Ford - "social media is bigger than advertising"

Just read your links, certainly makes you think. As you know yourself from the corporate world, most of the internal emails are irrelevant, and I look at my inbox now, and most of that is irrelevant, spam or people pitching services.

But on the other side of the coin, as we send out monthly customer mails which are very profitable, so we're also guilty. I think email use will decline over the coming years or at least commercial email, as new avenues open up on social media, but for general stuff, is instant messaging or nattering on Facebook more efficient than an email?

Hmm, can see even more time being wasted!

Anyone here actually get business via Facebook and Twitter? I think it can work if your business has a human face.

I also think executives burble about Social Media so as to seem 'with-it'.

I'd be interested to hear personal experiences. Or I could just search the forum

http://www.mylocalforums.com/online-marketing-using-social-networking/1353-how-much-social-network-sites-successful-generating-traffic.html

Social media is a form of marketing for companies though. O.o
It's a good tool regardless though. You get to keep in touch with existing clients, as well as reaching potential clients. Problem is though that you need to keep it clean, and not be excessive and actually get in touch with people.

From our experience, actually directly attributing a sale to social media, prob very few, maybe count on one hand. But definitely a good source of traffic, of which a proportion will be monetized.

But aside from revenue, as an overall blend of online reputation, general marketing, visibility, means for people to communicate with us, as well as bonus's such as link generation, then I think Social Media has now become invaluable.