Ford Motor Corporation.  Levi Strauss.  Chevron. Starbucks.  What do these big names have in common, besides being corporate behemoths?  They all are on the forefront in using social networking as an essential tool in reaching their customers.

A new article today in USA Today discusses how social networking has made significant inroads into the business world.   What’s nice about this article is that they provide some specific, real-world results of the efforts, something often missing from discussions about effective use of social media tools in the business world.

For example, Intuit, maker of the popular Quickbooks software, launched a new small business site, incorporating Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  The result was that customers flocked to the site and shipments of their flagship product were up 57% year over year.
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