The power of social networks

How important is social networking sites to business’? Here’s an example. In the year 2008 Canadian folk singer, Dave Carroll was travelling with United Airlines when the baggage handlers damaged his $3,500 guitar. The airline refusing to compensate for the damage and the customer service not being helpful at all led him to create a song about it (released on the 9^th July), “United Breaks Guitars”. In just 3 days, it had been watched half a million times; today, 9.3million views. If you read the comments under the video, there is more criticism against United Airlines that people post. This video caused United to have a massive public relations crisis. Thousands of unhappy customers are bombarding them with frustration and anger.
With this in mind, now how important is social networking sites to businesses? Well the answer is simple, VERY. Nowadays every tweet, every video, every blog post can cause immense amounts of damage to a company or its product. Through new technologies, one click away is the forward button to hundreds of friends. It’s a dramatic shift in consumer power. To survive the world of social media, companies have to throw away their old marketing playbook and have to develop ways to turn social media to their side in order to be successful.