My take on Copywriting,Technology and Social Media.

8 Business Social Sites to Help you Network

LinkedIn Twitter and Facebook  aren’t  the only social networking games in town. Not by a  long shot.

Social Networking sites are being created for almost every conceivable need and they are showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. Facebook, Linked In and Twitter are simply the most well known.

There are hundreds of other social networking sites where you can specifically market your business to your audience - and to other businesses. What I love about these networks is they are geared to promoting and growing your business with a social, give, share, get approach. After all that’s what it’s all about.  Instead of trying to fit your goals around Facebook or Twitter etc (and their sometimes mystifying business “rules” you can unknowingly break), why not try one or more networks specifically geared to your business promotion goals?

To help you get started, here are 8 sites well worth checking out:

1. Apsense.com: Tap into an affiliate marketing revenue stream by promoting products and sites on your business profile. You get paid for the friends you refer.

2. Biznik.com: Join your local business community to connect and collaborate with nearby entrepreneurs, and find out about local seminars and events. This is an excellent social networking site for business and it has a vibrant friendly membership and great original content in the form of articles, blogs and more.

3. Entrepreneur Connect : Share ideas, join groups, publish content and promote your business on Entrepreneur’s Magazine’s own social network.

4. FastpitchNetworking.com : Create a profile, product listings and blog. You can also take advantage of email marketing and virtual trade shows. Real social networking for business.

5. GoBigNetwork.com: This is a start up community if you’re interested in fast growth, and finding focused expert advice and funding.

6.Konnects.com: Social Network for local magazines newspapers. So if you’re in the Industry, what better place to start. Build a network with other start-up entrepreneurs and launch your own branded network when you’re ready.

7. Marzar.com: Here you can form business relationships, create interest-specific communities, find suppliers and stay informed about new developments and events. Businesses, entrepreneurs, and other professionals have a single, “one stop shop” to promote products, services and discover business opportunities

8. Xing.com - a global site for finding business partners, contacts and professional opportunities.

These are very interesting social networking sites for business that might even be better fits than the more popular ones. Check them out and and let me know what you think.

Thanks to: Entrepreneur Magazine March 09

Tagged as: business networking, Facebook, LinkedIn, socialmedia, socialmedia for b2b, socialnetworking, Twitter

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Whether a company wants to go from Laggard to industry Average or from Industry Average to to Best-in-Class there are  three key actions they can take to improve sales performance with Social Media. Aberdeen Group’s Research, based on asking companies what they have done, are doing, or plan to do in the future gives some excellent pointers. The steps are different, depending on whether the company is a Laggard or Industry Average. Here we look at Industry Laggards.

Incorporate the social media solution into the business plan

Aberdeen’s Research found that 62% of Laggard organizations don’t leverage social media technologies and don’t have it anywhere in their business plan. Of these, 29% said they have no plans to do so in the future. With customers becoming increasingly savvy about competitive products and services, these businesses will find it hard to keep pace. They should either:

• find ways to engage their audience through online communities, or
• give their sales teams the tools to allow for seamless internal collaboration

They may find they need to do both, so that insights gleaned from online communities don’t get lost in typical silos, and get to the sales team in a timely manner.

Dedicate the right resources and management support to social media

Once a company accepts how social media can benefit its sales organization it’s critical to get the right support from senior management. There is no getting away from this one. They need to have a champion who can explain how social media benefits not just  sales actions, but the whole organization. The champion must be able to ensure dedicated resources are allocated to enterprise-wide social media solutions. Critically, employees have to see, through actions, that social media  is a priority for management and as important as any other business objective. If they don’t it will hinder the adoption of social media in the organization.

Currently only 29% of Laggards, compared to 55% of Best-In-Class companies have the support of senior management of senior management for internal facing social media solutions. And only 18% of Laggards, compared to 28% of of Best-In-Class companies have dedicated resources devoted to the enterprise-wide use of social media. 58% have no plans to allocate such resources to social media.

Formalize and document sales processes

Social Media solutions will require new technology. As with any technology implementation, maximizing the benefits of any solution depends on the processes that are in place in the company beforehand.

Social media solutions are no different. They need to be integrated with existing sales processes not sit outside them. So having a formalized sales methodology in place before incorporating social media and sales productivity tools (e.g. internal wikis and collaboration forums) will increase the chances of seeing success.  Just 48% of Laggards compared to 66% of Best-In-Class currently have formalized and documented sales processes. 33% of Laggards plan to implement internal social media tools. They stand to gain an advantage if they accelerate the adoption of these tools.

Many businesses are wondering if social media “is for them.” Or if it can get them leads. The answer to both questions I believe is yes, but, as this particular research shows it’s quite likely that these companies should first of all:

1. Assess where they are strategically

The Aberdeen research can be helpful because it’s based on questions asked of companies themselves. And their industry comparisons actually offer steps for moving towards the goals they aspire to, based on where they are on a range of different performance indicators). This applies whether introducing social media or any other solution.

2. Observe the Industry Average as a stepping stone to being Best-In-Class

Laggards don’t have to eat the whole elephant. They can take key steps, assess the outcomes and then move to the next step when ready.

3. Start from the inside out with social media collaboration

Companies, particularly larger ones could see more gains if they implement social media solutions internally first. While much of the attention has been on companies gaining millions in sales using certain social networking tools, it is far from the norm and in many cases they are B2C companies that sell directly to the customer, for example, Dell).

Based on Sales 2.0: Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration by the Aberdeen Group

Tagged as: B2B, collaboration, enterprise socialmedia, sales, sales 2.0, socialmedia for b2b

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