Are businesses in Oman ready to embrace social media? It is early days for me on the field, but the signs are encouraging. There are a set of folks, who care two hoots for social / new media. They think and believe that fax and phone are the only two great inventions of this century to do business, and they will carry on the legacy of their predecessors. Then there are the exploring types, who are not sure of the benefits of social media and don’t get much of it, but somehow know the future lies there. They want to venture into social media, but not ready to bite the bullet yet. After some convincing talks, they say, ”Ok, send us a proposal, we want to try it out”. And, then there are the third kind who think they are quite e-savvy, but not ready to listen or experiment. You ask them about new media, they jump to say they have a state-of-the-art website. Their website was created way back in 2007, and since two years, there hasn’t been any update.

Advantages of social media for businesses

1. Community building

2. Product research

3. Customer service

4. Marketing and promotion

5. Transparency

Why social media?

You can buy attention (advertising)

You can beg for attention from the media (PR)

You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)

Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online: a corporate blog, a YouTube video, photos, a Twitter stream, a Facebook page.