Social Media and the Enterprise
According to a Gartner research piece, “Exploring the opportunities of Social Media,” social media has been seen as having “a disruptive impact on organizations’ processes and business models.” The research further adds that “the ability of social media to enable rapid mass collaboration differentiates it from previous generations of technology. Social media is ushering in a new era of transparency and allowing formerly hidden social structures to emerge. Social networks have the potential to deliver a new category of information based on social interactions. This information can be used to inform operational processes, facilitate engagement with employees, customers, business partners and the social Web, as well as create innovative business opportunities.” Social media solutions have become quite an asset for the enterprise since they enable better connection with their customers. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and many other community forums are ensuring that potential customers interact with each other using some of these social media networks. Enterprises have realized that they need to leverage the benefit offered by these social media networks.
Enterprises do not want to miss out on the varied prospects offered by social media solutions, which include ways and means to drive forward the enterprise’s brand and further its revenues. Social media integration with an enterprise’s marketing and sales strategies can usher in numerous benefits which range from forging new prospects to garnering enhanced visibility to getting improved accessibility to people, etc. Social media solutions can ensure increased traffic onto the enterprise’s website and also guarantee a much higher ranking among search engines. This in turn ensures improved online exposure and the possibility of newer prospects being attracted. Sought out to be an effective economical marketing weapon, social media solutions can definitely create a ‘buzz’ about a product or service for an enterprise through the simple creation of a banner on a social networking site or even through a blog.
Enterprises that have seen how the social media works and realize its vast potential have employed and engaged professionals to help them maximize the social media advantage. The benefits are simple to see: drastic reduction in costs and marketing spending, greater audience involvement and usage of business intelligence to ensure greater ROI. There are already plenty of B2B enterprises that have utilized social media networks to not only find their prospects, but to also enhance their brand reputation and engage with their customers in a much better manner. There has never been an easier time to connect to your prospects than today, and social media makes connecting with your audience an easy thing to do.