5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies

Many corporate are trying to jump the social networking band wagon. The social networking websites’ links, icons and/or logos are being shown on most of the corporate websites as they want to increase their reach to and want to easily communicate with the folks in their network – customers, prospects or anyone.

Here are the 5 important approaches that they need to be confident of performing prior to jumping in the networking band wagon.

1. Define Objectives: Companies first need to define the objectives and goals as to what they want to achieve by social networking. Defining them before will help the contribution and participation more interesting and productive.
2. Channel of Communication: Companies need to keep in mind that networking in this media is not to increase the sales. It is a channel to make your customers and prospects to communicate with the company in a simpler way. And the other way round, may be customers do not want to receive a phone call or an e-mail but, wants to read the corporate blog or tweet. And the customer may feel comfortable to respond back or ask questions through the same channel.
3. Listen to Customers: This is the most important thing that corporate companies need to be keeping in mind. The jump in social networking makes it easily accessible to their customers and prospects. Listen to them first. The more the knowledge is shared with the customers and prospects to solve the issues the more satisfied the customer gets. Thus, building a good reputation in the market.
4. Track Customers Talking: Search the online media frequently to find out what people are talking about the company. And companies need to immediately attend, communicate the updates to them immediately. This networking channel is to build the brand and not to start the sales cycle. There are tools available which can help to keep track of this - TweetScan, RSS feeds. Companies can also try Andy Beal’s trackur tool.
5. Be Real and Own: People like communicating through this channel as they feel they are talking to a responsible person from a corporate who listens to them. So, one who communicates from the company side needs to be a real person who can own the issue or problem being talked about and respond back with a solution to them.

Also read related posts -
The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business
6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing

Web 2.0 In The Corporate World

Web 2.0 has spread widely among the internet community over the past five years and the social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace boast about more than 100 million users per month. Imagine how easy it is to have a mere 1% of that traffic referred to your site and the sales reaching the peak. These networking tools are more for consumer engagements and interactions. These should not be perceived as sales tools. Corporate companies have already noted the intense strength of these technologies that they are now becoming keen to adopt.

Why corporate are not ready to adopt this latest technology as they have adopted ERP and CRM?

• Corporate companies are too conservative and the fear of transparency which Web 2.0 offers makes them take the back seat
• Organizational structure and the lack of knowledge of managers to understand the new trend. Executives feel suspicious and uncomfortable and perceive such changes as taking unwanted risk
• Unless a quantitative measure is shown these corporate companies will not like to deploy
• They will not like to discuss about their clients or vice-versa openly and honestly as they feel they have bad competitors
• Implementation of Web 2.0 does not require much time, but to implement it and to participate in it requires the interaction of the larger workforce

These Web 2.0 tools are easy to implement but inherently disruptive and can challenge an organization and its culture. These interactive tools can be used strategically across the organization internally or externally to tap the unused potential. Corporate leaders should understand that this technology helps their business, employees and of course their customers as this provides a channel for broader collaboration, broader communication, instant and fair solutions to their problems and issues, to get feedback and opinions and helps community building. This in turn will help corporate leaders in generating new ideas and strategies and to take important decisions quickly and wisely.