Social media should be focused on building relationships rather than driving specific campaigns. To do this effectively, businesses have to be able to articulate what their message is, know who their target audiences are, and find the right platform to reach them.

These were some of the insights that emerged from a panel discussion on Social Media in Business, at the recent BlogOut! 2009 organised by The Digital Movement. The theme for this year’s forum was "Making sense of the social media landscape".

Defining the scope of the discussion, moderator Mr William Claxton, Technical Director of Iterate, noted that social media was about leveraging the viral effects of user-generated web. This involved various facets of the Web 2.0 world – such as user-generated content, user-organised content and user-generated communities.

Panellists discuss the business case behind the buzz at BlogOut! 2009.

Panellist Mr Daniel Goh, Public Relations and Online Manager of Samsung Asia, felt that businesses, by and large, need to have a better understanding of social media tools and how they can be deployed within the organisation. "There is a gulf in understanding between enterprise IT and what marketing wants to do," he said.

As a marketer, there are many ways in which social media tools can be applied to the enterprise workspace. For example, social media tools can be used to find out what the competition are doing, and what people are saying. "You can listen in to the conversations," he said.

An example of social media tools in action was the use of Facebook to spread the word about Singapore Tattoo Show 2009, which was held in January 2009.  Show owner and organiser Ms Debra Tan had eschewed the traditional advertising route because "ads cost a lot of money and may not reach the right target audience". Instead, she set up a Facebook group which grew from the initial 100 members to 4,000 within three months.

"Facebook led to people blogging about the Tattoo Show, to online media covering it and eventually to us getting coverage from traditional media such as AXN, the local papers and wire agencies. It also grew beyond the tattoo community to reach out to the non-tattoo community," she said.

But Mr Goh cautioned that social media tools may not work for every product. For example, it may not be a good fit for business-to-business products, where case studies could be more effective. Neither is it likely to work for products that want to project an exclusive image. However, for commodity products where the market is "rife with competitors", it could be a powerful tool. "It depends on what kind of message you want to spread," he said. "You need to know what hook you have. What is your message? Who is your audience? Then find the right platform to reach them."

Agreeing, Ms Patricia Law, Digital Strategist at Ogilvy PR, emphasised the importance of knowing who you are talking to and how best to reach them, whether it is via email, Twitter, Facebook or any other channel. "You have to know what is the new vernacular."

It is also important that the use of social media is focused on getting to know customer preferences and starting relationships. "Social media cannot be campaign-centric," she said. "It has to be about relationship-building."

These relationships can subsequently be mobilised in the battle for public opinion. "It is important to find out who are ‘pro-you’," said Mr Goh. "If you need to influence people who are against you, need to get people who are pro-you to fight the battle."

Ultimately, social media gives everyone a huge advantage, and that is "the last word", said Mr Benjamin Koe, co-founder of social media consultancy JamiQ. "If someone gets something wrong, you get to have the final say. Or if you made a mistake, you can say sorry."