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Social media or social networking are catch all umbrella phrases for the basic concept of socialising via the Internet. The concept of social networking is not new, people have used various ways to communicate with each other since the dawn of the Internet. Chat rooms for example were one of the killer applications that led to AOL becoming such an important Internet company during the nineties and forums and message boards have always been popular.

As the speed by which we access the Internet improved, so did our choices. Particularly with regards to Social Networking Communities; these include the mega sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Sites that have been able to attract millions of very loyal users. These users also happened to have the exact demographics that honey to bees to many of the worlds leading brands. The major issue for advertisers is that their crucial target market is changing their habits with regards to how and when they take in information.

Almost every child of school leaving age in the UK has heard of Facebook. Many of those will have an active account, with many of those regularly posting to their profile, the statistics are everywhere on this, television viewing is reducing, Internet usage is growing. If you take the alarmist view, you could argue that advertisers are in danger of losing touch with a whole generation of their most lucurative market. So for that reason alone, the number one business benefit of using social media is that it provides you with an opportunity to communicate with your target market, via their preferred medium.

What is Social Media and Social Networking

In our mind it is not possible to describe the business benefits of Soical Media or Social Networking without first defining what Social Media actually is. Once you have an understanding of how this area breaks down, it is a lot easier to see which parts of Social Media can have an immediate impact on your business.

Social Networking Platforms – These are larger platform sites and include the likes of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Blogging – A regularly updated part of your website that allows you to communicate with your prospects and clients.

Microblogging – Relatively new concept of blogging, offered through sites such as Twitter.

Forums – Forums have remained popular and cover almost every niche.

Video Sharing – Very popular way to share product information, customer reviews and guides.

Photo Sharing – Share your pictures with prospects and clients, helps with branding and linking strategies.

Social Bookmarking – Sites such as del.icio.us and StumbleUpon where users share their favourite sites.

Social News – This includes sites such as DIGG and Reddit and work well for sites that are producing regular fresh content or have their own blogs.

Over the course of the next week or so, we are going to cover various aspects of Social Media and how it can help your business. We’ll explain exactly what we mean when we talk about Social Media and we will explain how the different facets of social media can help your business.

What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post. Alternatively, if you would like to speak to us, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.