Small businesses find value in social networking

By David Markiewicz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Rusty Newport knows enough about social networking to know it can help his business.

In just two months on the job as sales director for The Silver Platter, a Marietta catering company, Newport picked up seven new accounts thanks, he says, to his forays on Facebook after he created a page for the business.

"It's the way to go," said Newport. "It's cheap. It's easy. It's fun. It's the new way to get your name out. I don't think you have to convince people anymore."

The 100-plus small business owners and employees who attended the free three-hour Social Networking Workshop at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre Thursday didn't need to be convinced. They appeared to agree that for small businesses particularly, finding customers can be more cost effective and quicker on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, to name three tools, than through traditional means.

Now, if they only could figure out how their business could maximize use of those tools.

That's where the workshop came in. It was described as "a quick training session in how to jump into social media and apply it in a business to business world," by Richard Brasser, president and CEO of The Targeted Group, the Charlotte social networking and online marketing company that conducted the event.

Brasser said about 300 people registered for the Atlanta workshop, double the number in the four other cities where the event has been held.

Many in the crowd, which appeared to range in age from about 25 to 65, looked and sounded technologically savvy enough, at least to judge by the number of personal communications devices being used in the  lobby. But Brasser said that while many small business people know social media is "hot," not all  know how to use it to help their company.

Bill Largin, a freelance technology specialist from Roswell, said he uses social networking himself but that many of his clients, such as professional service firms, were just "getting interested in it." A longtime user of Linkedin, he was looking to learn the business advantages of using Facebook.

Bill Bright, an Atlanta recruiter, said he liked social networking's ability to target customers, but that while he uses Linkedin, "I'm not a Twitter fan." He attended the workshop because,  "I need to understand it better."

That, it was clear, was the overall view of social media among the workshop's participants. As Newport put it, "You can dive in now or you can dive in later. But eventually you've got to get wet."