It is time to use social networking to reach customers

Services, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and countless other websites, have had a profound effect on how millions of people — especially those under 35 — interact with others (or don't), shop and view brands.

Some statistics to justify your Social-media strategies:

• Facebook: More than 10,000 websites use Facebook Connect, a service that lets Facebook users log in to affiliated sites using their Facebook account and share information from those sites with their Facebook friends. About 30 million Facebook members access it through mobile devices.
• Twitter: Twitter users spend 66% more dollars on the Internet than non-Twitter users, says market researcher ComScore.
• MySpace: More than 1 million small businesses and individuals promote their goods and services on MySpace.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn has more than 365,000 company profiles. More than 12 million small-business professionals are members of LinkedIn.

Forrester states "the time to build social marketing applications is now". Social technologies continue to grow in 2009. Now more than four in five US online adults use social media at least once a month, and half participate in social networks like Facebook. While young people continue to march toward almost universal adoption of social applications, the most rapid growth occurred among consumers 35 and older. This means the time to build social marketing applications is now.

Do not wait otherwise it might be to late!