traditional marketing strategies,” said Aaron Sloman, CEO of speakTECH, in a prepared statement. “It’s driving a transformation where traditional marketing departments need to re-tool as interactive marketing agencies.”

A Telligent white paper suggests that social networking sites can reduce help desk costs through technical support forums. Wikis, blogs and forums also generate free content and can replace printed marketing materials. The white paper, “Increase the Impact of Your Digital Marketing Spend in a Down Economy,” also suggests that social networking solutions boost customer engagement and brand awareness.

Social media spending is expected to grow in the U.S. market over the next five years, from $716 million in 2009 to $3.1 billion plus in 2014, according to an upcoming Forrester Research report. Such growth would represent “a 34 percent compound annual growth rate,” which is “a significantly higher rate of growth than the future spending on other interactive marketing channels,” Forrester explained in a press release

 

So there are some compelling reasons to get your business moving with Social Technology. As with every other technology there are phases of development, we are moving from the innovation into early maturity phase and that’s when the good ideas get translated into real benefits.