LinkedIn, a professional contacts network reached 3 million members in the UK this year. To celebrate they held a party (alternatively called – a networking event) at London’s Imagination Gallery last week.

LinkedIn provides a very easy to use service that keeps members up to date with their connections online.  Email updates can be sent to you which let you know about the new connections that your contacts are making.  Membership is free although you can upgrade to different levels of membership.

Last week’s event was attended by Reid Hoffman the company’s founder and CEO. LinkedIn which was founded in 2003, now has 53million global members. Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn’s European managing director also attended the event and talked about the site:

‘If you look at the membership it’s business professionals who are actively trying to network and engage with like-minded professionals in order to expand their knowledge, solve problems and find out how to capture other opportunities.’

The company is keeping up with the times. Eyres said:

‘We have [Microsoft] Outlook integration now, there’s a BlackBerry application that we’ve announced, you can have it on your iPhone, so LinkedIn integrates to the normal tools that you would use in your everyday business.’

The company has also recently added a link to the social media site,  Twitter link so that members can tweet their updated status’ on the site. Eyres commented:

‘If you have a problem and you want to get maximum exposure to not just your professional community but also the wider community which Twitter provides, then you can increase the speed at which your questions are answered and move ahead with any decisions you have to make.’

When we think of social networking sites we usually think of two things: fun or business communications with our online contacts or marketing opportunities that could help our business. But we don’t often think of them as a tool with which to measure changes in the health of the nation.

At the Health Protection Agency annual conference at Warwick University last month one idea that was put forward was that Twitter and other social networking sites could be used to track the health of the nation, with particular reference to swine flu.

In recent months Swine flu has been measured by GP, NHS Direct and the helpline statistics but the real extent of the spread of the virus remains unknown as thousand of people with only mild symptoms remain unknown.

Experiments with Twitter have been tracking online reports of Swine flu.

Twitter is a type of social networking site although it really works more as a micro blogging site that allows you to update your list of contacts with messages that they can read either online or as a text message.

Talking to The Telegraph, Ed de Quincey, a computer scientist at City University London said:

‘As UK public health agencies and the NHS are preparing for the approaching flu season amid the H1N1 pandemic, new forms of social interaction via web sites such as Twitter and Facebook can expand the sources used in monitoring such outbreaks.

The flu pandemic was the perfect opportunity to test this idea and we found that at least 4,000 people reported flu symptoms via Twitter since May 2009.

‘We are currently analysing over a million ‘tweets’ that we have collected and exploring the potential of incorporating data from other social networking websites. We hope in the future to expand this approach to investigate other health issues such as drug and substance abuse.’

This information shows the vast amounts of useful information that can be gathered from social networking sites. Information that has both commercial and social uses.

As reported by Propero, the microblogging site Twitter has shown a huge increase in popularity in the last year. Social media of all sorts is becoming an increasingly popular way for companies to find out about their customers, develop a relationship with them and market their brand and product to them. However some experts think that Twitter’s value is limited and believe that its popularity will reach a natural peak and then crash.

According to a poll by Ragan Communications and PollStream, 54% of professional communicators think that Twitter will reach a plateau and then decline. 28% report that their companies are using microblogging at the moment as part of their marketing communications. The companies who do tweet say they have felt the following benefits:

-increasing employee engagement
-improving customer service
-Improving reputation with customers
-boosting website traffic

Bob Hirschfed, senior public information officer for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is representative of those who do not think that Twitter can be part of a sustainable online marketing campaign:

‘[It’s a fad] because everybody’s doing it,’ he said. ‘Ashton Kutcher and CNN have a steady supply of fans who want to know what they do. People like us, people with a job to do, every so often we do something of interest to the general public [but] we don’t have that steady supply of stuff that the public is interested in.’

Fad or not, Twitter is proving very successful for some businesses, the point being that the internet is a very fast-paced and adaptive medium and knowing this does not preclude a company for joining in whilst its running strong. The point is that it may peak and fall but that is irrelevant. Some more traditional companies are not interested in keep up with the times. However, for most it can do no harm.

Apart from the objection to it being a fad, professional communicators gave other reasons for companies non-presence on Twitter:

-Fearful managers reluctant to join in
-Lack of staff/time
-Belief that it won’t help the company

The general advice is to proceed with caution. As with anything there are pros and cons to social networking. Decide on the aim that you want a Twitter campaign to fulfil. Start slowly and monitor your results and then readjust as necessary.

A recent study by eMarketer predicted that Twitter users will increase from their present number of 12.1 million to 18.1 million by 2010. It remains to be seen what proportion of these will be company Twitterers.

Social networking sites are becoming more and more popular across the world.  Using this to your advantage can help your business to achieve its marketing targets.There are many advantages to this medium but there are also areas of caution which need to be addressed before you introduce your business to the world of online social networking.

ADVANTAGES

Easy to use
Social networking sites are designed to be easy to use, so they are. Using them as part of your marketing strategy does not need you or your staff to master complicated programmes or ideas.

Good Value
Social networking sites are free which is one of the main reasons they are so popular amongst marketers during the current economic climate. Your only costs are staffing ones.

Quickly Adaptive
Social networking sites allow you to respond to the moods and needs of your audience. Because they are instant they can help  you to develop a responsive relationship between you and your clients and potential clients.

Full of Viral Potential
The viral possibilities of the internet mean that something related on a social network site can be news across the world within minutes.

DISADVANTAGES

Full of Viral Potential
This can be negative too. If you make a mistake, or are perceived to have done, then the news can spread far and wide within minutes. This will be very difficult to remedy and will be wholly counterproductive to any positive global marketing goals you may have achieved.

Labour Intensive
Depending on how you set up a social networking campaign, it can be labour intensive particularly if your intention is to respond personally to messages from the public. Its important to plan what you want to achieve and how you want to do it.  Starting small and working out from there depending on your response means that you will never dissappoint.

The Law of Reciprocity
This law indicates that to develop a successful and satisfying relationship you need give and take. Social networking rests on this premise so it is important that you set up with your audience exactly what you are planning to ‘give.’ For example, if you send a Tweet on Twitter you may get an instant message back. The respondent may expect one back quickly and may feel disappointed if they do not get one. If your plan is to only send promotional updates then make this clear. Then you will be living up to expectations rather than creating disappointments.

Being Adaptive
With social networking you have to be adaptive. This is essential because its still a very new media and there are new sites and changes developing all the time. You need to keep abreast of the latest information and trends. Standing still and just repeating more of the same will waste your valuable time if your audience has moved on.

Twitter was designed to be a micro-blogging (small messages that are published on-line) tool that can help you to keep in touch with people but how can your company use it to enhance brand recognition and further your overall marketing strategies?

Twitter is currently the fastest growing social networking site and showed an increase of numbers of 1,383% from February 2008 – February 2009. Its visitors increased from 475,000 in February this year to a staggering 7 million by March according to Neilsen Online.

It’s service is simple:

‘Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?’

Here are some specific ways you could use Twitter to good effect:

1. Register your brand name immediately. Even if you are not keen to use this medium this will prevent others from doing so.
2. ‘Tweet’ (the name for the messages that you send) updates about your company and the good things it is doing or promoting
3. Provide links to your ‘tweets’ to news and media channels
4. Encourage people that visit your website to include you in their twitter list of contacts
5. Use search engine search.twitter.com to find out what the general public are saying about your company and respond accordingly

Careful use is important
Use Twitter with care and consideration. Messages can receive negative comments as well as positive ones and entertaining any tit-for-tat communication with respondents will be counterproductive.