Social networking is moving firmly out of the consumer market and into the business market.

There ae increasingly pressing business reasons to capitalise on social networking.  Below are 5 key reasons to boost a companies involvement with social networking:

• the power of recommendation – almost 40% of us trust our friends recommendations completely (this drops to about 10% for brand websites) – linking with social networking sites can build brand trust and engagement
• the power of the transient – short, personal, time linked tweets from brands and companies that we know has a street crediblity and vibrancy that traditional media lacks. A good example of this is Mission Pie, one of their bakers started sending out tweets about new pies and also alerts to interested customers about poetry readings and other events – they now credit their business growth to their growing band of followers.
• the power of the personal – social networking allows and encourages two way conversation, brands can build up rapport with consumers who want to get involved
• the power of engagement – Facebook and Twitter can help employees in large companies interact and share ideas in a more informal way, helping ideas to flow more quickly – they can even share and create with consumers
• the power of serendipity – geo-networking will allow brands to provide personalised location and time relevant information and incentives

But the real power is the mobile revolution – currently 140 million of us use our mobiles for social networking but this is forecast to increase to 600m by 2013.

So get twittering!