Social Networking for Business - is it worth it?

It all depends on the business and what you're trying to achieve, is it increased website traffic, sales enquiries or simply brand awareness. As I tell all my clients, it needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and you need to devote time to it.

Social networking is best way to increase the traffic of your website and popular your business, products.. etc using social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.. etc. These websites have huge number of uses in their websites, when you join them and post your links on their relevant posts, they help to increase the traffic of your website.
You can post images, description, links.. etc on the wall of your accounts in these websites and get reviews about your posts.

social media is very strong medium nowadays - some people think it works some don't. Some just forget the fact that in any marketing approach, it's always good to have a strategy in place.

Keep your strategy in line with your KPI, make sure you are marketing as you are supposed to (with your target market)

If the lines align then you have yourself a branding mechanism

yes, but there is a huge difference between marketing and flooding social networks with nothing but hard sell. I remember testing a twitter list once. People don't want to communicate, they don't want to do anything but get as many links through as they can. I have cut away at my list, taking the ones that are only there for self promo out, and now I have only those I actually talk to on a daily basis (besides a few that I have not had the time to get to yet.), my friends from forums etc.and somehow that seems a lot better than having a massive following where there is absolutely no interaction at all.

It might be a bit of a rant, but social networks are a put off for me for now. Marketing itself has taken a wrong turn somewhere as well (for some). Think about it though, marketing is meant to be a one on one with your selected target market, where you promote, discuss and show people why your product is better than anyone else in the same sector as you are. Its interaction, window dressing a product to show all its good points, and then making a sale to a client that you know will come back and/or refer other people based on their experiences with you and your product.

What I see mostly now days, is that some marketers really don't give a hoot about who they are targeting, as long as they get that link in. TBH, for some marketing is nothing but SEO, trying to get a site ranked above and beyond anything else. They focus on clients afterwards. Which is wrong, because at the end of the day, after spending all that time making sure their site gets to page one, their site is not made for clients, and visitors move onto the next person down the list. Then they turn to social media and blast link after link thinking that is the solution to the problem, they turn to forums, and everyone (well not everyone, but a heck of a lot) tell them the same thing. SMM, Forum posting, guest blogging, blog commenting....

Interaction is their last concern and to me that's just wrong.

I think that the effective approach online specifically is SEO geared towards inbound marketing, it might appear non-targeted as it is doesn't reach out to explicitly but it does target specific niches.

I do agree that for others its just all about SEO and that is not a good idea nowadays otherwise Google will slap you in the face.

The only way to go is correlate, build a brand, and eventually draw people in.

In today's world the standing of any company is determined on the basis of the web presence of the company. Social networking plays a major role in terms of creating the web presence. Creating a presence on the social networking websites is very important for any business. This will help in terms of getting more incoming traffic and as the network becomes stronger, a strong brand can be established through the social networking websites.

In order to get a good web presence, social networking is the most essential aspect. When a strong network is created in the social networking websites, it becomes easier to get more incoming traffic. It takes some time to establish a network but once the network is established, the incoming traffic to the website increases. Moreover it is also essential to maintain the social networking website accounts through posting regular content. This can be in the form of blog posts as well. If the people like the updates, they will share it further and this helps in increasing the network.

Hello,

These are good points. With regard to Link Building do you use the service provided by Wordtracker?

If we not contribute high traffic and high PR social networking site then its not effective to increase and promote our business.

A lot of the benefits of social media marketing stems from having a collaborative effort to so from the entire office, and not just one person. Work on building a community first and foremost, and from there, once you've reached out to contacts related to your industry, you can become more approachable to advertise brands...as long as you do it naturally and honestly. Develop your social clout and be active. Don't become dormant the minute you get a lead from social networking.