Making Friends the Virtual Way
December 11, 2008 by Efficient Entrepreneur
Filed under Busi-Tips, News, Other Resources
Social Marketing
Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Twitter and beyond! To stand out as a business, it helps to grab as much attention as possible. It’s sad to say, but the internet isn’t much different from High School, and you want to be the most popular kid in school. Google notices, Yahoo notices and your visitors notice. These are the major categories and how to use them to help your site get the hottest date by prom.
Popularity Lists: (Digg, Del.icio.us etc.)
At the bottom of every article on this site and, for that matter, every article on most other sites you’ll see a button or series of buttons that let’s you add this article or site to your special list of favorites. Digg was the first major player in this arena. Essentially the thought is that everyone has a list of bookmarks or favorites on their web browser, but what if you want to share your bookmarks with other people, or you want to find other cool sites but you’re sick of looking through the search engines. Voila! The power of Digg. You Digg an article or website you like (basically add it to your specific Digg list) and the more people that like the site and Digg it the higher up it goes in Digg’s rankings. Essentially everyone is school is voting for who they think is interesting and relevant and the more so you are the better you’ll do.
And as is typical on the internet, when a good idea explodes, everyone makes their own versions. =) So here we are with probably hundreds of Digg-type sites out there, some targeting very specific topics. In fact, using a free, open source product called Pligg, you can actually create your own Digg on your site. *-If you didn’t already know, I am a huge proponent of open source.
The Benefits: If others Digg you not only rank well on Digg, you will rank better on more traditional search engines, and you will draw attention from random Digg-browsing people. All in all, it nevers hurts to support the community of people that like to Digg.
How to do it: You could go to each and every digg-esque site and copy down the code for their respective “Add to” button, or you could just use one of the many easier services that give you the code for all the major sites. If you cater to a very specific niche industry (even a big one like Christians) I would recommend adding a button to a specific Digg-type site created for that market. Why make it hard on your visitors to up your popularity?!
I used AddThis to create the button on this site. Easy, straightforward, not overly cluttered with tons of symbols and it only redirects my visitors to the specific site they are looking for. Two versions are provided (one for blogs and one for regular sites) and offers 8 different looks. And, of course, it’s Free.
If you don’t want to wait for your visitors to add your site to the mass amount of bookmarking sites on the web, you have more than a few companies at your disposal that will add your site to all the bookmarking sites and search engines for a small fee or for free. (Fees listed below are accurate at the time this is written, always check with the site to verify prices before purchasing)
SocialMarking will add your site to 1000 web directories for $10, and $25 for 240 social bookmarking site. They also create a customized code for your site to help visitors add your site to their preferred social bookmarking site.
SocialPoster automatically creates a new account for you for 79 social bookmarking sites and adds your site to their registries for you. The most useful feature of this site is the PR and Alexa ranking info. This site tells you exactly where the mass of digg-type sites (at least the ones they follow) stand in the ratings battle. It also lets you easily pick and choose which sites would be most relevant for you with categories like News, Twitters, and Bookmark.
Social Networking (MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin)
MySpace was the original pioneer in the market. It is still a fairly strong contender for certain businesses, primarily music groups and restaurants. The advantage of MySpace over the quickly surpassing contender Facebook, is that MySpace pages can be completely public and easily accessible. Facebook has this capability as well, but standard MySpace is open and public, while standard Facebook is friend-only viewing. Your popularity is determined by the length of your friend list or fan list. MySpace is more conducive for sites and companies to create pages and connect with customers. While Facebook does also offer members the opportunity to create company-specific pages, the real strength of Facebook is to build up an individual’s relationship with the community rather than building a company’s reputation. Both though can be invaluable assets in building your site’s following online.
What if you want to take this concept a step further? Do you have a specific niche that would welcome having their own private social networking website? You might be interested in adding your very own “MySpace” to your site. This has become incredibly popular on sites aimed at aspiring actors (or glorified movie extras).
Ning is one of the most popular create-your-own-social-network sites around. It’s the ideal place to set up a social network if you don’t mind it being hosted on Ning. Your social network’s name would be something like actorsunite.ning.com. But you could link to it easily enough from your site. Ning boasts over 635,000 networks, and yours could be profiled on their front page. Other users already part of one Ning network could easily move to your network, making it easier to gather a following on Ning than one your lone site floating in webspace.
If you’re looking to integrate the social network into your site rather than only being able to link to it, Kickapps may be your answer. KickApps came out just before Ning a few years ago and initially allowed users to physically download the entire program onto their site’s server. Now it seems they host the majority of the site and just have developers integrate various controls into their site.
And this is only the beginning. TechCrunch wrote a great article about 9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network that profiles a few more do-it-yourself social networks. Any social network you choose can be a great asset for your customer base or any group with similar interests.
The Collective Conscious (Twitter, the latest and greatest):
Twitter gives a constant stream of what any individual is thinking to anyone interested. Although a majority of twitter may be trivial information, it has proven to be particularly influential. Large corporations are regularly monitoring twitter feeds for their company’s name. In fact, some people have found that they’ll get faster support by complaining on twitter!
So what does that mean for you and your site? You can keep in touch with your customer base (or fan base) as an individual, giving your site a more human side. You can also keep them informed of the latest developments in your shop or of interesting findings at a conference you are attending. And in the true meaning of creation for the good of society, Twitter is completely free and in fact the creator Evan Williams, still hasn’t figured out a way to monetize the site.
All these tools are focused on finding ways to connect, maybe even reconnect, people on the web in a more personal way. Shopping on the web is becoming increasingly popular and if you can connect in a more meaningful way with your target audience it may mean the difference between a one-shot sale and a long-lasting customer relationship.
