All Businesses and Organizations can Benefit from Social Networking
What does “social networking” mean?
People all over the world are drawn to other people who are similar to them. Whether in the workplace, in school, or in our personal lives, we are always forming groups based on common interests, our hobbies, and our experiences. With the growing popularity of the Internet, many organizations that traditionally were formed though face-to-face interactions are now taking new forms online.
For almost ten years, social networking has been thriving online, but recently it has been getting more attention from the mainstream public. The networks have many purposes and sizes, but they also have two things in common: user profiles and relationship building.
User profiles: Each participant in a social network establishes his or her identity though an online profile. For example, in professional networks, the profile usually offers information about work experience, academic background, research interests, professional affiliations, specialized skill sets, and current employer.
Relationship building: Good social networks allow participants to link to others within the network, either implicitly (sending emails to other network members) or explicitly (purposefully creating links with other users). The technology behind these linking connections is simple, but it carries powerful implications, since it replaces static content with dynamic information flows as members of the network share their thoughts and opinions in a vibrant atmosphere.
Why is social networking important for my business?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) relies on sales, service, and marketing, but consumers have changed and no longer choose to place their trust in this traditional model. The Edelman Trust Barometer reports that today’s consumers are more likely to trust other people than companies or even experts in medicine or academia. According to the organization’s recent survey, in 2003 20% of respondents placed their trust in “a person like me.” Today that percentage has grown to 68%. And that’s where social networking can help your business, because it puts individuals in touch with one another and overcomes the lack of trust that people have with corporations. Businesses that want to succeed must use the power of social networking to build strong and trusting relationships with individuals and with online communities.
Social networking is mostly for teenagers and students, isn’t it?
Many popular social networks, such as MySpace and FaceBook, are indeed aimed at a teenage or college audiences, but there are many lesser-known social networks that are used primarily for professional purposes and are aimed at association and business audiences. Originally, the role of social networking in the business world was to recruit new employees. Recruiters enter a community of potentially well qualified candidates, evaluate those candidates, and then contact selected individuals to discuss job opportunities. But these recruiting functions are only the tip of the iceberg for the business applications of online social networking.
12 Ways that Your Business Can Use Social Networking
1. Relationship Building with Customers
Today’s customers are increasingly dissatisfied, most likely because they lack a good relationship with companies. Although CRM manages customers very well, it fails to develop the personal relationships that most customers crave. Fortunately, by using an online social network, companies can quickly and easily connect with customers on a personal level. This “human face” on a relationship with a business can transform a customer’s perception of a company and help to instill trust.
2. Customer Service
Good customer service and support requires answering customers’ questions and helping them resolve problems with your company’s products or services. By using online social networks, you can provide unbeatable service because your best subject-area experts can connect directly with the customers who are contacting you to request assistance. Also, you’ll be able to create tight-knit communities of the users of your product, so that they can share information and address problems among themselves, ideally with the active participation of your experts.
3. Find the Answers You Need
Databases, reports, and other documents are good sources of information about a company, but people increasingly recognize that the largest component of the knowledge within any organization resides within the minds of employees. Chances are, your employees spend a great deal of time trying to track down the right person for information. With an online social network, you can drastically cut this time by using profiles with a description of each person’s expertise and contact information. This will let your organizations solve problems more quickly, letting newer employees seek and benefit from the expertise of those who have tackled similar problems earlier in their career.
4. Integrate Acquisitions More Smoothly
Most acquisitions and mergers become failures within only three years, most often due to poor integration and alignment, poor communication, and a lack of shared goals between the two organizations. Online social networking can help to build relationships between the two groups of employees, facilitating communication and the development of shared goals. The networking activities helps employees feel like part of a collective whole, rather than two separate teams.
5. Stop Working in Isolation
Most products and services are components of a much larger service chain. As an example, consider the home buying process, which requires the services of not only real estate agents, but also lenders, insurance agents, title companies, builders, and others. When your company, a single service provider, joins the right social network and creates an interconnected web of other related providers, your customers will reap the benefits as you’re able to provide significantly more value and needs fulfillment.
6. Understand How Communication Flows Through Your Company
Most businesses have an organizational chart that shows reporting structures, but almost none have accurate charts to document the flow of communication within the organization. An effective online social network can help to develop and document actual communication flows. Once you and your employees understand how information flows through the organization, it will become much easier to identify which areas of the organization are involved in and responsible for different activities.
7. Make Your Meetings as Effective as Possible
If you’re like most people, when you attend a meeting or conference it probably seems that you aren’t able to make strong professional networking connections until the very last day or even the last few hours. It’s frustrating, and one can’t help but wish to have met the other people prior to the conference. An online social network presents an effective solution for this problem. By establishing a dedicated network before the event and inviting all conference attendees to participate, you can make the basic introductions well before the participants meet. This frees up their time during the conference to interact more deeply and build relationships more quickly.
8. Get More Out of Conferences
After a conference you can continue using your pre-conference online social network to help conference attendees remain in contact and continue to develop the collaboration they began at the event. The network can be used to facilitate one-time or regular meetings, or even future gatherings of the entire group of participants.
9. Knowledge is Power
Having the most up-to-date knowledge about projects and clients is critical to your company’s success, but it can be difficult to track and compile information from multiple sources. However RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other subscription technologies can feed regular updates into your existing social networks. This is an easy way to have all the latest news at your fingertips and share it with all of your company’s employees at the touch of a button. Also, sharing information in this way reduces the volume of mass emails. People are able to pick and choose the information they need, rather than receiving mass emails filled with information that may not be applicable to them.
10. Better Teambuilding
An effective online social network allows project managers to build strong relationships with clients, understand those clients’ needs, and then interact with the company’s own employees to put together the best team possible with the right mix of skill sets for the project at hand.
11. Stand Out from Your Competitors
In a crowded marketplace, your company must find ways to differentiate itself, helping the customer to quickly and easily identify your brand and decide to favor it over those of your competitors. If customers can use their online networks to identify with you as a service provider, then they will feel that your company can understand their perspective and provide the requisite services.
12. Plan for the Generations to Come
Online social networks are a relatively recent entrant in the world of business, but the next generation of consumers has grown up using websites like Facebook and MySpace, is comfortable with the technology, and expects to see and use related technology in the workplace. Savvy companies must learn to integrate online social networking with their existing business practices in order to recruit and retain the best and brightest talent.
Taking Action
This briefing document may be your first encounter with the benefits that your company can enjoy by using online social networking, and perhaps you have many questions, please email us at sales@orientsoftware.net or just simply fill in the try us form, we will answer you promptly.