SOCIAL NETWORKING is seen in some quarters as a way for high school students to keep in touch when they graduate and leave for college. But the technology has applications for businesses as a communications tool as well. Many of the finalists for Best Practices in Communications & Marketing have found

Web-based tools and other strategies for communications that have dramatically improved performance.

Alliance spurs referrals
Blanski Peter Kronlage & Zoch (BPK&Z) has grown from being a tax and audit-based accounting practice into a business advisory firm that can provide a wide range of expertise to its clients.

When the company decided it needed to seek a higher rate of return on this extra level of service, it developed the Capstone Alliance, a collaboration between the company and smaller CPA firms.

BPK&Z, Golden Valley, invited several smaller firms that sometimes risk losing business because of certain missing areas of expertise, says John Edson, managing marketing partner.

“We invited 100 firms, about 25 showed up,” he says of the first meeting.

“Thirteen joined and since then, two additional firms have signed up.”

The network meets quarterly. Everyone pays a $250 fee that is returned to them if they refer business to BPK&Z.

Those companies often don’t have specialists in some areas that the larger BPK&Z does. They attend continuing education sessions for reduced prices. One payoff for BPK&Z has been increased business from referrals – more than $236,000 in new business has come its way since establishing the alliance, Edson says. BPK&Z will also do the same for partner firms.

“We’re giving them an opportunity to hear from people they might not otherwise hear from,” Edson says. “We have not lost any members except through a merger with our firm so it has been very successful.”

Political moves
Before starting her confectionary business Mary Leonard wasn’t sitting around making bonbons. She was a senior marketing manager at MCI, hooking up government agencies with telecom services.

She did, however, combine aspects of both roles this fall when her company, Chocolat Céleste, created bonbons bearing Republican logos and hired a political consultant to place those products in media kits at the Republican National Convention.