Jim makes a good point. What type of business are you in Carl? Do you have advertising or promotion in place now? One recommendation that I would make is to promote socializing but first learn how the Tracey Edwards Company team can show you how to measure the outcomes of your staff’s “socializing” effort. No one wants to see you waste company time and resources. With Convergence, we have created a method of tracking the conversations and new clients that are generated via socializing and “word of mouth” in any given period of time. I’m open to talking with you more about this. Contact me at Tracey Edwards Company if you are interested. It can’t hurt to chat about it. Keep in mind that social networking for business is about opening the lines of communication with your audience. Check back soon as I will be posting a new article shortly on just this topic. Thanks for your ideas and questions.

Good point! Unless you know how to identify people who influence and talk about your company online. Let’s call a spade a spade, people are going to spend time talking and networking online. If you know how to make that useful for your company, then you can promote the socializing at work and when they are not at work. Here is a good example to think about. We’ve done work with a local salon. One interesting fact that we determined is that parents (moms) are commonly chatting about their hair and clothes while waiting for their kids to finish karate class at a local studio. They are essentially deciding what new business might be referred to the local salon by word of mouth. The same thing happens online, but much, much faster. By finding out where these same women share this information online and “socialize” about it, you can learn from them and even market to them by socializing. Want to learn more? If you were a salon you would. - Jim

I’ve got a full staff of employees… How can socializing help my business? It costs me money if people aren’t focusing on their job! I’m listening!!