The boom in the use of Social Networking sites has already been with us for nearly a decade already. During this span, we have seen quite a number of sites that made it big, sites that crashed, and sites that had to completely reformat their niches and styles in order to survive. These successes, changes, and failures are merely manifestations of the fact that social networking is something that is constantly changing and adapting according to the time.

As of now, experts are saying there are already shifts that are slowly being realized in social media and social networking. These are trends that a business owner who is looking to leverage such sites for business purposes must look into in order for them to find success.

The social networking trends include:

Transparency:

Nowadays, companies are using social networking sites as platforms to enable their customers to see a different side of them. They are now trying to reach out to them and talk about their usual activities instead of being a tight lipped conglomerate.

This can be attributed to the fact that social networking enables businesses to have some sort of transparency and many current and potential clients are searching for it in a business.

Mobile compatibility:

Another current trend is to come up with mobile content. With internet becoming more and more available to people who use their phones, PDAs or even the small netbooks, having to come up with aesthetically pleasing content that is easy to load is becoming more and more important. Now, it is important that you would be able to cater to people looking for a quick browse of your blog through their phones.

That’s why it is now becoming more common to see the mobile versions of the various popular sites and even the corporate blogs or sites of the company.

When people discuss work or the operations within the company, you may often hear people talk about the “IT side” of the operations as well as the “business side” of it. This is especially relevant when it comes to outsourcing some of the services or processes of the company. They would often say let’s just outsource this “tech stuff” so that we can focus on our business.

When you think about it though, there really is no such thing as an IT side or a business side. This is because there really is no business today that does not require any IT infrastructure to be able to support it. From large corporations that populate the bustling skyscrapers of the city to the small businesses found in the streets near our homes, all of them would be running through the help of some form of information technology.

To realize that there really is no distinction between IT and your business is actually very important for outsourcing. This is mainly because we would often see companies not really caring about the outsourced IT services simply because it is not part of their “core competencies”. One should realize that if they hire outsourced IT services that are not up to standard, they would actually be crippling their ability to work their business.

On the other hand, simply outsourcing staff who are skilled in the IT side of things but have very limited knowledge about the ins and outs of the business would also lead to some problems. They would not know the proper framework that they would need to work on in order to help improve their operations.

As you can see, when it comes to outsourcing your company’s IT and Business, there really is no divide. One should go hand and hand with the other in order for it to be effective.

Of course, it won’t take long for the larger companies, even those in the fortune 100, to utilize these advantages as well. They are now utilizing social media, and are becoming active in sites such as social networks and blogging. In fact there is even a graph that shows just how much these companies are utilizing them:

So what does large companies becoming involved in youtube, twitter, and facebook mean for the small businesses that previously lorded over these platforms? Does it mean that they would no longer be able to maintain that equality that social media and social networking marketing used to provide them?

Well the answer to that comes in two ways. The first is that yes, the advantage that they used to have would now be slowly eroded. As more and more companies with more resources get in on the trend, you would be able to see more well designed pages, more interactive blogs, and other higher end pages on these sites.

However, another opinion could be that it doesn’t really matter if it is high end as these social networking sites are not offering much when it comes to aesthetics anyway.  You would still be able to attract consumers with a limited budget as long as you have a good and well thought out marketing strategy. You should just consider the large companies as nothing more than the usual competition.

Most businesses are driven by figures and numbers. For a strategy to be considered effective or useful, it should be able to immediately reflect on the bottom line of the company. A marketing strategy is good if it will be able to increase the revenue, and it’s bad if it does nothing to progress it.

While this is perfectly undrstandable, business owners must understand that there are some benefits that are noet as tangible as an increase in revenue. This is especially relevant in the case of actively marketing through the social networks. This is because the marketing done in social network may not immediately bring the income or sales increase that you would want, but it doesn’t mean that it is ineffective.

The Social Capital:

This is because there is an intangible benefit of engaging in social network marketing. This advantage is termed as the positive effect on social capital. Social capital is defined as the connections within and between people. Because one of the more common ways that people communicate with each other is through the social networks, having a presence there would increase their awareness of your products, and their propensity to try it out.

This happens because the social networks would act as a social lubricant for the individuals and your company. They begin to feel much more relaxed with dealing with you (indirectly done by purchasing your products) and may begin to trust your services and capabilities because you have formed ties and goodwill with them through the social networks.

Of course, a positive social capital takes time to build which may make impatient companies think that using social networks as a tool for marketing is actually ineffective. However, given time and proper management of the networks and your connections people, you would begin to realize that there really was a benefit to utilizing such a strategy.

While many companies and small businesses may already be utilizing some form of outsourcing for their operations, there are still some companies who are inquiring about more information regarding it. They want to know some of the different disadvantages that they may encounter because they would integrate outsourcing in their various processes.

While we have previously highlighted a wide range of positives of outsourcing in this very blog, it may be good to consider looking at the disadvantages. After all, as with anything, there really are some cons to them whenever you consider utilizing it.

Some of these disadvantages would include:

Data Security:

If you begin to utilize outsourcing, there would always be a risk of having to send out some sort of data or information that you use. This could be company figures or even information about your clients and consumers.

You may find it hard to secure this data, since you are working with another company. While you may be able to control leaks through the terms of your contract and your agreements, your outsourcing partner would still be a security risk when it’s time to keep the data safe.

May threaten current employees:

When you start outsourcing some of the processes regularly done by your in house employees, they may begin threatened about their job security. They may feel that they are about to lose their jobs and other opportunities to people outside of their company.

This may lead to a morale heat which could affect their current performance of the job that you would have them do.

Now that you understand some of the disadvantages of outsourcing some of the processes of your company, you may want to analyze the situation and see if this option is still palatable to you. Do note however that if you select a good outsourcing partner, then this issues or disadvantages would be significantly reduced.

As mentioned time and time again, utilizing social networking properly in order to market your small business or your company is one of the most cost effective strategies that you can use. Through social networks you would be able to tap into a new stream of potential clients and possibly get increased revenue with very little expenditure on your part.

Of course, this would only be possible if you are able to approach social network marketing properly. Without the proper approach, your techniques would be nothing more than spam messages that the people would ignore.

Some tips on approaching social networks properly would include:

Target relevant people:

You should target the relevant people with your marketing campaigns. As much as possible, you should try to send the marketing materials to those who are really inclined to purchase your products.

The great things it that this is actually easier now since the social networks are becoming more and more organized. Now, you would be able to search for a specific demographic that would really suit who your target clientele is.  Searching for women in their teens, grandparents, or sporty males have become much easier now, and can be easily done through a few clicks on the mouse.

Respond to Criticisms:

A common wrong approach that companies would often do with their social network pages would be to disable all the negative comments that are written in the page. The best way to handle negative criticisms would be to respond to them and state why they are wrong or how your team is looking into the complaints that the people may have.

However, it would be perfectly understandable to dispose of comments that are really nothing more than flame baiting, trolling, or baseless product bashing.

By approaching the social networks properly, you would be able to fully leverage it and use it as an effective marketing tool for your company.

In the early days of both off shoring and outsourcing, it was quite easy to determine which was which. Off shoring was usually defined as when you hire a company from outside your country to do your tasks for you. On the other hand, outsourcing is simply hiring another company from within your country to do some of your processes for you.

However, it seems that this line is blurring nowadays. This is because previously off shoring companies have already set up bases in other countries. Nowadays, it wouldn’t be a shock to see an India based outsourcing company having hubs in the USA. So what would happen if your business hired this India based outsourcing company for work. Technically you are off shoring since it is an India based firm, but the work is being done on your home soil. You can really see the lnes between off shoring and outsource blur.

So how is this noteworthy? Well it is significant in two ways:

Proves how widespread outsourcing and off shoring is:

The first is that it is a manifestation of just how widespread the practice of business process outsourcing is. As you can see, even those that are outside your country of origin has found it necessary to build a base in your home country so that they would be able to manage their wide spread operations.

Increased reliability peace of mind:

Another significant impact of this is that it helps companies have more peace of mind when they do outsource. This is because they would not have to travel halfway around the world in order to be able to talk with representatives of their outsourcing partners.

With their outsourcing partners having satellite offices in their home country, they can feel more secure as they would be able to iron out differences just by going to that office.

If you are one of the early adopters of using social networking sites to be able to market your business, then you would have already logged a lot of time in one of them and have probably realized that there are a lot of changes that are happening.

You should realize that there is an ebb and flow when it comes to social networking. Some sites would experience a time where they are at peak performance, but they would also ultimately end up losing members and losing popularity.

This should make you realize that you can’t put your eggs in one basket and just stick with a single social networking site to handle all your business marketing needs. You should be aware when it’s the proper time to move on so that you would not be left in a “stale” social networking site.

Here are some signs that it may be time to shift sites:

Significantly less Activity:

You should check if the current members are still active. If the current community is no longer as active as it once was, then it may be time to shift sites, as your efforts would probably fall on deaf ears.

This may mean that the social networking site has become boring or has no more fresh content that can attract the usual users.

Spam Dominated:

Another reason that you could use for moving out of your site would be if it had become spam dominated. When the website has been overrun with spam bots and spam messages, many people are also turned off from it and would not visit it anymore.

The good thing is that there are plenty of social networking sites on the internet and that you should not be limited to just one. You would easily be able to find replacements for sites that have gone stale and useless for your marketing efforts.

If you ask any company about the reasons for them having to outsource some of their business process or IT needs, one of the answers that you would probably get often would be cost savings. It can’t be denied that outsourcing’s primary purpose would be to make a company offer a service or function properly without having to spend as much on hiring staff or on infrastructure costs.

However, you should understand that outsourcing is now not just about cost savings. This is because as more and more companies applied outsourcing practices to their business, their outsourcing partners needed to step up their games as well. It’s not enough to become the cheapest company; they also had to bring something else to the table in order for people to choose them for their outsourcing needs.

Here are some of the new things that outsourcing can lead to:

Innovative practices:

Outsourcing allows a company to open up their business to outside minds.  Their outsourcing partners would be able to come up with new and innovative practices that can help the company come up with fresh solutions to some of their work issues.

These innovative practices can help the company reach their goals in a more efficient manner.

Leveled Playing Field:

Because of the prevalence of outsourcing, you can actually say that it is able to level the playing field with the competitors. When a large company decided to put all of its efforts and resources in a single process or task , it would previously lead to other small businesses not being able to keep up with them.

However, since more and more companies are outsourcing, you would be able to see that nearly everyone has a chance to keep up with all the innovation and technological innovations that all the other companies are using.

If you are planning on using social media marketing, it’s not enough to join a social networking site and put up your company’s profile or webpage. There are various things that you would have to do and ensure in order for your social media marketing techniques to become effective enough that it would be able to help your business.

One of the important things that you would have to ensure that your social network page has is balance. Balance is actually a critical factor in social media marketing. Without it, you can expect your potential visitors to be turned off which would lessen the value of utilizing the social networking site for your marketing efforts.

Here are some of the aspects wherein balance would really play a critical part:

Number of posts or updates:

When it comes to the number of posts in the social networking page, most companies or small businesses seem to subscribe to the “the more the merrier” school of thinking. They would think that having very few posts would lead to the visitors thinking that the site is dead. That’s why they try to come up with multiple posts and updates throughout the day.

While this is somewhat true, the problem lies in the fact that it can become spamming. Too many posts and updates, especially about the trivial things can turn off the people from following your page.

Positivity:

Another balance related issue is that sometimes companies would tend to simply focus on everything that is positive about their company. They would not take the time to respond to any negativity and try to paint a picture that everything is all good.

The problem is that people know that there would always be issues. You would be surprised at how people would think better of you if you would respond to some of the negative issues.