CORPORATE SOCIAL NETWORKING:

JUST A GIMMICK OR A POWERFUL MARKETING TOOL?

While social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube are becoming as dominant as newspapers, magazines, radio and television for consumers, corporate usage of social networking has been limited to individual employees using social networking tools such as Linked In to build their professional networks. However, organisations are now beginning to understand and embrace the benefits of corporate social networking.

Corporate social networking offers the opportunity to encourage your customers to interact more closely with you and each other driving traffic to your website and adding value to customers' perception of you. After all, you're providing them with access to your social network and the amount of industry information that can be generated by your users and made accessible to others is potentially immense.

The early stigma that surrounded user generated content is now disappearing as users latch on to the real value of information provided by their peers, partners and competitors. In fact, as such projects develop, some organisations are recognising that it's not a bad thing to allow customers to communicate amongst themselves and there are real benefits to be derived.

Customers have a tendency to trust their network in preference to your marketing and the interactions they have online can provide you with an excellent insight into the needs of your markets and the perceptions your customers have of your service. This is real information straight from the users' keyboards and in some lights could be looked at as more valuable than expensive market research.

Placing yourself at the heart of these discussions by providing the platform for such interactions, enhances customer perceptions of your organisation and is an innovative way of communicating with them. In addition, you become involved in your customers' conversations and are able to position yourself as their friend and a member of their network.

In a variety of forms, internet-based social networking has been around since the inception of the web and there is now a generation in the workplace that expects to chat about issues they face in the workplace in interactive forums. These aren't the passive media consumers of previous generations who would read direct mail or industry publications, these users want to participate, question and discuss.

Such users can only increase in number as subsequent generations of advanced internet users come to the job market. Those organisations that provide a vibrant, well-managed, easy-to-use platform upon which their customers, suppliers and other interested parties can network, debate and share knowledge will have in their hands a powerful marketing tool that places them at the centre of the debate. ~ Regards: Toby... IT Bloke... London.