Social Networking
Social Networking is a fast-growing internet marketing technique used by online businesses of all shapes and sizes, to generate traffic and increase conversions.
Social Networking uses social websites such as Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook, where people create individual social profiles, meet, hang-out and interact online, spreading news and information from person to person. This is viral marketing - where information passes from person-to-person, through "word-of-mouth".
The volume of traffic through YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook now exceeds traffic through Google. You can no longer ignore Social Networking as a cheap or free traffic source.
And the main difference between YouTube, MySpace and Facebook as traffic generators, compared to Google, is that information is passed with personal opinion, or recommendation. People generally trust a personal recommendation, rather than a search engine result that somebody with a lot of money may have paid for.
Social Networking is very much reputation based. You end up developing an online public persona.
If you choose to use Social Networking for online marketing purposes, ensure that your online persona is a successful, helpful, skilled professional. Someone who will add value, has something to offer. Someone who is trustworthy, polite and attractive. You don't have to have a personal photograph of yourself on Social Networks - although it can help. If you're shy, try something like a Simponised version of yourself - you can create a Simpsons avatar at www.simpsonsmovie.com.
Guard your reputation closely. Things that you do online rarely disappear - and can come back to haunt you. Employers these days frequently Google people's names to see what kind of person they are online.
Your business is being advertised by many others online. Why should a new business prospect choose YOU instead of somebody else? You need to be able to demonstrate that you can add value to their business, by proving that you have skills, resources or techniques that will be useful to them. Have an online history of being helpful to others.
www.facebook.com started out as a US College site, but then expanded internationally, and became open to everyone. It does use real names, but also allows you to control the amount of information visible, to just "Friends", if desired. Profiles are not typically indexed at search engines, as they require login, to view, however there are "Business" pages that are publicly viewable. The most popular thing about Facebook is that you can get quick summary information about what your friends are up to - its a great way of staying up-to-date and in touch, whereever you are. You can purchase targetted advertising at Facebook.
www.twitter.com was designed to address "what are you doing now". Posts are a maximum of 140 characters long. You can "follow" people, and see what they are up to. Twitter is a good way of staying up to date with business people you are interested in, and establishing relationships. Twitter is also excellent as a business reputation management tool - you can scan "tweets" for mentions of your company name, and address any bad publicity immediately.
YouTube
www.youtube.com is owned by Google. YouTube videos often rank very well at Google for relevant keywords. YouTube is excellent as a free host for videos. It's great for viral marketing - create a funny, interesting, topical, provocative, distinctive quality video, and you can generate extreme amounts of traffic. As with any free hosting site, it can atttract a lot of rubbish and spam. But it's where people are spending their time these days, because there are so many fun and interesting videos. You can subscribe to feeds, or channels, of people whose videos you like.
MySpace
www.myspace.com was the star before FaceBook. Everyone would setup their own profile - and often multiple profiles, customise it, and comment on each other's profiles. Great for music bands and businesses as a way of gathering feedback and interaction.
Digg
www.digg.com is a social news site. A place where you can submit news items (frequently blog posts), and get them voted on by the community. The items with the most votes would go to the top of the page, and generate such enormous amounts of traffic, that frequently the server hosting the site would crash. There is a Digg community, that actively polices attempts to spam Digg and frequently bans users who try to spam.
Squidoo
www.squidoo.com lets you build pages for free about topics you are interested in. One page websites, but with lots of useful features such as lists, voting, images, videos. Squidoo pages often rank well at search engines. People who get into Squidoo tend to build lots of pages, link them together and use it as an SEO tool. The pages are free, although ads are displayed by the owners, with a significant amount going towards charity.
Delicious
www.delicious.com is a social bookmarking tool. It allows you to share sites that you have bookmarked with others.
StumbleUpon
www.StumbleUpon.com is much less stressful. It uses a toolbar on your browser to let you give the thumbs up, or thumbs down, to sites that you visit. Then based upon your interests specified in your profile, you may choose to let StumbleUpon recommend sites for you to visit. Much more fun, and known for generating good long-term traffic, compared to Digg's short term bursts of traffic.
There are many more social networking websites, but these are the core ones that are known for sending good traffic and being beneficial to SEO.