Using Social Media to Promote Your Business

In an era of tweets, pokes and friend requests, keeping viewers attention to your Web site, which may not have features such as these, can be challenging. But learning how to use social media can be beneficial to your Web site and company in bringing traffic to your site and viewers interested in your products.

The A, B, C’s (or F, M, T’s) of Social Media
Facebook: Facebook has quickly grown to be one of the most used and most influential forms of social media. If you are hoping to master only one form of social media, I strongly suggest Facebook. It originated in the early 2000s as a social tool for college students, who were separated from their hometown friends or perhaps looking to meet new friends, to keep in touch. Originally, you needed an accredited college or university e-mail address to even log on to the site. Shortly after that, it expanded, allowing community colleges to join the network and soon, it expanded even more to what it is today, allowing adults, high school students and basically anyone who wants to be on Facebook to do so.

MySpace: MySpace was one of the very first social networking Web sites. My Space allows its users to not only to communicate through postings on each other’s pages, but to share music and other forms of media as well. Once upon a time,  MySpace was not strictly monitored and became the subject of many legal debates about the dangers of social networking with strangers and child abuse via the Internet. Since then, MySpace has become a lot more restricted, allowing its users to register their profiles as "private" so that only their friends, whom they must accept personally, can view their profile. There are also now age restrictions, as well as content restrictions like on any other Web site, that apply to MySpace.

Twitter: Twitter is a new form of social medium that was developed not only as a social networking tool for its users to use at home, from their computers, but for the BlackBerry generation, or Gen. B as I like to call it, to use from their cell phones. While Twitter does not have as many features as Facebook or MySpace, the basic premise is that from the Web site, users are able to update short posts about what they are doing, called a "tweet." Someone who is following you on Twitter can then see your tweet, along with all the tweets from people they are following, on their home page.

So how can I make this work for me?
By taking advantage of these forms of social media, which are free of charge to use, you are allowing yourself to spread the word about you or your company. Joining these networks, and then obtaining as many "friends" as possible, allows you to keep your company’s name fresh not only in the minds of people who are familiar with your company, but those who are not as well. As often as you update your social networking pages is as often as your name pops up on their screen. Consider it free advertising that you can do from your own home on a daily basis with minimal effort.

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