Last week, Yahoo Finance posted an article by J. Bonasia titled, “Social Networking Is Fast Migrating To Business World”.  In it, they talked about the impact platforms like Facebook and Twitter are having on allowing people to connect and how businesses are being prodded to get involved.

While the article mainly focuses on software for allowing companies to get involved in social networking, it did touch on some points relating to business in social media overall.  Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang is quoted as saying, “Social networking can be a marketer’s dream, letting firms communicate directly with customers and partners. Traditional Web ads are already becoming less effective than campaigns that invite people to social Web pages where users can try things out and tell their friends.” 

“Marketers moving quickly to embrace this trend will benefit, while those coming late to the party will struggle,”

The only thing I would add to the article is not just to move quickly, but to move quickly with a plan.  Know what realistic goals are in social media and have a plan in place that includes interacting on platforms or groups where YOUR customers are.  Just joining every popular platform out there will not help you.  Also, make sure that you have a social media policy in place and that you educate your employees about if and how your company is comfortable with their participation in social media.

Hopefully, your company already has a plan in place and is taking advantage of social networking.  This is not the latest fad that all of the cool kids are doing.  This is the next level of interacting with customers, prospects, and business partners.  The bus is leaving whether you’re on it or not.

Picture “DSC01368” by BRivey on Flickr.

As companies continue to create and share quality content with customers, prospects, and the like-minded, we recently announced that solution providers can now share their entire range of content media on their site.  The sharing and distribution of presentations has continued to grow among the business community and now solution providers will be able to share that content on FYIndOut along with white papers, case studies, additional links, videos and other marketing collateral. 

Companies can now display their SlideShare and Google presentations for their various solutions on FYIndOut without having to download them to multiple sites. 

All you have to do is enter the Title, URL, Description, and Tags for the presentation you wish to share and click “Save”.

When users go through your marketing collateral, they can view the presentations on our site without leaving the site and missing the opportunity to save your solution to their short list. 

It’s that easy and efficient.

We’re always interested in making sure we provide what you need for your business so please feel free to contact us and give us your suggestions as to how we can make FYIndOut work for you.

Thanks.

Recently, Mike Lewis of Awareness, Inc and Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs released a thirteen page report titled, “Corporate Trends in Social Media Marketing”. Information for their report was based on survey responses from 623 marketing executives at mid-to-large sized organizations.

Some of the areas we found most interesting were the reasons companies were looking at using social media as well as their concerns around doing so.

The top reasons why organizations are interested in implementing social media are:

1. brand promotion
2. increasing customer engagement

The primary concerns companies have as they launch social media programs are:

1. community participation
2. maintaining a consistent brand image
3. identifying ROI

In regards to concern about maintaining a consistent brand image, it was interesting to note that 71% of the respondents said that a set of ‘Best Practices’ be beneficial for them to launch or enhance their social media efforts.

As we’ve said in previous posts, we believe that ROI on social media can be measured, it’s just that it doesn’t fit the way most companies metric their standard forms of marketing.  Chris and Mike also state, “As companies adopt and enhance social programs they need to be sure that the vendors they select to support the technology component of the social program understand the differences in business objectives companies have and have the appropriate metrics in place to track an ROI.”

The summary of the report goes on to say that “Most [organizations] view social media marketing initiatives as a way to help retain customers and nurture prospects while the economy recovers and over 50% have allocated funding in their budgets for social media marketing spend.”  It then finishes with a key point, “Adopting social media marketing tactics is no longer an option, but the standard. If you are not engaged you are behind the curve.”

The key is that it’s not just enough to be involved in social media.  The important part will be to know what platforms and form of participation is right for your company’s goals.  An interesting point to note is that so far, social media has been geared towards individuals with some companies taking part with mainly a B2C focus.  As you see most companies trying to figure out the best way to get involved in social media it is still somewhat of trying to put a square peg in a round hole when it comes to those in B2B.  Are you really going to sell a business service or application by having a page on Facebook or LinkedIn?  Will people pay as much attention to you on these platforms when you’re B2B?  That’s why we created FYIndOut with the intention of allowing companies to put their best foot forward and participate on a platform with the sole purpose of helping professionals find and promote business applications and services.