Social Networking: A Required Fad

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linked-in, Digg.com, Flickr. You may have heard these words on TV, radio ads, seen them in print advertising or just from your friends and family. These are some of the most popular social networking sites on the internet today. Social networking is no longer something you can do, but is now something you should do. In today's fast paced information driven society, people are in constant communication, mainly due in part to technological advances with mobile devices, computers and website applications such as Facebook. Using social media platforms to promote products and services is increasing greatly for small and large organizations. It has now become the easiest way to gain contacts and a loyal customer base worldwide.

Ask yourself, what's the best method of marketing today? If you answered word of mouth, you're right! When you receive a referral from someone, it's not just a name and description. It's a sign of trust, community, and someone you expect will provide a quality product or service without any doubt. This is really the idea behind social media. People talk. If your business provides an outstanding product or service people are going to tell their friends and their friends will tell their friends and so on. Social networking allows you to be in the middle of this discussion to ignite, inform, and inspire your customers and potential customers. Social media allows you in most cases to target a specific audience. This may be based on location, age, interest, or recently viewed websites and profiles. It connects the business to the consumer allowing for more customer trust and likability. Facebook fan pages for example are a business profile as opposed to a regular personal profile that you log in to. It allows people to follow the post put on by profile managers and creates an entire community feel for your business. This is exactly what you need to succeed in today's market place.

This all may sound great, but it does require a lot of interaction and feedback into your Facebook business profile. You need to grow your followers and constantly post, blog, tweet, interact and continue to stir the pot. There are hundreds of different types of social networking platforms available online today and most of them are available for free. If you don't have at least a Facebook business page or twitter account, you could be missing an enormous amount of potential customers.

Learn more about having a Facebook business page.