Social Media Tools
THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS INCLUDE:
- Accessibility – generally available to anyone
- Cost – relatively inexpensive to publish
- Reach – small or large audiences locally, regionally, nationally and globally
- Frequency – information delivery is almost instantaneous
- Flexibility – content can be edited at any time
- Search Engine Rankings – social media sites are frequently indexed and can be keyword optimized for high rankings
SOME OF THE MORE POPULAR SOCIAL PLATFORMS ARE:
MySpace
MySpace.com is the most popular social networking site in the United States. Free to join, users create profiles that can be customized with photos, music, and videos. Upon joining MySpace, the site’s co-founder Tom Anderson is automatically added to your Friend Space. This means that all 70 million plus members are now in your extended network. You can search for other members based on certain criteria, get involved in forums, and join groups based on hobbies and interests.
Facebook.com is free for individuals and businesses to join. The individual user sets up a “Profile” where they can share information about themselves, become “Friends” with other users, and there is even a chat feature for real-time communication. Each time a friend posts their status, new pictures, or an item of interest, it is visible to you through the news feed function.
Businesses can set up a Facebook “Page” which is publicly available and accessible for indexing by search engines. Businesses invite individuals to become a “Fan” of their page, and benefit from viral growth through the fan’s recommendation of the business to other friends. Through the news feed, businesses can push information out to their fan base. Any individual that is a friend of that fan, can also see the information the business distributes.
For more information about leveraging the power of Facebook, please click here.
What are you doing? Twitter is a worldwide micro-blogging service that enables its’ users to communicate in real time. Through text-based posts of up to 140 characters known as “tweets”, users are able to send and read each others’ updates. When a person tweets, it is displayed on their profile page and visible to their “followers”, who are people that have subscribed to receive their updates. While the company does not release its’ active user numbers, independent reporting agencies place it at around 55 million monthly visits. Nielsen.com ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing social networking site in February 2009 with a growth of 1,382%.
Linkedin.com is a professional networking site with a membership of over 40 million and growing. Members create a profile whereby they can feature their current and past positions, educational background and links to their websites. Registered users build a contact network by inviting others, users and non-users, to become a “Connection.” Once this connection is established, registered users can maintain a list, an online rolodex if you will, of their contact’s details. Making connections in this fashion is designed to build trust among the users. Members can join or create Linkedin Groups, which are communities typically formed based on interests, affiliations and goals.
Squidoo
Squidoo.com is a community website that allows its’ users to create what are known as “lenses” or pages that can be made up of any topic of interest to its’ creator. Various modules containing photos, maps, videos and links back to your site or blog can be contained within each lens. Ranked in the top 50 most viewed sites in the United States and top 200 in the world, Squidoo is constantly indexed by the major search engines.
HubPages
Similar to Squidoo, users can create a hub to write about anything they have an interest in, knowledge about, or wish to promote. Each section, or “capsule” can be filled with text, images or direct links to your site, blog or squeeze page. Visitors to HubPages.com can search for hubs on particular topics, see what’s new or what’s hot, and browse through popular categories.
Social Bookmarking
Using social bookmarking is a great way to increase traffic to your blog or website. Sites such as Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon, allow users to save links to webpages and articles they want to remember or share. These links can be ones you create back to your own articles, blog or webpages, or they can be ones that you want to recommend to other users with whom you have made a connection.
Merchant Circle
MerchantCircle.com is an online community where business owners can post profiles, advertise, network with other business owners, and endorse one another for free. The site optimizes each entry in the directory, so that it gets good placement when it is picked up by major search engines such as Google. MerchantCircle.com also incorporates the business phone number into the URL, thus driving additional traffic to the merchant’s page based on phone number searches.
Local
Local.com is the largest local search network in the United States, and consistently ranks in the Top 100 in U.S. website traffic according to comScore. The company uses a proprietary keyword and local web indexing system, to provide in excess of 19 million consumers each month with targeted, local search results. These results include special offers from local businesses, reviews from other users, local businesses’ website links, maps, driving directions and more.
