Have You Jumped On The Social Networking Bandwagon?
Most businesses have used networking to help grow their business, at one time or another. While networking groups, trade shows and word of mouth, have been part of traditional business networking, with the explosion of the Internet, social networking has also become popular and its growing at an incredible rate.
So what exactly is social networking? According to the search engine Technorati, “Today’s social networks are the Internet-powered relationship engines of the twenty first century. Popular sites like Facebook, My Space, and Linked In are all examples. These services specialize in facilitating connections between people who share similar interests or professional pursuits.” While My Space and Facebook originally attracted college and high school students, they now have become mainstream and are attracting large audiences of people and literally millions of users. Linked In is a business oriented social networking site that basically works as a public resume of yourself, or business and allows users to list details and provide trusted contact connections.
So why should I jump on the social networking bandwagon some might ask? I may date myself a bit here, but do you remember that annoying, shampoo commercial of the 1970’s (Faberge Organic Shampoo)? It always ended with, “…and she’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on and so on.” Well-that is basically how social networking works. The more contacts you make, the better, and the good news is that you can look at other peoples friends, or contacts, and discover that you may know someone they know.
I have to admit, I was a little leary about all of this “social networking stuff” at first. I know from experience with my college kids, that you can spend an incredible amount of time connecting with friends, etc. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to put my personal information “out there” for people to see, but realized quickly I’ve already been posting both personal and business information on the PGC blog site for two years now. I figured it was time to take the next step. I’d received several invitations to join Linked In, and Facebook, and thought…”Why not join this social networking phenomenon and grow our business at the same time?”
For now, you can find me on Linked In, and Facebook, where I’ve already connected to family, some high school and college friends, as well as made some business connections. How about you? Are you building your on-line networking community?
Thanks for reading!
Barb
Posted in Business, Marketing on April 14th, 2009 by Barb | | 0 Comments
