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When Chevy Chase executive Tien Wong sent hundreds of invitations asking friends and business acquaintances to open Facebook accounts, most of them replied: "Are you serious?"
"I was serious," said Wong, CEO of Opus8 and Lore Systems. "I want to be up on the latest trends in technology in social networking. It's a way to keep in touch with people. It's a tremendous business tool. It's a great research tool. It's a sales and lead generation tool. And it's a great recruiting tool."
Wong is one of several experts recently tapped by the Tech Council of Maryland to explain his success to hundreds of other CEOs and marketing managers at a seminar on leveraging social Web sites held at Johns Hopkins University's Rockville campus.
"The overwhelming message was, while these sites all are cool, hot, sexy things, it's really just another channel in the whole realm of business communication," Wong said. "It's just another option for people to connect. … People are super-excited about what's going on with Facebook and social networking sites."
Wong founded Opus8 Inc., an investment company, and acquired Lore Systems, an IT consulting company now with 40 employees in six offices in the Washington region and Europe earlier this year, and is now among the growing ranks of business leaders leveraging social networking sites once used primarily as a medium for teenagers' gossip.
The sites, at which users approve contacts to view their Web pages where their contacts are displayed, are used in much the same way for business as for leisure, with a few exceptions.
The Facebook platform now allows thousands of software developers to create "widgets" such as chess games, personality tests and horoscopes, but Wong said business-related users shy away from the options to maintain a professional appearance. Instead, company leaders use it more as "an automatic address book."
Marc Hausman, founder and CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a public relations company in Silver Spring, runs a blog about networking — www.strategicguy.blogspot.com — and was also among the speakers at the Tech Council seminar.
Last year, Strategic Communications drew about 10 percent of its revenue from helping companies leverage social media, including encouraging "executive blogging" to expand Web presence. This year, Hausman's agency is drawing 40 percent of its earnings from social media, which he expects will jump to 70 percent next year.
"It's by far the fastest-growing part of our business," Hausman said. "What it has provided to businesses is a new channel to reach audiences in a much more effective way. This is where people are spending their time."
Jiyan Wei, product manager for Vocus Inc.'s PRWeb in Lanham, said more businesses are turning to him to adjust conventional paper press releases into items to post on Internet media for blogs and social sites. Company content that can safely pass around the Web is in high demand, he said.
"It becomes available to a really broad audience of news consumers and becomes more cyclical," Wei said. "We've evolved [the press release] to add hyperlinks, YouTube videos and other content."
After two years of updating a MySpace page, the Maryland Ensemble Theater in Frederick launched a Facebook site this month. The nonprofit also has connections on Fredrocks.net, a local social networking site that focuses on entertainment, said marketing director Sara Straw.
"You don't want to spread yourself too thin," Straw said. "You pick one or two and stick with them. … There's a lot of ways to stay constantly connected."
The theater uses Google Analytics to track visitors and how long they have looked at the site and what pages they have viewed. The technology does not reveal names or e-mail addresses, but tells Straw where visitors are coming from — by Google searching, linking from another page or typing in the URL. That helps her determine where to advertise, she said.
Portrait photographer Barbara Campbell, who owns Studio 11 Photography in Frederick, has used MySpace to market her niche to her target audience: high school seniors. Students often post photos of themselves taken by her on their sites, drawing more interest, she said.
Campbell, who has posted on MySpace and Flickr, a photo-sharing site, for two years, said she created a group for female photographers to post about their shoots the Frederick area. She also started blogging on Vox two months ago, posting a few photos and describing how the shoot went.
"It doesn't cost anything except time," Campbell said. "It really does help get people to see what I'm doing. … I haven't seen many photographers on MySpace, but I think it will catch on. It's free, for one."
