Social Media Brings Business Full Circle!

Social Business from the 20th Century

In the 60s-70s, social business was acceptable. Housewives who needed to earn some money or kill time or both resorted to becoming the Avon lady or having Tupperware parties. While these 2 social businesses had a certain negative or laughable image attached to them, todays social media networking is not hugely different from the 2 social business concepts from the recent business history.

Social Business in the 21st Century

Enter the 21st century and the advent of the social media network on the internet. Internet has become a pervasive medium that united the world population. The introduction of high speed and high bandwidth communication technologies has made this possible. The high speeds meant that websites can now deliver richer content to the erstwhile supercomputers in our hands or bags today.

I dont need to wait for my computer to boot up to see whats going on – its right here in my hand. Businesses have moved with the times and are using social media networking to engage in social business techniques not to dissimilar from the Avon Lady concept.

Social media engagement relies on increasing brand and product awareness and driving customer interactions. Companies rank these interactions in a variety of ways but modern metrics dont just look as $/€ sales but also at meaningful customer engagements as successful conversions. Business owners understand that turning people into “evangelists” for their product or service is a valuable asset that needs to be developed and maintained. However, there is a need to maintain a healthy balance between nurturing the evangelists and running a business to maximise ROI on the time spent on social media networking for a business.

Conversions

Conversions are customer engagements from any medium that a business uses to sell its products and services. From an online perspective, a conversion could be

• A direct sale
• A customer engagement
• A customer query
• A request to sign up to email marketing
• A social networking follow or share

Conversions that dont bring in direct revenue are Micro-Conversions and are important because the intangible benefit of spreading awareness about your business is useful as it has potential to turn into a sale int he future.

As I said in my blog article, Social Media Networking and The Future of Business, attracting customers is like trying to date someone. Adding to that, I can think of a sale as a marriage. There is a natural progression in the relationship between you and your customers. Just as you would in a relationship, you need to be wary of when you have to call it quits so you dont waste valuable time, energy and money in channels that are not productive.

I will analyse the various social networks to see how they can be used to connect with your customers. It is important for you to differentiate your social content to target your audience in the best possible manner.

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