BizSugar.com › Products and Services › Social Media Gets Professional

If you want an example of the power of social media, consider this. Starbucks gets 1.8 million visitors to its website every month, Coca Cola some 270,000. By contrast their Facebook pages get 19.4 million and 22.5 million respectively, roughly 10 times the traffic. And every one of those people has given those companies permission to talk to them.Social media and its impact on business was mentioned by almost every panel member as a key challenge. Jean-Philippe Courtois president of Microsoft International says: "The explosion of social networking with consumers has changed their expectations about how they can and should connect with businesses. 'Real-time' is a new imperative, which is causing many businesses to rethink their customer relations strategies via digital marketing."