Using social tools to grow your sales

Where are you going to find your customers now? According to Eric Picard over at iMediaConnection, customers are increasingly creeped out by targeted online media. (No huge surprise, I might add). As mentioned yesterday, customers want to browse, shop and buy from companies they trust. Which helps explain why customers increasingly work with brands that they’ve built a relationship with, either through Facebook, Twitter or myriad other social tools.

Of course, choosing the right social network to reach your customer can make all the difference between a successful campaign and trying to calculate ROI when dividing by zero. Which is what makes eMarketer’s recap of an interesting ExactTarget study on whether Twitter followers are better than Facebook fans so helpful.

Earlier studies seemed to favor Facebook (though, at the time, we suggested both Facebook and Twitter can work for many businesses). And, to be fair, the ExactTarget study suggests that Facebook’s higher use may lead to more business, just at lower response rates (Twitter only has 3% market penetration, while just about everyone in the universe has a Facebook account. I’m expecting friend requests from Vulcans and Klingons any day now).

Of course, as ever, e-mail remains the “forgotten social network”, with customers more engaged than Facebook users. Not that that makes the headlines. Ah, well…

Ready to take the plunge deeper into the social pool? Check out Mashable’s write-up of 5 great examples of social media campaigns to learn from. I also humbly recommend checking out thinks coverage of how the Marines use social media, too.

How are Twitter and Facebook working for you? Let us know in the comments, OK?

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