Archive for the 'Social networking' Category

Okay, before I kick off about Social Media and how it can be invaluable to your business, let me explain exactly what I mean by the term ‘Social Media’.

“Social media is where technology allows individuals to interact with other people so they become part of a community. They might share opinions, insights and experiences as text, images, audio or video via blogs, message boards, wikis, RSS, podcasts and social networking sites.”

Social Media is all about spreading your message, product or services by ‘digital word of mouth’.

It’s the most powerful form of ‘advertising’ you can use because it’s not about pushing your message at a blind audience. It’s about the online community willingly picking up your message and distributing it freely.

There are a number key channels you should be using to ensure you use Social Media to the very best of yours, and its, ability.

1) Create a MySpace Page
MySpace is just not for bands and freaks. MySpace is for everyone with something that might be of interest to others. You can quickly set yourself up with a MySpace page for free and immediately start advertising. The main limitation with MySpace is you are tied into the MySpace template so look to achieve standout with the content you use and look to drive people away from your MySpace page to your own web site where you can dip them into your full brand experience. Spend an hour or two every week updating content, expanding your links and inviting new people to comment on what you have to say.

2) Add Bookmarking Links
The ultimate for every web site owner is to have their site bookmarked by the visitor. Make it effortless for people to do this by including links through to the likes of Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us and Reddit. These bookmarking sites allow people with an interest in your sphere of business to quickly find you. A big part of the social web is the ability for people to build lísts of their favourite sites or articles. People with similar interests can then share their lísts and benefit from other people’s recommendations.

3) Add an RSS Feed
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and allows people who bookmark your feed to be notified every time new articles are added to your website so they can keep up to date with your content. You’ll need to create the appropriate RSS code for your website (talk to your techie or us ) and then put a link on all of your pages to the RSS code page. The link should be a small orange rectangle with the letters RSS in white.

4) Write a Blog
Hey, you’re currently reading enotions’ blog! Blogs consist of short articles, listed one after the other, usually on the home page but sometimes on a separate blog page. They usually cover current events or comment on industry related news. Do as enotions don’t! Update the blog every day even if it is with just one- or two-sentence comments. A busy blog encourages audience growth, participation and better search engine optimisation. You can integrate blogs into your main site or have a blog as a micro site. Use Wordpress or Blogger - they’re great and free.

5) Open a Twitter account
Twitter is the latest social networking craze (at time of writing!) Twitter lets you inform the world of your every move, activity and thought within 140 characters per entry. You can share your ‘Tweets’ as they are called with closed or open groups. It’s a great way, if you’re developing a product or service, of keeping your customers up to date with how developments are coming on.

There are other facilities that creep into Social Networking and Social Media; FaceBook being the big one (but that probably deserves it’s own blog article), Send to a Friend and Forums all being relevant, but for now I have tried to focus on the hottest platforms of the moment.

Whilst they all require dedication and involvement on your part, you’ll be rewarded with a far more involving site and involved audience and that can only be a good thing.