Social Networking: Way of The Future? (Part One)
There is a really great newsletter that I receive called Trend Watching (http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/) and this month’s briefing had some very interesting statistics that got me thinking seriously about Social Networks. I started asking myself:
- As a business owner do I really need to create, manage, and grow a Social Network presence?
- Do I feel that having a Social Networking presence is really going to increase my lead generation, PR, or Marketing?
- Do I really want to have my personal information shared with anyone who may be interested in doing business with my company?
For those of you not remotely familiar with Social Networks, Wikipedia defines a Social Network Service as:
A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messenger services. Some of the top Social Networks are Twitter, Facebook, and mySpace to name a few.
In their June briefing Trend Watching reported the following interesting statistics regarding the growing impact of Social Networking:
- Facebook reached 200 million active users on 8 April 2009. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook every day, while more than 20 million users update their status at least once each day.
- MySpace now boasts 130 million members
- LinkedIn counts over 40 million members
- Twitter had over 30 million members (late May 2009). Oh, and China’s Twitter, TaoTao, now has nearly 50 million users.
Overall, the share of adult US Internet users who have a profile on a social networking site has more than quadrupled in the past four years-from 8% in 2005 to 35% now. For adults aged 18-24, it’s 75%, and for tweens, it’s close to 100%. (Source: Pew Internet, January 2009.)
So where does this leave us, the small to mid-sized business owner?
My viewpoint on establishing, managing and growing a Social Networking presence for businesses tends to be skewed due to my profession and experience working with them. While I personally feel that every business should establish and manage some kind of Social Networking presence I have found that a majority of my clients do not!
I have found that a majority of the business owners and senior executives that I talk with are “aware of social networking” and may think they have a Facebook or MySpace account, but aren’t really sure. Overall I find that most business owners don’t have time to manage a Social Networking account and if they do have one it’s a personal account and they don’t promote their business within that Social Network.
Personally I find that as a business owner anyplace where I can get more information about my company promoted for FREE, especially information that I control as opposed to a Wiki or media article, the better! I think about it as free advertising, not to mention the SEO benefits [more information on Social Networking benefits can be found in our White Paper].
As I read through this briefing I started thinking: do I really want to have my business intermingled with my personal life? The more I think about it the more inevitable I feel it is. I mean, you can’t create a business profile page in Facebook without first creating a personal profile. Once you’ve created a personal profile you start finding your old friends, maybe checking in on some ex-girlfriends, and installing all kinds of crazy games which you end up deleting anyway b/c they take up way too much of your time.
My general feeling is that Social Networking websites are awesome and horrifying at the same time-an interesting dichotomy, right? Some of my clients and peers don’t want their personal information searchable within these Social Networking websites or are fearful of what others, maybe disgruntled clients or heaven forbid crazy ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, will say about them or their company online for all to read.
For me, this is now a risk I’m willing to take. I believe that creating a Social Networking presence makes you relevant in today’s business world. For example, just today I received an email from The Washington Post asking me to become a FAN on them on Facebook!
So the question remains . . . is Social Networking something that even small business owners need to worry about?
In my next post, I’m going to compare the benefits and drawbacks to creating Social Networking Accounts as well as share some great Business Social Networking Websites.
Oh, if you want to follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/greatcircle or become my Facebook buddy: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=670414669&ref=profile.
5 Comments
June 13th, 2009 at 9:41 am
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July 21st, 2009 at 6:27 pm
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August 15th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Nicely written. Well thought out.