How to use Social Networking for your business

Some of you might know, I just kicked off with my own start-up company – The Online Circle with my business partner Jeff Richardson.

On our company we are commonly asked about How to use Social Networks for business.

Our answer is always the same, its all about your needs fitting into the media rather than the media fitting into your business.

There are different ways to use the potential of Social network as Linkedin, MySpace, Facebook, ….., to create acquisition, awareness, relationship, etc., you just need to know how and when to use.

Thats a good example from BNET of Building up a business using the power of Social Network

How to build a business with Social Networking

Tactic: When Nick Kellet got in touch with a former co-worker through LinkedIn, he was interested to hear that she was teaching Chinese to the inventors of the board game Cranium to help them work with their factory in China.

Kellet had recently left his job to publish a board game of his own, called GiftTRAP. His friend arranged an introduction to the factory owners in Shanghai, and soon Kellet had a manufacturer for his game.

Next he turned to photo-sharing site Flickr and found images from more than 500 different photographers that he could legally use for his game.

Once GiftTRAP had been produced, Kellet used social networks to find buyers at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us. “It’s not easy to get into those places,” he says. “You get stonewalled at reception.” Then he plugged into BoardGameGeek to connect with influential players in the tabletop-gaming community and get his product into the hands of reviewers. The long hours online paid off.

Games Magazine declared GiftTRAP the best party game of 2008; it has been translated into eight languages and is now in its third print run. Kellet isn’t done with social networking, either — he’s just developed a Facebook application that lets people play his game online.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

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