Business Solutions

So you have been looking into LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs to try and figure out what the importance of social networking is to economic development organizations, municipal organizations and businesses, and you are still trying to determine if you need to take that first step towards the development of social media technology for yourself and your organization.

Of course, there are many people that have embraced social media, find it a lot of fun, and have connected with hundreds of others that they would not have thought possible just a few months ago, and they represent the majority of users and members of all social media platforms, which leaves the remainder that are still trying to figure out if it will really help in growing their specific organization or business.

There are a few good reasons that indicate why all businesses and organizations should begin using social media platforms if they have not already:

• Social networking sites have become the easiest way that people can share information about your organization, as you can easily upload any of your presentations, pictures, documents, and videos that people will be more than willing to share with their friends and associates.
• A critically important reason is that social networking sites is a great way to increase your search engine optimization (SEO) and rankings of your organization’s website, since every link that points back to the organization’s website adds to the improvement of the websites page rankings, and organizations should most definitely take advantage by including links to their website in other posts and any of their social networking pages.
• As a source of gathering information, social networking can be used to both gather and share customer feedback, and in the future, links to social networking sites will become a standard piece of information along with phone and fax numbers as ways to communicate with any company or organization, and in addition to gathering customer feedback, social networking platforms can be used to share this information, because customers can quickly find and read recommendations from their friends, associates and peers.

Finally, one of the questions that most comes up, is how much time is required for social networking? It really all depends upon what you define as your social networking goals, at a minimum, you only need to check in a few times a week to add comments, pictures, videos or other documents and information, and to quantify the time it takes on a daily basis, for those who want to find new friends or generate leads, one or more hours per day will typically be they average time spent, and people that are most involved with social networking and add least 10 comments per day, will of course spend more time.

Now that you realize social networking is for your organization or business, rest assured that it is not too late to start taking advantage of the benefits social media technology offers and can bring to you in greater awareness and connectivity with your market, the first step to starting the social networking process is developing a well thought-out and focused strategic plan of the results you want and expect, and how you are going to accomplish them, so what are you waiting for, get started planning.