For companies with contact centers, using all available resources to promote business increases traffic and, ultimately, helps deliver profitable results. As the professional market evolves, more and more companies are turning toward social networking as a way to maintain and promote business and services. 

In a recent interview, Rich Marica, marketing director for Coordinated Systems, Inc., or “CSI,” a provider of both call monitoring and call recording systems, told TMCnet that the company is experimenting with various social media to deliver updates to follows and extend an open hand to potential business partners and customers. 

The CSI blog serves as a replacement for the company’s online newsletter and also helps manage readership. Yet for the B2B marketer, Facebook (News - Alert), video and mobile are a bit more risky than Twitter or LinkedIn, Marcia said.

“I’ll be looking more into them in 2010, and it’s possible we may dive deep there, but it’s more likely we’ll just be testing the waters,” he said. 

With contact centers, many companies are hiring and therefore training “social ambassadors” who focus on contacting people who are voicing their opinions about specific companies in the social media space. 

“Companies, I believe, will eventually cross-train contact center employees to do this,” Marcia said. “If a Facebook fan contacts you on your fan page, that’s not much different than a prospective customer reaching out to you on your Web site. Contact center employees can be trained to handle those types of inquiries.”

However, in order for this to evolve, there will need to be an adapted skill set from these employees to professionally manage a public relations incident where someone on Twitter complains about their company or brand, Marcia added. The “social ambassador” will have to reach out and address the issue at hand. But the choice as to where to focus a company’s social media efforts is a difficult one, with so many growing in popularity and traffic.

“For business purposes, almost all business people can benefit by being on LinkedIn,” Marcia said, adding that referrals, which are offered and provided on LinkedIn are the best forms of leads, job opportunities and partnerships. 

“Twitter is also useful as a cog in your content machine. Twitter can direct people to your blog, which directs people to your website,” Marcia said. “Throw your LinkedIn profile in there and you’ve exponentially increased your online visibility and the ways of which people can contact you.”