Tapping the Full Potential of Business Social Networking
Internet today seems to be incomplete without mentioning the term “social media” along with it. Undoubtedly social media is one of the innovative things that has happened as a concept to internet. It not only caters to social interactions but also has proven to be beneficial in performing online trade and commerce.
Today, internet marketing enterprises have to redesign their online marketing strategies in order efficiently use social media elements. On one hand there are the public social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And on the other, hand, organizations are engaging with their customers directly through dedicated platforms, the so called social business softwareor enterprise microblogging software. It is quite apparent that social media marketing is fast emerging as a popular trend in internet marketing. The idea is to be able to manage one’s business profile in various social forums such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and many others.
According to technology evangelist Robert Scoble, Facebook and Google+ are fast moving towards business social networking. At the Enterprise 2.0 conference, held in Santa Clara, Scoble said that there is a huge potential for the likes of Facebook and Google+ to be used as internal corporate communication networks as well. Today irrespective of the fact whether an organization has its own enterprise social network or not, most employees are active in business social networks. For example, a marketing team could use a closed networksto share their learning and insights, by selecting a format that suits their unpredictable schedule. Other advantages are:-
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Engaging and Motivating Sales Staff
With the help of business social network, sales staff is able to post feedback through mobile phones in to a core group within thenetwork that is visible to appropriate team members.
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Shared Learning that reduces time to plan & execute new programs
Marketing teams of various brands or product linesin a companycan share strategy and results easily with one another. This enables one brand to learn from the initiatives of the other brand. For example, results of a specific roll-out plan in a location/ geography can help other brands to tweak and modify their marketing strategies accordingly.
Business has always been about two-way communication – conversations within company employees, conversations with customers, suppliers and other business partners. The internet is evolving more and more to resemble a “personal network” – a personalized version of the internet that allows a person to interact and consume content that has been selected by his own network for friends and acquaintances. It is easy to see that there’s a natural alliance between the way corporates function and the way technology has evolved. . So, we can very safely consider business social networking a mainstay to today’s way of working.