Social media is evolving into social business, implying business intelligence. Conducting social business includes deliberately turning social media into an integrated tool for customer and supplier recruitment.

The new term floating around management circles is “social business” which takes social media to the next logical level of deliberate integration of technologies to create a business advantage. Finding the right customers and suppliers are two important factors in business success, so leveraging social media to fulfill that function makes perfect sense. Social media is maturing and now recognized as an avenue for creating real business opportunities and improving competitiveness. Traditional methods for finding suppliers and customers, like cold calling and direct mail marketing, have very limited value in a globalized, technology-based business environment. Social media, as the core of a social business, is a much more relevant communication system for a widespread marketplace.