I recently returned from our firm’s annual meetings in San Antonio, TX where our 190+ partners convened to discuss our respective businesses and learn the latest about a variety of issues including exit planning, Google tools, accounting software, AND SOCIAL MEDIA.  I was pleased to see the commitment of our firm to the social media platform.  B2B CFO® has established its own Facebook and Twitter pages.  We are active on LinkedIn, have our Google places and many of us blog.   Facebook and Twitter are here to stay and all businesses I believe need to determine how they are going participate in this new space. The average person is spending over 7 hours a month on Facebook.

I talk about Facebook with my clients as the new super highway which is moving fast and becoming congested with upwards of 600 million people.  One out of every twelve people around the world has a Facebook account. These consumers speak 75 languages and recently Facebook accounted for 1 out of 4 American Internet page views. It's even more staggering to watch its membership grow at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.  And they expect to reach 1 billion members in 2011.  And it's not just Facebook that's having an impact on traditional marketing. In fact, all social media is growing at exponential rates - from Twitter and blogs, to customer reviews and recommendations, social customer service and certainly not least YouTube.  All of these social communication platforms are having a supercharged effect on how consumers interact, search products, get deals and shop.

According to Facebook, there are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices, and further these mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users.  Companies today need to figure out how to not only keep their consumer shopping on their websites but also build shopping portals on these new e Facebook/Twitter/YouTube superhighways and keep them coming back to their website and store location where they buy their products and services.  

Since November of last year I have had the good fortune to work as the acting COO/CFO of ShoppeSafe.com in Minneapolis, MN.  Fortunate, not only because they’ve become a great client, but also because I’ve been able to see the evolution of social media and the importance of it to maintaining and generating new customers for a business.   The one thing I’ve come to understand is that YOU NEED TO GET INTO THE GAME OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS. 

In some companies social success is beginning to surpass paid marketing channels like search engine marketing, display and print advertising. There is even discussion that social is the new search. In the recent Trend Report from Morgan Stanley, they predict m-Commerce (mobile commerce) will be half of all ecommerce by 2014.

 Businesses, small, medium and large need to reassess their same "old school" traditional marketing ways.  They need to consider walking away from the "old school" push product marketing and into “pull, buy and share” marketing.  And it’s not just putting the Facebook and Twitter icons at the bottom of your website.  It’s more than that.  You need to figure out how you can leverage your current customer base online or with email to provide “trusted testimonials” to their friends and family using social media and mobile.  You need to create a Sustaining Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach to marketing to consumers online.  Is there a better way to promote your products and service than your customers speaking well of you?  The opportunity to do so lies right in front of you with social media and mobile.  And the tools to do it with are not that expensive to use.   
 
My client ShoppeSafe.com has cracked the code with their Sustainable Social CRM tools which successfully drive social and mobile commerce for its clients.  There are no implementation costs and they charge a modest monthly subscription fee to position businesses and their products and services onto the social media and mobile platform.  And they do it in less than 10 days.

If you, your business, or other’s you know are interested in learning more about how social media and mobile can increase your average order value, frequency of purchasing, conversion percentage and reactivate old business while also providing new customers for your business, contact me kcattoor@b2bcfo.com  Social is the next internet.  It is going to be interesting journey.