St. Louis Bloggers Guild

Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and to a lesser degree Linked-In, continue to grow in membership. The interesting thing that is happening now is that growth is no longer limited to individual users alone. Businesses have also begun using the so-called “New Media” as a way to attract new customers.

As an insurance professional, I read trade magazines to learn about new products and glean business tips from successful people in my field. The most recent edition of Senior Market Advisor, a trade magazine for insurance and annuity sales, suggested that advisors should begin utilizing Facebook and Linked-In as a means to get in front of a younger audience. An advisor in North Carolina suggests Facebook as a faster and more effectiveway to attract people for events thanformer traditional means. Not only do you find out who wants to come to an event faster, you get instant feedback as well.

According to Jackie Willse,

“Once others saw on Facebook who was attending, interest grew and more people made an effort to come.  You cannot duplicate this type of action with mailed invitations or cold calling. The social networking builds a kind of excitement and interest grows.” With social-networking sites, when one posts information on their profile, “friends” those who’ve asked to correspond with you and your network, automatically receive it, providing extraordinary marketing reach with minimal cost and effort.”

Read the whole article here.

The biggest takeaway in the article for me was this quote:

“Face-to-face marketing is never going to go away, but with social networking, things will move at an accelerated pace.”

So if you are new to blogging and social networking, don’t fear it or ignore it, embrace it and use it to your advantage. It may be what keeps you in business in these tough economic times.