They use social media to enhance customer relationships

Social media has begun to be prevalent around 2005. Today, its sites like Facebook and MySpace that are popular among all ages, even if it started with a focus on young people as their main audience, to keep in touch. Today, companies are using these sites to improve relations with customers. Since 2009, social media has begun to revolutionize the way companies manage their relationships with customers at all.

According to IT research and advisory company Gartner, by 2010 60% of Fortune 1000 companies use social media in some way as a way to improve relations with customers. This is good news. Gartner also suggests that more than half of companies using Web 2.0 sites and this function will do badly and actually harm relationships with customers. Gartner recommends that companies focus their analysis on customer buying on-line in order to offer a direct calculation of return on investment in terms of sales and customer loyalty that goes social media sites.

Gartner said there are four steps that companies should pursue in order to successfully use social media as a means to improve and manage customer relationships. The first step is to clearly define what is the purpose of the initiative and social media is. The second step is that a company must be willing to cede some control over social media as a tool for customer relations, because the general public wants the "right" in the report as a reward for their participation.

The companies also reward those who participate socially. This may mean allowing them to vote, or otherwise rate contributions and information on the site. Finally, companies must appoint a person who has in-house expertise to manage a customer's social media relations initiative. Using Web 2.0 sites for customer relations should never be an afterthought. In fact, it should probably have someone specifically dedicated full-time, with their staff, if necessary.

Social networking has indeed changed the customers' perspectives and behavior, a critical mass. Gartner said that these customers can no longer be described demographically in a way that is entirely accurate and appropriate; demographics are the usual means of measurement when it comes to effective relationships with corporate clients.
However, with that said, do not spend a lot of time or effort in trying to use social media as a focus with a lot of effort unless it knows that it will pay off the really valuable traffic to your website.

Non-linear Creations did a five year study of social media sites, and their effects. These Web 2.0 sites were Stumbleupon, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. It was determined later that year that social media sites has prompted some 18% of its site visitors to refer to aggregation sites.

In case of non-linear Creations, Linkedin and Facebook has surpassed the other social media site. This is important, but not the whole story. Concerning conversion rates? Non-linear Creations measured conversion rates if visitors downloaded one of their white paper, signed on their blog or newsletter, or contacted them by phone or e-mail. In this case - driving real prospects - Linkedin has surpassed other sites. Traffic to Linkedin is much more likely to convert the site visitor on average. Other web 2.0 sites actually underperformed the average.

There is no guarantee that Linkedin will give your company the results tangible and non-linear Creations received. Probably depends on the type of business you have. It is not well understood what the benefits are less tangible to reach customers online in a way that makes them feel as if the brand is listening and cares enough to interact in the way they want. One of the things that people like to call customer service centers is that they feel anonymous. It prevents them from feeling a sense of relationship with the brand. So far no obvious disadvantages of using social media for customer service, so it would seem to be in the interest of each company to use this form of awareness.

Certainly it is not difficult to create accounts on web 2.0 sites. The hard part is actually interacting with customers about them, listen, and analyze the numbers of online visitors to see which sites will give you the maximum return on investment in terms of online sales, or some other metric. Then you must determine how much to put in the effort to make social contacts are under-performing media more effectively....