Tweeting, friending and linking in could be the next tools you add to your business toolbox.
Area businesses are embracing social networking to boost awareness of their products and services, drive sales and generate goodwill. While writing a blog (essentially an online diary or letter) has become commonplace, using newer Websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook are the latest elements of building a brand.
Twitter.com is grabbing the most headlines lately. The site allows users to post
messages of no more than 140 characters, about the length of this paragraph.
Companies are still trying to figure out how to “tweet” effectively. But Suzie Fenton, marketing director of packaging firm TricorBraun, feels like she’s got a handle on the truncated message service. She has been tweeting for about four months.
“Our strategy is to use Twitter as another one of the ways that we educate our customers,” Fenton says. “I’m not trying to use it as an advertising method; I try to avoid that. I’m trying to get our customers to see that we are in touch with our industry and knowledgeable about it.”
Fenton tweets about sustainability in packaging, laws that affect packaging, innovative trends within the industry and occasional fun tidbits like the new application for BlackBerry devices that calculates the environmental savings from using a particular type of fiber paper.
While she can’t gauge the impact of Twitter on her customers, Fenton says her messages are educating TricorBraun
employees about the industry’s trends. With employees in 30 locations across the
U.S. and China, that’s a challenge.
“I feel like one of my unofficial jobs is educating our people so they can educate the customer,” she says.
TricorBraun puts its Twitter feed on its internal and external Websites, although Fenton doesn’t send different feeds to the two audiences. She is hoping to encourage her sales force to talk up the company’s feed to customers to help it acquire more “followers,” or readers.
Companies like TricorBraun are social networking the right way, says David Strom, a journalist and speaker on technology topics like social networking.
“The point of using these networks is to create a better connection with your customers, trading partners and suppliers, look for more business opportunities, and keep your presence top of mind within your network as a resource for ideas, contacts or whatever,” Strom says.
The first rule of social networking for business is to avoid blatant advertising. It’s far better to be an information resource, Fenton says.
For professional networks like LinkedIn, Ning and Plaxo, the idea is to promote individuals’ expertise. These collections of professionals who build personal networks include their resume, contact information (available only to approved viewers for privacy purposes), recommendations from clients/bosses, and increasingly, tips or commentary in the user’s area of expertise. They are also excellent venues for being introduced to colleagues outside your network who you’d like to meet.
“Think about the paper resume and when it was king. Now what we are doing is much more powerful. It’s a living electronic collection of everyone you’ve touched previously in your career. The great thing about LinkedIn is you can connect to someone, say a former boss, and have them recommend you. That connection lives on and is available for everyone to see,” Strom says.
Beside connections, professional networks like these can help you find a job or employees along with customers, he notes. Part of the success of these sorts of social networks is using them to establish the company or individuals within it as experts or information sources for their industry.
“Even if you work at a big company, it’s still important for you to produce a set of content within whatever niche you are an expert in. That’s how people will find you and give you business or will increase your credentials,” Strom says.
But not all social networking sites are created equal, users say. While Strom pronounces MySpace dead for anyone but musicians and artists, he urges people to keep their personal and private communication separate on sites such as Facebook.com.
But Marie Casey, president of Casey Communications public relations, says her firm has used a fan page on Facebook to promote clients’ events such as the unveiling of Chesterfield Village’s sculpture “The Awakening.” The page allowed users to track the sculpture’s travel from Japan to Chesterfield.
In another instance, Casey Communications shot a video of a student awards ceremony
at St. Joseph’s Academy. Client Service Assistant Diane Poelker uploaded a link to the video in an e-mail blast to students, who flocked 1,000 strong overnight to YouTube.com to view the video. They also forwarded the link to their friends.
“It tied in with their open house night and we got a record number of applicants and a substantial gain in their freshman class,” Casey says.
The time and cost to engage in social networks can range from minimal to vast, Poelker says. Employees can spend hours finding content to post on Twitter, create e-newsletters or manage Facebook accounts. Companies that outsource regular social network communication could easily spend $30,000 or more a year, Casey says. But parts of the communication plan can be accomplished for far less, especially if a company’s employees can manage it themselves.
The key is determining the overall message and goal, and then stick to that message.
“It’s really finding the tool that is the best fit,” Poelker says.
A Social
Networking Primer
Twitter.com—Posting brief (140 character) messages for followers, or readers, to see. Followers find you or you can invite them to follow you. Individual posts are called “tweets” and resending another’s tweet as a “re-tweet” is a high honor.
LinkedIn.com—A directory of professionals/employees who post resumes, offer tidbits of expertise and serve as links to introduce colleagues within their network to those they wish to meet.
Facebook.com—Began as a social network of college students. Has since opened to anyone who wants to keep friends and colleagues up-to-date on their activities,
family, friends, personal likes and dislikes, chat, messaging, and forming interest groups. Seen as primarily social but has strong interactive features.
