Question

Social networking is becoming more popular each day. Why are these services becoming popular as business networking tools?

Please give an example of your own experience or an experience of a colleague using social networking as a business tool.

Answer 1

Business Networking Tools have become an extreme dynamic concept in today’s age. Let us take this forward with an example of ‘Marketing’ which is a significant Business Function in terms of Networking Tools. Networking influences marketing in major way and helps to generate more sales thereby more profits for an Organization. Accordingly, from the traditional concepts of marketing, it has now evolved to the modern concept of the same. With the introduction of internet, there has rather been a revolution in the field of marketing. The Integrated Media of communication especially in terms of social networking process has changed the way marketing used to tap the consumer behavior in the good old days and accordingly position the products.

The era of internet has evolved and so has the world of virtual marketing. With the advent of social networking and online shopping portals, it has become rather easier to migrate into this platform in a relatively more convenient way. While it cannot be completely disagreed to the fact that the traditional ways of marketing still plays an important factor in achieving sales and other marketing objectives, the growth potential of the virtual media and other software applications have also significantly increased.

Accordingly, there are many test marketing ways that can resort the help of the online media. For example, various survey questions could be asked to the consumers on the social networking platform with certain freebies or chances to win rewards and likewise schemes offered to them in order to ensure a better participation from their end. These survey questions would save time and energy, along with monetary benefits, to conduct a full-time field survey to evaluate the same set of questions on an off-line physical mode. Next, the advantage of official websites where these products fall under a Company’s certain brand umbrella, could also be resorted to, in order to undertake a test marketing. Such products could be given away as free samples to the consumers once the register themselves with the website and then, online reviews could be obtained once the samples have reached them by way of luring them to earn reward points or any lucky draw, if they participate in the survey, once the free samples have reached them. In this way as well, the virtual test marketing using internet or other software applications, could be conducted. While in case of the bigger products such as cars’ test marketing, a list of existing consumers in a particular location could be charted by way of again, online surveys on social media, using various offers to attract their responses, and then, subsequently, sending the marketing the field surveyors to these consumers and providing them with the testing of the product, to obtain their feedback.

However, it is to be noted that completely virtual form of test marketing may still not be able to achieve complete reliable results and therefore it needs to be accompanied with at least some form of actual physical test marketing as well in order to achieve the desired objectives.

The social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are rampantly used by the new-age consumers these days. It has therefore become just the perfect platform for the businesses to promote and sell their products. When the official websites often fail to generate adequate eye-balls of the public owing to poor designing of the website or when such websites are not user-friendly thereby failing to connect well with the audiences, the platform of Facebook and Twitter helps supporting the promotion campaigns of such Companies. The medium of Twitter enables the business to find out the trends in the current market regarding a particular type of a product or service offered in the market. This could be especially done by following the tweets of the targeted audience by way of hash-tags #, etc. The Facebook medium helps in opening of the pages or groups on the social networking site in order to learn what are the expectations of the customers from a Company’s product or services.

Moreover, it prompts the consumers for immediate feedback or response based on the types of advertisements they like on various Facebook pages or the trend of following the #hasthtags, make it convenient for the Companies to evaluate the consumer behavior. Understanding the target market in social media helps to design more relevant products before it gets positioned in the market. This in turn helps in generating profits with the help of the social media marketing. The launch of the social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter could be even before the actual physical launch of the business so that the consumers are aware of the products or services to be offered by the Firm and may also help to spread the word across the community through the use of social media platform thereby helping the business to generate profits from the earlier stage of its launch itself.

Also, these social networking sites also give a platform for the consumers to give their anonymous feedback thereby making the response more genuine in nature as well as suggestions to the Companies with regards to their expectations from them. On offline mode, a more cumbersome process of surveys needs to be undertaken to obtain the same. However, the social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter enables the consumers to come up voluntarily with their anticipations and reviews of the Company’s product thereby spending more time in constructive promotional campaigns than by taking surveys for a constructive feedback.