Why You Need to Add Social Networking to Your Company's Marketing Mix

There are many mediums available to get information to your customers and prospects but one form is quickly pulling ahead in terms of usage and relevancy.

By now you should all be familiar with social media. It is quickly becoming more relevant as a means of connecting with friends, family, business contacts, and yes customers. Sites like linkedin, facebook, digg, twitter, and youtube give us the ability to create an enormous flow of information and interactivity between large groups of people. They allow us to reconnect to people who we haven't been in touch with for years or form communication lines with brand new contacts.

We can post videos about events pertaining to our personal lives or our companies and products. They give customers a means of communicating with you - a place to leave comments make suggestions, fill out surveys, etc. It's important to engage your customers and the social networking sites give you the opportunity to do just that. It gives your customers an opportunity to feel like they are involved and are part of what’s going on with you. Your customers can join your network, subscribe to your blog, follow your feed, etc. It gives you a way to be communicating with them 24/7.

Want an example? OK. Let’s say you just released a new product. Of course you’ll still be utilizing your current means of promotion such as postcard marketing, television or radio ads, print advertising, etc. But if you’ve built up a significant social network you can blast this information out on your lines and it can create a viral effect. Invite the people in your network to repost the information through their networks and within a few hours you can reach thousands of people who you would not have otherwise reached.

Here are some numbers to give you a better picture of what’s going on with this medium.

Facebook
More than 120 million active users, Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world.

Linkedin
more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

Twitter
global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier, according to Internet researcher ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia.

Myspace
MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe. 85% of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older). 1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to have a MySpace as it is to own a dog.

With millions of people waiting to connect with you there is no reason not to tap into this resource. Especially if you consider the fact that it requires only an investment of time. So get on there and post those videos, product brochures and feeds. Connect with your customers and make some new connections. If you put the time into it you will see the results.