ur-designs.com

• Communicate and stay in touch
• Build a community around your business
• Market and educate
• Reach out to the world

Why your business needs Social Networking

Remember the days when you mailed a postcard to stay in touch or drove up to a phone booth to look up a store in the Yellow Pages? Seems long ago! Technology in the form of cell phones, laptops, and the Internet has made a paradigm shift in how we communicate with each other. First came Emails/Voicemails, followed by Texting/Instant Messaging and now we are in the era of social networks as the primary media for communication.

In 2007 two-thirds of American youth used Social Networks daily, and one-third of adults used it at least once a month. In Dec. 2009 users spent more than 19.2 billion minutes on Facebook. In Jul. 2010, half of the 500 million active users logged into Facebook everyday and clocked 700 billion minutes. In Dec. 2009, the number of tweets per month on Twitter reached 1 billion. In May 2010, it reached 2 billion tweets per month.

Popularity of social networking isn’t just a cultural phenomenon – it’s a business opportunity.
Your customers are a part of a larger community, and it is important to reach them where they work and play. Today, that means marketing online, social networking and tapping into the power of Internet communities like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. A website is a necessity to broadcast who you are,
a social network is a means to broadcast what you are up to in real-time. While websites are a “pull” model (where users visit to see what is updated), social networks are a “push” model (where you push information to those who are interested i.e. followers and fans and they in turn pass it along to others). That is the reason why businesses and organizations need to utilize their social networks to communicate in real-time. Though there maybe some overlap, your personal social network is not necessarily the same as your business social network.

Examples of Social Networking for businesses

Tweets:

• A restaurant tweets their daily specials.
• A doctor’s office tweets availability of walk-in Flu vaccinations.
• A small business tweets changes to store hours due to bad weather.
• A ticket agency tweets last minute travel deals.
• A non-profit organization tweets an upcoming event.
• A spa tweets about an upcoming one-day sale offer.
• A realtor tweets new homes listed on the market.
• A chamber of commerce tweets local events and promotions.
• An expert tweets about being a speaker at an upcoming conference.

The list is endless for real-time communication using tweets…

Facebook:

• Announce and discuss your talk at a conference – post pictures, videos and links.
• Discuss a new product or service. Let users who have used it comment on it.
• Gather feedback and listen to users comments on a topic of interest.
• Let patients post baby photos or thank you notes (like a bulletin board in a pediatrician office).
• Solicit reviews about your product, service or a new treatment.
• Post events and provide attendees links to details.
• Host fan polls to collaborate.

Blogs:

• Discuss a service, product or new treatment.
• Provide a synopsis, opinion and link to a healthcare article.
• Discuss trends and solicit feedback comments.
• Share your experience on daily workouts and how you help to stay healthy.
• Provide an ongoing, frequently updated newsletter.
• Communicate your thoughts on how to make the world a better place.