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Craig Allen will launch new social networking initiatives for executives who don't have the know-how or time

As more companies hop onto blogs and social networking sites to market their brands, Craig Allen is looking to carve out a niche spot to profit off the trend.

With his new company - launched officially with a site posted to the web Friday - the Saint-John based marketer will help those not tech savvy enough to make their own move online.

He won't be a consultant making cash by delivering lectures extolling the virtues of social marketing sites like Facebook and Twitter, but will work instead to launch new initiatives for executives who don't have the know-how or time to go online.

Allen - who has worked for nearly eight years in marketing, most recently for Saint John's Evolving Solutions - is launching a one-man firm where he will act as a website designer and communications employee.

He envisions spending four to five hours per week for each company on his roster posting messages to Twitter and Facebook, crafting e-newsletters and updating websites and blogs.

While many firms have online profiles, Allen said some executives don't know how to capitalize on that presence.

"People aren't using the tools to their full capacity," Allen said, citing examples from his time working for companies at Evolving Solutions.

"For example, they weren't updating the website, they didn't have a Facebook group, they hadn't heard about Twitter.

"They weren't sending out e-newsletters even though they had the tools to do it," he said.

Facebook allows anyone to create a personal profile or group online and add photos, links and updates for others online to see.

Twitter, in the same vein as Facebook, allows a user to create an individual profile and post status updates - called tweets - publicly, which are viewed by those who follow that user.

For many executives, it's a lack of understanding of the Internet that prevents them from making a move to grow their company's web marketing, Allen said.

"A lot of people are intimidated by the technology even though for a lot of us it isn't that hard to use; you just need a little strategy," he said.

He said some businesspeople find maintaining an online presence for their firm just too time consuming.

A survey released this month by Nielsen Online, a division of New York's The Nielsen Company, said one in every 11 minutes online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites.

According to the Nielsen report, Facebook - the world's most popular social network - is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets (Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States) in which Nielsen tracks social networks. And social networks and blogs are growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors online sectors, which include search engines, portals, PC software and email.

Allen, who said he is the only one in the province acting as a one-stop-shop for web marketing, has a handful of clients already, including Opera Bistro, a restaurant in Saint John. The marketer has been creating e-newsletters for the company and hopes to soon launch a Twitter page.

"There's a potential need, and I'm already doing it for a few people, where they actually need someone to do that for them."