The importance of social networking

What are you doing?

(This article appeared in the July 2009 issue of BeautyNZ magazine)

You will be familiar with the terms Facebook and Youtube. You may even have tried using these social networking sites yourself, especially if you have young people around you. And now, you may have noticed other new words creeping into everyday language: Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace and Squidoo. What does all this mean for your business? Quite a significant amount, as it turns out.

The first time I was sent a “Join my Facebook page” request by a magazine editor I worked for I was horrified she would cross the boundary between business and personal. But not long afterwards, I received a similar invitation from a magazine publisher and I realised these savvy people were no longer using social networking sites merely for socialising with friends; they were using them as a business tool. Now it is the newest and perhaps cleverest tool in a business’s marketing toolbox.

Read the full article.