Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Using Social Media to Communicate with Customers

Small business are turning to social media to promote their company's products and services.

With reduced marketing budgets, increased competition and a global economic downtown, companies are discovering that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, provide a quick and free way of promoting their products to a large global audience. 

Twitter, which allows users to post Tweets of up to 140 characters, is currently developing products to sell to business users, including software to verify accounts and analyse traffic to Twitter account holders' profiles.  It  recently launched Twitter 101, which includes advice for new users along with case studies, describing how companies of all scales and in various sectors have used the site to grow their business.

Social media is coming of age too and benefiting as a results of this surge of interest.  Facebook, which has 300 million users worldwide has announced it had become cash-flow positive.  Its business services include special pages and the option to buy advertising to show to users who like similar companies.

Social Media: Web 3.0

Tim Berners Lee the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web thinks that that the advent of Web 3.0 will introduce technologies capable of reinventing the internet as we know it, bringing with it many breathtaking propositions that effectively turn the online world into one big database.

Web 2.0 has had its good points.  It’s people friendly, social, interactive ...but... it's time consuming.  In essence it has created a world of time wasters and people blathering on about nothing in particular.

Then there’s also the problem that anyone thinks they can set up a business without having a business model. 

There is a danger that eventually Web 2.0 could end in a trickle with everyone with interesting applications running out of money and their social “audiences” running out of interesting things to say or simply talking to themselves? 

I for one am quite looking forward to seeing the development of Web 3.0.  Hopefully it will bring in some good technology and add “meaningful” to the conversation.

Online PR: Twitter Frenzy Grows

There is rather an interesting Twitter frenzy going on at the moment.

Last week, the Guardian's education editor reported that UK government planned to update the primary school curriculum.  New curriculum developments include introducing Twitter and Wikipedia into the classroom.

This week academics have been criticised for offering a masters degree covering Twitter and other social networking websites.  They are now defending themselves against the barrage of criticism –  on Twitter of course.

Twitter is such hot news that Sky News has now appointed a dedicated Twitter correspondent.  I understand that this is not someone who reports on Twitter but someone who spends the day searching Twitter for breaking news

Twitter received a further $35m funding round last month. 

It has now introduced a discreet ad box under the following/followers box at the top of the page which promotes one of a small number of recommended Twitter clients and a short description.  This is apparently currently a free trial to test the response to text ads.

With all this endorsement and attention, at some point Twitter has got to start making money and develop a real business model if only to ensure it lives to grow up with the children who are being educated to use it.

Social Media Gets Employees Talking

During a period of corporate upheaval, or when external news from the world of businesses creates anxieties leading to a crisis of confidence in businesses and low employee morale and productivity, the role of effective internal communications takes on greater significance.

However, although everybody understands and talks about the significance of internal communication, not many organisations manage it efficiently or have an information flow that runs in all directions throughout the organisation -  not just from the top down.

It’s no surprise then that the “communications” element of internal comms has been hooked into the world of social media and been recreated in the form of Yammer.com  - a tool designed “to get employees talking and boost their productivity”.

Yammer aims to encourage people employed within companies to interact with one another around the projects, tasks and issues they have.   It’s free to employees but the boss has to pay – employers can join a price of $12 per employee.

Interesting business model from Yammer.com.   As an employee, do you say what you think knowing that comments can be viewed by the boss and you could pay the price, and, if you are a the employer, will you pay the price to hear what your employees think?

://CORPORACT is an award winning online corporate communiciations company.