Businesses tap social networks to communicate with customers 31 July, 2008 By Erin Bell

The key benefits of businesses setting up a social network is that it allows the company to communicate directly with customers, and also allows customers to talk directly with each other about industry trends, interests, and, of course, the features and benefits of the company's products.

"Social networks are a way to extend your brand and really get to know your customers on a more personal basis," said Catherine Brown, Director of Enterprise Social Networking at Dotster, an all-in-one social networking solution that allows businesses to create a personalized social network either as a separate website or an extension of the business's current site.

The difference between business-oriented social networks like Dotster and something like Facebook or MySpace, according to Brown, is that they are designed to be an extension of a particular company's brand.

According to Brown, any size of business can benefit from having a social network, although each would likely use them in different ways. A large corporation, for example, might have both an extranet for their customers as well as an intranet between their own employees.

"For small businesses, especially for industries where there's a tangible product like healthcare, it's a great way to bring together people who are starved for information and want to get together and talk about it," said Brown.

Brown said that the advantage of businesses having an "in-house" social network is that they have data immediately at their disposal about what customers are saying about their product, what they're seeing in the industry, and product feedback, either in terms of new features or support concerns.

"Say, for example, a customer is having a support problem," Brown explained. "They bring it to the forum, and as a company you can address that publicly in front of everyone, show them that you're on top of it, and therefore help improve your customer service as well as your brand."

"And then afterwards, you're able to go through and really cull the information for what kind of things that your customers are saying."

For companies who are thinking of establishing a social network, Brown recommends beginning with a marketing campaign to let customers know about the network to attract them to the site, and then letting word-of-mouth do the rest.

"If you continually update your site with new information, the latest trends, insights from your CEO, or insights from your technical people, people will keep coming back, and the word will get spread out to additional customers," said Brown. "Once it gets going, if you're keeping the site fresh and keeping the content good and keeping people on it, then it starts to spread virally as these other social networks have."

Brown recommended appointing a site moderator from within the company who can manage the daily operations of the social network, such as posting regularly with new information, responding to customers, and catching flagrant terms of service violations and inappropriate posts.

Internal social networks can also be beneficial for large enterprises as a way of allowing employees to connect with each other and serving as a repository of company information.

"We are in a new era of brand building where traditional media and one-way marketing communications arent working the way they once did," said Clint Page, CEO of Dotster. "Customers are now relying on their communities to help them make purchasing decisions, and the companies who best understand and facilitate this are the ones who will emerge the winners."