More ways to reach out

More and more businesses these days are finding new ways to reach potential customers and partners online. The debate as to whether sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are more useful than company blogs is an ongoing one; however, with additional services such as Twitter gaining in popularity due to the supposed huge potential for its use, many nimble organizations are eager to create online profiles on such sites in an attempt to reach out to more people.

But does creating a multitude of online profiles actually work? Perhaps more out of curiosity than anything else, I've decided to create a profile on Twitter to see what kind of feedback does in fact come back. I'm not sure of the duration of this quasi-experiment, but it will be interesting to see exactly what kinds of connections and conversations can be achieved with status entries limited to 140 characters or less.

The twitter feed is accessible @ dilawri.

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Is Facebook Bad for Business?

Many businesses today are turning to social networking websites such as Facebook or LinkedIn to reach out to new customers and market their products and services in new ways. Websites such as Facebook have even tried to make it easier for businesses by opening their network and providing direct access to the websites 60 million or so users.

Numerous articles have been written on the potential for companies to profit from social networking, but do these companies really understand how to do this? Most use social websites to market their products and services and try to send them off of sites such as Facebook and onto their own websites. According to Facebook Senior Platform Manager, Dave Morin in an interview with BusinessWeek says the business applications that are the most profitable "are the ones that integrate seamlessly into Facebook" and generate revenue from within the Facebook site. Surely websites such as these would prefer your potential customers connect with your on their sites and not yours. The users after all, are theirs to begin with.

But are companies better off by connecting with potential customers on their own websites? Would the company be better off by creating a blog to connect with and gather input from customers and make the business more accessible, thereby giving it a real 'face' to the customers?

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