Why most business focused social networks are missing their own market

LinkedIn, Xing and now IBM's Bluehouse are hot news. But are they providing any of the services which draw business professionals to network in the first place?

When putting together a business plan for WeCanDo.BIZ I was inspired by a survey on the BNI website -- BNI is the Worl'd largest business networking organisation with over 3 million members -- which shows the primary reason why its members started networking in the first place.

New business is stated by 76.5% of respondents as the reason they network, with career advancement a reason for just 14.4%. And yet if you take a look at professional networking leaders LinkedIn and Xing, personal profiles read more like CVs than they do as promotion platforms for the businesses that the individual members represent. LinkedIn specifically advises its members do not accept invitations to connect from people unknown to them, limiting the further the number of new contacts that could lead to new business. Your ex-colleagues may have an interest in what you are doing now on LinkedIn, but are they likely to buy from you or send their customers to you?

So it was with interest that I read about IBM's entry to this market with its Bluehouse concept yesterday. In short, it's a directory of member profiles with a bunch of tools to help you interact with your contacts through things like online presentations and virtual meetings.

Now I agree that such tools are helpful in progressing sales cycles, but to have a meeting with someone, on or offline, you have to know them. And I see nothing in Bluehouse that helps to enable valuable new introductions, repeating what I consider to be a flaw in LinkedIn and Xing.

I would guess that any company would want to ensure that it is doing all it can to serve the needs of existing customers and that when networkers say they want to win new business, they mean NEW business from customers not yet known to them. In other words, they look to networking to provide new contacts; an inexpensive route into new markets without the need for big marketing budgets or tedious cold calling. I know a lot of individuals for whom social networking is a big part of what we could call their marketing mix.

So why are there not more tools to help facilitate this? If you believe BNI, it is what three quarters of their base would like to see and yet not the area where most online networking sites focus.

I am convinced we have it right at WeCanDo.BIZ of course, but I have always been interested to build on the BNI research to see if business professionals actually do have the same expectations of online networking as they do BNI's traditional face to face networking approach. So we have put together a survey of business networking trends which will help show whether the needs of online networkers are being met and whether LinkedIn, Xing and now IBM have got it wrong.

I'll hope you spare me 5 minutes of your time to participate in the survey to help us - you can start the survey at http://www.businesszone.co.uk/wecandobiz/start.html .

Your comments are always welcomed.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz