Social media and content marketing are everywhere these days. There’s hardly any company doing any kind of business that doesn’t have some kind of presence on some kind of social media site.

Here are just a few (mind-blowing) facts*:

• — $118.4 billion will be spent this year on content, video and social media marketing.
• — 91% of B2B companies use some form of content marketing.
• — LinkedIn generates 1,370 company pages daily.
• — Twitter produces 400 million Tweets daily.
• — Over 350 million photos are posted on Facebook daily.
• — 1.8 million blog posts are written daily.

 

Have you considered how social media can be used to help with contract management? If you think of social media as another means of staying in touch with key business partners, then it makes sense.

Following, “liking” or just visiting a company’s social media site (think mainly Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) can inform you a lot about a company’s activities. Some of that information can affect contracted services or sales contracts, such as:

• — Information about new products or services being offered
• — Important changes to company personnel (new titles, positions, etc.)
• — Tell-tale information about a vendor or client’s growth (or lack thereof)
• — Important changes in business strategy or partnerships
• — Key info in times of an unexpected service outage from a vendor

 

All of the above may come in various forms across different social media platforms. For instance, a company may post an update to its Facebook timeline about opening a new office or location (a hint they are growing). On LinkedIn, you may notice a new change in someone’s title – which may signal a change in contact names for a contract. Or maybe a tweet on Twitter will link to a new press release on a new or improved product or a change in a service offering – better than the one your company currently uses from a vendor.

If you are in charge of a contact management solution, then you or your group can easily become the conduit for passing along such helpful information to key stakeholders within your company.

Does your company have someone in charge of maintaining and monitoring social accounts? In that case, it may help to provide them with a list of all the companies in your current contract management database. Ask them to follow or monitor these companies as well for relevant, contract-sensitive information.

The larger point, however, is that a lot of information can be gleaned from vendors or clients via social media. For contract management purposes, there’s really no downside to keeping in touch with vendors or clients via social media.

[* Source note: The data on social media activity above came from infographics from multiple sources found on this page.]