2009 in review: Social networking

Corporate use of social networks exploded in 2009

This year has seen an explosive growth in the number of businesses using social networks.

The most popular consumer networks, mainly Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, have been harnessed by firms for brand networking purposes - to analyse their customer base, promote their company name, fine-tune their campaigns and test new product ideas. Additionally, social sites are now commonly used for customer service purposes.

While some companies have chosen to spearhead the use of social networks and test the waters in new areas with big, brave and bold social networking implementations, others have held back and just employed the basic tools. Some companies have put their reputation at risk by not adopting a social strategy at all or not thinking one through carefully.

One of the most daring social network implementations of 2009 was that of the confectionery brand Skittles at the beginning of March.

Skittles spent £100,000 changing its traditional homepage into an online portal of feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube and was rewarded with 4,000 mentions in the news media following the launch. Skittles promoted its brand far beyond what would have been achieved if it had spent the same amount of money paying for TV advertisements.

In April, Ford Motors promoted its new Fiesta by loaning the car to 100 bloggers for six months. In exchange for the car, the bloggers were encouraged to write about the Fiesta and upload videos to YouTube. The ploy clearly reflected how consumers increasingly use online communities to discuss new purchases they may be considering.

Comcast, which delivers customer service through Twitter, made the headlines throughout this year. The company employs half a dozen employees to talk to its customers through the real-time site, answer their queries and discuss any problems. Comcast currently boasts 35,470 followers on Twitter and the internal leader of the Twitter strategy, Frank Eliason, is known in the industry as “Comcast Cares”.

In terms of how social media strategies translate into revenue, Dell announced in December that promoting its PCs using Twitter had generated more than $6.5m in sales in 2009. According to reports, there has been a 23 per cent rise in the number of users following Dell on Twitter in the past three months and it now has 1.5 million followers.

Other social strategies that have caught public attention include Southwest Airlines, which employs a chief Twitter officer to alert flyers of bad weather and monitor dissatisfied customers using the site to complain; and Coca-Cola, which owns one of the most popular pages on Facebook and has a strong presence on other social sites, including YouTube and Second Life, as well as its own corporate blog.

Health professionals have tapped into Twitter, using the social sites as an early warning Swine Flu system. A trial conducted between May and August tracked more than one million tweets referring to Swine Flu.

Many news sites have used social media in a bid to retain readers. The Guardian has in many ways been at the vanguard of this movement, with its technology Twitter account alone boasting 1,497,356 followers and most of its full-time reporters having a strong presence on Twitter. Meanwhile, the BBC created its first social media editor post this year.

Some companies have attempted social strategies half-heartedly in a rush to gain fans. These attempts have often ended in failure. One example is the UK retailer Habitat, which got caught spamming hashtags related to the Iran protests in July in order to drive Twitter users to its products. The company had to make a public apology for exploiting the unrest.

Some companies have ignored social networks altogether. These businesses risk being met with cyber squatters when they finally venture into the social nework space

For example, South West Train's Twitter account reads "Not actually anything to do with SWT. Just a spiteful commuter playing around". The page documents hiccups and delays in the train provider's service.