Integrating Social Media with Your Website

Not long ago, adding community features to your site meant the ability for users to participate in forums, chat with other visitors in a window or post comments. Internet users as a whole are a nostalgic bunch who will continue to flock to well established old sites but there is a clear elevation in the expectations of user generated content. This change has been predicated on the rise of supersocial networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Youtube.

There are many possible motivations for adding social media to your website. You want to create and build credibility or show people who you are and what you are about. When people learn about you, they begin to trust you and naturally tell others about their positive experiences. This progression has a clear tendency to snowball, until very soon you will be asked more detailed information about yourself as well as your business.

There is now a small number of companies that assist businesses, both small and large, and even the common webmaster, in creating their own community space with the features of the sites listed above. Users are given tools to create a personal profile, connect with people of similar interests, upload photos and videos and even blogging. Examples of these include Ning, KickApps, pluck, Me.com and Wasabi.

Ning and Wasabi offer the most intuitive and thorough free white label social networking solutions. Ning claims over 100,000 networks and Wasabi, 5 million users as proof of both technology and ease of use.

All of the free white label social network offerings are ad-supported with an option to remove ads with a modest monthly fee.

In my next blog I will discuss how to implement a white label social networking product to achieve you business goals.

Social Media Marketing

Social media provides many opportunities to advance your business but also opportunities to waste effort or worse, let efforts fall into disarray. In this series of blogs I will examine some guidelines for successfully growing your community and avoiding some common pitfalls.

Start with Intent

Identify what your intentions are in creating a social network. Are you hoping to improve awareness of your brand or open communication? Are you looking to reach new markets and open channels for sales or membership? Are you hoping to use these tools as collaboration platforms? Are you making informational products or are you simply virtualising your water cooler?

Knowing your intent drives which path you take.

Developing your network

Having a social network on your website is well and good but unless you invest a little energy in promoting it, the likelihood that it will ever become the active community that you desire is slim.

Rarely in history have thriving communities formed spontaneously. Major factors for early settlements included water sources, trade routes and defensible land formations. For your community to flourish you must offer some form of value which will incentivise users to stay and interact.

You can do any of the following but I recommend that you do only one, and do it very well.

1) Create short reports and updates on a personal level. These will give alway inside information, which readers will be pleased to receive.

2) Create helpful videos. Again these videos will provide something viewers want to know, in a very personal format.

3) Write and publish high quality articles.

With each of these avenues, you create a need for more information and a way to receive it. By publishing links or paths to your product, customers will have means to learn more about you and your business.

Capitalising On Success

Be sure to reward any interest that your customers have made in your social network. Respond promptly and enthusiastically and you will be surprised how fast you will build an army of followers.

Business Model

Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be because social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly established in customers' minds.[citation needed] Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site. Hence, they are seeking large memberships, and charging for membership would be counterproductive. Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can currently provide.

Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in which a social network's members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content. This is in contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and consumers are distinct agents. Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous business model via advertisements, but subscription-based revenue is possible when membership and content levels are sufficiently high.

Research on the social impact of social networking software

An increasing number of academic commentators are becoming interested in studying Facebook and other social networking tools. Social science researchers have begun to investigate what the impact of this might be on society. Typical articles have investigated issues such as Identity, Privacy, E-learning , Social capital and Teenage use.

A special issue of the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communications was dedicated to studies of social network sites. Included in this issue is an introduction to social network sites.

A 2008 book published by Forrester Research, Inc. titled Groundswell builds on a 2006 Forrester Report about social computing and coins the term groundswell to mean "a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their own experience, and get what they need-information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power--from each other."

Business applications

Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads. Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the world.

One example of social networking being used for business purposes is LinkedIn.com, which aims to interconnect professionals. It claims to have more than 20 million registered users from 150 different industries.

Professional networking sites function as online meeting places for business and industry professionals. Other sites are bringing this model for niche business professional networking.

Virtual communities for business allow individuals to be accessible. People establish their real identity in a verifiable place. These individuals then interact with each other or within groups that share common business interests and goals. They can also post their own user generated content in the form of blogs, pictures, slide shows and videos. Like a social network, the consumer essentially becomes the publisher.

A professional network is used for the business to business marketplace. These networks improve the ability for people to advance professionally, by finding, connecting and networking with others. Business professionals can share experiences with others who have a need to learn from similar experiences.

The traditional way to interact is face-to-face. Interactive technology makes it possible for people to network with their peers from anywhere, at anytime in an online environment. Professional network services attract, aggregate and assemble large business-focused audiences by creating informative and interactive meeting places.

Dating Applications

Many social networks provide an online environment for people to communicate and exchange personal information for dating purposes. Intentions can vary from looking for a one time date, short-term relationships, and long-term relationships.

Most of these social networks, just like online dating services, require users to give out certain pieces of information. This usually includes a user's age, gender, location, interests, and perhaps a picture. Releasing very personal information is usually discouraged for safety reasons. This allows other users to search or be searched by some sort of criteria, but at the same time people can maintain a degree of anonymity similar to most online dating services. Online dating sites are similar to social networks in the sense that users create profiles to meet and communicate with others, but their activities on such sites are for the sole purpose of finding a person of interest to date. Social networks do not necessarily have to be for dating; many users simply use it for keeping in touch with friends.

However, an important difference between social networks and online dating services is the fact that online dating sites usually require a fee, where social networks are free. This difference is one of the reasons the online dating industry is seeing a massive decrease in revenue due to many users opting to use social networking services instead. Many popular online dating services such as Match.com, Yahoo Personals, and eHarmony.com are seeing a decrease in users, where social networks like MySpace and Facebook are experiencing an increase in users.

The number of internet users in the U.S. that visit online dating sites has fallen from a peak of 21% in 2003 to 10% in 2006. Whether its the cost of the services, the variety of users with different intentions, or any other reason, it is undeniable that social networking sites are quickly becoming the new way to find dates online.

Potential for Misuse

The relative freedom afforded by social networking services has caused concern regarding the potential of its misuse by individual patrons. In October 2006, a fake Myspace profile created in the name of Josh Evans by Lori Janine Drew led to the suicide of Megan Meier. The event incited global concern regarding the use of social networking services for bullying purposes.

In July 2008, a Briton, Grant Raphael, was ordered to pay a total of GBP £22,000 (about USD $44,000) for libel and breach of privacy. Raphael had posted a fake page on Facebook purporting to be that of a former schoolfriend Matthew Firsht, with whom Raphael had fallen out in 2000. The page falsely claimed that Firsht was homosexual and that he was dishonest.

At the same, genuine use of social networking services has been treated with suspicion on the ground of the services' misuse. In September 2008, the profile of Australian Facebook user Elmo Keep was banned by the site's administrators on the grounds that it violated the site's terms of use. Keep is one of several users of Facebook who were banned from the site on the presumption that their names aren't real, as they bear resemblance the names of characters like Sesame Street's Elmo. The misuse of social networking services has led many[who?] to cast doubt over whether any information on these services can in fact be regarded as true[citation needed].