The temptation to see social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn as a passing fad is too much to resist for many comms resellers, but according to those who are already a-Twitter about social media, resellers are missing a trick if they fail to realise this potential new business opportunity.

There's a seismic shift in the way people talk to each other, and the comms industry has to at least understand social media if not take the lead with best practices. Mike Briercliffe (@mikejulietbravo), a telecoms expert who advises businesses on social media, observed: "I find it hard to believe that social media will not be all-pervasive within a very short timeframe. And anybody who's in the technology world and hasn't come to appreciate social media won't be able to advise other people on how to use it - and they'll lose business."

When we talk about social media, we usually mean one of the big three names - Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - although there are many more with a more specialised business purpose. Twitter is, simultaneously, the most pervasive and hardest to understand. Users post short updates that can be thoughts, links or part of a conversation, in bursts of no more than 140 characters. It's been likened to a stream of conscience from the Internet itself.

Chris Elkins runs Sovereign Communication Systems (@BusinessComms), a company which services local businesses and NHS clients in Wiltshire and regularly attends face-to-face networking meetings in order to meet potential clients and gain referrals. He speaks for many resellers when he explains why he hasn't explored the potential of Twitter. "I'm sure it could be good, but it's one of those things that needs time, and it's time I don't have," said Elkins. "I've registered on Twitter and that's as far as I've got. I'm not saying we won't look at it, we just won't at the moment."

Yorks-based Pro-IPBX, however, has found the effort worthwhile. According to Andy Bricknell at Pro-IPBX, within his first month of creating a Twitter account for the company he secured four new pieces of business from contacts made using the tool. "It's a really good medium," Bricknell explains. "But to develop anything you really do have to work at it. It's a lot harder than having a Facebook presence or a LinkedIn presence, or even generating an email campaign. You've got to be sat there, not monitoring it constantly, but being aware of what's going on."

Bricknell says that the fact so few telecoms companies had a Twitter presence initially put him off trying it out for himself. Now, he believes that it helps to humanise business relationships and win the trust of potential customers. He's even begun using it as an alert system for warning users of problems like server outages. "Once you grasp that it's a conversation, by text message, and not really about marketing in the traditional sense, that's when it takes off. Don't be afraid of being transparent," he added.
There is a straightforward technique for winning business through Twitter, says Briercliffe. Using a third party application like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, filter Twitter's global stream to find conversations and people to follow which are relevant to your field of interest. The next stage, says Briercliffe, is to engage and not to go wading in with a hard sell. "You wouldn't go to a networking meeting at your local civic hall and burst in saying ‘Hello, I sell telephones, who wants to buy any?'," he explains. "You're looking to go from a level of no intimacy into a level of some intimacy as quickly as you can."

Erica Jones (@Total_ltd) is Marketing Manager at Total, based in Cheltenham. Over the last two years she's helped to draw up a social media strategy for the company. In March, members of her team began blogging regularly, which not only helps to keep them in the mind of customers, says Jones, but also increases the Google page ranking. Within the last six weeks, Jones has moved on to creating Twitter streams that her colleagues can post to. These have already helped to create new relationships within one of Total's key market areas, the legal industry. "I don't know if it's translating into new business yet," she commented. "But we're speaking to people that we wouldn't be able to connect with in our traditional activity. All kinds of people tweet, from partners and practice managers to newly qualified solicitors. It's a level environment."

Jones says it's important not just to focus on the direct sales aspect, but by following people within the legal industry she can quickly get a snapshot of what they're talking about at any given time. "From the vertical side of things it's really quite good," she says. "We can engage in those conversations. All of our sales processes tend to be consultative, and all our marketing tends to be educational, we like to be seen as a trusted advisor."

Although many successful companies silo their social media activities, Briercliffe advises taking potential leads through a variety of networks to establish the coveted status of ‘trusted advisor'. Once you've engaged someone's attention on Twitter, invite him or her into a smaller, more private LinkedIn group or a ning network (www.ning.com). "You don't just ‘do' social media to somebody," he explains. "If you don't engage and build a circle of trust it won't work."

While social media as a sales tool is still a rapidly developing discipline, larger companies have found it an invaluable tool for customer service. O2's David Plumb is quick to refute the idea that all people talk about on Twitter, for example, is what they had for breakfast. "People blog at times when they're feeling very happy or very unhappy," he says. "It's two great moments to find out what the process of dealing with your company is truly like for the customer. We read them carefully, we respond and we try to change our processes based on what they say. And it's worked well for us."

A simple filter to alert customer service staff every time O2 is mentioned on Twitter is enough to instigate a direct response to a customer complaint before they've brought it up with the company. It's perceived, Plumb believes, as more personal and proactive than a call centre or email. "We see a strong connection between customer experience and what they talk about. This gives us a great set of needs, opportunities and ideas to transform our business around," added Plumb.

A dealer's customer may complain about service on Twitter, therefore resellers should be positioning themselves to advise on all aspects of a communications strategy. "There's a lot of people out there who are frightened about technology or are scared about the costs of implementing it," Plumb says. "If they can reach out and informally find friendly resellers who can have a discussion with them, then you can find a lead through social networking. It's also a great way of finding people who are dissatisfied with their current supplier, and that's a great sales op' for a reseller."

Gail Lyon (@OpenComms), Global Internet and Social Media Manager at Siemens, has been managing Siemens' Twitter feed and says it's led to a lot of interest in the company from analysts, journalists and the like. She highlights the low risks involved in having a go yourself.

She commented: "The good thing about social media, especially for smaller comms resellers, is that it's free. Particularly in times like this when budgets are tight, social media should definitely be an avenue for resellers to pursue. Otherwise dealers are doing themselves a disservice and closing doors that could potentially be open for business."