Learning how Social Book Marking (web 2.0) can improve your home page, and lead to e-commerce opportunities.
To understand this it is most likely best to understand some nuts and bolts;
What is a Social Network Service?
According to the highest authority, Wikipedia: A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of folk who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. These are folk that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, e-mail etc. rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community.
This allows organisations to produce online profiles and share media such as photos, music and videos. A common feature of these services was the catalogue of collegues that each user safeguarded, contributing to usage of the site by folk drawing in more collegues, who add more collegues, and so on and so on.
Consistant with this news story, and your approach to your potential in this field, is the puzzle for all social networking webs: By the time they reach a critical mass for sellers, they might also be seen as less innovative and edgy by initial adopters, who could migrate away in herds. Plus, any attempt to use targeted advertising based on user profiles could trigger an exodus of folk who don't want their private data mistreated for pecuniary reasons.
Sometimes as social networking webs keep on evolving, they also fire up a swath of "social media" webs that let folk share news, reviews, personal experiences and website favorites with others. The social news site Digg, which launched in December 2004, lets folk elevate entertaining news stories or blog posts, which are then voted on - or "Dugg" - by other users to get more prominent placement on the site. Regular users of Digg have their own profiles, and gain currency by getting stories featured on the site. A number of similar services such as Reddit and the updated Netscape have also sprung up.
This is where Social Marketing appears
The indicator is in the title:
Social
adjective
1 Relating to society, its organization, or hierarchy.
2 Needing companionship; suited to living in communities.
3 Relating to or designed for activities in which folk meet each other for pleasure..
noun
An informal social gathering organized by the members of a club or group.
Marketing
noun
The promotion and selling of products or services.
Therefore a Social Marketing definition could well be;
The promotion and selling of products or services to people/society nominally meeting for pleasure, companionship or as part of an organised group or structure.
A fairly under-utalised way to get yourself in front of unrealised markets!
So am I saying you can just get into social networks and peddle your wares? Of course, as most of life, it is not that easy. Here is an example of that brain child, and below is the illustration of why this is NOT a good idea;
Make a lot of money online
The Social Marketing Blueprint by Charles Heflin
This FREE course show you how to leverage Social Marketing and drive vast profit to your website.
Click here for instant access
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This will never get past the (usually human) inspectors for the webs ~ it will (rightly) be considered as non-value adding SPAM , lacking content, with the title not matching the subject and, despite the fact the content is totally true, it will be discarded and you will receive a negative marker for commissioning it. If you receive too many negatives then nothing you write will ever make it to being published!
The other problem is which page do you publish your masterpiece, and how should you publish to get the best results? Charles has done a lot of work on that topic and has reduced the answer to a "one formula fits all businesses". Although I cannot break down this formula outside Charles free website I do not think it breaks any copy write to show you the blueprint, which is:
(TYPE 1 or TYPE 2) + (X) + (A, B, C and/or D) + (H) = Blueprint.
Charles also pigeonholes the various network types, their URL and their individual ranking ~ again a summary of the rating is public domain data, and a wide-ranging test spreadsheet is available to download (complementary) by clicking the image below.
What is "thorough"? Well the themes currently cover;
|
Type
|
Total
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|
Answers
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1
|
|
Article
|
1
|
|
Audio
|
1
|
|
Blog
|
7
|
|
Blog creation
|
1
|
|
Bookmarking
|
30
|
|
Micro Blog
|
2
|
|
News Story
|
136
|
|
Site Creation
|
9
|
|
Social Bookmarking
|
20
|
|
Story Submission
|
1
|
|
Video
|
141
|
|
News Story, Bookmarking
|
3
|
|
Grand Total
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353
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Although this is just a snapshot in an ever enlarging data agglomeration and consequent investigation by a group of devoted specialists.
If you would like to probe this further start from this Free site, which has the BluePrint formula, sample web URL's sample spreadsheets, sample blueprints and a wealth of information in a public forum.
A glaring question to ask is does Social Marketing work ~ there are two rejoiners to this. The first is unmistakable ~ you have read this page this far so yes, it works because I have followed the above blueprint to drive you here. The second is harder. I am in the process of authoring an experiment, using Google Earth mapping software, to prove (or dis-prove) the spread of information by social networking. This will probably run in the summer of 2008 so please feel free to check this Facebook discussion group to see a) if it is running yet and b) what the results are.
To sum up
Used correctly, Social Networks have the power to drive targeted visitors to your message. Crafted correctly, your paper will work to enhance sales of your products or services. This action is repeatable and ends the 100% reliance on search engines to decide the future of your online company. This in turn makes your company more viable because it will have direct control over its future rather than leaving it totally in the hands of unknown search engine foibles.
Please
this page for your future use (or, even better!, send it to your friends)
Regards Paul
Yes! Paul, This is
definitely what I've been looking
for.