Quite a few professionals have researched the effectiveness of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook with regard to business establishments.

Networking sites can be quite effective tools for building direct marketing relationship and probably one of the best ways of getting your customer’s feedback. Although, the method of advertising here would be quite different when compared to the traditional methods, it is still as much a necessity here. Also there are no immediate results but the rewards can be reaped on a long terms basis.

The best method for organizations would be to create their own pages on sites like Facebook and YouTube and encourage their existing customers to become “fans” and comment or review their products. Other additions could be allowing them to upload their audios and videos onto your profile, thus increasing your content value. Thus your businesses icon is also displayed on their profile page and exposes your product to their network of friends.

You can communicate with your fans directly by giving them updates on your products and services or inviting them to special events. Fans are even known to hold discussions on company pages amongst other customers and company representatives. Of course the content of the page is ultimately in the hands of the owner who can decide which is the right content to be displayed on their company profile page. This makes it possible to track and study the marketing trends and performance of the product and helps understand the needs as well as demands of the customers in a better way.

Before plunging into the sea of social networking sites, it is a good idea to understand your niche markets and customer profile. Open a account of your own on one of the social networking sites and use it like you would use as a customer, see how people respond to your site, study the kind of conversations they are having and what kind of benefit you can derive from it.

Once you grasp the basics of the networking sites, you can go ahead with the launching of your own site. But do remember that the content needs to be updated frequently and so indulge in this only if you are able to commit some time regularly to communicate with your customers. Chalk out a plan to market your presence on these networking sites. Most often than not, people open up profile pages on the networking sites and then leave it at that, without advertising their presence or updating their products information. In fact this could be worse than not having a profile at all as potential customers may consider you as an irresponsible company.