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Social networking has come a long way since the early days of chat rooms and instant messaging. Now that Web 2.0 to 3.0 has come into full-swing, businesses are flocking to the major players such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and MySpace to create more visibility and drive more website traffic. Since the different social networks can be tricky to handle all in one fell swoop (and might not all be viable for business pursposes), there are now social networks and software that enable employees to be more productive with blogging, tweeting, commenting, and sharing ideas on the business-friendly social networks.
The most important first step is knowing which softwares are useful and how to keep the productivity ball rolling in the business environment of social networking.
The sad truth about social networking is that it has a bad reputation for being the ultimate waste of administrative time for employees initiating Facebook pokewars and viewing their friends recent tweets instead of getting other work done. But as difficult as it is to imagine, social networking actually increases worker productivity significantly.
In an article from USA Today, it was revealed how social networking is "catching on at companies to improve productivity and communication among workers." Collaboration is key to creating ideas and getting information shared within highly dispersed organizations.
Some of the productive tools that businesses can use include company forums on resources such as Linkedin as well as other networking places such as group "walls" for the company on Facebook. When sharing links on twitter to encourage company website traffic, employees can bulk upload and strategically send tweets (or "retweets") through services such as HootSuite or Tweet Deck.
Technology is taking a powerful role in the evolution of the social networks technology trend and making it an even more productive and useful tool for companies of most industries and sizes. |