New business client acquisition using social networking sites

The rapid development and expansion of the social services and social networking sites (SNSs) on the Internet has boosted interdisciplinary research on online communities as a part of social network analysis. Social networking creates a unique opportunity to establish new business contacts with people from unexplored markets to gain new customers or contractors. The goal of the paper is to present a new idea for acquisition of new customers in the business-to-business market using individual human relationships existing SNSs. In order to find an appropriate solution, the SCAN method (System for Client Acquisition via Social Network) has been proposed. This method is a B2B application to support new markets gaining process. It makes use of paths over human relationships that lead in the shortest and steadfast way from the searching company members to the potential clients represented by their selected employees.