Social Networks and Your Business

Introduction

Connect with Facebook

Social networking has exploded in the last few years. There are dozens of different social networking sites, but three of the major ones are

Facebook
MySpace
Twitter

Of these Facebook is by far the biggest with a global ranking of #2

Why Use Social Networking

This really depends on the sort of business you are in. As a general rule of thumb If your customers, clients or members use social networking then you really need to use social networking too.

How do You Use Social Networking?

There are two ways you can have a presence in Facebook, a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page. A Facebook profile is your presence as an individal, your friends, photos, family, games you play, videos you like. It's really about private individuals not organisations. Facebook pages on the other hand are for exactly that, clubs, businesses, organisation, musicians. So we start by setting up a Facebook Page for your organisation.

Once you have a Facebook Page you can then start getting people to register as a "fan". Fan is an unfortunate choice of word but it really means a follower or a champion of your business.

Once you have a Facebook page and some fans you can then start using the other features of Facebook pages.

You can make wall posts. This is a great way of making announcements or putting special offers or promotions online. All of your fans will get notification of your wall posts on ther Facebook profile page. This is where the leverage of Facebook starts to kick in too as all of their friends can also see these updates.

You can put events on your Facebook page. This will allow you to promote to all your fans, and indirectly all their friends, any special event, concert, conference or party you might be throwing.

You can post reviews, notes, videos & photos to name just the standard features.

Once you have a presence in the social networks, we can then add to your standard website small tools and features they call widgets which will link your website with your facebook page. Visitors can

Share content from your site to their network of friends
Give visitors to your website the opportunity to become a fan on Facebook
If your site needs people to login to access secure content, they can do this using their Facebook login credentials so they dont have to remember yet another username and password
Visitors to your site can trace their friends on your site as well

What's Twitter For?

Twitter is know as a micro blogging site. Users can make small posts to their Twitter profile that show people what they are up to at any moment of the day. It's very popular with celebrities who like to let their fans follow their day to day activities and also communicate with people outside the media.

For businesses its a very good way to post updates and announcements online and reach a wide audience instantly.

Whilst you may not be interested in it personally it may have a use for your business.

What's the Difference between Facebook and MySpace?

Not much really. MySpace came along first but then was overtaken in popularity by Facebook. Its still popular with musicians and their fans.

How much does this Cost

£66. For this you will get

A Facebook page with the ability to make amendments to the page yourself
Up to 5 Facebook "Share" buttons to share content on your site with a social network
a Facebook "become a fan button"
Up to 5 Facebook "Comment" buttons to allow users to comment on content in your site, and share this with their social network.