A computer company's research team puts their latest video up on Facebook rather than presenting it during a technical conference. A video game developer turns to Twitter to first break the news of a new release to the masses. A salesperson stays in touch with all professional relationships - colleagues, mentors, proteges, former bosses, even friendly rivals - through LinkedIn.
Welcome to business in the 21st century. The widespread acceptance of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn is changing the way individuals communicate. Friends lists have become prime currency in cyberspace today. "Since so many consumers have adopted social networks as a new way of interacting, businesses are trying to catch up and use it to increase awareness - and ideally sales - of their products and services," Paul Greenberg, president of The 56 Group, a strategic CRM consulting services firm, told CRM Buyer.
Consequently, companies have opened up the corporate walls to these new social networking sites and developed social networking pages. As this change takes place, the question becomes: How beneficial are these moves? Unfortunately, at the moment, no one can say with certainty. Corporations have linked themselves to social networking sites, but in an ad hoc rather than a systematic manner. Social networking information is largely segregated from customer data stored in CRM systems. Consequently, more work is needed before it becomes clear what companies can and should do to take advantage of this new phenomenon.
