Social Media for Business

In these times where Web 2.0 technologies are strongly making its presence, businesses may not necessarily depend on the traditional media channels anymore to promote their products and services. No longer do they need to rely on the traditional industrial media such as newspapers or television. Thing is, some of the braver companies are now relying or trying out new media channels such as the social media applications to reach out to their target markets.

So what is social media? Basically, it refers to a platform for users to participate and contribute. Social media sites enable millions of people to connect with others; building personal relationships or professional networking, expressing personal worldviews or even sharing photos with friends – online. Social media has various forms: social networks, blogs, forums, wikis and virtual worlds and these are supported by customised applications. For communications we have blogs, micro-blogging, and social networking and for collaboration there’s wikis and social bookmarking while photo and video sharing for multimedia.

What does this mean to businesses? It means businesses may have to change their mindset when interacting with customers to gauge feedback or loyalty. Since social media technologies allow interactions, businesses are now increasingly paying attention to social media technologies to help them reach their customers. Businesses need to constantly identify and recognize the changes in consumer behaviour. They can’t just wait for customers to come after spending millions in advertising campaigns. They need to reach out to win new customers, to stay close with existing ones and to win back unsatisfied customers. Customers are now talking to each other to exchange views and share experience. All these activities are now taking place online on social media sites as traditional mass media lacks interactivity.

Why is social media space becoming so important? I would say because of its strong adoption culture, ubiquitous technology environment and the interactivity element. Let me show why. Facebook has close to 184 million worldwide users as at end of March 2009 and visitors to Twitter.com increased 95% in the same month to about 19 million! The availability of affordable converged mobile devices is also giving the added push coupled with development of wireless Internet. Considering these factors, businesses may want to recognize the power of social media driven by the increasing adoption as more people are assessing their social network pages from homes and offices or even remotely.

Among the social media sites, I would rate LinkedIn as the most popular business social networking site as it creates business leads and enables new contacts to be made across the globe. Facebook has added pages for businesses through NetHooks which allow acceptance of fans that eventually builds up company reputation and branding. Twitter has the stickiness factor in the form of breaking news contributed by members about almost everything. The constant news feed, status updates and quick responses are some of the main attractions for its increasing popularity.

All said maybe Malaysian companies can consider jumping into the bandwagon using one of these platforms to create presence in the World Wide Web on 2.0 technologies! Companies need to go global to build footprint. You will find familiar Malaysian names such as Tune Money, Sime Darby, Petronas, NTV7, DiGi and Maxis on Facebook; and Astro, The Edge, The Star and New Straits Times on Twitter. Budget airline AirAsia is communicating through its blog, “Just Plane Thoughts” and Maybank is banking on their “AllYou M2U” blogspot. Interestingly Star Publications, due to the economic downturn, is focusing its efforts towards growing its revenue from online media in anticipation of reduced revenue from print media.

I believe social media will continue to be the better option to communicate and interact, and businesses and individuals will continue to grow in numbers in adopting them. I am making myself visible too in the social media space where you can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook. On Twitter you may follow me at http://twitter.com/kushairi.