Is Your Business Visible on Social Networking Sites?

Recently I was speaking at an event for key IT decision makers in SMBs. I

talked about some ways in which you can monitor your brand and website online.

Specifically, I talked about and demonstrated some websites which let us track a

brand or a product, through popular social networking sites such as Twitter,

Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut and Google Blogs. I also demonstrated features in the

website http://howsociable.com, about which you can read more later in this

issue.

I asked the crowd to suggest me a product name so that I can track its brand

visibility for that day on social networking sites. Someone from the crowd

shouted his product's name. I asked him whether he has any strategy for

leveraging social networking media or not, and whether his organization has

official channels in sites like Linkedin, Twitter, etc. He answered in the

negative. I told him, in that case it would be very difficult to get any score

at howsociable.com. Still, I entered the name of his product in the site. To my

surprise, the website found 53 instances where his brand was talked about on

various social networking sites!

The person was literally shocked and that's what the reaction of the rest of

the audience was. The point I am driving through is whether you use social

networking for your business or not, there is a very high possibility that your

business will have a mention on social networking sites. Getting feedback and

comments from across the globe, in real time, and also to get a mechanism to

respond to them is something which is very powerful and was never available

before.

A couple of years back, when we decided to create a page for PCQuest at

Wikipedia, we found there already is an unofficial page created by someone (not

an employee of PCQuest) and has been updated by many others. The best part is,

the entire content was factually correct and made sense except some very minor

glitches which we finally corrected. Similarly when we went to Orkut to start a

PCQuest chapter, we found a couple of PCQuest fan clubs which are already there

and discussing our content and offerings.

So, today fact is, whether we like it or not, companies, brands, products,

and even people will be quoted and discussed across such social networking

sites. What we can and should do is to track our presence online regularly and

see if we can derive business benefits from it. This is indeed a potent weapon

to keep an eye on your customers and see what they are talking about across the

globe.

Anindya Roy



Associate Editor




anindyar@cybermedia.co.in