In November, Rebecca Byrd, owner of upscale Greensboro clothing boutique Rebecca & Co., was getting ready to open a new store, Perch.

Byrd wanted to find a new way to reach her target audience, generally women in their 20s and early 30s, to let them know about the store and update them on sales and other happenings at her original location. Instead of turning to the newspaper, TV or even e-mail marketing, Byrd created a business profile on social networking site Facebook. Through the page, potential customers can receive basic information about the store, see photos taken at special events and even sign up as “fans” of the store and recommend that their friends do the same.

To date, the store has 62 fans with whom Byrd can communicate directly, sending information about new clothing lines or special promotions and sales.

“As a small-business owner, using Facebook is a way for me to create awareness about my stores and hopefully bring in new clients,” Byrd says. “With our struggling economy, everyone is looking for the most cost-effective way to promote their business and, for me, social networking is the way to go... It has absolutely brought it more clients.”

And Byrd isn’t the only one turning to social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for marketing opportunities. A growing number of businesses are examining the options as social networking sites continue to grow their audience and become more mainstream. The use varies from creating company pages, as Byrd did, to placing advertising on the sites or using them simply as a way to keep up with business contacts.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research found that 57 percent of people considered themselves “very familiar” with social networking sites in 2008, up from 42 percent in 2007.

And more than half of Internet users have a profile on one of these sites, with the main users being people in their teens, 20s and early 30s — demographics that marketing experts say can be difficult to reach through more traditional advertising.

“It’s one of those things that’s so heavily used you can’t ignore it,” says Jon Kemp, president and owner of marketing firm Ed Kemp Associates in High Point.

Not all sites created equal

One of the first things to know before using social networking sites for business purposes is to recognize that while there are dozens of social networking sites, not all sites are created equal or have the same audience, purpose or even etiquette. (See box).

For example, the focus of LinkedIn is business networking and developing recommendations of potential vendors and using contacts to find potential clients. And there are several sites targeted at communicating with people in specific industries. Facebook and MySpace, however, have a much broader audience and are more social in nature, and behavior that’s overtly focused on business is generally frowned upon.

While businesses can create profiles on these sites, the focus is expected to be more on generating a community of “fans” rather than overtly selling a product or promoting yourself.

“You can’t be obvious about the approach,” Kemp says. “You have to be very subtle about it. It’s almost a guerilla marketing thing where you have to make an impression on them without them realizing it.”

One of the big advantages of social networking sites, experts say, is that creating a profile is free, other than the time involved.

“In today’s tight economic climate, most of these sites have a very low cost of entry so it’s inexpensive for companies to use them,” says Jordan Bressler, president of Leapfrog Marketing, PR and Design in Greensboro, the agency that works with Rebecca & Co.. “You just need to find the time to sit down and do it.”

Carrying on a conversation

One of the big advantages of social networking sites is the ability to have conversations with clients and to get immediate feedback from them.

“What companies who are using social media are trying to do is connect with their customers and engage them,” says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student in the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill who has done extensive research into how social networking sites are used.

That conversation can play out in a variety of ways. For example, the Facebook page allows Byrd to quickly let customers know about new merchandise, upcoming sales or other things of interest. Likewise, people can visit the Rebecca & Co. page on Facebook and write about their experiences at the store, good or bad.

While some business people may not like giving up that feeling of control, customers are going to be saying these things online anyway, so it may be in the best interest of the company to create a forum where the company can better track what’s being said, experts say.

Companies can also buy ads on the sites and often get more timely feedback than through more traditional channels, marketing experts say.

For example, Chris Whitesell, who works with interactive media for Winston-Salem marketing firm Cassels Caywood Love, cites a North Carolina-based educational client that has placed ads on several social networking sites. Because sites like Facebook and MySpace carefully track the demographics of their users, the client’s ads are only shown to people between the ages of 15 and 22 who live in the state, the key demographic for the client.

“In the past that’s been a hard group to find through traditional media,” Whitesell says.

The client is also able to track how people respond to the ad. Do they click on it to get more information? Or do they mark it as something they aren’t interested in? And, in the case of Facebook, the client also receives information about the personal interests of people who do click on its ads — what bands or TV shows have they cited as being favorites, for example — so the client can better target more traditional media to its core demographic. Whitesell says that kind of immediate feedback isn’t available with TV and radio ads and, in many cases, even on ads placed on other Web sites.

Building relationships

Another way companies are using social networking sites is just that — to socialize with and develop better relationships with clients, vendors and other people who might have an interest in your or your business.

For example, Adrienne Cregar Jandler, president of Atlantic Webworks, says she has several clients based outside of the Triad whom she has never met face-to-face. But, through Web sites like Facebook, she has learned more about their personal interests, hobbies and families than she would have through a series of conference calls.

The emphasis, she says, is on getting to know the person, “but, without question, that can lead to business.”

If you are going to form friendships with clients or other business contacts through such sites, be aware both of what you post about yourself, but also about the privacy settings on the site, Jandler says. On most sites you have control over who can access what information, in many cases even giving access to certain parts of your profile only to those you choose.

So, while you may not care if your best friend from college sees the photos of your vacation to Cancun, you can keep your boss from seeing those same photos, even if both are “friends” on the same site.