Social Networks Need The Right Approach

When you sign up with social network, you are only half done as far as getting traffic is concerned. For one, take the word “social”. By being social you will need to build on acquaintances and making friends. Why? For one, even if you have the option to invite friends, you can be assured that they may not necessarily know what the whole membership phase is all about, particularly when the time comes that they would need votes to boost the ranking of their sites so that they can gain attention.

Hence, it is all about growing your friends’ list but mostly composed of people who are already there even before you signed up and doing the same thing as far as sharing and bookmarking certain posts that you want to be pushed.

But make sure you don’t overdo it. Just like you, getting too many messages requesting for a bump. One thing you don’t want to happen is lose their trust and perhaps being called a spammer who mainly has nothing in mind but to build on his sites.

For sure, this is the main purpose of most people, particularly the ones who are trying to build on their websites. Traffic is important and building that traffic through social media is something that many have found as useful and handy. You can see it in most social communities. This is where most Internet enthusiasts hangout. This is where the untapped market is hanging out and so expect potential supporters to originate from there.

Putting your Mobile Phone to Socialize

Meeting people or carrying out transactions today are no longer constrained to having a personal computer or laptop. The important thing is to get online, access the web and check out social groups that seem to be growing in numbers as the years pass.

Thanks to gadgets that have been brought to us by technology, no longer has it been constrained to computers as a requirement. With the advanced features that most mobile phones have been equipped with today, all that is left is to access the web via GPRS or Wifi connections, normally available anywhere you go these days.

Why would I want to get online with my phone? Well for one, there are a lot of things to discover and information is perhaps the key element in determining why people need the social networking community. Some do it for fun while others do it for profession. Any which way you look at it, it all boils down to what you need and how you can get it.

There are a lot of ways to get information and the most common things we hear of are RSS feeds or subscriptions. The only matter left to figure out is where to find it. But with the right sources to look in, you may be surprised that they are abundant in numbers and with all the choices available, you may find it hard to decide on which sites to follow and which are frequently updated.

Placing Chat Scripts on your Site

For most website owners, ensuring that there is interaction and activity in them is something that many are targeting. This not only helps bring in the people via the web but also helps identify if the site is performing up to par as far as familiarity of the site is concerned.

There are sites that install chat scripts to which people converse on and off topic. While that is a given and something that people view as a great feature, as a developer you also have to think of bandwidth and the impact it has especially when the traffic into your site starts soaring. When that happens, you better check your bandwidth capacity since ignoring it would make your site one hell of a snail’s pace refresh rate.

Some people will not know this until the time comes that a lot of people visit their site. For sure, in the preliminary stages, most people would let it go. But after a few months, that is when you will start seeing warnings like “Bandwidth Exceeded”. Once that happens, you are bound to panic and contact your provider to help resolve the issue.

This cannot be avoided nor can be forecasted on when it would happen. The best way is to closely monitor your site. It may not be a setup anyone would love but you can be assured that proper monitoring can avoid such inconveniences if you want a great website put up.

Twhirl

Twhirl has made my return to Twitter much more enjoyable. I enjoy Twitter to stay connected to friends, geniune ones, and co workers that interact with on a daily basis. Not just random folks I’m looking to evangelize. I like to use Twitter to deepen relationships not fluff them up or use it as a status symbol. It’s about being more real. I like Twhirl in that it allows me to be more effective with the time crunch I suffer from daily.

twhirl is the latest Twitter Client I’ve come across using the Adobe AIR package. AIR makes it possible to run the same code on both Windows and Mac (others?) which I like. I hate finding some cool app and it only be for one system. As a developer, I use Windows, Linux and a Mac and I like finding tools that work on all three systems, which is rare. Adobe’s AIR is a step in the right direction.

via Twitter Hacks

How You can Use Social Media to Edge Out Your Competitor

This post is NOT about improving your social media presence but using your competitors social media presence to benefit your business!

Spying is not something new in business. It’s as ancient as the most ancient tactics used by traders of the olden days. However, these days we’d much rather give it a nicer term, something like market research. Whatever you may call it, thanks to social media, it has become a lot easier to get more information about your competition nowadays. The only thing you need to do now after all is visit their pages or add them as friends or become a fan of their account. Of course, you’ll have to use a pseudo account to not be too obvious. This will help their statistics since it’ll be one more fan for them but what is one fan compared to the wealth of information you can get?

So what information can you exactly get about your competition?

latest and upcoming marketing efforts – Businesses use social media for marketing. They like to give promos to their social media fans and also make announcements via social media. This will help you determine the kind of promotions they are offering, just how much effort they are pouring into a certain product, and will give you an idea of their overall marketing strategy.

the number of customers – Of course, the actual number of customers will not be reflected on the social media site but the number of fans/friends is a good indicator of how many customers are happy enough with their product/service to want to be associated with the company, even if only via social media site.

customer feedback – Always always keep an eye out for the buzz on your competitor on social media sites. In facebook read people’s comments. In twitter search for your competitor as keyword. You want to make sure you know how they are perceived and what it is about them that drives up customer satisfaction.

Social Media Business Account Ethics

AnnLuck posted her rules of engagement for any business using social media in Youmoz and I’m going to expound on her points.

1. Be transparent – Do not post as someone else, especially as a customer just to appear like someone’s interested in your company and/or product. Disclose your true identity and intentions.

2. Never fight, provoke, flame or offend – In short, be courteous! Act like your meeting your other half’s parents for the first time. This will not only make you ensure that you put your best foot forward but will help you avoid any potential lawsuits.

3. Inform/Educate – Do not promote. Though sales is your end goal leave the hard selling techniques to the other marketing methods you are currently employing (ads, your websites, etc.) and use your social media account to simply drum up more awareness of your products/services and company.

4. Don’t insert links in forum posts – Allow the signature to act as a link. The only exception is when someone asks specifically for a link or for information wherein a link is needed in order to give complete info.

5. Don’t respond to post more than 3 months old – Exceptions are posts that have been revived by someone looking for more current info on the same subject.

6. Don’t answer a question that has already been answered unless you can honestly add something useful – Enough said.

7. If you are posting as yourself or your own web personality, do it from home – I guess this part is more of a reminder for employees who tend to abuse their office internet access. It doesn’t have much to do about your behavior in social media sites.

Own a Dog? Get a SNIF Tag

Don’t look now but social media is going to the dogs! Well in a manner of speaking that is. We all know that there are a lot of dog owners out there who simply cannot stay put whenever their friendly K9 is not around them and given a choice, they would want to install surveillance cams or get paid help to make sure they are up to date with what is happening when they are not around their pooch.

Many would call it an overboard way of loving you mutt but now, there is a gadget that can perhaps monitor everything your dog does and even tie you up with other dog owners while you are at it.

SNIF Labs has unveiled a pet accessory, the SNIF Tag, that combines wireless sensing and social networking technologies to give dog owners peace of mind to supervise their dog’s activities plus a means to socialize and develop relationships online with like-minded owners.

So you have to think, to whom is this beneficial; the owner or the dog? Well perhaps both. For one, the dog can be spoiled by the owner at times, going to the extent of treating them as if they were their own kids. We all invest a lot in gadgets and stuff and with a SNIF Tag, it is not surprising to be seen growing in numbers behind every dog’s collar.

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Expecting a Barrage of Online Advertising

We have seen most companies turning away from traditional media advertising and this has stemmed from the eventual cost-cutting activities that they are forced to endure because of the hard times. With that in mind, expect them to turn to the modern mediums that include investing heavily in the wiser online advertising mediums.

Online advertising has been pegged as the feasible alternative mainly because it is cheaper and the growing marketing of the Internet makes it a better population to penetrate. There have been companies that have started to invest on the web and much of them have planted the seeds if not realized profits as well.

Entrepreneurs and virtual companies are leading the way as most of them have done so from past years. But money talks and considering how companies have invested in millions on traditional media, this is perhaps a walk in the part for them as even a 50% slash on advertising budgets can still return them a favorable result.

So with that in mind, expect the web to be filled-up with social media platforms getting a boost from the faltering economy. Even the small players on the web are bound to get their share of scaled media investments as big companies are jockeying up for a better place through SEO and Internet building presence as well.

Focusing on the Social Network Niche

We all hear that the way to do business today is via the web. Many people have shifted their attention on social media but it is not that simple. For one, you have to sink yourself in to the proper social network that suits your business model. There are millions of social networking groups out there but not all of them may necessarily be your market.

Business is perhaps one of the ideal topics you can see as far as group category is concerned. But while that is perhaps like looking for a needle in a haystack, you will notice that you have to further dissect the area and type of business you will have to cater to.

So social networking goes way beyond social bookmarking and promoting certain sites you feel will carve out your niche on the Internet. Proper planning similar to common businesses we see daily is something that would be needed as well.

Also, the time factor comes into play. Businesses investing on the web have to count the months and depending on the median that they use to establish their sites for optimization is something that will certainly make them vary from one another.

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Entice Guest Posting for Your Site

Guest blogging is something that we have heard of today. While you are not really compensated for it, the backlink is really the thing that should be checked out. We all know that links to our site will be the best way to drive in traffic and apparently, this is one alternative you can really try and do.

To some bloggers it may be a waste of time. But before you pass judgment and take a look at the page rank and the unique visitors that this blog gets. Composing a blog post may be too much for some people but just look at the future and see how it can benefit your blog. In the end, you may find that it is worth more than a couple of dollars and it stays there for a longer period of time.

In the world of vying for the best standing as far as optimization and social networking practice is concerned, it is about how high you can get. The higher you are the more visitors you get. That is the best way to gauge it. While others are paying for a service to help market their blogs or websites, here is a free opportunity to which it benefits you more than the actual blog looking for blog posts.

In a manner of speaking, it is the content that the blog owner is looking for. It is apparent that at times, you need a different personality when it comes to blogging. Guest blogging is a good way to do that and the reward comes with a simple link back to their site. Not a bad deal!