What is Social Networking?

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What is Social Networking?

At one time in the near past, the only reliable way to find information online was to use a search engine.

However, with the advent of what has come to be known as Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can now easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend.

Types of Social Networking Sites

The most recent instance social networking is "social bookmarking". Websites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Sphinn allow users to share their personal favorites (bookmarks) with others on the internet. Social network users tag each bookmarked website with the keywords they feel are most applicable.

Instead of using a search engine to find information, people can now search tags (a tag is a keyword that a human associated with a website, vs. a keyword that a search engine attributes to a website), that will display all websites bookmarked with that specific tag. This amounts to a human referral or vote for a website and its relevance to the subject being searched. This differs from webmasters referral as is common with the major search engines with their incoming link relevance algorithms.

Other ways of social networking include blogging social networks, most notably being Technorati.com. Technorati indexes blogs based on the amount of incoming links those blogs have (like the search engines), as well as the tags associated with their posts.

The most popular social networks are FaceBook and of course MySpace. Though these social giants enjoy over 20 million unique visitors each every month, few businesses or website owners have thought to penetrate this incredible resource until now.

Lastly, two powerful new social media networks have emerged that are revolutionizing audio and video on the internet. These are YouTube and BlogTalkRadio. These mega networks allow amateur filmmakers and broadcasters to share their visions and thoughts with the world and spread their word about what matters to them.

Few businesses realize it yet, but these media audio and video networks are potential goldmines stock full of future Speilbergs, Bloombergs, and Oprahs. These networks are becoming potential broadcasters of your marketing message.

How Will Social Networking Help My Site Traffic Grow?

Two out of three people online in June 2007 had visited a social networking site. Today, 1 out of every 20 website visits is to a social networking website. Internet experts say that social networks are starting to eclipse traffic from the major search engines Yahoo! and Google and are becoming a marketing haven.

So if your company is not present on one or more of the major social networks, you're missing out on the easiest, fastest way to access 67% of internet users.

How Do I Get Involved in Social Networking?

Working with social sites is similar to working with any off-line or on-line media. Give them a good enough story, secret, tip, or resource that visitors can sink their teeth into and you’ll have an army of talkers spreading the word about you, your brand and your business.

This translates into referrals to you, which convert into sales on an average of 667% better than cold, search engine leads. Even if you reach less people through social networking, your sales and lead conversions will be far higher.

We can help you target various social networks through a variety of methods:

Article or Blog Promotion

We manage several blogs for our clients (as well as article pages) that contain posts written purely to capture the interest and imagination of our client’s target market.

For instance, if you sell pet beds, pet gifts, and other pet items, we will develop a series of blog posts or articles that discuss a “hot off the press” or controversial topic that pet lovers either find highly valuable as a solid informational resource, or highly intriguing or emotionally stimulating topic.

We will then promote it to various social bookmarking and blogging networks, as well as popular bloggers in the targeted market area. The network will then circulate the story and generate traffic back to your website.

Social Promotion

Particularly effective for clients who target teens, college students, young adults, musicians, or other highly active social groups (yes, there are even networks for older adults), we implement social promotion campaigns on networks like MySpace, FaceBook, Catch27, and CraigsList to spread the word about your business. Even if your business does not target the “myspace crowd,” we can almost always devise a creative social-type campaign to get the net buzzing in a viral manner.

How Does Social Networking Work With SEO?

As more and more internet users begin to use tags to find information, Search Marketing professionals cannot ignore the growing dominance of these social networks and the viral nature they impart in the marketplace.

We view the partnership between social networks and search engines as a balanced and excellent marriage that will aid you in getting your website known and branded. Social networking gets you in front of people who limit their use of search engines in lieu of finding their information through referrals and/or bookmarks/tags.

The added, and perhaps more exciting bonus from social networking, is that while you grow in popularity with social networks like Digg and MySpace, your search rankings will continue to increase as a result! Search engines love the social sites!

Your popularity signals Google and the other search engines that you are an authority in your market according to your human audience.

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