Jon Klein, president of CNN, was recently quoted at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek 2010 Media Summit. Mr. Klein remarked, “I'm more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox".
Now why would Mr. Klein make such a remark? For quite some time, online news websites and cable TV have been accused of contributing to the demise of newspapers. Now it seems that it the old saying may be true – “what goes around comes around”.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets are pulling viewers away from CNN, and other news outlets. Klein further remarked, “We want to be the most trusted name in news. But people have friends on Facebook and follow others on Twitter and they consider them as trusted sources of information”.
It seems that there is some power out there in the land of social networking. CNN has definitely changed the ways news has been reported over the years. Social networks now are poised to take that to another level. “People are pretty up to speed on what happens today. You’ve got to give them more insight about what’s going on. That is where we are going to continue to make a difference” Klein said.
Is your company or business getting engaged with social networks? Your website is a valuable tool that can grow your business, but another valuable tool is using social networking to help get the word out about your company’s products, services, or cause. Ask yourself this - what would happen if your company was mentioned in a news report on CNN? You would guess that a certain number of people would go to the internet and look up your business to find out more about it. At the same time, what would happen if the people you’re connected to starting talking about you in their social networks? The answer is the same. Further, you can use social networks to better understand your customers and competition… even if you are not actively publishing content, and are more passive in your networking social engagements.