Blogging: Blogs are probably the most established and universally used types of social networking. These large, text based, collaborative sites work very similarly to a website, but allow their owners to accept or decline contributors to published articles, thoughts or photos.
Blogs have captured a large corporate audience because they are a casual way for companies to interact with clients, employees and the community at large. We recommend that our clients establish a well-branded blog that is consistent with their corporate look and feel and is limited to trusted contributors.
Blogs are also a great way to develop a content-rich area within your website and gain rank in Search Engine Positioning. Most companies feature access to their blogs through their website navigation, allowing visitors to their websites to view and join their blog. If managed correctly, a blog can be a vital social networking tool for your company. FliteHaus can easily create a blog that matches your corporate identity and teach you a few tricks to managing and updating it on a regular basis.
Facebook: Facebook is all the rage! Even my mom is on Facebook now! So how does this social networking tool help your business?
The premise of Facebook is to have an interactive, sharing environment that links hundreds of people to one another through the community sharing of comments, actions, videos and photos. In the branding world, we would term Facebook as a “brand awareness tool”. This means that the hundreds of people you establish Facebook relationships with will more than likely know you or your employees as individuals first and then through your corporate Facebook page learn more about the “company” that you and others work for, creating a general awareness of who and what the company is.
So for instance, my mom is an interior decorator and one of my best friends is a furniture designer. If my friend who is a furniture designer creates a Facebook page for her company, my mom will learn about new work my friend is getting, the designs she is creating and who is buying from here through updates and streams she posts which are accessible through my Facebook because she is one of my friends and so is my mom.
This non-intrusive form of communication can allow my mom to learn about my friends work and then choose to pursue business with her if she wants to. The thing to remember about this site is that people post very personal information about their friends and you have to be very careful not to mix business with pleasure if you get my drift!
LinkedIn: This is a site created for professionals. The sole purpose of the site is networking. It is similar to the facebook concept because it allows you to reach out and establish a network of other users to join your network.
However, LinkedIn was created for career minded individuals looking to expand their business connections. From a branding perspective, this site goes a long way in establishing credibility for the owners and employees of businesses, but linking that network to a company is important or all you are establishing is personal credibility for individual accomplishments.
Creating a corporate LinkedIn page that allows the company, as a whole, to have a network can be a great social networking tool, but be mindful that you open yourself and employees up to recruiters, advertising solicitation and spam. FliteHaus is familiar with the pitfalls of social networking and we can assist you in developing a good mix of traditional online marketing and social networking.
