Social Networking-The journey from toys to tools
“Follow me on Twitter!”
“I’ll add you on Facebook!”
“Hey, we are Orkut friends!”
“I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed right away!”
You will agree, these are some of the most touted phrases that we use when we “network”. However, this is not the way the journey had begun. The transformation from toys to tools was a revolution that brought out a whole new “Social Economy” in “Social Networks”.
Marketing is going through a revolution online, thanks to the continual adoption of the Web 2.0 concepts originally defined by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty.
If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson's blog, Trends in the Living Networks.
A New Conversation
Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them.
You have recently set up your business organization and deciding on a proper marketing strategy to add brand value to your organization. However, your resources are limited and this is restricting you form any sort of capital investment in this regard. Amidst a highly competitive market, how would you advertise and add proper brand value to your products? The answer in this fast-paced technology aware world is quite simple and intriguing: Social Networks.
For those of you new to this philosophy or rather a concept, a Social Network is a social structure which links individuals and organizations on common grounds of interdependency and areas of interest. These interests may include friendship, kinship, values and visions, or even financial exchange and trade; just to mention a few. There are a plethora of websites that offer you services that allow you to Social Network. However, the question is, How do you utilize this offering?
The emergence of social media has been a game-changer for newspapers and magazines. On the one hand, they have seen their print numbers continue to drop as more and more people turn to the internet to get their news and information. On the other hand, they (the smart ones) have seen that by embracing social media and leveraging the different opportunities it offers, they can drive more traffic to their sites, engage in open dialogues and react quicker. So what does this mean for you? More opportunities than ever for you to build relationships and get publicity. Here are a few things to keep in mind when trying to leverage social media for PR purposes -- and that's PR as in public relations, not PageRank!
Start Small
Many times when people think about getting publicity for their business, their wishlist goes something like this:
The social media bookmarklet has become a de-facto element in most new website designs. And while I love social media and think it can have some huge benefits for websites; I think including social bookmarklets like AddThis to a new web build default is at best lazy-ness and at worse symptomatic of a complete miss-understanding ...
With the recent increase in internet usage and more recently in internet access via mobile devices, online marketing is becoming increasingly important to the success of any business today no matter how small or large.
Online marketing has evolved in recent years. The rise in the popularity of social networking phenomena and the resulting rise of ...
Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the top global social network with 132 million unique visitors for a staggering 153 percent growth rate, according to comScore. MySpace is second at 113 million visitors, and Hi5 grew its global audience 100 percent to land at 56 million unique visitors. A new report from the online tracking company shows global usage of social networking sites growing 25 percent since June 2007.
No, I am definitely not going to write about the lucky number! I’ll talk about the most anticipated operating system of the year, yet to be released from the stables of Microsoft. Welcome to the new Windows 7.
I already have 7 questions on my mind. What shall be the minimum hardware requirements for this OS? Will the support for drivers be better than the previous releases of Microsoft? Will the new OS beat Vista and rival operating systems on performance issues? What about security? Phew!