It can help you understand the changing marketplace, provide a route to inform and educate your target market as well as drive new and returning business.

It is not just about technology. Social media may rely upon it, but the value is created in the exchanges of information, the conversations taking place and the relationships formed over it.

Reducing social media to a particular platform or technique is to misunderstand the underlying ideals that separate this medium from more traditional marketing approaches. It is about creating mutual benefit – not the age old targeted message delivered through the appropriate channel.

In fact, social media isn’t just marketing at all. It goes way further, taking on areas of PR, business strategy, market research, customer service and sales. Understanding the operating mechanisms and principles behind it can unleash whole new worlds of possibility for those businesses that understand them.

Let’s take networking as an example to start with.

Good networking is built on getting to know people and building rapport with them. It is built on mutual respect and a desire to help each other’s businesses grow. Through helping each other we foster good will, which over the longer term is rewarded by trust, referrals and new business.

Bad networkers treat the experience as an opportunity to hunt new business. They bore those around them reeling off their achievements. They try to dominate and push people towards doing business with them, with no interest in returning the favour. They operate on a ‘numbers game’ philosophy, thinking that as long as they keep trying some business will come out of it.

Eventually, people become wary of the bad networker. They don’t really want to talk to them. They cannot be confident referring business to them as they themselves feel intimidated by them. They do not feel the need to pass business in their direction because they never really did anything for them.

Good networkers see their credibility increase over time. Other business people know what they can do for them as they have heard first hand how they have worked with or helped others. They get recommended with confidence because they have taken time to build rapport with those around them.

Now think about your approach to social networking. Does it sound more like the first or second approach? Are you after the quick buck or in it for the longhaul?

OK, so what about the other uses of social media?

Market Research

Whatever business you’re in, there is sure to be some need to research your market, the competition or another facet of your business.

You can take time to compile industry statistics, read the latest trade magazine or conduct your own research into previous buying habits. However, it may all seem a bit flat and logical without a more human aspect – a more qualitative element to your research.

By understanding the opportunities created by social media you can bring your customers and potential customers into the process from the very beginning.

Take Walkers Crisps in the UK as an example.

They recently invited customers to suggest new flavours. People responded with their suggestions and eventually the most popular were launched in shops across the country. Not wanting to stop there, they invited customers to review the new flavours and vote to keep the one flavour they felt passionately about.

So what?

Well think about this. The customer did the work of the R & D department in suggesting flavours. The data recorded in the first process showed the most popular suggestions eliminating the need for focus groups or other surveys. The customer tested the products during the first release and recorded their findings by voting for their preference.

The customer felt ownership throughout the process. The customer engaged with the campaign, in many cases offering up their email addresses, phone numbers and other contact details in the process. The customer will have discussed the campaign and choices with others creating valuable word of mouth marketing for the company.

Win – Win – Win.

Walkers Crisps created a new product with an established market ready to adopt it.

The Customer got a new flavour of crisps that they had a role in deciding upon.

Suppliers and retailers could have confidence that demand for the product already existed.

Customer Service

There is a statistic repeated the world over which goes something along the lines of ‘A happy customer will share their experience with one other. An unhappy one will share it with ten.’(The numbers may differ but the idea’s the same)

Identifying the unhappy customer before it’s too late has always been a difficult task.

In a world where everyone has the tools to communicate their dissatisfaction with many others, finding them has never been more important.

For example, say I have a gripe against Company X which has just sold me a faulty widget.

I outline my gripe in a short message over Twitter which automatically updates my Facebook status. Some friends join me in berating Company X with comments on my Facebook status and a couple of reply Tweets.

Soon my complaint with Company X has been shared with not 10, but moving on for 1,000 (Total of Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers).

Add in, that my complaint is now supported by others, who have added their own perspective and shared details with their own networks, Company X is now facing a lot of negative attention.

By understanding the principles, you can seek to identify and address customer service issues before they get out of hand. You can turn those negative comments into positive ones, retaining the original customer and demonstrating to others your focus on customer service.

Business Strategy

Getting to know your way around the emerging digital landscape can open entirely new models of doing business.

We are no longer constrained to working in the same office, or even the same continent.

Take the recent Twestivals held across 175 separate locations across the globe. Although not strictly a business event, the Twestivals highlighted how the tools used within social media could be put to use in making funds for charity.

The process began with a single message shared over Twitter and led to volunteers organising their own teams to put together an event in their city with sponsorship, food, drink, live streaming of footage over the internet, local and regional news coverage and event bookings.

In many cases even the local teams had never met before, nor did they know the guests that would be attending on the night.

I was lucky to be involved as the Cornwall Twestival organiser. I had a rare chance to watch all this come together in just 4 weeks. To see organisers collaborating on a global scale. To see people coming together locally with pride in their local event.

If all this could be achieved from a message over just four weeks, what could a business do with the same tools over the space of a few weeks, months or even years?

PR

There are many different aspects to public relations, some of which will have been covered in the previous sections relating to networking and reputation management. What remains to be mentioned is the role of blogs and other internet news or article sites.

Getting media attention for your company is no longer just a case of firing a press release off to the local hack and ensuring you buy him or her lunch once in a while. The media is now in the hands of millions of individuals acting outside the constraints of the traditional press, TV and radio institutions.

Bloggers, are independent commentators reporting on or discussing events, launches and other matters that they believe to be of interest to their their audience. Many are not restrained by the presence of editors or advertisers. They speak to build their own credibility, to generate revenue from advertising (often in the form of Google Ads) and in many cases just because they like doing it.

Bringing bloggers into your marketing mix can be powerful for your business. Acting more like a word of mouth referral than traditional news coverage, bloggers can shine a light on your business should they decide to mention you or write a post about you. Understanding their motivations and engaging with them is like the other areas of social media, more about mutual respect and a win-win approach than the age old, message – channel – target market.

Coming back to where we started, social media is a lot more than just marketing. It is a lot more than the latest platform or service offering – those are just fads.

What matters are the changes taking place in the way we communicate and manage our businesses. The conversations initiated, the relationships formed, the new models of business and the emerging possibilities created as we move forward in an ever more connected, ever more sociable world

Web development company, UKNetWeb, which advises businesses on their use of Social Media, has issued the warning after noticing a number of local business people had fallen victim to the virus which spreads itself through messages sent to each member of a their friend list.

The title of the dodgy message varies with messages such as “Maan,yyou’re great!” and “your ass looks not bad in this video” forming part of the message body or Facebook wall posting.

Anyone receiving messages of this kind should not press the link under any circumstances and should delete the message from their inbox or wall immediately.

Once clicked, these links forward you to a site which hunts for a file on your PC referred to as a cookie and prompts the user to update their video or flash software. Once accepted the Trojan virus proceeds to lock the user out of their account and messages each of the friends on their friend list with a similar message, further spreading the virus.

UKNetWeb Managing Director, Toby Parkins says, “Issues of this kind are not uncommon; however, they can be extremely disruptive and annoying to the individuals involved.”

“It is always best to exercise caution and where suspicious do not take any chances. You should ensure that your computer has the latest anti-virus and anti-phishing software installed and run on a daily basis”. He continued.

Facebook has now taken steps to deactivate malicious links in messages through the network; however, it is still possible that some may get through. Anyone worried about their security should seek the advice of their web developer or IT specialist.

The key to success in more troubling times is to work hard to attract a larger share of the market followed by aggressive retention strategies to ensure that you retain those new customers.

With the rise of digital marketing, and the growth of online tools such as social media and social networking sites, there are now many opportunities for businesses to promote their business without breaking the bank.

Areas covered in this section include:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• The Rise of the Blog
• Email Marketing
• Social Networking including Facebook Pages, Advertising and Networking

Understanding how these networks can be of use to your business is still only just becoming clear, but we’ve done our best to highlight some of the ways the biggest, Facebook, can help you and your business.

Facebook Groups

If you have something to talk about why not set up a group? A group on Facebook is just like a group in the real world; it has officers or organisers, members and events. Setting up a group on Facebook takes just a few seconds and if you have something to share then it makes for an effective means of communicating for free with your audience.

You can publish events and even compile the attendance list for an event easily with the tools built into the application. You can message all members at the push of a button or post information or links they might want to read.

Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are like profile pages for your business. They allow you to upload company information, including opening times, contact details, links, pictures and logos. Like groups they cost nothing to build and have options to message all your ‘fans’ (the term for anyone who likes your page enough to link to it).

Every person that links to your page displays a neat little icon showing they adore you, what could be better! And, if you want to see just how effective it is, all the data relating to people visiting your page including; gender, ages etc is stored in the system for you to see.

Check out Facebook Pages here.

For an example of a working Facebook Page you can visit ours here.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook offers one of the most highly targeted forms of advertising around. Using the details stored on individual member profiles, the Facebook advertising system can target advertising to be displayed for your exact target market alone.

The system works on a pay per click or pay per impressions basis; with fees charged only when someone clicks on your ad in the first instance or for every display in the second.

Profiling options include: gender, location (right down to town), job title, interests, education status, relationship status and sexuality.

Ads can be used to promote a Facebook page, group or application; or a company website or micro-site.

For more information check out http://www.facebook.com/ads/

Networking

Chances are that most business people have undertaken a form of networking at some point or another. This may have involved going for breakfast with members of your local chamber of commerce or BNI, it may have been a speed networking event organised by a local company – either way networking on Facebook isn’t much different.

The principal behind ‘social networking’ is that through publishing a bit about your social activity you will find shared interests with friends or colleagues, helping foster a closer relationship between you.

This may sound all too frightening for many businesses; however, once you have spent a little time working out just what you want to share (and the bits you might want to keep private) it can prove an effective means of building stronger relationships with potential customers or partners.

Each profile comes with something called a ‘status update’ (see example below), this is a small one line statement detailing what you are doing, thinking about etc at the very moment in time. Using these to publish small sound bites about you or your company can present interesting results. Try experimenting with different statements and watch as people mention them the next time you meet or call.

With many companies, organisations and individuals generating new content all the time it is worth taking the time to see how each may improve the way you do business, research or networking online.

In this post I have attempted to catalogue some of the many sources I have found useful in my role researching and advising companies at uknetweb on the possibilities presented by Web 2.0.

Some of the links refer to other list blogs cataloging the best of the web, others are my own selections and some are link to directories I found useful when browsing the web.

Free Useful Software

Open Office – Why pay for MS Office when you can get most of the functionality for free with Open Office?

A suite of software with programs offering many of the functions found within the Microsoft Office Suite. Worth downloading and playing around with – it works across operating systems and platforms . (The Draw program is particularly useful for preparing flowcharts and process models.) If you’re interested how these programs are free – click here.

Open Workbench – Specifically for Project Managers

Similar to OpenOffice this is a program for Project Managers available as a Free Full Download. This neat little bit of software has all the functions to make a project run according to plan and timescales.

Free Online Applications and Downloads

Flock – Manage the Web 2.0 World

Already the subject of one of my past entries I am still loving the functionality of Flock, an alternative version of the Firefox browser system. The Flock browser brings together all of your social networks, bookmarking sites, picture sites, blogs, rss feeds and much much more.

WordPress – More than just a blog site!

WordPress is one of many free blogging systems available free of charge on the web. With loads of functionality in the hosted or download ble versions this great piece of open source content management software makes it easy to publish anything online. Try it out to see what I mean.

Slideshare.net – Get presenting to the World.

I first used Slideshare to publish a presentation given by my MD to a local Chamber of Commerce (click here to view – E-commerce 2008 and Beyond). I never intended Slideshare to be anything more than a convenient place to host presentations for interested parties to download; however, on the first morning after uploading we received 65 viewers from across the globe.

Ning.com – Host your own network

If you’re getting bored of using other social networking sites, Ning.com provides a great location to host your own network. Featuring many of the functions you’d expect to find on other social network sites, Ning gives you control over the name, content and style of your own network. Desktoptwo – The Desktop that travels with you. A handy little online environment featuring a range of online applications accessible through one secure online virtual desktop. Features 1gb of free storage.

The Best Lists

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

The title says it all – Packed with links to useful software that gives you the opportunity to put two fingers up at our dear friend – the Big Mr.G.

25 Firefox Extensions to make you more productive

If you have switched to Firefox or Flock this list features a host of add-ons / extensions that make your day that little bit more productive. Warning: you might not like the results of MeeTimer – an add on that identifies where you spend your time online – splitting it into neat sections which include; ‘procrastination’.

ReadWriteWeb – List of Web 2.0 Lists

As it says this is a list of the best lists of Web 2.0 applications, this is a veritable list bonanza!

All Things Web 2.0 – Top 100 Top Rated

This is a link to a directory of the Top 100 (Top Rated) Web 2.0 resources. Navigate the site to find apps etc listed by top recommendations, number of users or category. Really useful site to keep up to date with the latest developments on Web 2.0.

I hope you find these useful. If you have any of your own suggestions please let me know and I’ll get them up here as soon as I can.

]]> http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/the-best-free-software-online-apps-and-lists-on-the-web-20/feed/ 0 http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/get-flocked/ http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/get-flocked/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:39:03 +0000 Aren Grimshaw http://uknetweb.wordpress.com/?p=14 I discovered the Flock browser at the beginning of this year after noticing that friends on Facebook were joining up as fans.

A dedicated user of the Mozilla Firefox system, I had my reservations of moving to yet another browser and all the issues in cross browser compatibility on badly developed sites I was sure to have.

On download, I found a browser well beyond my expectations and one that I believe enhances my online experience and my efficiency in carrying out research and networking online. Using the same image rendering as Firefox (according to my techie friends in the office), I don’t need to worry about any new browser compatibility issues at all.

So why do I recommend Flock?

Flock is, to use their words, ‘The Social Web Browser’. It has built in functions to make your social networking, blogging, RSS feed experience the best it can be.

When I want to see what’s happening on Facebook or Flickr, its all one click away with a simple bar down the side showing my friends pics and status. Notifications of waiting group requests, messages etc are shown at the top of the bar too.

When I want to blog I push the little quill and up pops a little window (I am writing this there now), write my blog and press publish to automatically upload to which ever site I have registered.

Through ‘My World’, a personal home screen a little like the iGoogle set up, I see my favorite sites and RSS feeds all in one place.

I could go on listing all the functions but I will leave you to find out the rest by downloading it and testing it. I am sure it has it’s downfalls too, I just haven’t found them yet. If you want to leave me a comment with positive or negative comments about Flock feel free. Happy Flocking!

My role within the company is to research emerging technologies, liaise with clients and potential clients, and manage some of the projects coming in.

I have started this blog to share some of our work with the world and help businesses locally or further afield tap into the many new tools emerging on the web. I will post as often as I can with links to great sites, information or tools for those interested in the internet, other emerging technologies or growing their business.I want to start by adding the following slideshow (available for download) which was a presentation we prepared for our local Chamber of Commerce featuring hundreds of embedded links to more info.

I am keen to hear any thoughts you have and welcome anyone to get in touch. You can find me on Skype, Facebook or Plaxo. (Click here for links through ‘About Aren’)

Aren