How be successfull in Social Networking?

How To Interact Through Social Networking

Ways to interact are numerous. The first order of business is to decide what your marketing goals are with respect to social networking. While "finding new friends" is a sufficient personal reason for social networking, business marketing goals need to be more specific. Are you an individual looking for a job or freelance work? Do you want to gain exposure for your product, brand or company? Are you looking for potential employees or contractors? Do you want to get prospects interested enough to visit your Website or contact you? Your goals will dictate what you put on your profile and social networking home page, as well as who you look for to become part of your network.

After you’ve decided on your purpose for online networking, choose which social networking Website(s) you will participate in.

Where to Network Online

You can find a comprehensive list of social networking sites here, at Wikipedia. I am familiar with those listed below. They will give you an idea of the range of opportunities you will find at social networking Websites:

Yahoo! 360 (360.yahoo.com):

Yahoo!'s social networking site is in beta as of this writing. The unique feature here is your Yahoo! 360 space is cross-promoted with other Yahoo! products, such as with your reviews on Yahoo! Local and your Yahoo! Groups. Like many social networking sites, you can also host a blog on the server.

MySpace (myspace.com):

This is the mother of social networking sites. Originally dominated by teens, there are reports of the "graying of myspace" as older people and businesses are also networking on the site. It may be worth your while to spend some time there to see if your target customers hang out there.

LinkedIn (linkedin.com):

LinkedIn is excellent for professional, career-related online marketing because it focuses exclusively on business and professional networking. You will find interfaces to connect with classmates or colleagues (both past and present); find service providers or clients; post or find a job; and ask or answer business-related questions.

Gather (gather.com):

This network incorporates user publications (in the form of articles) and a points reward system into the usual social networking activities.

Each social networking Website has it’s own "personality" and a different mix of people to interact with. Before signing up, go to each site and explore a bit ― search on keywords related to your goals and interests, check out the different groups, the activity level, etc. This will help you determine if a site will be beneficial to you. Once you find a site that interests you, establish your presence by signing up and filling in the questions for your profile and site home page. Once that is done, you are ready to interact.

Whom To Interact With

The people you want to associate with (i.e. make "friends" or be "connected" to) will depend largely on your goals. There are several types of people you will want to consider contacting. Each can help you in different ways, so consider looking for more than one type of "target friend:"

Customers and Consumers:

People who will benefit from what you do, consume or buy your products or services, and rave about you to their friends.

Others Within Your Industry: People with whom you can network, share resources and cross-promote with.

Media and Publishers: People who work for, or can influence, publications you would like to be mentioned in (e-zines, newspapers, Websites, etc).

Consultants: People who may want to hire or purchase products from you.

Event, Company or Organization representatives: People who operate businesses and associations that support your industry.

How To Find Friends

A few people will find you based on your profile, but you will want to actively seek out quality friends. You can start to find friends by joining groups related to your expertise, that have members who match your target friend profile or interest you in general. You can also approach

individuals and ask them to become a friend and/or part of your network.

In my Next Postin part 2 I will detail some more specific networking and marketing techniques. Until then, explore your social networking sites, get comfortable with the features and find a few friends.

Social Networking Tips and Advice

It's a well-established Web 2.0 trend that people are gathering themselves into online social networks. Mobilizing these individuals and communities into action, however, is still an emergent practice.

At N-TEN's 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference, folks gathered to share best practices on how to not only effectively spread a message using social networks, but also drive people to take action. These seven tips are worth noting:

Meet people where they are.

Why do rock bands put more effort into creating a MySpace persona and presence than they do into building their own web site? It's because MySpace is where the people are, and it's easier to work with an established community than to create a new one from scratch. Leverage network partners. Care2 built its network of 7 million members by giving both organizations and individuals many ways to engage. Because of this cross-organization network, the Humane Society was able to reach out to not only its own members, but also to members of other organizations that would be interested in mobilizing around Katrina relief. Be everywhere you can be, but prioritize.

Different social networks have different demographics, so be very deliberate in choosing which networks to reach out to. In addition, the best campaigns will integrate both online and offline strategies towards achieving a unified goal. Keep on top of your member acquisition costs.

Figure out the most cost-effective way to aggregate your community.

e.g., is it cheaper to buy a list and convert .01% of them into activists for your campaign, or to hire an intern to work on creating an active social network persona? Care2 found that their acquisition cost per friend on MySpace is about $12/friend. And if 50% of those people opted in to a mailing list, then the cost per opt-in activist lead is $24. Given that highly targeted lists can cost $7 - 15 per raw lead, that final $24 can make sense. Be prepared for the big moment. Typically it takes time for a message to percolate when it doesn't have a supporting marketing budget. But whatever your effort is, there will come a moment that puts you in the news. Will you be able to retain all of the people that show up at your door? For nonprofits, a example scenario is the Red Cross web site after Hurricane Katrina hit. For a consumer Internet vendor, it could be a great mention in digg.

Let the community take over your message.

The best thing that you can do is to lose control of your message, and to let other people take it over as their own. Scott Goodstein of Catalyst Campaigns shared the story of how 1-800-SUICIDE made up for a large fundraising deficit due to cancelled government grant. The organization took a concise message and its small, 2500-person e-mail list to MySpace. Musicians touched by the issue joined the group --- as did their own enormous mailing lists. MySpace ended up being a great vehicle, and other major web sites were able to jump in and build in a natural, viral way.

Keep calls to action simple.

If you're able to tap into a community using a simple call to action, that community can end up doing a lot of work for your campaign. Calls to action also need to make sense within the context of the forum in which a message is being heard. For example, don't ask a user to make a phone call while watching your YouTube video on MySpace - ask her to tell a friend about it.

In my experience, the toughest item on this list is #6 - it's tough for traditional marketing and outreach staff to let go of control over their messages. Faith in the community, however, is rewarded more often than not, and even large consumer products vendors are taking notice.

What are Social Networking Websites

Through social networking, people can use networks of online friends and group memberships to create real–life friendships or start a romance. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking members can share their interests with other like–minded members by joining groups and forums. Networking can also help members find a job or establish business contacts.

Most social networking websites also offer extra features. In addition to blogs and forums, members can express themselves by designing their profile page to reflect their personality. The most popular extra features include music and video sections. Members can read bios of their favorite music artists from the artist's profile page as well as listen to their favorite songs and watch music videos. The video section can include everything from member–generated videos from hundreds of subjects to TV clips and movie trailers.

What to Look for in Social Networking

The recent phenomenon of online social networking—made extremely popular by MySpace.com, has evolved to include more than the teenage stereotype looking to expand his/her network of online friends. People of all ages and backgrounds have discovered that they can enrich their lives through the contacts they make on a social networking website.

Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate Social Networking websites.

Networking Features – These features help members connect with other members such as a featured member section, photo galleries and a search function that allows searches by criteria such as gender, age, location and relationship status.

Clicking on a member’s photo or name should link directly to their profile page; then you can post comments and invite them into your network of friends. Most sites allow members to make their profiles public, private or semi–private.

A profile page should be a reflection of a member’s personality. You can post background information like your name, age, gender, physical description, likes and dislikes. Many sites also allow members to upload multiple photos, videos and music. The best social networking websites also allow members to customize their profile skins.

Extra Features – Most social networking websites provide extra features—music, videos, blogs, forums and groups, to enhance the networking experience and keep members coming back for more.

The music section may consist of Internet radio or a large database of music and music videos. An exceptional music section allows members to browse or search for music by artist, album, track or genre. Clicking on an artist’s name or photo will give you access to the artist’s profile page. From there you can read the artist’s bio, related news, listen to complete songs (not samples) and watch their music videos.

Videos are generally member’s home videos of various subjects or member–generated compliations of their favorite movies and TV shows—some are quite impressive. Some videos also include commercials, clips from TV shows and movie trailers.
Blogs and Forums provide extra avenues for members to express themselves; they can access other member’s opinions and post their own comments.

Groups – Members who want to connect with people who share their interests can join groups. Many sites have regional groups so members can join groups close to where they live. Members usually have a wide variety of groups to choose from like Romance & Relationships, Entertainment & Arts, Hobbies & Crafts, Health & Wellness, Games, Sports & Recreation and Jobs/Career. Group creators can make groups public or private and many sites will allow you to create your own group.

Monitored Content – Social networking websites that allow people under 18 to join should make every effort to monitor the content posted on their website. Content such as cursing, threats, sexually charged language and especially sexually explicit photos and videos can turn up in photo galleries, on members’ profile pages, in blogs, forums and groups.
Some websites closely monitor certain word tags assigned to videos, photos and groups. In a test search, we typed in several sexually related words in the video and group sections on all the websites we reviewed. We did not find any sexually offensive content on the sites that monitor their tags.

Vigilant websites will also provide a direct link on all their pages so members can easily report offensive content. Some sites also have a link on profile pages and group forums. Although offensive content can appear anywhere on a social networking website, we found the most explicit content (photos) in group forums.

Ease of Use – Joining a social networking website is usually easy—it consists of providing your name, gender, zip code and an email address. You will have to activate your account by clicking on a link in a confirmation email; then you can begin creating your profile.
The majority of sites are easy to navigate with a permanent menu toolbar at the top of each page as well as extra links on profile pages. Some social networks use one or more separate websites; in these cases, a permanent link should appear on all pages to make switching back and forth easy.

Help/Support – Social networking members may have many technical questions as they upload photos, music and videos to customize their profile pages or they may have trouble signing into their account. There should be a large FAQs section to answer all questions related to using the website and an email address for questions not answered by FAQs. Some sites also provide user forums to help resolve problems.