By Bernard Hickey
This week I spoke with Deloitte Australia's Chief Edge Officer Peter Williams (@rexter on Twitter) in our offices about how growing businesses can use social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter and what types of cloud computing type services might be useful.
Williams is a real enthusiast for social media and sees great opportunities for small to medium businesses to use the power of these often cheap or free tools to steal a march on bigger, more established and clumsier corporates.
Have a watch of the video above for the full story.
He says any firms' Facebook page can actually be more important than that firms' own website, given that only one in every 5 minutes of internet time is spend away from social media.
"My view is you should be there and it's relatively easy to set up. There's also a lot of other applications you can pull in such as live video streams and competitions provided by a Kiwi company called Wildfire," he said.
Williams suggests a business posts relevant content rather than try to sell too hard.
"The key is, how do I make a two way relationship?"
Actually selling goods or services through Facebook hasn't yet taken off, with many customers going back to the company's actual website to transact.
"Other than that we find it the best way of maintaining a persistent relationship," he said.
Williams uses Linkedin for managing contacts in the business community.
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