What is all the fuss about? All we hear about these days is how many followers you have on your Facebook or LinkedIn account. Has our country gone crazy with this idea of “social networking “or “social media”? Perhaps; in fact we have not even begun to see the impact of social media in our personal lives and businesses.Connect Consulting can help you manage all your Social Media needs.
What is Social Networking?
Basic “old school” networking used to involve golf, a drink, or taking someone to a football game. One of the goals of the “old” style networking was to learn about the person and communicate with them about your solutions, ideas and skills. The goal may be the same, but the methods are new. Social media or social networking is a term used to describe a method of communicating both for social and business objectives, with millions of other people connected to the same kind of communication tool. To put it another way, social media is an umbrella term that defines the many different kinds of activities used to integrate technology into social and business interaction, including pictures, audio and videos.
What Are The Benefits?
A recent study in 2009 by Michael Stelzner points out some real benefits to developing a social networking strategy.
The numbers of individuals and companies involved in social networking are staggering. 35% of Americans are on a social networking site. Here are a few of the hundreds of sites. These numbers will be out of date by the time you read this.
Wikipedia 13 million articles
You Tube 100 million videos viewed
Blogs 200 million or more
Twitter 14 million users in the US
Facebook 80 million users
LinkedIn 43 million users
All of these have good applications for business, but they all may not be best for your needs and use. We are not going to try to convince you of the value, because you are already networking at some level. Technology gives you a platform to take it to another level. Research suggests that when people need to make a decision, they put more trust in person to person references than they do marketing or advertising.
pplications for business, but they all may not be best for your needs and use. We are not going to try to convince you of the value, because you are already networking at some level. Technology gives you a platform to take it to another level. Research suggests that when people need to make a decision, they put more trust in person to person references than they do marketing or advertising.
Bob Lilly