Social Networks
Social Networking Among All
The Internet which is considered as the world’s largest library is also used for absolute communication. National borders aren’t even speed bumps on the information superhighway. The rapid growth of the Internet through recent years is because of the intensification of social networking websites. These social networking websites are welcomed by people from teens to businessmen.
Social Networking among Teens
The social networking websites are given a warm welcome by teens because of the easiness to get new friends online. Repots indicate that teens are using the Internet extensively to communicate with each other through the social networking websites. Social networking is booming as teens could share their ideas, post comments, upload photos, and share the information about the latest happenings in their world and so on through them. Social networking websites like myspace, friendster, and facebook has become socially acceptable among majority of teens.
Social Networking among Advertisers
Social networking websites are also welcomed by advertisers around the globe. For example, the famous social networking website, myspace generates over billion as advertising revenue. There is nothing to wonder why these websites draw many advertisers. These social networking websites have the ability to draw the attention of a massive audience and hard to reach young consumers. And this is what advertisers are looking for. Moreover, social networks are able to target advertising based on the profile of the consumers.
Social Networking among Business
Nowadays, businessmen consider the social networking websites like myspace as opportunities to promote their business. As the web traffic in social networking websites are high, these businessmen have a higher chance of building web presence than the competitor who is not utilizing these methods. The next important reason why people use these social networking websites for business promotion is because of their ability to build effective backlinks. With a little patience and persistence one can utilize the social networking websites like myspace to build web traffic and sales.
Social Networking websites for all
The recent growth of social networking websites has grabbed the attention of web designers also. The professional web designers around the globe design social networking websites based on one’s need. These experienced social networking web designers are capable of creating stunning networking websites for different uses. It means that you can even own a social networking website like myspace with the help of these web designers.
However the social networking websites added to the growth of the Internet. More people spend more time in using the Internet than ever before. Communication has never been easier than at present. All these changes are seen because of the rapid growth of the social networking websites.
Social Networking: the Five Biggest Mistakes Nichepreneurs? Make
Over half of all Americans between the ages of 15-34 consider themselves active social network users. They regularly visit well-known social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook, or log onto specialty social networks, like Ravelry (devoted to the fiber arts) or GroupRecipes (for the foodie set). While industry research tells us that television watching is declining, especially among this age group, social network use is on the rise: average users spend seven to eight hours a week online.
This time spent on social networks clearly affects buying decisions. An estimated forty percent of all social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products they like, according to GreenBiz.com, with twenty-eight percent saying they’ve had a brand or product recommended to them by a friend.
The message is clear. Strategic use of social networking can help a company grow. It’s an effective use of target marketing, reaching out to one’s customers where they are.
However, in order to capitalize on social networking’s power, you have to do it right. Execution is everything. Make no mistake. Every time you log onto Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking platform, you’re representing your company in a very visible arena. The world is, quite literally, watching.
There are five common mistakes Nichepreneurs™ make when it comes to social networking. Here’s what they are — and more importantly, how to avoid them!
Mistake #1: Dismissing Social Networking as “Just a Fad”
Social networking may have emerged as a phenomenon only recently, but it is a manifestation of something as old as time — word of mouth! Customers value the opinions of colleagues, relatives, peers and friends above almost anything else. This has been true for generations. Social networking has merely expanded the definition of friend. Technology has made it easier to communicate with more people than ever before — a person could have hundreds of friends they’ve never once met in person. That’s a power and a privilege that no one is going to let just fade away.
Mistake #2: Mistaking Social Networking for Advertising
Social networking is a form of relationship marketing. It works best when you view it as an opportunity to build your brand, a prime platform to let your customer base know who you are and what you represent.
At the same time, you’ve got a fantastic chance to learn about your customers. If you actually stop and read what they post, you’ll learn a tremendous amount about who your customers are and what’s important to them. Where else do you get your customer’s pure, unvarnished opinions served up to you on a silver platter?
Don’t spoil this prime market research opportunity with unwelcome advertising. It’s fine to let people know you’re in business, but that can’t be the only thing you bring to the conversation.
Mistake #3: Failing to Connect Online Interaction with Real World Consequences
This mistake is often a generational problem. Nichepreneurs who grew up before the Internet was such an omnipresent force can have a hard time understanding how words on a computer screen can have real consequences on the every day course of business.
Compounding the problem is the fun, freewheeling atmosphere prevalent on many social networking platforms. It’s easy to forget the potential results when the commentary’s flying fast and furious. However, your words can come back and haunt you later. Remember — it all counts! The days where an organization can dismiss poor behavior with “It’s just the internet” are long gone!
Mistake #4: Using Sock Puppets
Sock puppets is the term applied to social networking accounts that are created with the intent of hiding the poster’s true identity. Individuals often create sock puppets in an effort to avoid the real life consequences discussed in mistake number three!
Sock puppets can be used to boost, support, or defend a company’s position. Conversely, they can be used to tear down, disparage, or make negative commentary about a competitor’s organization, products, or services.
Either way, it is a bad idea! Many denizens of social networks are incredibly tech-savvy, and it won’t take them long at all to discover who is really behind a string of negative or hostile commentary. Exposure can be a public relations nightmare.
Honesty is the best policy. Either be willing to own your commentary, by posting under your own identity, or don’t say them at all!
Mistake #5: Overestimating Social Networking’s Role
Social networking is powerful. It is influential. It is, in many cases, free to participate in. However, it is NOT the end all, be all solution to your marketing needs. While it is tempting to try to solve many of your marketing challenges with social networking, it is important to remember that social networking is a tool, not the only tool.
Use social networking efforts to augment your existing marketing efforts. There are small, start up companies that market themselves solely via social networking. However, this is a self-limiting strategy: even if you reach every single person on that network, you’re still missing out on a large number of potential customers who never log on.
Keep your perspective. Social networking might not eat into your budget, but it does take time. Realize that at best, social networking can significantly augment and enhance your marketing and promotional efforts — but it will never wholly replace it!
Social Networking for Online Promotion
By : Jonathan Haryanto
Social networking is increasingly popular, and have become wildly popular with a varied demographic. The birth of the social networking phenomenon has seen a shift in the way that many people browse the web, and especially in the way that people interact socially. Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter are among other plethora of social networking sites out there on the net. They seem to have become unavoidable, and spring up wherever you go.
Everything about social networking is based on the profile. People spend hours updating their profiles just to let the world know whatever they happen to be doing. It seems that everyone is trying to live as their own mini celebrity, and suddenly everyone want to know your intimate details on everything from your address and date of birth to your musical tastes. The desire to have the most friends, or the most hits, makes people scramble to get as many friends as they can, even if they’ve never met the person. They add a vast swathe of plugins while bloggers and YouTube video makers are all trying to score as many hits as possible.
Each month there are billions of page views of ‘Web 2.0′ websites as people return time and time again to Social Networking Sites (SNS) like Facebook and MySpace, Social Media sites like YouTube and Blogger and Social Information sites like Wikipedia and Delicious. Cagora has recently launched the first Global Community Network consisting of more than 20,000 local and special interest communities that appeal to all generations. Cagora goes beyond Social Networking, Social Media and Social Information to provide Community Networking, Community Media and Community Information where Individuals , Businesses and Community Groups are all part of the same network.
The popularity of social networks has spurred many website owners to develop their own social networking website or to integrate social networking into their existing website. There are many reasons why you would want to build a social networking website or add one to your existing website. You may want to integrate social networking into your existing website to drive more traffic and expand your user base. Or if you have a company or group, you may want to benefit from a virtual pace to hangout, communicate, and share ideas, content, and files.
Whatever your reason, there are many social networking software platforms that offer distinct features to create your own social networking website, either independently or in conjunction with an existing website. Some are incredibly easy to use but offer limited customization while others require extensive technical knowledge but can run seamlessly with your website. With a little technical knowledge it is relatively easy to fully customize your own social network and even integrate it into your existing website. You also have the option to pay designers to create the perfect social networking add-on for your website. Most will also offer just about every imaginable feature you could want for your social network, making sure you do not loose out on functionality.
Some remotely hosted solutions give you the ability to customize your network’s URL so visitors to your existing site get a sense of congruence as they navigate from your main site to your social networking platform. They give webmasters more intricate control over layout by allowing webmasters to manipulate HTML headers, footers, and CSS styling. Although they take more skill to use, once developed they give your social networking site a more seamless and professional look. Some also offer unlimited storage for pictures, videos, audio, and videos for free. With this, your members will not have to worry about running out of space when sharing content. Others, however, have limits on storage capacity depending on the plan you purchase.
GoingOn is one such social networking software platform that webmasters who are looking for an innovative solution to their social networking needs can use. GoingOn is relatively new, and still in BETA status, which means that not all the modules are currently performing to their potential, but it will be the most feature rich platform among its competitors. GoingOn is easy to set up and requires little technical knowledge. It is also built using open source software which means that it will have even more potential for features and add-ons over time. Like its competitors GoingOn offers a selection of membership options. The paid packages allow webmasters to control advertising while the free packages are controlled by GoingOn.
However, if you need a perfectly functioning platform now, Ning or Kickapps are better options. They are also easier to set up than GoingOn and offer different pricing plans, and have more advanced functionality that can be used as an add on to an existing website.
Advertising on a social networking website created with a remotely hosted platform can very easy to set up and use, while some require more technological skill to set up but the results are worth it if you have the skill or can afford a web designer that does. Some platforms offer innovative advertising programs, while others don’t offer much advertising flexibility. Creators can get total control over advertising including collecting revenue, wile some platforms offer no control at all. Some offer innovative widgets that make promoting your social network easy even on a viral level, others are limited in functionality. So be sure to compare features.
With this free willed disclosure of all kinds of personal information and the ability to so easily carve out your own webspace has really opened up the Internet to the masses and released it from the grip of the computer geek, thus become a hacker’s paradise. Your name, address, date of birth and in fact just about everything about you could become available to hackers to use as they please. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace could become platforms for more serious Trojan attacks. So far social network sites have been hit by relatively harmless worms, adware and phishing attacks. However, with the amount of personal data so readily available it is certainly feasible that online banking data and other sensitive information could become compromised.
Understand Social Networks Better for Effective Business Promotion
Social networking is a big buzz in today’s world of Internet marketers. Social networking can be said to be virtually started (introduced) by My Space and facebook. Today, these two giant social networking websites are the ones most visited by people. Many of the Internet marketers have found charming opportunities to market their products through these social networking websites. Though all the members of these social networking websites are not targeted, many of the Internet marketers consider this as an effective means to get more free exposure to their business.
There are many social networking websites that are emerging each and every month. TalkMoola.com, Zenzuu, Friendswin, Yuwie, and Wowzza are some of them launched recently. With all these social networking websites, Internet marketers have a wide source to promote their business. However, many of the Internet marketers complain that social networking is a complete waste of time and they didn’t find gain out of it. It is because not all network marketers have caught on to the power of social networking yet or how to properly use social networking to explode their businesses. But the ability to further expose themselves and their business to other like-minded people is extremely valuable and profitable for most.
The most important fact about social networking websites is that all social networks that are created are not equal. Social networks differ in many ways. It is up to you to choose the best social network that suits your business promotional needs.
Look for Social networks with similar interests
Before signing up with any social networking website for business promotion, you should make sure that the network has people who would be interested in what you have to offer, or are like-minded to you. For example, if you are trying to promote your business of electronic goods online, then you should look for social networking websites with related communities and forums. If you try to promote your electronic product in a social network that includes members looking for a date or love, it would be a complete waste of time.
Active involvement is essential
Maximum exposure to your business through social networks can be achieved only by increasing the contacts. This can be achieved by accepting all the friend invitations within the social network and searching for like-minded people in the community and adding them as friends. The larger your list of friends the more active you will appear to be and more people will take heart to what you have to say. Active involvement in social networks is essential for effective business promotion. Regular forum participations, blog postings and messaging to friends are some kinda active involvement. While promoting a business in a social network, bulk messaging is a facility to look for. Some social networks limit the amount of people you are able to send a message to at once. On the other hand, some social networks will let you add unlimited friends and you can send them a bulletin or message to all your friends at once anytime with ease. This is what you should be looking for.
Create your own social networking website
It’s always good to create your own social networking website for promoting your business. Creating your own social networking website will be beneficial than promoting your business in other social networks. This will help you to strengthen the customer-supplier relationship and also helps you to identify your customer needs. Designing a social networking website is just a breeze today. Professional social network web designers can help you design unique social networking websites to grab more audience.
What does a friend of a friend of a friend know about you? Video generated by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart. For more information, please contact Colin McKay, Director of Communications, at cmckay@privcom.gc.ca
How to Create Niche Business Social Networking Sites
Social networking is the buzz word in today’s Internet space. With lots and lots of people getting into Social networking everyday, many wise online marketers are creating their own Social networking websites. However, with many online marketers getting into Social networking, it is necessary to highlight your social networking website to avoid getting lost in the crowd. For this you have to offer your users with something unique and useful.
Provide the users with interactive Social networking Softwares
Do you know the reason behind the huge popularity of the social networking websites like myspace and face book? One of the reason is that they provide some interactive, useful social networking softwares. Unlike other softwares that needs to be downloaded to the users computer (which most of them do not prefer), these social networking softwares doesn’t need to be downloaded. These web based social networking softwares are gaining popularity these days because of the ease of use. As there are no compatibility problems associated with these social networking softwares, anyone can use it.
Creating Social networking software for your own Business Social Networking Website
When it comes to creating a social networking software, you will come up with a question “Should I Build my Own Social Networks Software?” Just keep reading on to find the answer. You can create the social networking software for your website by yourself if:
1. You are a skilled programmer.
2. Have lots of time to spare to spend on researching the trends in the Social media.
3. Are able to identify the user needs and satisfy them
The users of any websites will become unpleasant if the site takes long time to load. Moreover, the error messages are the ones that make the users of your social networking website more irate. Once the error message shows up to any user of your social networking website, they will never return back to your website. If you are a no vice programmer, trying to add or build social networking softwares, then your social networking softwares will be more error prone. All of these factors will be rather overwhelming to you if you are not a skilled programmer. Yet creating your own social networking software for your social networking website is not impossible.
Getting professional help for building Social Networking softwares
There is nothing to worry even if you don’t have the above said requirements for building social networking software. The professional social networking web designers are capable of building unique social networking softwares too. There are so many ready made social networking softwares also. All you have to do is to pick the right one that best fulfils your customer requirements. Getting social networking softwares built through programmers has many advantages. It saves much of your time and money along with enabling you to offer the users of your social networking website with some great interactive social networking software.
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Top 3 Social Networking Web Design Tips
We have seen many social networking sites to gain quick popularity while a very few didn’t make it up to the mark. With almost one year now, through which the social networking websites gained ultimate popularity, now is the ideal time to look into the successful social networks for some unique social networking web design tips. Here are 5 main points that has to be noted for a successful social networking website design.
3. Learning from the mistakes that other social networks have made
As already said, while many social networking sites like myspace, Facebook etc have gained popularity, a few other social networking sites have disappeared in the Internet crowd. As the old saying goes, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” Hence it’s necessary to learn from the mistakes that the other social networks made. One of the biggest mistakes that some of the social networking web designers make is overloading their web page with heavy graphics. They have a misconception that attracting visitors to social networking website depends all on eye candy. Loading a web page with heavy graphics will end up in longer load times. The visitors of your website won’t be patient enough to wait for the page to load. This will make the visitors quit from the page and they never return to your social networking website. Hence make the social networking web design simple and user friendly.
2. Increase the interactivity of your Social Networking website
With the advancements in online marketing and SEO techniques, driving visitors to your social networking website is easy today. It’s upto the effective social networking web design to make the visitors spend some time in your site and also become returning users. For this, some interactive stuff must be added to the social networking website. Apart from the common social networking features like making friends and exchanging messages some other interactive fun stuff can be added to the social networking website. The social networking softwares come in handy here. There are many social networking software that can be used in your social networking website, which will be fun for the users. They will be pleased to return to your site to use the social networking applications and moreover, they will refer your site to their fiends too.
1. Be unique
Social networking websites are emerging like mushrooms today. At this point, just think in a social networking users point to view. With thousands of social networking websites out there, why should they choose your social networking website? The answer is simple “Make it unique”. Provide the visitors of your social networking website something that the similar networks haven’t offered. Be sure that the unique offerings at your social networks are useful too.
Bottom line
People consider privacy much more important than anything today. Hence it is essential for your social networking web design to ensure the privacy of the visitors of your site.
Social networking is rapidly becoming the most preferred Web 2.0 marketing tool. If you are engaged in selling your products or services online, there is plenty you can do with social networking sites to promote your business. However, the possibilities are accompanied by inevitable pitfalls. Here are a few things to keep in mind in order to raise your effectiveness when using social networking sites. Rule #1 – One site or many: While many organizations prefer to maintain their presence on several social networking sites, it can take up considerable amount of time as well as staff resources. Determine the amount of time you can spend updating your profile on each site. It’s far more effective to spend extra time and energy maintaining a high profile on one, well-chosen site rather than spend precious hours juggling different operating platforms on too many different sites. If you do choose to maintain a presence on multiple sites, make sure you assign a full-time staff to regulate your various profiles. This could include posting comments on other member’s pages, inviting other people to become friends, or accepting other friend’s requests. In the absence of regular care, your web page is sure to languish.
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