Looking for a new way to connect with lots of customers? Try social networking suggests Chris Jewell

Conventional marketing, involving advertising, direct mail and leafleting is being knocked on its head by the huge increase in what’s called social marketing, including services like Facebook and Twitter, which many of you might be aware of, if not their implications and opportunities for your business.

One of the market leaders in this field was Bebo but recent announcements by owners AOL suggest it will fold, leaving Facebook as the true market leader and innovator with some 700 million users. If these were all in the one country it would be the third largest country in the world behind China and India. Twitter users issue what are known as ‘tweets’ or short messages and I understand that the number of tweets is rising at some 1,400 per cent on a monthly basis.

There are other less well known sites and activities like RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) where you can order information on specific topics to be sent to you, blogs, wikis, Ning, Virtual Reality, Mashups, Google Alerts (see later in this article) and the You Tube channel, many of which might have a use for your business. More about these another time.

Social networking sites are likely to impact on every aspect of our business, including:

• How we market

• Our customer relations

• Our reputation management and

• How we interact with our customers.

A new way

Advertising messages by way of TV and press advertising, leaflets, posters and direct mail all offer us a paid-for way of making statements, promises and offers about our business and its products.

But they are effectively one way ‘conversations’ from the business to the marketplace. Yet nowadays it is said that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements.

Social networking sites, by their very nature, offer businesses an interactive way of speaking with (as opposed to speaking to) our customers and prospective customers. For example, it is easy to create a business page on Facebook for your store alongside a personal Facebook page and update it regularly with news and offers, add photographs, adverts and video and seek to invite people to become ‘fans’ of the business page … Once a fan they are alerted to all we put and change on the business site.

Some Christian Facebook sites have over 100,000 fans and communicate with them regularly (a quick trawl suggested only three Christian bookshops in the UK with a Facebook page). Using Facebook, we can also ask for feedback from our fans, get responses from them regarding our business, its products etc and therefore gain important information and research about what people are saying about us.

80% of companies now use social networking for recruitment and the fastest growing segment on Facebook is females aged 55 to 65 - one of our core markets. And somewhat alarming, 50% of the mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook; imagine what this means for getting out bad customer experiences.

Add to this the fact that some 34% of bloggers now post opinions about products and brands. I wonder what they might be saying about your business and mine?

I mentioned Google Alerts a short while back. Free feedback is now available to us using Google Alerts - email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic, which can include your business. That could be a real help to us.

New mindsets are required

Social networking is a whole new way of communicating with customers and prospective customers. Businesses which get involved and get social networking to work for them will be the winners.

Your business and mine, by harnessing this technology and way of working and listening, will be among the winners, as we gain

• Involvement with our customers

• Interaction with them

• Intimacy in terms of knowing how and what they think about us, and

• Influence by engaging with them and energising them.

I have only so far been able to give you a brief sketch of the possible benefits to us of the social networking phenomenon. Try it yourself and get a better idea of how it works and how it can work for you. Ideally get a member of staff who already understands and uses social networking personally to be your social networking marketer. Or go out and discover it for yourself. The guidelines are:

• Set your page up

• Introduce content for your page (and update it)

• Acquire ‘fans’ from existing customers and other Facebook groups

• Encourage them to interact with you.

The message is clear … integrate social networking into your promotional strategy as soon as possible.