Many people I know are very skeptical about social media websites and their usefulness and effectiveness to any serious marketing or communications programme. Some think that these websites are just a fad that will disappear like the fashion trend in bell-bottom or faded jeans and all the time invested in it will go up in smoke – poof! Others are overly cautious about the channel as a legitimate one because they are not sure how to measure its impact. I mean where does one begin?

For me the practical usefulness of Facebook, lies in my penny-pinching ways. Part of me refuses to pay that much more than is necessary for overseas phone calls. So my ‘real-real’ foreign friends and family will get their news from me via FaceBook most times. I will unashamedly admit to roundly chastising one and all if they have not signed up on this New Media channel and shame them into joining the 21st century all in a bid to save my purse. The brave ones who take the FaceBook plunge will hear my voice when I visit them from all that money I saved messaging them through this website. So already using this website from which I can get instant responses is saving me a few dollars, here and there.

The truth is that these websites are just evolving so proper assessment of their long term usefulness will happen over time. Estimates have shown though that within the last few years over 500 million of us who call ourselves human beings are using Facebook and Twitter. Some will admit it in public and others will outright lie, and on the sly send you a friend request using a strange and ridiculous alias. Nevertheless, this new continent of FaceBook is peopled by millions of us and so some preliminary studies are being done to map its usefulness particularly in business.

If your business has established a presence on FaceBook you can track the growth of the ever-building (or declining) members of your community by the number of ‘likes’ you record on your page and use this as a metric. The content that you post is also important in measuring the

usefulness of this website. Encouragement is given to one and all to post useful content and not frivolous material that we can do without. Tell us something interesting about what your company is doing, product innovation perhaps? Invite us to submit ideas to you and ways that we think you can improve your service or product. The comments you get on your page is an indication of our level of interest and engagement. Yes, it is nice to win a prize every now and them but consumers like to recognized so plan around that for us.

Facebook itself has ad space that you can buy and the impact of the ads is provided to you via charts and graphs.

The Journal of Business & Economics Research (February 2013 Volume 11, No. 2) has published recent research (Does Social media Influence Consumer Buying Behaviour?) They looked at consumers who made a purchase of an item based on the recommendation of a peer or contact via social media and used a sample of 249 consumer purchases and analyzed the type of product purchased, the cost of the item and numerous other product dimensions related to the purchase.

The authors, Dr. Lukas Forbes and Eve Vespoli pointed out in the article’s conclusion that “while the field of social media has become an emerging area of research within the business discipline, there still exists uncertainty regarding the extent of the role that various forms of social media has on consumer purchase and what items the consumers are purchasing.” They point out that a key business component of social media is that “it now allows consumers to evaluate product, make recommendations to contacts or friends and link current purchases to future purchases through status updates and twitter feeds”

Most importantly the authors note that the use of social media presents a valuable tool for firms in which a satisfied user of a product could recommend that product to other potential users. “In essence, the social media world is slowly taking the place of product review and panels found in outlets such as ‘Consumer Digest” in previous generations.”

I can see this happening as many of use operate using the ‘herd instinct’ and this is not always necessarily a bad thing, it is just a lazy thing to do. Rather than do the product investigation ourselves we are sometimes led by the experiences of our friends. If this is the wave of the future – then this might just be the place to place your product or service. After all – it is free at least for now.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with RO Communications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.