Why is this important?

Social Networks are online communities or groups of people or individuals who share information on or about common interests. While the word 'social' suggests non-business interests, social networks are increasingly being used as business tools.

What to do

There are many social networking websites – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to name a few. While each website is different in its look, feel and target audience, there are similarities in the process of using them.

Step 1 – Sign Up

You are required to be a member of each site before you begin using it. Becoming a member is usually free, though some sites offer additional services via a paid membership upgrade. Becoming a member involves completing a sign-up form with your name, email address, etc, and agreeing to the site’s Terms and Conditions. Either at the time of signing-up or shortly after, via email, you are given your member details to access the site.

Step 2 – Create your profile

Your profile is your individuality in a social network. It defines who you are and what your life is about. While different websites may be focused on different aspects of you and your life, they generally encourage you to provide as much information about yourself as possible – your name, age, birth date, occupation, school/s you attended, job/s you’ve had, hobbies, interests, etc.

Step 3 – Define your security/privacy settings

The larger and better-known social networking websites all allow you to define your own security settings, ie who gets to see any or all of your private information as defined in your profile. With the growing concern of information security on the web, social networking websites have adopted stringent measures to secure their users’ information.

Step 4 – Network 

Once you’ve completed the above mentioned steps, you can begin joining the various communities, groups and/or forum discussions which the website offers. At this point, each social networking website will vary depending on its focus. Usually, you can search for groups in your specific areas of interest. Some groups allow all site members to join, some require additional information before allowing you to join, some require a referral and some are closed. Some sites will allow you to start your own interest group.

Business value

There are varying opinions on the value of social networking for business purposes. There are people who suggest that it’s invaluable to their business success and there are others who suggest it’s a waste of time and effort. Even the experts are divided on the business value of social networking.

Most people agree however, that the future of social networking presents enormous potential for business.

Jody Nimetz, the author of Marketing Jive, suggests that there are five ways for businesses to use social networking:

1. To create and maintain brand awareness
2. As an online reputation management tool
3. As a recruiting tool
4. To learn about new technologies and competitors
5. As a lead generation tool to intercept potential prospects

The obvious question here is “How do you generate leads via a social networking website?” According to Nimetz the answer lies in driving users of that website to your company’s website. If you can do that and harness those users, you have a source of reasonably qualified leads.

Return on investment  How do they work? 

Social networking is a financially low-cost investment. However, successful social networking requires a significant amount of time and effort. For smaller business owners, time is money. So, while it’s relatively cheap to become involved in social networking, successfully continuing the practice can become an expensive exercise.

Will you make a profit on the exercise? It’s difficult to say. There is no magic 'how to' with social networking currently. As a minimum though, you should:

• investigate social networking sites to see if there’s potential for your business
• assess the true cost of your involvement in terms of money, time and effort
• continue investigating social networking, it is continuously and rapidly changing

There’s enormous business potential in social networking, a business just needs to figure out how to capitalise on it and which ways will work best for them.

Where to go for help

Do It Yourself

Where do you start with social networking? By looking through and understanding some of the more popular sites:

LinkedIn:  LinkedIn boasts around 40 million users in 200 countries. Its users are primarily business professionals. It provides its users the means to establish ‘connections’ to other users and businesses. It is often used as a tool to aid recruitment.

Xing:  Xing boasts 7 million users in 200 countries. Most of Xing’s users are from Germany and most of its users are business professionals. It provides an easy means to connect its users internationally. Unlike LinkedIn which is mostly free, Xing is primarily a fee-based service.

Ecademy:  Primarily UK based, Ecademy users are able to make contacts, advertise business and work opportunities, arrange networking meetings and to create private business clubs and arrange meetings. Ecademy has free and paid membership.

Ryze:  With most of its users from the US and India, Ryze boasts a membership of more than 250,000. Its focus is on connecting business individuals and companies to other individuals and businesses. Ryze has free membership and Gold membership, which offers additional features and services.

Facebook:  Originally developed as a site for college graduates to maintain contact, Facebook has grown to include groups and individuals from all walks of life. Its focus is more of a contact management system, including business contacts and groups.

MySpace:  With more than 185 million users, MySpace is one of the most popular social networking websites. While originally targeted at younger web users, MySpace has become of increasing interest to businesses due to its enormous number of regular visitors.

Friendster:  Another popular social networking website with more than 45 million members, Friendster focuses on finding and linking people with common interests. Again, Friendster’s enormous visitor count draws significant interest from business users.

Other social networking websites worth visiting are Orkut (owned by Google), Bebo, Nexopia (youth-oriented), Hi5, Tagged, Skyrock (European-based), Multiply, Twitter, Cyworld (South Korean-based), Xiaonei (China-based) and Yahoo Groups.

There are, of course, many more social networking websites on the web with the numbers continuously growing.  

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