Is Social Networking Here to Stay?

Being a marketing junkie I was reading one of the many publications I get through the post and came across an article that inspired this post, Is social networking more of a fad in B2B marketing than a viable marketing medium? in B2B Marketing magazine.

Considering how long I've been engaged in social media and the growth in the medium I was interested to read the debate.

Ross Sturley, principle of Chart Lane consultancy and committee member of the CIM Construction Industry Group said that it's 'fun' and 'cool' but ultimately not worth the time.

He went on to say 'LinkedIn has 21 million users, but its most frequent use is recruitment consultants trying to source candidates' something I would have to disagree with. I've found Linked In to be a very good site to network on and gain work from.

I've not spent a large amount of time on Linked In but I keep information up-to-date and participate on a regular basis and have found it a valuable source of interaction with other members of the community.

I'd have to agree with Penny Power, founder and director of Ecademy when she said 'Communities are the foundation of the web. The top ten websites are social networks and more messages are being sent between people inside social networks than emails.'

I think it's very important for businesses to engage in social networking and that also includes blogging. If you're not involved with social media your competitors could be stealing a march on you or your customers might be spreading the word but not in the way you imagined.

In some cases the power of the social networks can be swift and to the point, killing a brand with negative feedback. Ben Goldacre of The Guardian writes how bloggers win on timeliness, accuracy, relevance, effort, ethics so if you're not putting your side of the story across you could find your business dead in the water quicker than you think.

In the case mentioned in Ben's article it was a justified attack on a business but what if you had customers with gripes you could answer but you don't have a means of response. This negative vibe could easily spread if countered with a reasonable response.

One way to show to customers exactly what your business can offer is social proof. Miguel Alvarez over at Marketing Factor writes a great post on using social proof to empower your customer.

'The desire to belong (to a pack, a group or a larger social unit. So when suddenly other people in our niche all start talking about the same thing, we feel a natural desire to belong and join the conversation. It’s all pure and unadulterated human nature.'

Bringing social networking and social media marketing together in an all encompassing strategy to boost your brand is something all businesses should be partaking in.

I wrote a recent article on how to Optimize Your Social Media Marketing which describes how to target the right audience and maximise your time spent.

Social Networking is here to stay and will only grow in its' worth and power.

Has your business engaged in social networking or do you feel traditional measures are a much better use of your time?