Vodaphone has recently polled 1,100 British business and found that almost half (47%) of the entrepreneurs in their early 20s preferred to network online. This should be a wakeup call for many small businesses, you need a website and an email address. More importantly you need to make sure that the emails are read and answered promptly. These young entrepreneurs are your future customers and it’s likely they are representative of the wider population too.
The poll claims that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are unlikely to deliver success in terms of business, despite their soaring popularity. While I’d agree it’s hardly news after all neither was designed as to facilitate business, they are after all social networks.
Overall (67%) of those polled said they preferred to do business face to face. The reality however I suspect is different, while I prefer to do business face to face, more and more of my introductions and initial discussions are done online with only the final meetings conducted face to face.
So where do you stand, are you and online or offline business person? Have you used social networks for business?
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
As an online business owner in my 20’s i feel obliged to offer comments to this post. I run a virtual IT Consultancy and conduct 99% of all business online. This includes everything from marketing and research through to signing contracts and invoicing. As a small business it is imperitive to keep costs down and efficiency up. Compare one day of 2 or 3 meetings in the city with a day in my home office contactable in a second by all of my clients and can respond to any issue immediatley, it simply doesn’t compare!
Do i really need to see my clients face to face? Yes, but only to expand on an existing relationship already built online.
I have just had a product manufactured and dealt with the manufacturer almost exclusively online.
I emailed drawings to a couple of manufacturers for quotes and once I had decided on a manufacturer, after reviewing the quotes (and reviewing the manufacturers web sites to gain a basic insight into the actual companies) I placed an order via email.
It was a very quick process and one which I can easily check back on correspondence whenever I need to.
I would be happy to repeat this process again with other products.
I would say even more than half, being a young entrepreneur online ive met a lot more online then my offline venture.