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Posts Tagged ‘Networking’

A Brief Look into the World of Social Networking

Undeniably, social networking has been one of the biggest internet fads to date, having millions of people subscribe and visit the countless social networking sites everyday. With the popularity of social networking these days, someone who isn’t taking part of all these can’t help but wonder if there are any real benefits to it all – whether if you’re personally using it or your company is using it. A lot of social networking members will claim that there are heaps of benefits to these kinds of sites so let’s take a look at some of them:

1. Building a “social network”

When you’re a member of social bookmarking sites, you get to meet friends the world over. You aren’t restricted to your own local community when it comes to meeting new people, unless of course, the social network that you belong to is restricted to your locality alone. These people can become mere acquaintances, friends or even business partners. Relationships in social networks tend to be flexible. Your social network can also be “specialized” depending on what you need a social network for.

2. Social networking sites have different categories

As stated in the first point, you can choose which social network you want to subscribe to depending on how you want to use it. There are different kinds of social networking sites:

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Conventional and generic networks

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News networks

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Bookmarking networks

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Business networks

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Media-sharing networks

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Video-sharing

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Image-sharing

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Music-sharing

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Startpage networks

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Fitness and sport networks

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Widgets and plug-ins networks

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Mobile networks

With the knowledge of the different kinds of social networking sites, you can easily choose those that are to your interests and build a network that will suit your needs as an individual, career-person or a business entity. For a more in-depth look at the many forms of the social networking world, you can check this list:

Ask anyone who is using the Internet regularly about websites like myspace, yahoo 360 or classmates. Everyone will have one common answer that these are social networking websites. These social networking websites have increased in popularity through the recent years. People who have been using these kinds of social networking websites will be well aware of their popularity and also the reason behind it. Let’s see something that helps these social networking websites to draw the attention millions of people towards them.

EASE OF USE

With wide variety of social networking websites in use, there are different reasons for their popularity in the Internet. The fist feature noted in most of the social networking websites like Myspace is their ease of use. Even one with very little knowledge about the Internet could use these social networking websites. These social networking websites are made so simple so that users can easily navigate through the pages.

EASE IN GETTING NEW FRIENDS

Second aspect is the easiness in making new friends with the help of these social networking websites. There are many people who really love to make new friends online. The reason being, social networking websites allow the users to get the information about the interests of the other Internet user before making any contact or conversation with him. Without these social networking websites we would have to connect to others through chat rooms, and learn about their interests by actual conversation before considering them as friends.

FREE TO USE

Another noticeable feature of social networking websites is that most of them are free to use. All we have to do is to make a free registration in these social networking sites. Once the registration is complete, we are all set to go. This free registration for a unique service is one of the main aspects that make these social networking websites more popular. However, some of the social networking websites like Classmates offer only a free trial membership. You can try the website and decide whether it is worth paying for. Since most Internet users don’t really want to pay for something that they can get for free, these paid social networking websites have only limited number of members.

MORE BENEFITS

Meeting new people and making new friends online is the basic use of these social networking websites. Apart from making friends, most of these websites have started including some additional features. The additional features they offer are, free webpage, free music, free videos, free blog etc for their members. There are people who use these social networking websites for business promotion.

Mentioned above are very few of a bunch of benefits of these social networking websites. These are the reasons why these networking websites are at the top.

The popularity of social networking websites has hit the highest point through the recent years. Myspace, Facebook, Classmates, Yahoo 360 are some of the bunch of social networking websites that were wildly successful. The global Internet users are embracing there social networking websites with more enthusiasm.

MORE OUT OF INTERNET

Internet is considered as the largest source of latest information. Nowadays, the Internet is becoming something more than just a place to find information. It is now a place to interact, communicate, learn, opine about various topics. The social networking websites create platforms for people to get new friends online and to maintain old relationships. Communication has been never easier before.

THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

Since the development of the first social networking website, Classmates, in 1995, the popularity of this kinda websites has steadily increased. Today there will be only a countable number of teens who are not members of any social networking websites. What I would say is they are really missing something in their life! One of the main reasons for the quick growth of the social networking websites is because they are easy to use. People with little or even no knowledge about the internet can use these social networking websites with ease. Moreover, getting new friends is made easier through these websites.

SOME FIGURES

The other reason for these websites to remain popular is the high number of unique registered users in them. The leader of social networking websites, Myspace had over 50 million registered users the previous year. There is nothing to wonder why these social networking websites have such huge number of registered users. Free registration provided by these social networking websites is the main aspect that attracts millions of people towards these networks. Classmates, the first social networking website has over 14 million registered users. Classmates have fewer users because they provide only a free trial registration. People do not wish to pay for something that they can get for free somewhere else. Social networking websites are growing at a rate of 47% a year.

FUTURE TRENDS

Social networking will go mobile and is poise for a spectacular growth in next five years. Mobile social networking is expected to grow in a higher rate and attract much more users. Whatever, Social networking has made people use Internet more than ever before. This makes the social networking websites act as a catalyst for the growth of Intenet.

Information technology is a much mandate for almost any sphere of life. So is the social networking. The activities like make new friends and maintaining the relationships are common in these social networking websites. These social networking websites are use for effective business promotions also. These traditional websites not only allows one to develop business relationships with other organizations, but also helps one to build close relationships with others with the same interest. This varied use of these social networking websites makes people stay longer in these websites.

SOCIAL NETWORKING AS a BUSINESS

A social networking website can generate revenue for you like any other Internet business. Everyone could see that the social networking websites like myspace, yahoo 360, orkut, classmates etc are in big business, generating huge revenue. The most interesting thing about these social networking websites is that, they have the ability to build up customer loyalty and are capable to retain its members. It has been noted that the members of a particular social networking website, keeps inviting his/her friends to join the same website inorder to expand the friendship circle. This in turn creates more members for he networking website with ease. This act also builds up the brand of the website and as it does, other people will get interested in advertising in the particular social networking website. Hence the revenue starts to flow in.

SOCIAL NETWORK WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

From the above paragraph, everyone will be clear that a social networking website can generate huge revenue than any other Internet business. So if you want to create your own social networking website, it’s simple. The first and foremost strategy to be considered while designing a social networking website is to create a platform that attracts people to use the website to build up relationships with others. The website should provide user friendly tools to customize their profile layout, add friends, inviting friends and so on. The important factor to be taken into account while designing a social networking website is to make sure that the design is user friendly. I.E the website should be easy to navigate through pages so that even users with little knowledge of the Internet can use your website.

If you are not sure about the design of a social networking websites, there are experts in social network web-design waiting to help you. They are capable of creating eye catchy, user friendly designs. All you have to do is to approach them and describe they type of network you wish to create.

PLAN BEFOR YOU LAUNCH

Launching a social networking website requires a lot of planning. Based on the plan you should choose the best design. You must look into all aspects of how you can lure users to your website and make them spend more time in the network. That is the start of the unique revenue generator.

Social networking seems to be the new catch phrase for many internet marketers. Yet it leaves many busy business owners wondering if it is worth all the hype. Social networking takes time, time that many business owners just don’t feel they have.

So is Social Networking worth the hype?

Yes…and no. It largely depends on how it is approached. Social networking is the process of joining professional and social networking sites for the specific purpose of creating business and ultimately profits.

Social networking can result in:

- Powerful business partnerships – Customer relationships – Added value and benefit to the community – Improved credibility and expert status – Brand awareness – Increased reach and exposure – Gained knowledge and education

Social networking is a very powerful tool and it can result in tremendous profits however if approached with the sole purpose of generating profits, efforts may fall short. Here are a few guidelines to get the most from social networking:

1. Where to join? One mistake many business owners make is to join too many groups. To get real value from a forum, membership site, or chat room you have to have the time to contribute on a regular basis. Belonging to 10 social networking sites is great if you have the time to contribute to them every week, however it is recommended to start small. Dip your toe in so to speak. Join one or two groups that provide the most value at the time. As your business grows and your schedule allows, add more groups to your list.

2. Join groups that are specific to your industry. There is a forum or membership on just about every topic under the sun. Fitness, pet training, recycling, hiring, cleaning, software, coffee drinking, etc the list goes on and on. Additionally, there are professional forums and social networking sites that can provide tremendous value. LinkedIn is one of the growing professional networking sites, and WarriorForum is a very popular forum among internet marketers.

3. To find groups to research simply type your industry and the word forum or membership site into your search engine of choice and see what comes up. For example, “surfing” + “Forum” generated 579,000 results on Google. That’s a lot of surfing forums!

4. How often to contribute? In order to make your presence noted and to have any kind of effect on a networking site, business professionals have to make regular contributions to the site. Otherwise membership is nothing more than a business card stuffed in a pocket. No one will know you’re there.

So what is a regular contribution? Weekly visits to a membership site or networking site are a minimum requirement. Many networkers schedule social networking into their calendar. For example, on Wednesday nights they schedule two hours to visit their forums and social networking sites they belong to.

How to promote subtly:

1. When evaluating membership sites, forums and networking sites it is important to make sure a personalized signature is part of joining. Your signature is the one resource that fellow members have to find you online. Most sites do not allow blatant self promotion so that means a signature can be key. Be sure to include a link to your website and a quick USP that states what you do.

2. Two tools to help. Because forums and membership sites can contain thousands of posts, it takes a lot of time to read through posts and decide which are appropriate to respond to and which are not. http://www.botsurfer.com/ is a tool that can scan forums for you based on preset criteria and cut your social networking time in half.

3. Adding a social networking feature to your business website. A great way to get involved in social networking is to create your own forum right on your company’s website. Snitz forums, http://forum.snitz.com/, offers free ASP based forum software. It’s a solid product that’s been around for more than 10 years.